Scott Fairley

My godfather is a chaplain with the Army. A few years ago, he visited my family after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He said two things that stuck with me: sand will get in places you didn’t think sand could get, and daily life for soldiers is like Groundhog Day meets Black Hawk Down.

So several years later, I’m finding that this is perhaps the best way to describe Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. It seems like an unlikely marriage between concepts, but it’s apt; the film gives the impression that time in a war zone is frustratingly cyclical and incredibly dangerous. But the film also goes deeper than this. The Hurt Locker opens with the words “War is a drug”. From there, it unpacks what that might mean.

The film centres around Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) and his two EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) teammates. Essentially, they’re the US Army’s bomb squad. The film follows them from mission to mission on Renner’s final month of duty in Iraq, documentary style. Though the film’s subject lends itself more towards a gung-ho action film, it winds up using mood as it’s primary method of storytelling. While Bigelow is known for her action films like Point Break, The Hurt Locker is a suspense film that actually lives up to that title.

Much has been said about how intense the film is. It’s justified. Because the film is shot in a hand-held documentary style, the “you are here” effect is amplified, but even so, the level of tension in The Hurt Locker is remarkable. It’s a film that, in it’s most intense scenes, draws you in like no other war film I’ve seen. In particular, there’s an intense showdown between Renner’s squad and (mostly) unseen snipers that draws on for roughly ten minutes, but there’s a sense of unpredictability present that keeps a scene where very little happens intense. It’s an action film without action; the film has suspense scenes in place of action scenes, and it’s difficult to overstate how legitimate the suspense actually is.

It’s almost a deconstruction of the modern action film. The cocky, rule-breaking hero has no place here, and attempts to become one don’t last. Even when Renner is at his most reckless, it’s hardly heroic in the traditional sense. He acts more like an addict than a cowboy. It takes a toll on his sanity and on his team.

Kathryn Bigelow’s direction, it needs to be said, is phenomenal. The film’s intensity is coming from more than just the pacing and performances (Jeremy Renner absolutely earns his Best Actor nomination), but nearly every aspect. The film’s score ups the tension with less music than noises, and the way it uses silence in particular is effective. Bigelow sought realism, shooting in Jordan (sometimes within sight of the Iraq border) and with the cast living in close quarters, and it feels very real as a result. The frayed nerves of Renner and his teammates never appear forced, and they’re never overplayed.

So with all that said, the question that needs to be answered is this: Is it truly the best film of 2009? I will say this: I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and it’s incredibly effective. It’s certainly among the best films I’ve seen, and well worth seeing. This is one example where a film is capable of backing up it’s hype.

I have enormous difficulty ranking movies.  Partly because I love as many of them as I do, but partly because I just can’t compartmentalize them like I want to.  I also seldom see ten that I really love because I’m lucky if I see ten total in any given year.

That said, I’m pretty quick to be able to name a movie that sticks with me from any given year.  Here’s ten of those, plus some honorable mentions

2000 – Memento (Dir. Christopher Nolan)
Memento, in my opinion, will long be considered the strongest debut film of any filmmaker in the 21st century.  It’s a hyperbolic claim, sure, but it’s kind of hard to overstate how good Memento is.  It’s ambitious premise and plotting are more than just gimmicks; the power of the film is essentially embedded in them.  It speaks volumes about Nolan’s chosen form that nobody has really tried to replicate it; Charlie Kaufman even considered abandoning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind once he saw Memento because he felt it could never measure up.
But that aside, it’s still an incredibly strong film in nearly all regards; the performances are excellent, and there’s no significant missteps in pacing or tone.  It’s a very dark film to be sure, but the ending knocked me flat on my ass when I first saw it.  I’m not sure any twist ending since comes close, and neither does any movie released in 2000.
Honorable mentions? Almost Famous, Gladiator, Amelie

2001 – Monsters Inc. (dirs. Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, David Silverman)
Monsters Inc. is a movie that will probably forever make me smile.  The voice cast is perfect, comic timing flawless, and it’s sense of imagination never falls back on taking the easy way out like too many animated movies do today.  Monsters Inc. sticks out because I’ll never miss a chance to watch it, which isn’t something I can really say for other movies released in 2001.  And thanks to Pixar’s refusal to rely on soon-to-be-dated pop-culture jokes, it’s still as fresh now as it was back then.  It’s not a big “prestige” movie by any means, but it’s entertaining from start to finish and it was my constant choice for Pixar’s best until recently.
Honorable mentions? Moulin Rouge!, AI: Artificial Intelligence, The Royal Tennenbaums

2002 – Adaptation (dir. Spike Jonze)
Adaptation is something of a kindred spirit with Memento; both work against the traditional filmmaking formula, and both have their story strengthened by breaking with tradition.  But Adaptation has a lighter side and when one breaks through the meta-film elements, it has a lot of heart.  Nicolas Cage’s performance is especially noteworthy, as it defies his oft-mocked over-the-top hamming reputation by being simultaneously understated and ridiculous; he even manages to get a few heartbreaking scenes in there.  By being equal parts.. well, equal parts nearly everything, but never abandoning the idea that the characters make or break the story, it works.
Honorable mentions? 28 Days Later, Gangs of New York, Panic Room, Catch Me If You Can.

