To be honest, I didn't have much expectations for this film--I thought it would be a quirky for the sake of quirky type of indie that comes along with a barrage of random weirdness and unfocused, ill-crafted ideas (or, more precisely, anti-ideas) that end of just as unoriginal and thoughtless as the regular car-chase-and-explosion-stuffed blockbuster. I was wrong. The Men Who Stare At Goats, while not quite the thinking man's comedy, clearly sets out for that goal, grasping sometimes with desperate, ridiculous effort or sometimes with weightless ease. About two men on a psychic, visionary 'mission' (if that is the adequate term) for--actually, just what was the point of their mission? Nonetheless, it makes for lovely viewing. Or at least funny viewing. The jokes pulled and made throughout are the types that really try to make you laugh. Admittedly, they worked in this movie. Sometimes, they even give into insights and truly profound thoughts--glimpses of vision and genius--that all come into a stumbling, lost, paceless place, both fun and self-indulgent. The movie, with performances well-played with smoothness and ease, is written, designed, and shot just right, and remains funny and intelligent--and that last scene,where chaos and peace come together in a fit of mass LSD tripping--is simply glorious.
Reviews
15 Reviews
The Last House on the Left
(2009)
Meh
23 November 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Well, it isn't much a daring or truly exciting spin on the horror genre--at first sight, in fact, I might remind one much more of a kind of plastic, glamorous update of 'I Spit on Your Grave' (or, more obviously, Wes Craven's 1972 'Last House on the Left'); you know, the type of dull, bloody deranged female revenge fantasy masquerading as something deeper and steeped more into feminism and politics--but in its heart beneath its foggy atmosphere and unsettlingly perfect, ship shape tone (intentionally or unintentionally, though?) there is small little patches of real, genuine rigour, mystery and, most importantly, vision. Regarding the murder of one girl and near-one of another (and the family's encounter with and revenge on the band of killers that had done this), the movie should be praised for its unsentimental, primal and exquisitely physical portrait of two parents' disgust and rage over finding their beautiful girl, raped, tortured and horrifically wounded, lying cold in the rain--and not to mention the realization that the people who had done this were inside their house, while being warmly and kindly served and sheltered by them--the movie teeters between a foggy blossoming of dread and a murky, mucky sense of nastiness and exploitation of dread--and speaking of exploitation, how's about that last scene in the film? That moment--where (SPOILER ALERT) the parents paralyse the last sadistic killer standing and, in a gory, up-close shot, puts his head in a microwave and...well, I think you understand the following scenes. It's difficult to tell whether it was a loving homage to exploitation cinema or simply pure exploitation on its own. Either way, it's either a poor smirk or simply a bad stumble into torture porn. Not great, nor good, even, not even decent. Just stale, sometimes great, yet mostly unaffecting with trace point and meaning.
Miss March
(2009)
Beyond Stupid - 1/2 * (half-star) out of four
5 October 2009
The monumentally disgusting Miss March seems to have one key moral to guide it along: ignorance is bliss. Among the most notable examples of Miss March's caveman-like intelligence is that it almost seems like it wants to grab and keep hold of every cliché it can take, but of course, something this reptilian, queasy and nearly reclusive in its anti-comedic not-being-funniness simply doesn't just go for mere clichés--Miss March functions much like a vacuum, too. That is, it makes sure, using plenty of noticeable effort, to suck out all the possible fun and humor of pop culture references, physical gags, et cetera--Miss March is like some dead, strange thing, a type of indecipherable, cancerous lump that started out by meeting my already-low expectations and going only down from there. Miss March is not merely bad, it's sprawling, multi-layered and complex in its boring, plain awfulness, something so fascinatingly stale that it's like a labyrinth of stupidity.
It begins as some casual fluff, children playing inside the cleanest, cutest lil' house in the suburb--but it then downgrades with the two boys finding a Playboy magazine. The directors and writers, with all their uncreative might, seem to pack every endlessly, relentlessly immature joke possible, save for, of course, one, single, solitary, lonely relatively-funny joke (the abstinence assembly sequence even manages to be clever when satirizing all those super-clean sugary abstinence speakers). Of course, Miss March can't merely respond to the lowest common denominator of humor alone--it makes sure to be a leech off previous emotional-ride melodrama tactics used in infinity-plus other comedies that existed before it, not to mention adding all the phony inspiration to the sentimentality that a horde of living, breathing forms of smug, TV-bred culture can live off of for a lifetime. Of course, Miss March doesn't even have the brain or the self-referential fun to even poke fun or at least understand its own ineptitude; all the sappy, happily ever after segments are done without even the slightest bit of irony. It's cringe-inducing. And this may come out as cold and cynical (maybe because I am, maybe because I'm just bothered by this movie's existence), but for the crowd that actually laughs, cries and cheers for this stuff, and there are lots of you, I sure hope you find some joy out of it. Because all I can muster out of it is contempt.
It begins as some casual fluff, children playing inside the cleanest, cutest lil' house in the suburb--but it then downgrades with the two boys finding a Playboy magazine. The directors and writers, with all their uncreative might, seem to pack every endlessly, relentlessly immature joke possible, save for, of course, one, single, solitary, lonely relatively-funny joke (the abstinence assembly sequence even manages to be clever when satirizing all those super-clean sugary abstinence speakers). Of course, Miss March can't merely respond to the lowest common denominator of humor alone--it makes sure to be a leech off previous emotional-ride melodrama tactics used in infinity-plus other comedies that existed before it, not to mention adding all the phony inspiration to the sentimentality that a horde of living, breathing forms of smug, TV-bred culture can live off of for a lifetime. Of course, Miss March doesn't even have the brain or the self-referential fun to even poke fun or at least understand its own ineptitude; all the sappy, happily ever after segments are done without even the slightest bit of irony. It's cringe-inducing. And this may come out as cold and cynical (maybe because I am, maybe because I'm just bothered by this movie's existence), but for the crowd that actually laughs, cries and cheers for this stuff, and there are lots of you, I sure hope you find some joy out of it. Because all I can muster out of it is contempt.
Hitler: A Film from Germany
(1977)
The 20th Century Embalmed
6 September 2009
** (out of four) By Aaron Dumont There's something a bit wrong with Our Hitler, the monumental-but-ultimately-shallow roundabout of culture, art, politics and, in general, things as a whole. It teeters, wobbles and gets usually off-balance when stumbling across the line between the realms of sprawling masterpiece and dried-up encyclopedia. It's a bit magical, lucid and shows off all its cold style marked by monologues ranging from misguided to impassioned, but comes up short to its vast promises, ambitions and illusions, even with its massive eight-hour runtime. Taking place inside a snowglobe, Our Hitler, using static long-takes and, as Sontag said, "exploded mental states" (ones that incorporate symbols and designs that are both stunning and flatulent), mainly functions as a slipstream. It tries to rejoice and realign, but eventually can't, whether for the 20th Century or for itself--the endless child's-play interpretations and just plain annoying remarks and near-sermons (the things that hide some brilliant, gorgeous scenes and quotes, from Syberberg's statement on the overuse of the word 'culture' to Hitler playing the molester in Lang's M) turn from daring to stiff, from lively and fiery to sparse and didactic.
