Kwik-Flix

The movies watched since my last entry are starting to pile up, so here's some brief commentary on the latest viewed.

Frantic (1988)
dir. Roman Polanski
Viewed on: 2007-06-12
Rating: 7.5

An alternate title could be "Fuming." It's pretty amusing to hear Harrison Ford's dialogue devolve from normal to increasingly clench-jawed as his character, whose wife has been kidnapped for no apparent reason, becomes more desperate and angry. By the end, you half expect him to stop talking altogether and instead breathe fire out his nostrils. So... angry... Can't... open... mouth.

Actually, at some point I started to add one of Ford's lines from The Empire Strikes Back, "I'll see you in hell!," to whatever he said in Frantic. It's sorta like the game where you add "in bed" to the end of your fortune cookie fortune.

For example, in my favorite moment, Dr. Walker (Ford) is on the phone with the terrifically frustrating American Embassy, trying to explain his encounter with the men who are holding his wife captive. The embassy doesn't seem concerned with his wife, and keeps asking him mostly trivial questions. Finally:

Embassy bureaucrat (on phone): What number are you calling from?
Walker: How should I know? I... I'm in a cafe, the Paris Midi.
Bureaucrat: How do you spell that?
Walker: How do you...? With an "S"-- for shithead! [hangs up]
["And I'll see you in hell!"]

Anyway, despite the odd casting of Betty Buckley as Harrison Ford's wife (they make a strange couple; she'll always be Abby from "Eight is Enough" to me), Frantic is fun because it is essentially Polanski doing a Hitchcock movie--an ordinary man gets thrown into extraordinary circumstances, gets zero help from the authorities, and ends up chasing after a MacGuffin so
that he can get his wife back. Good stuff.

Ocean's Thirteen (2007)
dir. Steven Soderbergh
Viewed on: 2007-06-10
Rating: 7.0

Like my friend the Food Librarian said after we watched this, it was like seeing old friends. I didn't see Ocean's 12, but I'm not sure I needed to. This was essentially the same set-up as in Ocean's 11, but with less character development (actually, almost zero) and no Julia Roberts (not a huge loss, in my opinion). Still, the ensemble cast is enjoyable and the premise is still fun: a bunch of smart, cool guys banding together to stick it to the Man. It's like a comic book for adults. Avengers Assemble!


Internal Affairs (1990)
dir. Mike Figgis
Viewed on: 2007-06-09
Rating: 8.0

The great thing about the early '90s is that it was really an '80s hangover, so the contemporary movies all feature hair and clothes that are very '80s and cheesy. For instance, Nancy Travis with her linebacker shoulder pads and frizzy mega-'do is freakin' hilarious.

Beyond that, Internal Affairs tuned out to be one of the better cop movies I've seen. Richard Gere as Dennis Peck is SO evil in this movie. He goes from a sociopathic corrupt cop who is nevertheless partly sympathetic (he's a family man and looks after his friends--basically, law enforcement's version of Tony Soprano), to a raging, paranoid, megalomaniacal psychopath. That's highly entertaining in its own right, but add to that Andy Garcia's character Raymond, a new internal affairs detective who becomes so obsessed with bringing Peck down that he risks sinking into the same psychotic oblivion as his enemy -- and the tension goes to 11.


Waitress (2007)
dir. Adrienne ShellyV
iewed on: 2007-06-02
Rating: 6.5

This is a cute, but fairly typical indie romance movie. The acting is good, but I felt like I'd seen most of the characters in many other indie movies before, particularly the abusive husband, the quirky friends, and the gruff old man with a heart of gold. It's totally worth seeing, though, if (a) you're sick of summer blockbuster fare and want something lighthearted but grown-up, or if (b) you love homemade pie. Half the movie is food porn.

Don't see it on an empty stomach, though, or you could end up on a desperate search for food afterwards, made worse by the fact that everything nearby is way crappier than you're willing to settle for, lacking in baked goods, or too damn crowded.

Another warning: Waitress has a sad background story involving its director. If you don't know about it already, you may not want to read it until after seeing the movie. It could ruin the lighthearted mood.

Sixteen Candles (1984)

dir. John Hughes
Viewed on 2007-05-27
Rating: 8.0

Somehow, this slipped through the cracks. I don't know why I never saw Sixteen Candles when I was younger, as it is basically required viewing if you grew up in the 80s. It's not like I consciously avoided it, either. Just one of those flukey holes in my pop culture education, I guess. I suspect all pop culture junkies have them, whether they want to admit it or not.