2003 – American Splendor (dirs. Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini)
Finding an entry from 2003 was a tricky one until I saw this one on my DVD shelf.  It’s actually not my copy, but it’s been there so long it may as well be.  A trend I’m noticing is that my favourites of this decade seem to play with traditional cinematic structure, or at least work against genre conventions.  American Splendor is part documentary, part biopic, and part comic book adaptation.  And it’s a hidden gem.  I originally planned on going with Kill Bill as my 2003 pick, but while Kill Bill celebrates genre films, American Splendor occupies a fairly unique place.  Paul Giamatti’s performance is terrific, and it balances the documentary and dramatic better than any film I’ve seen before by drawing attention to a character – and I mean that in every sense of the word – with stories worth telling.
Honorable mentions? Kill Bill, Finding Nemo

2004 – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry)
A lot has already been said about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and it’s a complex movie that can be examined from philosophical, aesthetic, and even scholarly perspectives, but what keeps it from just being an intellectual exercise is how grounded it is in it’s characters.  Yes, the screenplay goes into places that folks like Terry Gilliam or Philip K. Dick would be familiar in, and Michel Gondry offers some fairly bizarre images to match.  But then you also have an incredibly understated performance from Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in her best work to date.  It also has some pleasant surprises in Mark Ruffalo and Kirsten Dunst.  And like Memento, it’s never content to just be an exercise in non-traditional filmmaking; Gondry and the cast deliver when it really counts.
Honorable mentions? Collateral, The Aviator, Sideways, Shaun of the Dead

2005 – Match Point (dir. Woody Allen)
Match Point is one of those movies that has managed to stick with me despite only seeing it once.  It’s economical, tense, and relies a lot on mood and music.  And to my great surprise, it’s a Woody Allen movie.  I’m someone who hasn’t seen a great deal of Allen’s films or even feel compelled to, but probably wouldn’t want to be stuck in a world where Woody Allen never decided to make a movie.   Woody Allen’s best-loved films generally aren’t thrillers, and they’re also generally not about upper-class Brits and the terrible things they’ll do in the name of reputation, but Match Point is.  I still find that Scarlett Johannson is a fairly inconsistent actress, but she’s excellent in this one, and the film looks fantastic.  Is it one of Woody Allen’s best?  That’s a matter of debate to be sure, but it manages to be an incredibly involving film in it’s own right, even if it’s not a kindred spirit with Annie Hall or Hannah and her Sisters.
Honorable mentions? Brick, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The 40-Year-Old Virgin

2006 – Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuaron)
2006 was a hard year to narrow down to just one.  Even just within my own tastes, I found that there was a great heist flick (Inside Man), one of Scorsese’s best mob movies (The Departed), and a terrific Christopher Nolan character study/thriller (The Prestige).  So why Children of Men?  A few reasons.  The first is the overarching story: the film drops you into a devastated world with no real explanation as far as how that happened; the hook (women are inexplicably infertile and mankind is at most 50 years from extinction) is strong enough alone to be intriguing, but by asking questions and giving no answers, it becomes captivating.  There’s an enormous problem facing the world, but they’re damned if they can solve it.  Second is how effectively it narrows a plot that’s on a global scale down to just one character.  And the third is how well it tells his story.  The film’s guerilla-style handheld shots and long takes make it hard to not get involved, and the performances keep the film grounded in human drama, ensuring the film’s plot never veers too far into science fiction to keep from being taken seriously.  It’s fundamentally rooted in it’s characters and performances rather than the sheer volume of despair in it’s world, and that makes it great rather than simply bleak and technically impressive.
Honorable mentions? Inside Man, The Departed, The Prestige

2007 – Zodiac (dir. David Fincher)
I feel as though all David Fincher’s award nominations and Oscar buzz for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button were essentially consolation prizes for how little buzz and recognition Zodiac received.  Because Zodiac is easily a better movie in nearly all regards.  It has help; the Zodiac killer story is among the most fascinating true crime stories in American history.  But even with some assistance from reality, it takes a special talent to make scenes about handwriting analysis interesting and engaging.  But the real treat is when the film shifts into thriller territory.  While the scenes of the murders are often tense, the most intense scenes are the ones where the tension and fear felt by Jake Gyllenhaal’s character are dictated not by onscreen violence, but by careful editing and well-chosen camera angles.  It sounds boring, but the results speak for themselves; the film is incredibly tense, even if you can’t figure out why until after the fact.  While Panic Room is the most purely entertaining film Fincher has made, Zodiac remains his best.
Honorable mentions? Once, Sunshine, No Country for Old Men, Juno