In this way, the movie cannot truly express itself; it eventually degenerates to a string of borrowed, drafted mock-expression some of the time (the pseudo-Anger sets and lights, the Wagner-obsessive theater-dream-visuals, the Marker/Mekas essay style but without the truly developed mind, heart, soul and maturity, etc) and all the headsmackingly indulgent image-is-dead, queasy speeches on war, cinema, the psyche, and of course, the "Hollywood fascists" seems not much more than a flea market of insight, passions and emotions--that is, between the momentary universal feelings and fleeting grace, the movie panders to its audience often more than not.
It sinks and spirals down the rabbit hole of beautiful fantasies and dreamscapes, but never keeps on its feet when venturing off into stylistic experiments and wild narrative tones. It's like a Wikipedia retelling of myths and revolution, a textbook summary on a great work of art--it's like the Sans Soleil of long, bored lectures--it seems at the end of the labyrinth, between the bits and pieces of poetry and the glorious feat of it all, coupled with endless faux-metaphysics, clueless excersises in knowledge and philosophical dress-up, you'd be hard-pressed to find much more than drained thought.
In this way, the movie cannot truly express itself; it eventually degenerates to a string of borrowed, drafted mock-expression some of the time (the pseudo-Anger sets and lights, the Wagner-obsessive theater-dream-visuals, the Marker/Mekas essay style but without the truly developed mind, heart, soul and maturity, etc) and all the headsmackingly indulgent image-is-dead, queasy speeches on war, cinema, the psyche, and of course, the "Hollywood fascists" seems not much more than a flea market of insight, passions and emotions--that is, between the momentary universal feelings and fleeting grace, the movie panders to its audience often more than not.
It sinks and spirals down the rabbit hole of beautiful fantasies and dreamscapes, but never keeps on its feet when venturing off into stylistic experiments and wild narrative tones. It's like a Wikipedia retelling of myths and revolution, a textbook summary on a great work of art--it's like the Sans Soleil of long, bored lectures--it seems at the end of the labyrinth, between the bits and pieces of poetry and the glorious feat of it all, coupled with endless faux-metaphysics, clueless excersises in knowledge and philosophical dress-up, you'd be hard-pressed to find much more than drained thought.
Coraline
(2009)
Rare Magic
4 September 2009
Warning: Spoilers
**** (out of four)
By Aaron Dumont
A work like Coraline is, much like Pixar's Up, a relieving work. The state of mainstream cinema today---a cynical feeding tube of explosions, borderline-playboys, one-dimensional insults to characters and character development, and pretty much vapid cultural nothingness---seems always to be steeped in a complete lack of ideas, thought or obstacles. That, among several other things, is what makes Coraline so special. Of course, it's still a great work when standing on it's own, but such an unlikely breath of fresh air is simply difficult to come across these days---Coraline is well-near rapturous. The endless sense of unsettling terror, of mystery, of complete perplexity---the kinetic, vibrant balance between emotion, adventure and hallucinatory near-myth is purely stunning. In the wasteland of today's arts and entertainment medium, one so dense with mediocrity that intellect can barely survive in it, Coraline finds itself in the humble, calm, albeit mundane world of a young girl named (ever-so-obviously enough) Coraline. Coraline, bored with her limited surroundings, workaholic parents and (utter lack of) contact and friends, goes exploring in her twisty, spirally house, before finding a small door, leading through a pulsating, acid-like tunnel, before getting dragged right into a darkly perfect alternate life, with an Other Mother, Other Father, delicious meals, ridiculously luxurious mansion/garden/shows and magic/et cetera. Though as Coraline gets more and more obsessed with this psychedelic happy-circus alternate life, she begins to become disillusioned by a series of unfortunate findings; the mandatory buttons-for-eyes, the Other other's insanely cruel punishment towards Coraline's only friend, the trapped souls... I won't reveal much more; such a movie needs to be experienced. During the final moments of the movie, the dusky, cloudy shades from previously bloom into complex interplays of lights, shadows, primaries, often wandering off into more psychedelic regions, often entering a twisted dream logic and topsy-turvy psyche, though the brilliance of Coraline is that is stays earthy and on its feet even when it has its head and arms embraced right into the wildest of fantasies, dreams, nightmares and puzzles---the terrifying, vertiginous scene where Coraline has a final standoff between her and the Other Mother, is one of pure, handcrafted imagination; it's something so antique yet so inventive, something nostalgic yet open and liberating that it can only be one thing, something difficult-to-recognize but more than welcome: genius.
By Aaron Dumont
A work like Coraline is, much like Pixar's Up, a relieving work. The state of mainstream cinema today---a cynical feeding tube of explosions, borderline-playboys, one-dimensional insults to characters and character development, and pretty much vapid cultural nothingness---seems always to be steeped in a complete lack of ideas, thought or obstacles. That, among several other things, is what makes Coraline so special. Of course, it's still a great work when standing on it's own, but such an unlikely breath of fresh air is simply difficult to come across these days---Coraline is well-near rapturous. The endless sense of unsettling terror, of mystery, of complete perplexity---the kinetic, vibrant balance between emotion, adventure and hallucinatory near-myth is purely stunning. In the wasteland of today's arts and entertainment medium, one so dense with mediocrity that intellect can barely survive in it, Coraline finds itself in the humble, calm, albeit mundane world of a young girl named (ever-so-obviously enough) Coraline. Coraline, bored with her limited surroundings, workaholic parents and (utter lack of) contact and friends, goes exploring in her twisty, spirally house, before finding a small door, leading through a pulsating, acid-like tunnel, before getting dragged right into a darkly perfect alternate life, with an Other Mother, Other Father, delicious meals, ridiculously luxurious mansion/garden/shows and magic/et cetera. Though as Coraline gets more and more obsessed with this psychedelic happy-circus alternate life, she begins to become disillusioned by a series of unfortunate findings; the mandatory buttons-for-eyes, the Other other's insanely cruel punishment towards Coraline's only friend, the trapped souls... I won't reveal much more; such a movie needs to be experienced. During the final moments of the movie, the dusky, cloudy shades from previously bloom into complex interplays of lights, shadows, primaries, often wandering off into more psychedelic regions, often entering a twisted dream logic and topsy-turvy psyche, though the brilliance of Coraline is that is stays earthy and on its feet even when it has its head and arms embraced right into the wildest of fantasies, dreams, nightmares and puzzles---the terrifying, vertiginous scene where Coraline has a final standoff between her and the Other Mother, is one of pure, handcrafted imagination; it's something so antique yet so inventive, something nostalgic yet open and liberating that it can only be one thing, something difficult-to-recognize but more than welcome: genius.
I Know Who Killed Me
(2007)
Sirkian, Lynchian, et cetera...but those directors meant something
20 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Zero Stars (out of 4) By Aaron Dumont
Now, I would give you all a real, labored-over (actually, not really) review of this compost-bin-rate-Inland Empire, but I cannot due to a) me not being able to find sinister-sounding enough words that mean "horrible" within by trusty thesaurus, b) me not being able to pay attention to the actual plot due to distractions such as shameless self-promotion and enough tramp-ness to make even the most pitiful of nighttime-dwelling Hilton-wannabes look like Witherspoon's Tracy Flick, and c) because no one, not even my time-wasting self, would even dignify this movie with a full length review. Dedicating more than 10 words to this cinematic equivalent of tear gas is going to a dark place, losing an important part of your sanitary life. Oh, wait...