For the record, I had seen parts of Sixteen Candles, but only when flipping through channels, and it always seemed to be more than half way through the movie. I can't stand coming into a movie late unless it's something I've seen before. It's like a sin.

Besides wondering why I'd never seen Sixteen Candles, I was also thinking that Molly Ringwald seems to be in the same category of actor as Mark Hamill--a young star of generational touchstone movies, but too-closely associated with the role (or type of role) to end up in a different type of movie that will match that success. It makes me wonder who else will join that class. Elijah Wood seems like a good candidate, but somehow I don't think of Lord of the Rings movies as having the same generational or pan-cultural significance as Star Wars or John Hughes's teen movies. (Don't get me wrong, the LOTR movies are among my favorites.) Could be that the LOTR movies are the Star Wars of a younger generation, though.

Anyway, getting back to Sixteen Candles: the movie is great, as I am no doubt the very first to discover. It's completely crazy and hilarious like a teen comedy should be. As much as I love The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller are more fun to watch, and that always counts more for me. That is, my favorite movies tend to have re-watchability, and there's a difference between "favorites" and those that I think are the best made. It's like the difference between everyday food that you love and rich food that you love but would get sick of if you ate it more than rarely. But I digress. What I was getting at is that Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller illustrate some of the problems and tensions of adolescence, but present them in absurd ways, while Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink* emphasize the drama. The thing about a lot of teenage drama--the real-life drama, I mean--is that it feels like the most vital thing in the world at that age, but at a distance it starts to seem more and more silly. (It's the inverse-square law of teen films: dramatic intensity drops off exponentially with distance.) I think that's partly why the comedies seem more relevant to me now. There's only so long you can remain serious about something. You either have to laugh it off or sink into a bitter hole.

So, maybe the serious teen movies should now be laughed at and can therefore be viewed in the same way as the comedies.


* I don't care for Pretty in Pink much at all. I suspect it might fall into the inverse-square theory I described above: if I'd seen it at a more relevant age, it would've been better. Yes, another admission, I only saw Pretty in Pink six months ago, but I think I did purposely avoid that one: "Meh, it's a chick flick."

Grindhouse (2007)

viewed on: 2007-04-29
overall rating: 8.0

Planet Terror
dir. Robert Rodriguez
rating: 8.0

Planet Terror could possibly be my favorite zombie movie after Shaun of the Dead. Whereas the latter is a comedy with action, Planet Terror is an action movie with tongue-in-cheek comedy. For example, Cherry Darling's (Rose McGowan's) gun-leg is simultaneously super-badass and super-cheesy.

The plot is irrelevant and utterly uncomplicated--zombies, mayhem, explosions--so I'll just list things I loved, in addition to the "leg."

-Freddy Rodriguez and his character El Wray. Although El Wray was mostly played for laughs, Freddy could definitely carry his own action movie. He's a good actor.
-Michael Biehn, who really should be cast in every action movie made. His steely gaze and somewhat gravelly voice were made for the genre. And he's been in some of the best examples of action movies (good and bad): Terminator, Aliens, Navy Seals, The Rock... Inspired casting here.
-The return of Earl McGraw (Michael Parks), a recurring Tarantino/Rodriguez character. He originated in From Dusk Till Dawn, showed up in Kill Bill, and appears in both parts of Grindhouse.
-Bruce Willis. Fit his (essentially cameo) role like a glove.
-Rose McGowan, it turns out, is a good actress, and was a wasted talent on the very crappy tv show "Charmed." She does almost a 180 between her two roles in Grindhouse, and is believable in both. Hopefully she'll start getting more good roles.

One thing I wish got paid off more were the specially-made car and motorcycle. The movie made a big deal of revealing them, but they didn't figure into the plot much after that. I was expecting them to be tricked out with weapons or something, but they were basically only for show--helping the good guys look cool. The chopper was used a bit in one or two stunts, but the car wasn't really.

I could've done without Quentin Tarantino, limited screen time though he had. As a writer and director he is high-quality; as an actor, not so much. I think my dislike of him on screen has to do with his perpetual smirking sneer, or sneering smirk, whatever you want to call it--I can't take him seriously as an actor at all.