2008 – The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky)
Noticing another trend?  I like movies with strong characters and performances.  And why not?  Objectively complex special effects alone don’t make movies interesting beyond the initial viewing experience and the behind-the-scenes DVD features.  I love movies where the special effects are in the service of characters, but The Wrestler had no special effects to speak of.  Just a character.  It’s essentially the Mickey Rourke show, but his performance was justly rewarded.  Darren Aronofsky slips in some truly beautiful moments and some achingly broken ones.  It’s not the only performance-driven, low-fidelity movie of 2008 – it has a kindred spirit in Rachel Getting Married – but it resonates most.  It’s a movie that I can’t shake from memory and though it’s flawed, flawed movies are often the most memorable.
Honorable mentions? The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, Wall-E

2009 – Up (dir. Pete Docter)
It speaks great volumes about Pixar that their biggest screw-up was Cars.  While Wall-E accomplished the unenviable task of making a love story about robots warm and resonant, Up takes the ambition and heart of Wall-E and applies it to a deeply human story.  As firmly planted in fantasy and adventure serials as Up is, it’s an incredibly smart movie in how it handles that.  It never overplays it’s emotional hand, despite having a stacked deck.  It’s the strongest argument against the “animation can’t compete with the real thing” made to date.  When I saw the movie, the film’s most heart-wrenching scene (a montage of Carl and Ellie’s life together) was narrated by a loud woman sitting near me, and the scene still managed to be as powerful as every film critic had said.
Honorable Mentions? Adventureland, Coraline, Zombieland, District 9

Funny People is a movie I wanted to love, but just couldn’t.  Judd Apatow I have a lot of affection for as a filmmaker (Knocked Up is my least favourite of his, but Freaks and Geeks is easily one of my favourite TV shows), and I generally agree with the critics who laud his ability to balance juvenile comedy with legitimate drama, though I find myself much more drawn to the drama.  And his approach to Directing is one I take myself; maximum collaboration with an emphasis on improvisation.

Funny People is about Adam Sandler playing a darker version of himself, ostensibly.  He lives alone and has a fundamentally meaningless existence.  Anonymous sex, making mindless high-concept comedies (such as Mer-man and My Best Friend, The Robot), and famous “friends”.  When he’s diagnosed with a terminal illness, he returns to his stand-up roots.  When his alarmingly dark routine falls flat, up-and-coming comic Seth Rogen essentially follows his act by riffing on how dark Sandler’s routine was.  Then Sandler decides to take Rogen under his wing/employ as a writer and personal assistant as he tries to figure out what the end of his life is going to look like.  It’s a comedy, to be sure, but Apatow takes an intentional turn towards drama this time, and there’s some fairly dark scenes in an otherwise lighthearted look at death and fame.

There’s essentially three major plotlines that make up Funny People.  There’s Sandler’s dealing with his impending mortality and his relationship with Rogen, Rogen and his comedian roommates and friends, and Sandler trying to win back his long lost love (Leslie Mann, now married with children to Eric Bana).  And frankly, there’s close to enough material in all three for their own movie; I’d certainly say that Apatow could have done a full-length tale of Rogen balancing his life at home and with Sandler and a fairly economical, but separate, film about Sandler’s character at Leslie Mann and Eric Bana’s house.  And that’s really the problem with Funny People.

All three plotlines are well executed, and it’s to Judd Apatow’s credit is that the world he establishes is one that I wanted to keep watching.  But the movie is two and a half hours long, and as a result, it’s just… excessive.  The best parts of the movie are among Apatow’s best overall, and while there’s no fluff here, per se, the final product feels like it could use a less loving edit.  Maybe that’s the danger in writing such a personal project; you don’t want to leave anything out.

That’s really my only beef with the movie, but it goes without saying that a movie that’s too long is a big problem to have.  The movie, however, does have it’s share of praiseworthy elements.  Apatow’s shift towards a more mature tone, by and large, works.  There’s no serious gross-out moments, and while it has a lot of dirty jokes, the bulk of them are in stand-up footage.  Rogen and his roommates bear few resemblances to, say, Rogen and his roommates in Knocked Up (save Jonah Hill being in both).  Rogen’s performance shows a lot of growth as well.  As with most Apatow films, the heavy improvisation makes the performances feel more natural, and that definitely works in favour of the film this time; where the improvisations are and where scripted dialogue made the final cut only Apatow knows for sure, but the dialogue never sounds forced or “written”.

There’s a lot to like in Funny People.  Subtle “moments” pop up here and there, performances are solid, and Apatow has largely jettisoned the sorts of things that would have put his career at a standstill had he just made another Knocked Up clone with the same affable manchild characters (the most childish character is also the least likable this time around) and gross-out humour.  But it feels like what could have been here is better than the final product.