Now, I would give you all a real, labored-over (actually, not really) review of this compost-bin-rate-Inland Empire, but I cannot due to a) me not being able to find sinister-sounding enough words that mean "horrible" within by trusty thesaurus, b) me not being able to pay attention to the actual plot due to distractions such as shameless self-promotion and enough tramp-ness to make even the most pitiful of nighttime-dwelling Hilton-wannabes look like Witherspoon's Tracy Flick, and c) because no one, not even my time-wasting self, would even dignify this movie with a full length review. Dedicating more than 10 words to this cinematic equivalent of tear gas is going to a dark place, losing an important part of your sanitary life. Oh, wait...
Breathless
(1960)
One of the last genuine celebrations of youth
19 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
By Aaron Dumont **** (out of four)
Screw 'The Jazz Singer'--one of the few genuine revolutions of cinema can be found here; Breathless is the 30's-hipster-esque precursor to Wong Kar-Wai and Antonioni--it is a kinetic tour de force film that, much like Antonioni's own inflammatory Zabriskie Point(less, as some say) and his meta-classical-oddity L'eclisse, gains momentum as it whirs through circuitous colloquy, modern babble, and revolutionary metaphysical pivots. As well as that, the film, just like Hong Kong's hue-saturated auteur Kar-Wai's masterfully structured, humane, moving-Impressionist-portraits, is one few that purely encapsulates, if detachedly fractures, a whole romance within a short hour-or-so. The two protagonists, two lovers, might as well be real--they tease, laugh, learn, talk, live, love, hate, betray...they are both universal and forcible--they don't spew quirky one-liners and haul, even heave their alienating, stereotypical personalities and petty, melodramatic social-cum-crisis; something that sadly cannot be said for films today. Main character Patricia Franchini said it best: "Informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, and lovers love."
The premise renders simple at first greeting; Michel, a man running from the law after killing a policeman, runs off to be with his beautiful girlfriend, Patricia. It's a smidgen-bit tawdry, kitschy way to craft something belonging to such a medium known for such great artistry, and it has been seen many times before here and there.
And then they talk to each other.
Their deep arguments of hate, happiness, unhappiness, freedom and love is a sweeping one. Their nature is sophisticated; they are disenchanted freelancers in a caustically desolate atmosphere that feels terrifying, quite simply unfair--but life assuring. Every second of the film gains an increasingly cosmic breath and life, and the relationships grow more and more in dynamic intimacy. By the closing minutes, everything is romantically vigorous, fizzing with verve, and leaves you--and I say this truthfully, not as a referential pun to the title name; breathless, but alas, this ravishing, self-reflexive, self-devouring mood mix abruptly ends with a great bang.
With the ending, which I won't spoil, a quasi-comedy ends in full-on-tragedy in one of the most iconic, penetrating, devastating and embodying scenes in cinema--to make a great romance is pure magic today, and people must realize that budgets, stars, black and white are all superfluous and overestimated for the outcome of the film--sometimes, all you need is a bit of love and a lot of thinking.
Screw 'The Jazz Singer'--one of the few genuine revolutions of cinema can be found here; Breathless is the 30's-hipster-esque precursor to Wong Kar-Wai and Antonioni--it is a kinetic tour de force film that, much like Antonioni's own inflammatory Zabriskie Point(less, as some say) and his meta-classical-oddity L'eclisse, gains momentum as it whirs through circuitous colloquy, modern babble, and revolutionary metaphysical pivots. As well as that, the film, just like Hong Kong's hue-saturated auteur Kar-Wai's masterfully structured, humane, moving-Impressionist-portraits, is one few that purely encapsulates, if detachedly fractures, a whole romance within a short hour-or-so. The two protagonists, two lovers, might as well be real--they tease, laugh, learn, talk, live, love, hate, betray...they are both universal and forcible--they don't spew quirky one-liners and haul, even heave their alienating, stereotypical personalities and petty, melodramatic social-cum-crisis; something that sadly cannot be said for films today. Main character Patricia Franchini said it best: "Informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, and lovers love."
The premise renders simple at first greeting; Michel, a man running from the law after killing a policeman, runs off to be with his beautiful girlfriend, Patricia. It's a smidgen-bit tawdry, kitschy way to craft something belonging to such a medium known for such great artistry, and it has been seen many times before here and there.
And then they talk to each other.
Their deep arguments of hate, happiness, unhappiness, freedom and love is a sweeping one. Their nature is sophisticated; they are disenchanted freelancers in a caustically desolate atmosphere that feels terrifying, quite simply unfair--but life assuring. Every second of the film gains an increasingly cosmic breath and life, and the relationships grow more and more in dynamic intimacy. By the closing minutes, everything is romantically vigorous, fizzing with verve, and leaves you--and I say this truthfully, not as a referential pun to the title name; breathless, but alas, this ravishing, self-reflexive, self-devouring mood mix abruptly ends with a great bang.
With the ending, which I won't spoil, a quasi-comedy ends in full-on-tragedy in one of the most iconic, penetrating, devastating and embodying scenes in cinema--to make a great romance is pure magic today, and people must realize that budgets, stars, black and white are all superfluous and overestimated for the outcome of the film--sometimes, all you need is a bit of love and a lot of thinking.
Lancelot of the Lake
(1974)
Cold, Unforgiving, Heartless, Beautiful
19 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
**** (out of four) By Aaron Dumont Despite what you've heard, Lancelot du Lac remains one fo the most meditational, multi-faceted and cinematic movies ever made; this bare-bones, minimalist interpretation of the legend of Arthur, a late-period Bresson film that teeters dangerously between 'gorgeous' and 'tedious', is a stark, modernist beauty, a masterfully-structured transformation of the Arthurian legend and all its absurdities, its ridiculous blemishes, its lack of insight and apathy, and possibly all the other countless, pompously glamorous counterparts and adaptations--mostly cinematic--of the legend, as well.
From the opening scene to the closing shot, Lancelot du Lac purposefully closes out all "emotions" (aka overacting and overposing) and any "enchanting" (read: astonishingly depthless and distracting) features of the original while calmly, serenely gliding through the anonymity of death--however, though seemingly of work of pessimism, Lancelot du Lac is as far from; it incorporates not only the agonies and facelessness of war, it succeeds in its transcendent, near-reverential attempt to give a reason to all the coldness and brutality--the camera moves along with phantom-like eyes of disillusionment and of loving craft, yet still remains almost purely physical, savage and kinetic much of the time. While most movies would simply remain boring as hell right from Step 1, Bresson, knowing an actual thing or two about cinema, meticulously emphasizes the texture, shape and form of the movie, creating a sprawling canvas of transmuted life, space, and humanity, while still reserving bridges and swirls of poetry and liberation.
Bresson was indeed a skilled craftsman of the cinematic form. And, much like the rest of his oeuvre, he claws past every little insignificant bit and plot piece that are oh-so-conveniently (and, of course, conventionally) used, and goes straight for the most basic, most shamefully true, most resonant instincts; compulsion, meaningless bloodshed and the need to stay alive. Bresson never compromised; every one of his movies need devoted, undivided detention to grab hold of. And, he manages to sustain a movie with that (and an incredible one, too)--which should at least be respected, considering how that shouldn't even be possible in cinema.
Though of course, Lancelot du Lac is difficult, to say the least--a fantasy without fantasy, a spectacular tale told in the mode of guilt and sensitivity. However, that's also what makes it so stunning--it is the work of someone who has given up on the petty, masturbatory pizazz of film-making, and of a genuine, fully-bloomed artist in their prime.