The trailers
dir. (various)
rating: 9.5

Before the main features there were fake trailers for other "grind house" type films. These were each directed by buddies of Rodriguez and Tarantino, and they were awesome--completely flippin' hilarious. The titles actually do them a lot of justice:
"Machete"
"Werewolf Women of the SS"
"Thanksgiving"
"Don't!"
but the trailers themselves are a treat. I could've watched an hour or more of these, especially if it meant taking time away from the next feature...


Death Proof
dir. Quentin Tarantino
rating: 6.5

While I don't have any idea of what makes a movie a "grind house" film, my impression after seeing Grindhouse was that Planet Terror was "it," the trailers for the fake films were "it," and Death Proof was "not it." If not for the ending, an extended car chase sequence that joins the one in Bullitt among the best ever, there wouldn't be much to recommend Death Proof.

The film's structure goes like this:
Talk
Talk
Talk
Talk
Talk
Talk
Action sequence
Talk
Talk
Talk
Talk
Talk
Talk
Talk
Very long action sequence

Now, this being a Tarantino movie, you'd expect witty dialogue with cultural references and observations. But there's just... So. Damn. Much. I have no doubt that had I watched the movie at home, or after 9:00 at night I would have fallen asleep through much of it. Sure all the conversation is interesting and well-written when taken in small parts, but it gets freaking boring if it goes on and on without much point. Essentially, Death Proof would have worked a lot better if it were only an hour long rather than 1:30. The acting was good, the climactic action sequence, though, was excellent, and somewhat cathartic given the slow pace of most of the rest of the movie. Also, if you imagine Quentin Tarantino in the place of Kurt Russell's character in the very last scene before the credits, it's even more cathartic. (I can't say more without spoiling it.) To me, the film was mostly a self-indulgent outlet for its writer-director, and aside from the action sequences, it wasn't clear that it belonged as part of a "grind house" program.

Overall
The whole Grindhouse experience was highly original and entertaining--original, that is, in the sense that it's totally unique to the present-day moviegoing experience. We simply do not have double features of first-run films anymore, and rarely (it seems) do we get movies made just for the hell of it. Everything, and especially the popcorn movies, is marketed and audience-targeted to death.

So, in spite of my "issues" with Death Proof, the whole thing gets bonus points for originality of concept and for the side-splitting fake trailers whose full film versions I would pay to see if they ever got made. (How about more "Grindhouses" featuring those movies? Or at least "Machete" and "Werewolf Women of the SS"?)

Oh, and I should mention that I paid only $3 for my ticket. That's the matinee price at the Culver Plaza Theater where I saw it. Sweet! The only way to get more retro than a $3 double feature would be to see it at a drive-in.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

dir. Edgar Wright
Viewed on: 2007-04-22
Rating: 9

Best. Cop movie. Ever.

That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Actually, I'm ambivalent towards cop movies, some are lame, and some are classics like The French Connection. Anyway, I made some comments a few posts ago about my wish to see a comedy composed completely of cliches, but presented in a deadpan way. Lo and behold, here is Hot Fuzz, which is probably the closest match I have yet seen to what I was talking about. Maybe it was because I was conscious of those comments, having written them so recently, that I noticed what was going on in Hot Fuzz more than I might have otherwise. Still, I don't think the movie can be fully enjoyed the way it was intended if its viewers aren't aware of the humor underlying the surface humor.

Now, granted, Hot Fuzz is absolutely a straightforward comedy played for laughs, employing lots of physical humor, jokes, and excellent puns.(1) In these aspects alone it is a good movie. And no one would mistake it for anything less than a parody of the cop movie genre. But the film goes to some trouble to clue the audience in to a larger, yet more subtle purpose of not only poking fun at cop movies, but completely deconstructing them. One example is the soundtrack, with abundant, overly loud sound effects and a tense musical score--neither of which would be at all out of place in a common action-suspense movie. Another is the use of references to other movies. Nick Frost's character Danny hasn't seen much police action, so movies like Point Break and Bad Boys II are his frame of reference when he tries to relate to his new hard-ass partner Nicholas (played by Simon Pegg). Danny asks Nicholas about a particular scene in Point Break, later shows the film to Nicholas who hadn't seen it, and finally ends up paralleling the scene near the end of the movie. But although the parallel was set up all along, it still played out logically. That is, Danny does the same thing Keanu Reeves does in a similar moment in Point Break for the same reason, not because he's merely imitating Keanu or making fun of Point Break.