B-

This review contains some minor spoilers.  Proceed with caution

I’ve been a big fan of David Fincher for a while.  I even liked his (long disowned) chapter in the Alien franchise, Alien 3.  I certainly liked it more than Alien Resurrection, despite Joss Whedon’s participation.  I’ve yet to see Fincher’s The Game, but Fight Club, Panic Room, and Zodiac rank among my favourite films.  In fact, I was bewildered that Zodiac received little to no attention when 2007’s awards were being handed out.  Zodiac, aside from being masterfully shot, acted, and paced, was able to make lengthy scenes about the mechanics of handwriting interesting.  It’s his best movie.

And after seeing Benjamin Button, I still feel that way, but Benjamin Button is a more than worthy follow-up.

The story of Benjamin Button is fairly simple, and based (very loosely) on a short story by F. Scott Fitgerald.  Benjamin Button ages in reverse.  He was born a wrinkled, arthtitic, near-blind and deaf, and given mere weeks to live in 1918.  He spends his childhood in a nursing home in New Orleans, growing younger while those around him grow older.  The old adage “Youth is wasted on the young” is oddly inverted, as Benjamin not only goes through his elder years with a child’s curiosity, but he winds up retaining that curiosity until 1985, when he ceases writing letters to his one true love, Daisy (Cate Blanchett); letters that serve as the primary narrative device.

In the hands of a lesser Director and lesser actors, this would come across as painfully sentimental and heavy-handed.  But Fincher didn’t earn his reputation by making epic love stories or melodrama.  He earned it by making gritty thrillers and challenging narratives.  He takes both that aesthetic style (there’s no shortage of both gorgeous and complex shots to be found in Benjamin Button) and the confidence of having tackled works like Fight Club and Zodiac and applies them to a love story that’s less about the couple being together and more about how they got there.

Curiously, Benjamin is by no means the most interesting character.  Obviously, his condition has a built-in depth, but Pitt underplays that if anything.  His dialogue is only slightly less sparse than his narration.  He’s given no big scenes of cursing the heavens for his affliction.  Not even quiet moments of breakdown.  It’s an incredibly understated performance, and wisely so; aside from Blanchett (who’s fantastic as Daisy), the characters Pitt encounters during the movie are nothing short of, well, characters.  The movie is more about the journey than the destination.

The fact that the audience can’t really connect to Brad Pitt (who bears an uncanny resemblence to Robert Redford in many shots, intentionally or otherwise) but can to Cate Blanchett or Julia Ormond appears to undermine the movie at times, but by the end it becomes clear that while it is a journey movie, it’s also a location movie.  While there are scenes in Moscow, the Pacific Ocean, and New York, the movie plays out as if it was all a grand elegy for New Orleans; a subtle tribute to what Hurricane Katrina took away.  Fincher and Roth never overplay this, but the final scene makes this clear.

The movie works because of what it doesn’t do more often that what it does.  The CGI used to age Benjamin as a child is used sparingly, and as impressive as it is, it’s still not 100% seamless.  Similarly, it avoids scenes that are heavy on stated emotion.  Julia Ormond has the most emotionally-charged performance, and it’s appropriately subdued.  She’s not battling grief; she’s been defeated by grief.  But how disconnecting this is may vary from viewer to viewer.  All the same, Fincher deserves credit for making a choice that goes against the grain.  Removing big emotional scenes maintains the film’s consistency, but goes against audience expectations.

Fincher might finally get a Best Director nod for his work in Benjamin Button, and he deserves it.  It’s beautifully shot, incredibly paced, and well acted.  It’s an award-worthy movie as made by a filmmaker who has no real interest in winning awards.  While it doesn’t emotionally connect as strongly as it perhaps should have, it’s still one of the best movies of 2008.

Verdict: B+

So let’s get the obvious out of the way:  Daniel Craig is not the James Bond of decades past.  At least not largely.  This is probably ample material for a separate blog entry, but to make a long story short, his is a post-9/11, post-Jack Bauer, post-Jason Bourne Bond.  And as such, much of the excesses have been stripped away, leaving a good deal of room for character development and more intense action.  And as expected, it’s something of a divisive decision; Roger Ebert doesn’t care for it, and he’s far from alone.  Critical consensus for Quantum of Solace has been mixed at best, especially contrasted with the near-universal praise for Casino Royale.

But all the same, Casino Royale was, after Die Another Day, a breath of fresh air.  While Brosnan’s Bond movies were hardly economical spy thrillers, he was able to carve out his own niche as a Bond somewhere between Connery’s swagger and toughness and Roger Moore’s likeable wit.  Gadgets, though pleantiful, were never centre-stage.  At least for his first three movies.  Die Another Day was at least on-par with Roger Moore’s campiest outings, and while I enjoyed it, Bond looked closer to Austin Powers than ever thanks to contemporary spies like Jack Bauer and world events taking a sharp turn to chaos and uncertainty.

Exit Brosnan, enter Daniel Craig.  When Casino Royale gave the series (and the character) a fresh start, Daniel Craig had to both stay true to past incarnations and prove he could keep up with Jason Bourne and the like.  And he had to make the character his own.  And thanks to Martin Campbell’s direction, most agreed he delivered.  Quantum of Solace, Craig’s follow-up, continues in a similar direction, but isn’t quite as well executed.  While it’s by no means a poor addition to the Bond catalog, it does have it’s share of shortcomings.