From the opening scene to the closing shot, Lancelot du Lac purposefully closes out all "emotions" (aka overacting and overposing) and any "enchanting" (read: astonishingly depthless and distracting) features of the original while calmly, serenely gliding through the anonymity of death--however, though seemingly of work of pessimism, Lancelot du Lac is as far from; it incorporates not only the agonies and facelessness of war, it succeeds in its transcendent, near-reverential attempt to give a reason to all the coldness and brutality--the camera moves along with phantom-like eyes of disillusionment and of loving craft, yet still remains almost purely physical, savage and kinetic much of the time. While most movies would simply remain boring as hell right from Step 1, Bresson, knowing an actual thing or two about cinema, meticulously emphasizes the texture, shape and form of the movie, creating a sprawling canvas of transmuted life, space, and humanity, while still reserving bridges and swirls of poetry and liberation.
Bresson was indeed a skilled craftsman of the cinematic form. And, much like the rest of his oeuvre, he claws past every little insignificant bit and plot piece that are oh-so-conveniently (and, of course, conventionally) used, and goes straight for the most basic, most shamefully true, most resonant instincts; compulsion, meaningless bloodshed and the need to stay alive. Bresson never compromised; every one of his movies need devoted, undivided detention to grab hold of. And, he manages to sustain a movie with that (and an incredible one, too)--which should at least be respected, considering how that shouldn't even be possible in cinema.
Though of course, Lancelot du Lac is difficult, to say the least--a fantasy without fantasy, a spectacular tale told in the mode of guilt and sensitivity. However, that's also what makes it so stunning--it is the work of someone who has given up on the petty, masturbatory pizazz of film-making, and of a genuine, fully-bloomed artist in their prime.
Prom Night
(I) (2008)
The Intellectual Anti-Christ
19 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Zero Stars (out of 4) By Aaron Dumont
There are and will always be mind-numbing, fatuous thrillers that come, rob a significant stash of money from sadly unsuspecting citizens and scat into obscurity. These movies suffer from:
1. By-the-numbers plot 2. Flat, ugly thrills and stale (if laughable) chills 3. Turgid, rancid dialogue
And et cetera. They are mostly regurgitated in January.
However, Prom Night (committed and schemed by Nelson McCormick) was something that I thought couldn't be achieved with idiotic thrillers. Technically, all of them are excruciating and among the worst released in quite a while, but it takes true soul, passion and heart to achieve the level of inhumanity this film has wallowed itself in. Prom Night was not just a crime, it was...unholy.
It's desecrating. In fact, now that I think of it, I may have changed my mind about all those absurd, uninspired blockbuster-thrill fare garbage that I described earlier. They are all horrid, true, but forgettable - they disgust you, but they easily leave your then-tainted imagination within a few hours' time. They are the cinematic equivalent of that troubled kid in your grade 5 class who ate juicy insects in anticipation of getting not four, but five quarters from his classmates and other young spectators.
By contrast, Prom Night is the cinematic equivalent of being attacked by a group of deranged child molesters. You are not only disgusted, but their presence grows on you well after the initial encounter. How could I let this happen/rent the movie? Why didn't I fight back/turn off the TV? What kind of people would conspire to commit such a crime/direct this type of movie?
The film follows several high school students - all of them 2D pretty girls and jocks - being chased by a rampant, murdering, masked Jonathan Schaech.
That was how far I got into the film. I walked out after 40 minutes. From then on, you're on your own. Good luck.
There are and will always be mind-numbing, fatuous thrillers that come, rob a significant stash of money from sadly unsuspecting citizens and scat into obscurity. These movies suffer from:
1. By-the-numbers plot 2. Flat, ugly thrills and stale (if laughable) chills 3. Turgid, rancid dialogue
And et cetera. They are mostly regurgitated in January.
However, Prom Night (committed and schemed by Nelson McCormick) was something that I thought couldn't be achieved with idiotic thrillers. Technically, all of them are excruciating and among the worst released in quite a while, but it takes true soul, passion and heart to achieve the level of inhumanity this film has wallowed itself in. Prom Night was not just a crime, it was...unholy.
It's desecrating. In fact, now that I think of it, I may have changed my mind about all those absurd, uninspired blockbuster-thrill fare garbage that I described earlier. They are all horrid, true, but forgettable - they disgust you, but they easily leave your then-tainted imagination within a few hours' time. They are the cinematic equivalent of that troubled kid in your grade 5 class who ate juicy insects in anticipation of getting not four, but five quarters from his classmates and other young spectators.
By contrast, Prom Night is the cinematic equivalent of being attacked by a group of deranged child molesters. You are not only disgusted, but their presence grows on you well after the initial encounter. How could I let this happen/rent the movie? Why didn't I fight back/turn off the TV? What kind of people would conspire to commit such a crime/direct this type of movie?
The film follows several high school students - all of them 2D pretty girls and jocks - being chased by a rampant, murdering, masked Jonathan Schaech.
That was how far I got into the film. I walked out after 40 minutes. From then on, you're on your own. Good luck.
Synecdoche, New York
(2008)
Crushed Ambition, New Doors
19 August 2009
**** (out of 4) By Aaron Dumont
I'm not sure where to begin on this one. In fact, I'm not sure if I'm really up to writing on it. But after the seventh viewing, I think it's good to take a breath and attempt to let out my feelings on Synecdoche, New York - a Proustian, Godardian, Brechtian meta-masterpiece.
This movie is a fantasia of all the colors and sides of human nature. It is a dreamscape, realist, social-satire. It is a perfect humanity-simulation that sets up a hopeless array of hopeful people among life-devouring art the same way T.S. Eliot set up all the world's heroes into a foggy battle in The Waste Land, or how James Joyce set up a group of normal men and women into a gloriously uneventful topographical trek in Ulysses.
There are distinctly three acts in Synecdoche, New York, each of them stepping further and further into the universal troubles that keep us all together. The first act starts as an impulsively unsettling, quirky portrait of a family in the midst of death and a disintegrating relationship. The family is alienated. As they continue with life they grow more weary and more worried about what will happen next.
The family is surrounded by a series of characters who intertwine in and around the various stories and experiences throughout the film. They are all actors in the play, who then become actors to play them, and then actors to play the actors. As the film sprawls more and more, identity, emotion and humanity become lost in translation and art, which highlights the sad insignificance of all of their eventual, inevitable deaths. This all gets run further down the increasingly hallucinogenic, seemingly endless stretch of the fading human condition and devastation, leading up to the end - a gorgeous culmination of the past events, ideas, themes and styles this movie had meticulously, masterfully shown and constructed. This is the final act.
As the end approaches, its nihilist tones contract into an insane, quiet, infinitely devastating humanism that lands the entire multi-dimensional, sprawling, unwieldy metaphysical fantasy / horror / celebration-of -the-mundane -while-being -as-least-mundane -as-possible drama into a full circle. Fade to white, not black. The end is a rebirth that leaves viewers to wonder if the play is finished or not.
Mysteries like these are highlighted here. But one thing is certain - as the average life gets snuffed out of memory and existence, the circle of life continues on. This is how real life works, too. And if you can except that, then you can really live your life. A movie that can give you this effect and sentiment should at least be respected.
Synecdoche, New York is on an entirely different level. It is an actual masterpiece, one that retains a truly organic, visceral philosophy while letting itself off into dreams, reality, love, hate, myth, loneliness, et cetera. These are new doors, ones that should be experienced.