I'm trying not to spoil the details here more than I might have already, so my example might be a little vague. Suffice it to say that I think the references (2) to the other movies, or the elements of those movies, reveal Hot Fuzz as something more complex than a genre parody.(3)

Apart from the clever writing, the acting is outstanding. For one thing, your average British cast always seems more talented top-to-bottom than the typical American one (4), and good actors just seem to have a knack for comedy as it is. But also, I think Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the lead actors, could become one of the top comic duos ever, based on only Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead.

Speaking of Shaun of the Dead, it occurs to me that it too might be a good example of a cliche-based film that isn't overly aware of itself. Although, not having seen it in a while, I have an impression of it as being more of a straight-up parody of zombie movies, and not as much a deconstruction.

I'll have to revisit Hot Fuzz several months from now to see if I still like it as much. I hedged my rating a little--I was going to give it a 9.5--because I am initially flattened by the movie's total awesomeness, and at the moment it's hard to see anything wrong with it other than what I imagine people who aren't me might say. For example, some could argue that the movie, especially the ending, is too long. In that regard, though, Hot Fuzz's long ending is entirely necessary since cop movies or action movies in general often have overly-long climaxes with endless action sequences and multiple resurrections of both the good guys and the bad guys. Anything less would have been untrue to the genre the movie deconstructs.

Of course, one could choose not to buy my argument that the movie is a deconstruction. In that case, though, I think the movie would have much less value but still would be worth watching.


Notes:
(1) My favorite pun is the description of a character named George Merchant, the local appliance retail tycoon, as "the refrigerator magnate." Heh heh.

(2) Another great reference was almost a blink-and-you-miss-it moment where the final line of Chinatown is paraphrased but not really dwelled upon or otherwise highlighted. In fact, I don't think Chinatown is mentioned or referenced in any other part of Hot Fuzz.

(3) I think what I consider a parody movie is one that calls attention to characteristics of one or more other movies by explicitly highlighting and exaggerating those characteristics for humorous effect. Basically, as caricature is to cartoons, parody is to movies. Therefore, I see deconstruction comedy as taking an extra step in that it makes more oblique references to the same characteristics with the intent of peeling off layers of meaning so they can be laughed at for their inherent absurdity, not merely mocked. I believe Hot Fuzz does both. And I'm not saying, here or in my comments on Not Another Teen Movie, that one is a better type of comedy than the other, just that I've seen plenty of parody and would love to see much more deconstruction.

(4) Maybe it's due to the fact that they make far fewer movies, and fewer per actor, in the UK, so to get a part you have to be damn good.

Flirting With Disaster (1996)

dir. David O. Russell
Viewed on 2007-04-16
Rating: 7

I guess I'm not on the critics' bandwagon that seems to think this is one of the funniest movies ever. For that matter, I'm not really on the David O. Russell bandwagon, either. Of the three Russell movies I've seen, Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, and this, Flirting is my favorite,* but it's not like I love it--or hate the others. To me, they're all good and worth seeing; not great or "must-see."

I think I liked Flirting, in part, because it felt like a Woody Allen movie. But at the same time it loses points for coming off too much as a Woody Allen wannabe. (I'm hard to please sometimes, I know.) As comedies about eccentric families go, I'd much rather watch Hannah and Her Sisters, or outside the Allen oeuvre, Raising Arizona. The latter being one of my favorite movies ever. As nutty as both plots are, I like Coen brothers-nutty much more than Russell-nutty.



* Probably for some of the lines, like: "You've got a lot of nerve. You come in here, you lick my wife's armpit. You know... I'm going to have that image in my head for the rest of my life with your tongue in there. "

Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

dir. Joel Gallen
Viewed on 2007-04-09
Rating: 3

Arrgh! Stupid f***** Blogger!

I had a post for this movie almost completely written several days ago, when some piece of crap, Java-spewing, Flash-"enabled," or whatever-the-hell-plugin-enhanced site I had open in another window (to research some point I was going to make) crashed my computer. (I think it was the homepage of one R. Ebert, that computer-crashing bastard!) Despite the crash being so bad that I had to restart the computer manually, I thought at least my post would be safe because Blogger has an "auto-save" feature. Turns out it is shite; auto-save "auto-lost" everything. If there is one thing I truly, truly hate it's having to (attempt to) retype something from memory, especially if wasn't my fault that the original was lost.

So, there will not be the usual movie write-up because... screw Blogger, that's why! From now on I'm going to type posts somewhere else and only paste and do final edits in Blogger.

Okay, I have to say something about the movie. It sucked.

That's it.