The storyline is actually not too un-Bondian.  Bond, betrayed by Vesper Lynd, is out for revenge for her death, and as luck would have it, he stumbles upon a conspiracy much larger than his initial scope.  It echoes similar storylines from Connery’s first few outings as Bond, but manages to feel like a revenge tale all the same.

Where it most significantly differs from Casino Royale (and all previous Bond outings) is how economical it is.  This unfortunately works both for and against it.  A number of early action scenes feel too short, and the edits are simply too fast.  This is most prominent in the opening car chase, but the rooftop chase and hotel fight scene both were a little too close to similar scenes in the Bourne series for comfort.  Not necessarily bad things, but still alien to the series, and too quickly paced for my liking.

Similarly economical is the dialogue.  Bond has very little to say, especially since a still-green 007 lacks the confidence and cockiness to drop cheesy one-liners and ridiculous innuendo on a regular basis.  M’s role is expanded, but dialogue is still largely kept to a minimum.

But after the first act, things take a turn for the better.  It’s almost as if Director Marc Forster became more comfortable with the film as he went.  The turning point is Bond doing some legitimate spying at the Opera.  It’s one of the best scenes in the movie, and probably one of the best spy moments that a Bond movie has seen in quite some time.  From there, the movie resembles a Bond movie more.  Action scenes look a little more epic.  Bond’s women are a little less cold.  And Bond’s cold exterior warms up a little.  While Dominic Greene isn’t a cartoonish megalomaniac with a hollowed-out volcano, he still manages to be an effective villian, and the film ends with a very strong fight scene, and a great deal of promise for future installments.

While Marc Forster probably shouldn’t refocus his career to making big-budget action flicks, it’s still a solid entry in the Bond canon.  Make no mistake, this is a far cry from Roger Moore’s campy classics, but it’s taking a similar direction to Connery while making good use of Daniel Craig’s talent as an actor.  Of course, growing pains are to be expected with a series re-boot.  And Quantum of Solace doesn’t match Casino Royale.  But it’s beginning to look more like James Bond than it did at the end of Casino Royale.  Rebuilding a character as legendary as Bond from the ground up was an unenviable task, but I still believe that Daniel Craig will be remembered as the strongest rival to Sean Connery.

Daniel Craig is, sometimes in spite of the thin script and Marc Forster’s action scenes, giving Bond the proper 21st century makeover.  While I hesitate to say that we’ll have the good old Bond back sooner than later, Quantum of Solace is still a step in the right direction after Casino Royale.  How well it works might be easier to determine when the Quantum story arc has closed, but things are looking good, even without Q’s fancy toys.

As a Bond movie: B

Overall: B+

Run Fatboy Run – 2007 (dir. David Schwimmer) I greatly enjoy stories of actors who willfully drop way off the public radar to pursue something they really enjoy.  For example:  Michael Palin of the Monty Python troupe has done a handful of acting gigs since the group disbanded for good some decades back, but his main passion seems to be travel.  Obviously having the BBC bankroll and film your global escapades helps a lot, but he obviously had no intent to cash in on his fame by just taking on whatever projects come his way.  The same is true of Friends star David Schwimmer.

Save a particularly memorable role in Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s World War 2 miniseries Band of Brothers, Schwimmer has been keeping a very low profile since the show ended in 2004 by working primarily in the theatre and taking some stabs at directing.  Run Fatboy Run is his first Directorial effort for the screen, however.

The premise of the film is that Dennis Doyle (Simon Pegg) is a hapless mallcop who made the mistake of leaving his pregnant fiance Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar five years ago.  He’s spent those five years doting on his son (though certainly an atypical father) and running the wrong way in life.  See what I just did there?  The movie does it, too.  After meeting Libby’s new boyfriend, the impossibly perfect Whit (Hank Azaria), Dennis decides that he needs to run a marathon to not just win Libby back, but get his life back on track.  Another running metahpor, I know.  But the movie’s about running, both literal and metaphorical.

David Schwimmer spent ten years intimately involved on Friends, and it shows.  It’s a very economical comedy in a number of ways.  Impressively, it never gets too self-involved with it’s own jokes.  A good example of this is the lockerroom scene between Pegg and Azaria.  A lesser director (and lesser actors) would have made every possible penis joke, but Pegg wisely gives a few choice reactions and Azaria never overplays it.  The blister scene seemed out of place at best (especially since it’s a far cry from a gross-out comedy), but it had a number of charming comic moments all the same, as well as one of the funniest fight scenes I’ve seen in a while.

But what really makes a comedy work are the moments that aren’t funny.  And the last act of Run Fatboy Run is comprised mainly of these.  And it works.  Scwimmer tries some clever scenes, and while they’re not flawless, they’re fun to watch, and they keep things interesting.  And it shows a lot of promise.