I'm not sure where to begin on this one. In fact, I'm not sure if I'm really up to writing on it. But after the seventh viewing, I think it's good to take a breath and attempt to let out my feelings on Synecdoche, New York - a Proustian, Godardian, Brechtian meta-masterpiece.
This movie is a fantasia of all the colors and sides of human nature. It is a dreamscape, realist, social-satire. It is a perfect humanity-simulation that sets up a hopeless array of hopeful people among life-devouring art the same way T.S. Eliot set up all the world's heroes into a foggy battle in The Waste Land, or how James Joyce set up a group of normal men and women into a gloriously uneventful topographical trek in Ulysses.
There are distinctly three acts in Synecdoche, New York, each of them stepping further and further into the universal troubles that keep us all together. The first act starts as an impulsively unsettling, quirky portrait of a family in the midst of death and a disintegrating relationship. The family is alienated. As they continue with life they grow more weary and more worried about what will happen next.
The family is surrounded by a series of characters who intertwine in and around the various stories and experiences throughout the film. They are all actors in the play, who then become actors to play them, and then actors to play the actors. As the film sprawls more and more, identity, emotion and humanity become lost in translation and art, which highlights the sad insignificance of all of their eventual, inevitable deaths. This all gets run further down the increasingly hallucinogenic, seemingly endless stretch of the fading human condition and devastation, leading up to the end - a gorgeous culmination of the past events, ideas, themes and styles this movie had meticulously, masterfully shown and constructed. This is the final act.
As the end approaches, its nihilist tones contract into an insane, quiet, infinitely devastating humanism that lands the entire multi-dimensional, sprawling, unwieldy metaphysical fantasy / horror / celebration-of -the-mundane -while-being -as-least-mundane -as-possible drama into a full circle. Fade to white, not black. The end is a rebirth that leaves viewers to wonder if the play is finished or not.
Mysteries like these are highlighted here. But one thing is certain - as the average life gets snuffed out of memory and existence, the circle of life continues on. This is how real life works, too. And if you can except that, then you can really live your life. A movie that can give you this effect and sentiment should at least be respected.
Synecdoche, New York is on an entirely different level. It is an actual masterpiece, one that retains a truly organic, visceral philosophy while letting itself off into dreams, reality, love, hate, myth, loneliness, et cetera. These are new doors, ones that should be experienced.
The Dark Knight
(2008)
Plastic and Savages
19 August 2009
*** (out of 4) By Aaron Dumont
"I have a magic trick to show you," says the Joker in The Dark Knight, right before he takes out a pencil and drives it in to a bodyguard's face.
This scene sums up the looming sense of terror in the movie - or, more precisely, the attempt of a looming sense of terror. After the hype, as rigid as The Dark Knight's surface is, the movie doesn't quite pass for much more than a two-and-a-half hour-long series of poses and charades. As incredibly beautiful and wild as they are - it's difficult to make a magic trick when you're being too obvious, and it's difficult to make a joke when you're being too obscure.
In my view, it's too easy to label The Dark Knight a masterpiece. A masterpiece of what? Of action? Of suspense? It's more responsible to call it a work of new-found maturity and sophistication, but I'm still not getting the whole picture. Maybe I'm an idiot. Or maybe it's just a children's comic-book movie that wishes to be more. So, while it is honorable that this movie is taking a kind of artistic leap of faith, it's solemnized to death and drowned in a vat of pessimism. It is reality-distanced culture, and (worst of all) offers unenlightening "questions" and "observations" ad nauseum.
What worked was the movie's attempt to illuminate the flaws in its heroes - those saviours of the screen that, in some respects, are our modern, near-mythical figures. In this way, the movie stood true to its own philosophy. For that, I give it respect.
All the feral dynamics that the movie is so well-praised for don't seem to be more than second-rate. The politics are dress-up. The complexity of the city is blunted into the realm of foggy, somewhat-monotonous markers, blueprints and wasted-away commercial aesthetics (note the stylish-but-little-else car scenes between all the queasy monologues, and the 'fashionable' dark-azure tints, bleeding city lights and sledgehammer-composed skyline shots). While poetic, this treatment is little more than an abstraction. It alienates viewers from the movie's center and its creative structure.
However, I won't deny that, at parts, this movie gets to a haunting standpoint. There is visible inspiration and more of an open mindedness to new genres and styles. It comes across in places as feverish, even Sirkian melodrama. In many ways, this movie is an updated thriller, adapted to new forms and texture. It is more fast-paced and comparable to the whirring, unwieldy, surface-obsessed 'Brave New World', as Aldous Huxley put it. Even so, The Dark Knight does trip and stumble when juggling all these parts, and it slips between a Frankenstein mesh and epic ensemble. It many ways this movie is a glorious, incredible, highly fascinating mess.
For all the Biblical resonance and inferno-like, scorching moral plays intertwined through this grim trip, it's not without all its pop-mythology excess and pseudo-sophistication. It turns into a psychopathic, sugar-induced, one-note daze at times. All the artistry of the movie plays second fiddle to the premeditated, calculated and preachy aspects. Though the chaos, havoc and anti-city ideology isn't a stroke from the heart like one would expect it to be, it's all much more sing-song and a bit drained than memory would have one believe.
The Dark Knight at moments, can be pretentious and simplistic, which is too bad. The attempt was highly admirable and ambitious, though. All of the eye-popping, hallucinatory urban decay (visually, thematically and metaphorically) was impressive, but at moments it came across as thinly veiled and a smidgen shallow. It's a masterpiece of smoke and mirrors and a few dimes more. This movie is exhilarating to anticipate, but almost-but-not-quite-there when experienced.
In many respects, The Dark Knight is much like a mirror of our own culture of today. It's quite a coincidence, really, because, as noted by both its detractors and exaltors, it's one of the very things that defines it.
"I have a magic trick to show you," says the Joker in The Dark Knight, right before he takes out a pencil and drives it in to a bodyguard's face.
This scene sums up the looming sense of terror in the movie - or, more precisely, the attempt of a looming sense of terror. After the hype, as rigid as The Dark Knight's surface is, the movie doesn't quite pass for much more than a two-and-a-half hour-long series of poses and charades. As incredibly beautiful and wild as they are - it's difficult to make a magic trick when you're being too obvious, and it's difficult to make a joke when you're being too obscure.
In my view, it's too easy to label The Dark Knight a masterpiece. A masterpiece of what? Of action? Of suspense? It's more responsible to call it a work of new-found maturity and sophistication, but I'm still not getting the whole picture. Maybe I'm an idiot. Or maybe it's just a children's comic-book movie that wishes to be more. So, while it is honorable that this movie is taking a kind of artistic leap of faith, it's solemnized to death and drowned in a vat of pessimism. It is reality-distanced culture, and (worst of all) offers unenlightening "questions" and "observations" ad nauseum.
What worked was the movie's attempt to illuminate the flaws in its heroes - those saviours of the screen that, in some respects, are our modern, near-mythical figures. In this way, the movie stood true to its own philosophy. For that, I give it respect.
All the feral dynamics that the movie is so well-praised for don't seem to be more than second-rate. The politics are dress-up. The complexity of the city is blunted into the realm of foggy, somewhat-monotonous markers, blueprints and wasted-away commercial aesthetics (note the stylish-but-little-else car scenes between all the queasy monologues, and the 'fashionable' dark-azure tints, bleeding city lights and sledgehammer-composed skyline shots). While poetic, this treatment is little more than an abstraction. It alienates viewers from the movie's center and its creative structure.