But the point of my lost post, after an introductory section contemplating what possessed me to add the movie to my Netflix queue in the first place, was going to be that the movie was at least useful in reminding me of an idea I've had for several years: Someone should make a movie composed entirely of cliches, but done in a complete deadpan way--because farces (like Not Another Teen Movie, Scary Movie, Airplane, Naked Gun, etc.) are basically cliche-fests done in an overt, slapstick way, and are totally obvious as to what they're about. NATM in fact expressly calls attention to the cliches it mocks, like the "token black guy" who introduces himself as such. Just for the hell of it, though, I'd like to see someone intentionally make a movie full of cliches but not call any attention to them whatsoever. That includes the acting: no over-acting-to-emphasize-the-silliness allowed. No winks to the camera. The film has to be completely unselfconscious, apart from the filmmakers' conscious attempt to be utterly clicheed, that is.

But nooo! Blogger deprived me of the opportunity to make that point. And trust me, my friends, it was going to be insightful.

For Your Consideration (2006)

dir. Christopher Guest
Viewed on 2007-04-01
Rating: 4

Parts were funny--some lines here and there. Mostly this film was painfully unfunny, though. I don't know what went wrong: The same cast and creative talent that made Best in Show and A Mighty Wind somehow fired a blank. It could be that Guest and co. made a mistake by foregoing the mockumentary format in favor of a more conventional style. Really, though, most of the jokes just plain fell flat, and making fun of insipid Hollywood types and Hollywood hype is too easy. It comes off as too believable, and therefore tests my patience in the same way as the actual Hollywood tripe.

I think, too, that I was a little prejudiced by having very recently seen the David O. Russell v. Lily Tomlin videos, which are a far more insightful and entertaining look at Hollywood moviemaking than For Your Consideration. Watch those instead.

Farce of the Penguins (2006)

dir. Bob Saget
Viewed on: 2007-03-18
Rating: 4.5

Bob Saget, who's funny (and foul-mouthed) now dontcha know, saw March of the Penguins and decided he had to make a parody. So, with the help of lots of stock footage and lots of actor/comedian friends, he did. And although I thought March of the Penguins was good, it was certainly asking to be parodied once media and silly conservative types started praising the penguins' "family values."

Saget decided to run with the penguins-as-people concept by making a romantic comedy out of their weird mating ritual. It's a nice idea that's good for a few chuckles here and there, but the joke gets old. It should've been a 30-minute film at most, or better still, a succinct five minutes, like this:

Tenacious D in 'The Pick of Destiny' (2006)

dir. Liam Lynch
Viewed on 2007-03-09
Rating: 5.9

Ten minutes into this movie I was thinking it could be headed for legendary status. Those ten minutes led me to believe that the whole film would be a revelation: a rock opera featuring the music of Tenacious D, a duo that simultaneously honors and mocks rock music (particularly of the Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath ilk). Alas, after cameos by Meat Loaf and Dio, the movie played out like a 90-minute version of one of the episodes from The D's HBO series, or else like a mediocre retelling of The Blues Brothers. Some genuinely funny songs and scenes, but not enough to carry a whole movie unless you really enjoyed the series, or you love everything Jack Black does. Whether they didn't have the time, budget, will, studio approval, or whatever was needed to make a full-blown opera isn't really important--I don't blame anyone. But I can't help feeling an opportunity was missed here.

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

dir. Marc Forster
Viewed on 2007-02-27
Rating: 6.5

Somewhere in the middle of watching this movie I wondered, "What would Charlie Kaufman have done with this story idea?" For one, I think Will Ferrell's character Harold Crick, a metronomic IRS auditor, might have gone a little crazier when he starts hearing novelist Kay Eiffel's (Emma Thompson's) voice in his head, narrating his life and announcing his impending death. Harold is already obsessive-compulsive, so it was hard to believe that he wouldn't have gone a little more off the deep end. Granted, it's more than justifiable that Harold acts the way he does because he's under the control of Eiffel's story. Still, I'd like to think Kaufman would've invented some way to introduce doubt into the whole premise of this movie, perhaps by making us wonder whether Harold was dreaming/hallucinating. Or maybe it would be Eiffel's hallucinations about one of her characters thinking he's real and hallucinating about an omniscient "author" controlling his life. Or maybe... well, you get the drift.

What I'm getting at is, the story was a good idea, especially for a romantic comedy, but it wasn't as ambitious as its premise allowed. Nevertheless, the movie is worth a look, and makes some interesting, if heavy-handed, points about art and sacrifice, and about facing death.