But it’s still a little bit short of being as good as it could have been.  I can forgive the Nike product placement, as Schwimmer told the AV Club that it was the only way to finance the marathon, and I don’t really care that Simon Pegg isn’t technically fat.  But it wasn’t a total wash, and there’s some good laughs to be had.

B-

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? – 2008 (dir. Morgan Spurlock) It’s so easy to call Morgan Spurlock the heir apparent to Michael Moore.  Too easy.  Both started their documentary careers from an underdog perspective (Moore went after General Motors, and Spurlock went after McDonalds as relative amateurs).  And both have worked on the small screen, as well as the big screen (Moore’s The Awful Truth and Spurlock’s 30 Days).  And both have political views best described as liberal (Moore’s been incredibly outspoken in his criticism of American conservatism, and Spurlock’s a card-carrying member of the ACLU).

The differences between them are, on paper, minimal.  But while Michael Moore is effectively a pundit with a multi-picture deal, Spurlock seems genuinely interested in generating dialogue about the subjects he explores.  But perhaps more importantly, Moore’s opinion dictates his films, but with Spurlock, it seems more like his experience is what runs the show.  Sure, he doesn’t shy away from presenting opinions, but that’s not his endgame.  On 30 days, he tackles heavy political issues head on, but he lets the dialogue between the two groups tell the story.  While he’s been accused of picking people who will come to his understanding of the issues, at least he’s presenting the view that most political issues are nowhere near as black and white as the media and politicians present.  It’s activist entertainment for moderates, if anything.

And that’s generally what he proposes with Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden.  As he attempts to explore the causes and consequences of Osama Bin Laden in Egypt, Morrocco, Israel/Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it becomes very clear that it’s an immensely complex problem.  It’s a bold choice for a follow-up to eating McDonalds for a month to dive right into the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and radical Islam, but the results speak for themselves.  Two scenes in particular were disturbing; Spurlock’s appallingly harsh welcome to a Jewish settlement in Israel, and a chilling interview with two Saudi teenagers (under the direct supervision of their teachers).  Obviously, those who prefer a black and white view of foreign policy will have difficulty with Spurlock’s conclusion, and American foreign policy takes a lashing, but it’s still an entertaining, if somewhat troubling documentary.

A-

I rented three movies this weekend.  There’s no real link between them, save being movies I haven’t seen before, but wanted to.  Rather than three longer entries, here’s three shorter reviews:

State and Main – 2000 (Dir. David Mamet)

I’ve been somewhat familiar with David Mamet for around the last decade or so, but I know more about him by way of reputation than his actual work (although my first serious acting lessons culminated in a scene from his play American Buffalo).  He’s known for his dialogue, and his directorial obsession with dialogue (down to having actors rehearse their lines to a metronome).  State and Main is his most recent comic directorial effort, starring an ensemble cast of fairly well-known names.  It’s about the lead-up to a movie crew filming in small-town Vermont.  While it’s billed as an ensemble piece (and due to the number of characters present, it technically is), it’s a bit less easily defined than that.  If anything, it’s a William H. Macy-lead (never a bad thing) comedy with a standout performance by a younger Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the film-within-the-film’s rookie screenwriter.  While Alec Baldwin and Sarah-Jessica Parker have small roles as the impossibly selfish lead actors (to match Macy’s impossibly selfish Director), the bulk of the scenes are not a biting satire of Hollywood amorality (which is present, but subdued if anything), but a love story between Hoffman and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet’s wife and frequent star).  It’s simple, sweet, and/but impossibly perfect.

But this is a Mamet flick, so dialogue is the intended star.  And it generally is.  It’s fast-paced, witty, and very clever.  Too clever in some cases.  While Hoffman gives a great performance (understated to be sure, but it fits the character), and Pidgeon matches him with every epigram, it felt like Sarah-Jessica Parker and Alec Baldwin were underused.  Baldwin’s scenes with Julia Stiles (playing an underaged fan of Baldwin’s) are just too short to really justify the sort of chaos they later cause.  I suppose an argument could be made that the movie is meant to be shown through the eyes of William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who are by and large oblivious to his indiscretions, but it’s not made clear enough that this is the case.  I guess the whole just isn’t the sum of it’s parts in this case.  The level of talent is present, and there’s some great scenes to be found, but it doesn’t add up to the satire of/small town take on Hollywood decadence that it was trying to be.  It’s closer to the latter than the former, but it’s still just close.  B-

Smart People – 2008 (Dir. Noam Murro)

Smart People flew fairly under-the-radar following it’s release earlier this year, despite it being the first release of note starring Ellen Page since her Oscar nomination for Juno.  It’s kind of a shame that it didn’t get much notice, because it’s a very well done, low key dramedy (I assume that’s the correct spelling).  It skews more towards drama than the DVD art suggests, but it’s not without laughs.  Dennis Quaid plays an aloof english professor, who’s also a single dad looking to move his career and his personal life forward.  After an embarrassing injury at an impound lot, Quaid loses his ability to drive (legally, anyway) and a large chunk of his self-reliance.  Enter Thomas Hayden-Church as his luckless adopted brother Chuck, who is effectively hired as his personal driver.  Of course, he also winds up being something of a catalyst for the change the family needs.  Otherwise it’d be a boring movie about people impossible to relate to.