However, I won't deny that, at parts, this movie gets to a haunting standpoint. There is visible inspiration and more of an open mindedness to new genres and styles. It comes across in places as feverish, even Sirkian melodrama. In many ways, this movie is an updated thriller, adapted to new forms and texture. It is more fast-paced and comparable to the whirring, unwieldy, surface-obsessed 'Brave New World', as Aldous Huxley put it. Even so, The Dark Knight does trip and stumble when juggling all these parts, and it slips between a Frankenstein mesh and epic ensemble. It many ways this movie is a glorious, incredible, highly fascinating mess.
For all the Biblical resonance and inferno-like, scorching moral plays intertwined through this grim trip, it's not without all its pop-mythology excess and pseudo-sophistication. It turns into a psychopathic, sugar-induced, one-note daze at times. All the artistry of the movie plays second fiddle to the premeditated, calculated and preachy aspects. Though the chaos, havoc and anti-city ideology isn't a stroke from the heart like one would expect it to be, it's all much more sing-song and a bit drained than memory would have one believe.
The Dark Knight at moments, can be pretentious and simplistic, which is too bad. The attempt was highly admirable and ambitious, though. All of the eye-popping, hallucinatory urban decay (visually, thematically and metaphorically) was impressive, but at moments it came across as thinly veiled and a smidgen shallow. It's a masterpiece of smoke and mirrors and a few dimes more. This movie is exhilarating to anticipate, but almost-but-not-quite-there when experienced.
In many respects, The Dark Knight is much like a mirror of our own culture of today. It's quite a coincidence, really, because, as noted by both its detractors and exaltors, it's one of the very things that defines it.
Funny Games
(2007)
The desensitized corpse of an intelligent movie
19 August 2009
By Aaron Dumont Zero Stars (out of 4)
It's unfair that Funny Games U.S. (2008) is compared to one of the all-time greatest movies - Pasolini's death-contract opus Salo - because of the violence. However, one of these movies actually has a point; the other doesn't.
Salo was a work of passion, of love and of beauty. It is lively, complex and peerless in its difficult-to-find understanding of humanity and human nature. In its chaos, and, as independent filmmaker Bill Mousoulis put it, narrative 'circles', the ideas there are intensified to extremities; it's more dazzling and profound than any Bergman, or Godard. On the other hand, Haneke's Funny Games U.S. is in fact a morally dead, clueless piece of sadism and pretension, and one without brains at that. It's intellectually and emotionally dull. It's misguided and repulsive. There's nothing to it. There's no anatomy. There's no feeling. It functions like it's a masterpiece, when it's more of a misguided mistake.
Pasolini wasn't out for revenge or shock when he made Salo. He was out to challenge, question and engage in frank and poetic ways. His movie was personal and fearless, and put expression and freedom out on the line. Haneke, however, comes across as if he is out for just about nothing (or if he was, then he simply failed trying). Funny Games U.S. is hypocritical and cowardly. The movie itself, the very one trying to catch the audience for their cynicism and their shamelessness for entertainment, becomes a work of cynicism and shamelessness. It has nothing to say, and I doubt it wants to, either. The movie has no emotion and is completely impersonal.
The movie begins with an upper-class couple on vacation. Then, two young men come in, ask for some eggs, steal a golf club, smash the father's leg and tie them all up. It gets worse from there. The violence portrayed in the movie serves as a a critique on the audience and our need for entertainment at whatever cost. The two torturers actually acknowledge they are in the movie, but the inept "critique" is lost as the movie progressively scream the message louder and louder in you ear. The director would've been better off running into the frame to shout "You are a bad person because you're watching this!"
Though the family's pain really gets to me, it doesn't bother me that much. it's when all that torture is set to play right along such dubious moral lessons, artsy moping and self-importance that really makes me upset. Haneke is at times a good, but not great moviemaker. Unfortunately, Haneke, in making such a noxious, blunt and - in a highly ironic sense - mindless movie, not only makes such a spectacular failure of craft and intelligence, but makes himself out as a fraud, a hypocrite and a dictator.
I felt battered and puzzled by the movie during, but by the end, I felt empty. At least many other awful movies give you a feeling, a pulse. At least some movies need second viewings to catch it all, to understand it more. As one wise man once said, "When I leave a theater and understand all of what I saw before, then I know it's not much good." When I finished this movie, I got it all. Oh, But *No*, you see, it's All Good! It's metafiction, a dark prank! It's Art with a Capital *A*!
Unfortunately, however, this is not art. It's just trash.
It's unfair that Funny Games U.S. (2008) is compared to one of the all-time greatest movies - Pasolini's death-contract opus Salo - because of the violence. However, one of these movies actually has a point; the other doesn't.
Salo was a work of passion, of love and of beauty. It is lively, complex and peerless in its difficult-to-find understanding of humanity and human nature. In its chaos, and, as independent filmmaker Bill Mousoulis put it, narrative 'circles', the ideas there are intensified to extremities; it's more dazzling and profound than any Bergman, or Godard. On the other hand, Haneke's Funny Games U.S. is in fact a morally dead, clueless piece of sadism and pretension, and one without brains at that. It's intellectually and emotionally dull. It's misguided and repulsive. There's nothing to it. There's no anatomy. There's no feeling. It functions like it's a masterpiece, when it's more of a misguided mistake.
Pasolini wasn't out for revenge or shock when he made Salo. He was out to challenge, question and engage in frank and poetic ways. His movie was personal and fearless, and put expression and freedom out on the line. Haneke, however, comes across as if he is out for just about nothing (or if he was, then he simply failed trying). Funny Games U.S. is hypocritical and cowardly. The movie itself, the very one trying to catch the audience for their cynicism and their shamelessness for entertainment, becomes a work of cynicism and shamelessness. It has nothing to say, and I doubt it wants to, either. The movie has no emotion and is completely impersonal.
The movie begins with an upper-class couple on vacation. Then, two young men come in, ask for some eggs, steal a golf club, smash the father's leg and tie them all up. It gets worse from there. The violence portrayed in the movie serves as a a critique on the audience and our need for entertainment at whatever cost. The two torturers actually acknowledge they are in the movie, but the inept "critique" is lost as the movie progressively scream the message louder and louder in you ear. The director would've been better off running into the frame to shout "You are a bad person because you're watching this!"
Though the family's pain really gets to me, it doesn't bother me that much. it's when all that torture is set to play right along such dubious moral lessons, artsy moping and self-importance that really makes me upset. Haneke is at times a good, but not great moviemaker. Unfortunately, Haneke, in making such a noxious, blunt and - in a highly ironic sense - mindless movie, not only makes such a spectacular failure of craft and intelligence, but makes himself out as a fraud, a hypocrite and a dictator.
I felt battered and puzzled by the movie during, but by the end, I felt empty. At least many other awful movies give you a feeling, a pulse. At least some movies need second viewings to catch it all, to understand it more. As one wise man once said, "When I leave a theater and understand all of what I saw before, then I know it's not much good." When I finished this movie, I got it all. Oh, But *No*, you see, it's All Good! It's metafiction, a dark prank! It's Art with a Capital *A*!
Unfortunately, however, this is not art. It's just trash.
Up
(2009)
All You Need Is Love
19 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
By Aaron Dumont **** (out of 4) Pixar's Up is stunning and delightful. But what makes it so unique? It's a Pixar creation with disappointment, loneliness, regret, personal reconciliation and crushed ambition, but that's not what makes UP transcend entertainment to artistry--from child's play to vivid, mature reverie. In this movie, characters do let down others, get let down, die and spill blood. They cry, they lose hope, realtions are disintegrated, passions and goals unfulfilled. However, with all the hyperreal color, theatrics, and grace of it all, this movie works on two different volumes at once--both a life truly lived, as well as a life truly dreamt, which is a marvelous feat all by itself.
UP has beauty, redemption and a sense of simplicity and humor in it, while still remaining earthy and pure in its vision and splendor. In a compassionate homage of past classic movies and fairy tales, UP begins as an episodic series of Chaplinesque vignettes--from the opening, a short movie that evokes the beginning of Citizen Kane, UP establishes what it sets to be--a whole spectrum of moods, wonders and experiences from the first embrace of childhood to the final acceptance of weariness and grief.
As a young child, the main character Carl watches a short movie (as I had described earlier) about his hero and banal inspiration Charles Muntz, an aviator and explorer. He soon meets a young girl who shares his beloved obsession, and their childhood friendship soon turns into a lifelong marriage. They develop a dream to sail to where their idol Muntz had flown off to, never to return--Paradise Falls--but before they save up the money to do so, Carl's wife dies from a terminal illness, leaving with her the couple's lifelong goal.
Most of you probably know the rest. Carl ties thousands of balloons to his house, flies it up into the air, and a young boy accidentally gets swept on board. Their adventure begins. The beauty of the flying scenes are magnificent, and the pastoral range of light and shapes used here is more than merely impressive--it's a semi-psychedelic kind of life-affirming.
Apart from the technical brilliance, what can also be found here is profundity, humanity and emotion. This duo (Carl and the young boy) come across a now-elderly Muntz as well as several his several talking guard dog, which provide quirkiness a-la-Duck Soup (or perhaps Chaplin?)--comedy and craft in the most feverishly impassioned and feistily engrossing of the term. The two split up, after a series of mishaps and disagreements, in a turn for loneliness and solemnity, and in a climactic fight scene, find and embrace each other again, but not before depending on one another, helping each other, and saving each others lives in suspense and moving sleflessness. In fact, in the simple, humble ending, perhaps one of the most touching of endings, the formerly recluse and grumpy Carl makes himself as a father figure to his young companion.
UP is truly a wonder. It is capsule of sorts - it holds love, optimism, innocence and freedom in a special, vibrant place, glowing, blossoming and swirling around, floating through scenes and glowing as beautifully and brilliantly as birth. Even during the worst of times, in fact. UP has all the passion, exuberance and emotion of any great art--animated or not--with multifaceted flares of hallucinogenic sights, waking dream textures, reservoirs of poetry and magnificent vision, and the movie's humanistic grandeur and dignity makes it all the more lovably important.
UP, throughout all the adventures and feelings, achieves what many other movies couldn't even dream of doing - it creates a world on its own, one both personal and universal.
It's magic. Deep, true magic.
UP has beauty, redemption and a sense of simplicity and humor in it, while still remaining earthy and pure in its vision and splendor. In a compassionate homage of past classic movies and fairy tales, UP begins as an episodic series of Chaplinesque vignettes--from the opening, a short movie that evokes the beginning of Citizen Kane, UP establishes what it sets to be--a whole spectrum of moods, wonders and experiences from the first embrace of childhood to the final acceptance of weariness and grief.
As a young child, the main character Carl watches a short movie (as I had described earlier) about his hero and banal inspiration Charles Muntz, an aviator and explorer. He soon meets a young girl who shares his beloved obsession, and their childhood friendship soon turns into a lifelong marriage. They develop a dream to sail to where their idol Muntz had flown off to, never to return--Paradise Falls--but before they save up the money to do so, Carl's wife dies from a terminal illness, leaving with her the couple's lifelong goal.
Most of you probably know the rest. Carl ties thousands of balloons to his house, flies it up into the air, and a young boy accidentally gets swept on board. Their adventure begins. The beauty of the flying scenes are magnificent, and the pastoral range of light and shapes used here is more than merely impressive--it's a semi-psychedelic kind of life-affirming.
Apart from the technical brilliance, what can also be found here is profundity, humanity and emotion. This duo (Carl and the young boy) come across a now-elderly Muntz as well as several his several talking guard dog, which provide quirkiness a-la-Duck Soup (or perhaps Chaplin?)--comedy and craft in the most feverishly impassioned and feistily engrossing of the term. The two split up, after a series of mishaps and disagreements, in a turn for loneliness and solemnity, and in a climactic fight scene, find and embrace each other again, but not before depending on one another, helping each other, and saving each others lives in suspense and moving sleflessness. In fact, in the simple, humble ending, perhaps one of the most touching of endings, the formerly recluse and grumpy Carl makes himself as a father figure to his young companion.
UP is truly a wonder. It is capsule of sorts - it holds love, optimism, innocence and freedom in a special, vibrant place, glowing, blossoming and swirling around, floating through scenes and glowing as beautifully and brilliantly as birth. Even during the worst of times, in fact. UP has all the passion, exuberance and emotion of any great art--animated or not--with multifaceted flares of hallucinogenic sights, waking dream textures, reservoirs of poetry and magnificent vision, and the movie's humanistic grandeur and dignity makes it all the more lovably important.
UP, throughout all the adventures and feelings, achieves what many other movies couldn't even dream of doing - it creates a world on its own, one both personal and universal.
It's magic. Deep, true magic.
Watchmen
(2009)
Doubt, Greed and Capes
19 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
** 1/2 (out of 4) By Aaron Dumont
An odd type of noble, embalmed experience that all but transcends, falls beneath and remains firmly aligned with the superhero movie norm, Zach Synder's Watchmen has remained a curiosity to me.
The opening of the movie was a dizzying, glorious promise to a possible masterpiece from a director who had previously made only watchable horrors and asinine high-art-masquerades. The first 10-or-so minutes illustrated a brief, ravishing odyssey through recent history under the influence of superheroes. Acted through a series of tableaux, it all felt much like an experience. It was a perfectly constructed space, full of form and texture and set to Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin.
Afterwards, the movie roughly runs through the next two-and-a-half hours, grasping and losing the brilliance it started out with. It grows more and more with characters and plot, ripens with great potential, and sprawls in detail and complexity - it's too bad the inspired structure can't handle it. It all becomes a bit too unwieldy for its own good, ending up as a philosophical epic that leaves me cold. It is a movie rich with poetry and disillusionment, albeit one that doesn't know what do with it all.
Something that also struck me during my viewing was the borrowed, stitched-together feel of the movie. It had an unpolished effect that, to a certain degree felt a bit casual. The images and senses triggered were astonishing, but felt much like a carbon-copy of the original graphic novel. This bogged down the message, the approach and the humanism of the whole product. Perhaps it was the ending that truly got to me - under a saturated sky, exactly like in the comic, a young man working at a newspaper office, finds the journal of Rorschach's journal, and the words that began both the film and the journal are read from it. Finish the movie. Fade to credits. The end.