It’s similar to In Good Company, another similarly low-key movie starring Dennis Quaid.  But the difference here is that it’s more of an ensemble piece.  In Good Company was more or less a compare/contrast of one man leaving the prime of his career and another entering it.  Smart People explores not just Quaid and Hayden-Church’s different paths, but Ellen Page and Ashton Holmes’ as Quaid’s children.  Throw in love interest Sarah Jessica Parker, and you get a fairly broad study of a family in need of a wake-up call more than a middle-aged career man coming to terms with turning fifty.

It comes close to getting cheesy in the last act, but what keeps things interesting is how it presents a reality that not everybody is willing (or able) to change who they are.  Dennis Quaid is still arguably the same arrogant academic that he was at the beginning, but he’s at least aware of it and working on it.  Ellen Page remains relatively unchanged as well, but more aware that things are in flux.  It takes Uncle Chuck to get them all on the path to self-improvement, but the movie doesn’t cop out by showing us a happy ending where everyone ceases to be selfish, but an ending where nobody’s content to remain oblivious to it anymore.  Which could be frustrating or refreshing, depending on your perspective.  It’s not a unique look into the situation, but it’s a well-done character-driven story, and I’m always a fan of that, no matter how low-key.  B

I also rented Michael Clayton, but due to a DVD malfunction, that review remains pending.

In a recent interview, Alan Moore had this to say about the state of modern cinema:

“I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying. . . It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The Watchmen film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I, for one, am sick of worms”

Well who isn’t sick of worms?  Any movie that insults the audience’s intelligence by not taking risks or watering things down shouldn’t be regarded in high esteem.  Granted, such things are subjective, but I think we can all agree on a list of movies that pander to the lowest common denominator rather than tell a story with any sense of purpose.  And a lot of modern movies do that.  Out of all the movies being made today, how many of them are truly great?  If you take a look at critics top-ten lists, there tends to be a hell of a lot of overlap.  Granted, I don’t want to watch exclusively great movies.  Movies are a lot like literature; sometimes you want something light to read on the train, sometimes you want something complex like Rushdie, and sometimes you want something in-between.  But I don’t think anyone wants something lousy in any of those categories.

What gives Alan Moore a unique insight into movies is that he doesn’t consider them to be the absolute pinnacle of storytelling, or at the very least, not the only valid means of telling a story.  Which brings us to the Watchmen movie.  It’s incredibly unlikely that Zack Snyder will completely undermine the story, themes, and impact of Watchmen.  But Moore didn’t write it for the screen.  There’s a reason Watchmen is so universally acclaimed.  It’s the only graphic novel on Time Magazine’s 100 best literary works of the 20th century.  It took the form to a new level.  And as far as it’s creator is concerned, that’s enough.  That story’s already been told.

Obviously, I’m not so naive to assume that Hollywood is interested in anything other than money.  There’s a good deal of sub-studios who are more than willing to take a chance on something creative and interesting (Focus features, Fox searchlight, Warner Independent, Paramount Vantage etc), but Hollywood as a whole just wants to make money.  I get it, but I’m not a fan of accounting, I’m a fan of movies.  So lets move on.  I know why they’ve made a Watchmen movie from a financial perspective, but I have no interest in discussing that.  I think it goes without saying that we all disagree with making movies for the money alone.

And related issues about why Moore doesn’t have any sort of legal ability to say whether or not his works are adapted to the screen also put aside, when he told Terry Gilliam that Watchmen shouldn’t be adapted to the screen, creative types in Hollywood maybe should have listened.  Gilliam’s a smart guy, and an incredibly capable filmmaker.  He was interested in a Watchmen adaptation, certainly had the ability and intuition to pull it off, and when he asked Moore for tips, he was told “don’t do it”.  And he didn’t.

I think the issue of medium should come into play in this debate.  A lot of the best filmmakers actively pursue making the medium of film bigger and better than it really is.  Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, and George Lucas (circa 1977, anyway) have all more or less invented new ways of shooting scenes.  Orson Welles more or less rewrote the book on filmmaking, adding a scope never before seen and still yet to be matched (if the AFI top 100 is to be believed).  Alan Moore did that for the graphic novel.  So in theory, Zack Snyder’s Watchmen should do the same, shouldn’t it?

Snyder’s in both a dream and nightmare come true.  He’s a genre filmmaker with a huge budget and one of the most complex and ambitious texts ever written to work with.  If he stays too close to the source, he’ll be criticized as a hack who’s too weak to put his own mark on it.  If he strays too far from it, he’ll get tagged as an egomaniac who thinks he can outdo Moore.  Either way, pressure on him is enormous, and he knows he can’t just approach it like a director would approach any other movie.

This isn’t to say I have zero interest in the Watchmen movie.  I’m, if nothing else, curious how it translates from page to screen.  And I wrote this article.  But I think adaptations are in many cases superfluous.  I doubt many would argue that point.  A lot of the best movies I’ve seen are adaptations of some kind.  The Dark Knight is based on previously established characters (both onscreen and on comic pages) and inspired by comics and graphic novels (one of which was written by Alan Moore, if I recall correctly).  But all the same, they often take a new spin on it.  If 300 is any indication, it will largely be a carbon copy.  Unless Snyder takes some risks (and given the material here, that could be either a brilliant move or career suicide), he’ll be doing what Moore hates most in movies:  playing it safe.

I’ve always been sort of an admirer of the Coen Brothers.  Not a full-fledged fan, as I’ve only seen a handful of their movies, but I’ve had a healthy respect for their technique and ability to forge a unique style of their own.

Out with the old, and in with the new, I say.  After seeing Burn After Reading, I’m a big fan.  In fact, they’re now firmly in my top five filmmakers (among Martin Scorsese, Kevin Smith, PT Anderson, and Wes Anderson).  The thing that struck me with Burn After Reading is that, while it’s not as ambitious or mood-driven as No Country for Old Men, it’s effectively everyone involved playing to their strengths.  Word on the street is that each role was written with a specific actor in mind (all of whom played that character in the final product), and it definitely shows.

The film is about adultery, blackmail, depression, and online dating.  And probably the funniest movie about those subjects I’ve seen.  Brad Pitt’s performance as dull-witted personal trainer Chad is probably the standout, with a ridiculous hairdo and severely limited vocabulary, but there’s really no weak link in the cast.  George Clooney playing a womanizer isn’t much of a stretch, but when the stakes start rising (and rise they do), he’s more than up to the task.  Same for John Malkovich, always on the edge of going medieval on the nearest object.  JK Simmons, however, comes closest to stealing the show as a deadpan CIA higher-up forced to make sense of the madness that ensues from some stolen memoirs and an internet hook-up.

But cast, direction, and editing aside, what really makes this movie work is the music.  No Country for Old Men had no score to speak of (granted, it was able to rely on Javier Bardem to set the mood), but Burn After Reading is made all the more enjoyable by the animated score by Carter Burwell, a frequent Coens collaborator.  It’s not a subtle score, but it’s the perfect match for the slapstick violence and larger than life tone of the movie.

It’s ridiculously funny, and incredibly well executed.  But what’s really impressive is knowing that had the Coens decided to make it a tense, mood-driven drama, it would have been just as good. Burn After Reading is absolutely night and day compared to No Country for Old Men, but they’re both fantastic movies.  While some have called Burn After Reading a spiritual sequel to The Big Lebowski, I’d compare it to an earlier work:  Raising Arizona.  Simpletons getting in way over their heads + consequences they didn’t expect = comedy.  A basic premise, to be sure, but for whatever reason, the Coens seem to do it better than everyone else.  The Coens aren’t infallaible to be sure.  They’ve had their share of flops.  But when they get it right, they really nail it.  And they wind up making some of my favourite movies when they do.

A

Before the release of Tropic Thunder, there was a largely viral trailer for Rain of Madness, a companion mockumentary. I suppose the intention was that it would be to Tropic Thunder what Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse was to Apocalypse Now. Since the movie was more or less mocking big war movies like Apocalypse Now, it made sense. However, I assumed (incorrectly) that should Rain of Madness ever see the light of day, it would be as a DVD/Blu-Ray (I guess I have to start mentioning both formats now). Not only is that not the case, but it’s also a free download on iTunes.

Normally, this sort of thing wouldn’t get me as excited as it did. But truth be told, Rain of Madness is better than the movie it’s derived from. My key complaint with Tropic Thunder was largely with how off-putting the celebrity cameos were. It weakened the satire and took me out of the movie (only to bring me back in with some legitimately great scenes). Rain of Madness emphasizes the stuff I liked (albeit in a different way), and effectively reinforces the satire. The mockumentary is, unlike the film, also played completely straight. It’s very, very dry. Not surprisingly, it was actor Steve Coogan, and not Ben Stiller, who was the creative force behind it.

As disappointing as Tropic Thunder was, Rain of Madness takes away some of the sting. It’s vastly different in tone and presentation, but it’s funny and engrossing. It also manages to satirize self-important documentary filmmakers and skewer further method actors and oscar-baiters, to the point of absolute absurdity (which was what I was really hoping for in the real movie), with Robert Downey jr. losing his shit in a hotel room, and more scenes from Simple Jack.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s worth the price. The eventual video release of Tropic Thunder should see it packaged with the DVD, and I think knowing that will make it easier for me to recommend , but until then, it is on iTunes, and it’s fantastic. It takes some jokes too far, but given the context, that’s not a huge problem.

B+