I don't know about you, but it felt simply underwhelming - an all-too-light, all-too-easy route to cut off the movie and make it easy to digest. It was something that made the past events and themes - disenchantment, moral crisis, loneliness, alienation, mortality, decaying politics - seem so less grim, so less real. It was a screaming reminder that what you were watching was merely some fiction. This was theatre. It was Hollywood.
I felt I was watching a masterpiece trapped in the shell of an average, everyday crowd-pleaser. Watchmen was a glorious effort, but an oddly unsatisfying watch. Maybe it was simply trying too hard to film the 'unfilmable' comic series. Overall, it's a mixed bag - a great movie listlessly stumbling about.
Where has all the liberation of cinematic adaptations gone?
An odd type of noble, embalmed experience that all but transcends, falls beneath and remains firmly aligned with the superhero movie norm, Zach Synder's Watchmen has remained a curiosity to me.
The opening of the movie was a dizzying, glorious promise to a possible masterpiece from a director who had previously made only watchable horrors and asinine high-art-masquerades. The first 10-or-so minutes illustrated a brief, ravishing odyssey through recent history under the influence of superheroes. Acted through a series of tableaux, it all felt much like an experience. It was a perfectly constructed space, full of form and texture and set to Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin.
Afterwards, the movie roughly runs through the next two-and-a-half hours, grasping and losing the brilliance it started out with. It grows more and more with characters and plot, ripens with great potential, and sprawls in detail and complexity - it's too bad the inspired structure can't handle it. It all becomes a bit too unwieldy for its own good, ending up as a philosophical epic that leaves me cold. It is a movie rich with poetry and disillusionment, albeit one that doesn't know what do with it all.
Something that also struck me during my viewing was the borrowed, stitched-together feel of the movie. It had an unpolished effect that, to a certain degree felt a bit casual. The images and senses triggered were astonishing, but felt much like a carbon-copy of the original graphic novel. This bogged down the message, the approach and the humanism of the whole product. Perhaps it was the ending that truly got to me - under a saturated sky, exactly like in the comic, a young man working at a newspaper office, finds the journal of Rorschach's journal, and the words that began both the film and the journal are read from it. Finish the movie. Fade to credits. The end.
I don't know about you, but it felt simply underwhelming - an all-too-light, all-too-easy route to cut off the movie and make it easy to digest. It was something that made the past events and themes - disenchantment, moral crisis, loneliness, alienation, mortality, decaying politics - seem so less grim, so less real. It was a screaming reminder that what you were watching was merely some fiction. This was theatre. It was Hollywood.
I felt I was watching a masterpiece trapped in the shell of an average, everyday crowd-pleaser. Watchmen was a glorious effort, but an oddly unsatisfying watch. Maybe it was simply trying too hard to film the 'unfilmable' comic series. Overall, it's a mixed bag - a great movie listlessly stumbling about.
Where has all the liberation of cinematic adaptations gone?
Crash
(I) (2004)
Deception
19 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Zero Stars (out of 4) By Aaron Dumont
Among the countless slew and turgid veil of the garishly safe, self-satisfied PC-indulgence fests released within the past years, Crash, a monstrous, clunky culmination of the very, very worst of Altman-wannabes and the most tired and bored of overused conventions, stood among the most confoundingly successful of them all.
In Paul Haggis' Crash, an array of characters live in Los Angeles. Their lives intersect with each other, and they go through an unbearably straightforward series of melodramatic incidents, mainly due to a car crash. The movie as a whole is executed in a pretend-mythical style—astoundingly overused, absurdly glossy spiritual symbols, artificial, indulgent melodramatics instead of genuine humanity and insight. The characters are portrayed as either victimized angels or bigoted demons that repent to become victimized angels.
The movie itself is so clean, manufactured and mass-produced that it feels like a plastic shell. The characters are nothing more than pop abstractions that begin with little-to-none dimension and, paradoxically, lose dimension as they progress. The social and cultural tidbits portrayed here are illustrated in straight, bold, plain lines. Crash's formality feels so out-of-place, so uncomfortable, that even with any redeeming values, it's impossible to forgive.
Now, technically speaking, it's not the worst movie ever made, and it's not the worst of the decade, either. In fact, based on technical guidelines, it's not even the worst movie of 2005. However, in applying the Joe Queenan theory-—that the truly worst movies ever made are the ones that shot for the moon and offshooted; the movies that bugged you; the ones that stuck with you for a long, long time - Crash is really the worst of its year. It is also one of the worst of the decade (only The Village, The Passion of the Christ, Hancock and a few others fare worse). It's wildly visionary approach simply felt like a mammoth-scale failure. It got to me. It bugged me. The whimper this movie got out of such a fruitful idea was simply sad to watch. Any faint merits or respectable attempts for greatness made it seem all the more heartbreakingly terrible—this pretentious, cheap disaster seems so wasted.
The movie is a deformed pastiche of political blindness, soullessness and emptiness. It appeared to me as a lifeless, rushed scam - a movie that feeds off mass consensus of opinion without trying anything revolutionary itself.
Crash is a movie that gives itself the undeserved assertion that it really is revolutionary-—yet it pathetically follows the crowd while it obnoxiously assumes it is leading. This movie could have been so much more—something modest, something in-touch, something relevant--or, at the very least, something tolerable.
Among the countless slew and turgid veil of the garishly safe, self-satisfied PC-indulgence fests released within the past years, Crash, a monstrous, clunky culmination of the very, very worst of Altman-wannabes and the most tired and bored of overused conventions, stood among the most confoundingly successful of them all.
In Paul Haggis' Crash, an array of characters live in Los Angeles. Their lives intersect with each other, and they go through an unbearably straightforward series of melodramatic incidents, mainly due to a car crash. The movie as a whole is executed in a pretend-mythical style—astoundingly overused, absurdly glossy spiritual symbols, artificial, indulgent melodramatics instead of genuine humanity and insight. The characters are portrayed as either victimized angels or bigoted demons that repent to become victimized angels.
The movie itself is so clean, manufactured and mass-produced that it feels like a plastic shell. The characters are nothing more than pop abstractions that begin with little-to-none dimension and, paradoxically, lose dimension as they progress. The social and cultural tidbits portrayed here are illustrated in straight, bold, plain lines. Crash's formality feels so out-of-place, so uncomfortable, that even with any redeeming values, it's impossible to forgive.
Now, technically speaking, it's not the worst movie ever made, and it's not the worst of the decade, either. In fact, based on technical guidelines, it's not even the worst movie of 2005. However, in applying the Joe Queenan theory-—that the truly worst movies ever made are the ones that shot for the moon and offshooted; the movies that bugged you; the ones that stuck with you for a long, long time - Crash is really the worst of its year. It is also one of the worst of the decade (only The Village, The Passion of the Christ, Hancock and a few others fare worse). It's wildly visionary approach simply felt like a mammoth-scale failure. It got to me. It bugged me. The whimper this movie got out of such a fruitful idea was simply sad to watch. Any faint merits or respectable attempts for greatness made it seem all the more heartbreakingly terrible—this pretentious, cheap disaster seems so wasted.
The movie is a deformed pastiche of political blindness, soullessness and emptiness. It appeared to me as a lifeless, rushed scam - a movie that feeds off mass consensus of opinion without trying anything revolutionary itself.
Crash is a movie that gives itself the undeserved assertion that it really is revolutionary-—yet it pathetically follows the crowd while it obnoxiously assumes it is leading. This movie could have been so much more—something modest, something in-touch, something relevant--or, at the very least, something tolerable.
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