The problem is that it still isn't a particularly good one.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Michael Bay may actually be in on the joke...
The problem is that it still isn't a particularly good one.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
The flashing lights. The cheesy music. The mooning, needy host, desperately clinging to his last bit of relevance. I hate most network primetime game shows for plenty of reasons, but my biggest pet peeve, without question, are the participants. When a person on "Deal or No Deal" is offered six figures to stop choosing briefcases at random, a once-in-a-lifetime offer, and they do the unthinkable and refuse because they’re convinced their next briefcase is going to be one of a low denomination, I want them to fail. When a person exhausts their lifelines on a blindingly easy question, I hope the next one they face is one even I don’t get. If game shows were a window to the soul, they’d reveal that I’m a pretty terrible person; so I stopped watching them.
That’s one of the many reasons I was surprised with Danny Boyle’s Academy Award winning 2008 effort Slumdog Millionaire: Not only did I want Jamal (Dev Patel)to win the money, get the girl, and dance his ass off, I was heavily invested in his doing so. Never in my wildest imagination would I ever think that the traditional camera and music gimmickry of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" (a universal language, even if currency isn't) would have me gripping the armrests of my chair, but there I was, doing just that.
Of course, there's more to Slumdog Millionaire than the game show scenes; there is a story behind how Jamal got to be in the hot seat, and it is as fascinating as it is sad.
Yes, I found the movie to be sad. Not life-affirming. Not heartwarming. Not a tender love note written and sealed with soft kisses to the nature of the human spirit. Slumdog Millionaire has a happy ending, but everything leading up to that fairy tale ending exists in a pure, Dickensian nightmare world. I left the film happy, feeling good about what transpired, but a limp-wristed tearjerker this isn't - DVD blurb writing defies it.
The movie's framework is thus: Jamal, an unlikely contestant on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" answers a series of questions that no person raised in the slums of India should know. Some Americans, if quizzed, would guess that Andrew Jackson was the subject of the first digital presidential portrait, so why would Jamal know who was on the American $100 bill? How could he know that without knowing who was on the 1,000 rupee bill (Ghandi)? The police, and the show's host (Anil Kapoor, whose pronunciation of "Millionaire" really is heartwarming) suspect he is cheating and interrogations commence to get to the root of the problem, all before the show Jamal might just pull it out on.
As it happens, Jamal's life experiences are the reason he knows the answers to all of these questions. Flashbacks detail not only how he knows the answer to these questions, but why they matter to him - all of them are tied to one experience or another in his life, a tragic one that sees his mother die in a riot, his brother become a gangster, and his best friend/soul mate stolen away for future prostitution. Jamal has been trying to pick up the pieces for 20 years. He appears on "Millionaire" not for the chance to become one, but because he knows Latika (Freida Pinto), the soul mate, watches regularly.
This is a film with many ambitions. It rarely misses the mark. This is a film bursting with subplots. It doesn't forget any of them. This is a film that takes risks. They were certainly rewarding.
What can you say about the performances of the film's untrained, unwashed child stars, plucked from the slums of Mumbai? They carry much of the film's weight, waging an epic struggle against their harsh reality, not knowing just how rough they really have it. For every indignity they suffer, there is a smile. For every atrocity they witness, there is some moment of happiness - the kids are still kids, until they're forced to grow up. Even then, there are young adults who are corrupted and killed, and there are those who refuse to be.
The scenes involving the children are shot mostly using Dutch angles. On the Wikipedia article for the technique, an unverified claim has it that there are more Dutch angle shots than ones where the camera is level. Those shots lend a largeness to the flashbacks, the same sort of largeness most people lend to their own childhood memories. There's another reason for those shots, I think: Distorting the world around Jamal, Latika, and Salim serves to illustrate the impossible world they were dealing with at an age where the concern of most American children is getting another hour in front of their X-Box 360.
This is not a perfect movie. The cynic in me says that the ending was contrived and that the Bollywood-lite dancing at the end of the movie robbed the film of some of its gravitas, even if it put a big, goofy grin on my face. The movie left me wanting to know more. How does Jamal deal with his sudden fame? How do the mob associates deal with a late-movie bloodbath? Danny Boyle wraps this movie up with nice, shiny paper and a big, red bow, but there were elements of the story that begged for more than the story book ending it was given. I understand why this was the life-affirming movie of 2008: Walking out of the theater to the strains of "Jai Ho" amidst cute dancing and smiling people evokes good feelings. My only hope is that the people who see this movie wake up remembering the two hour nightmare that preceded that finish. What’s the use of a fairy tale ending without the struggle that came before?
I Like Your Style, Dude
Friday, July 3, 2009
Happy 4th of July!
I'll be out of town until Monday night, which is just in time for the LAMB's upcoming Danny Boyle blogathon, which I am running.
If you have any entries, please send them to me at marchhaire@gmail.com
If you have any entries, please send them to me at marchhaire@gmail.com
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Movie Review: Goodbye Solo (2009)
Goodbye Solo, the third film from director Ramin Bahrani, is, one hopes, the sort of film that will benefit from the Academy's recent decision to increase the field of Best Picture Nominees from 5 to 10. This isn't the kind of movie that crops up in multiplexes across the country. According to Box Office Mojo, Goodbye Solo has yet to make $1 million. It's widest release? 34 theaters. What if a movie like this were playing in 100 theaters? 500? 1,000?
The movie begins like a blind date. Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané), a Senegalese cab driver with aspirations of being a flight attendant, has picked up William (Red West), an old, white man who offers Solo a thousand dollars, cash, if he'll pick William up in 10 days and drive him to Blowing Rock National Park, where legend has it that the wind causes the snow to fall upwards and makes sticks thrown from the cliff fly back to the thrower's hand. There will be no return fare.
Solo takes William's deposit payment, but wants to know why he wants to go out to Blowing Rock. William doesn't want to tell him, but Solo is a persistent cab driver, and after getting some sad, wear-beaten looks from his fare, jumps to the worst possible conclusion. This is an awkward conversation, it feels awkward watching it happen on screen, and it only gets worse when Solo tries to goad something, anything out of William, who only wants to go to the movies. As he gets out of the cab in front of the theater, William is handed Solo's cell phone number. "You're a preferred client," Solo says, all smiles.
And so he is. Whenever William needs to go anywhere, which is usually to the movies and back to his apartment, Solo is the one to drive him. Always smiling, always chattering, Solo puts his cabbie charm through the paces in trying to crack William's armor, and slowly, he does. Eventually, William meets Solo's wife, ex-wife, step-daughter, and friends. He comes to know Solo's hopes for the future. He winds up living with Solo. He says he doesn't give a damn about Solo's personal life and requests some privacy when it comes to his, but over the course of 10 days, Solo and William wind up being like family.
If the 10 day span seems fast for such a relationship to develop, consider that William is an old man with no family, and that Solo is an immigrant who has a small family and a number of connections, but no true friends. Solo explains to William that in Senegal, the old are taken care of by their family. Seeing an old man with no family, Solo takes pity on William and tries to include him in his own.
The movie could have taken on a sappy, sentimental tone, but Rahmin Bahrani, who directed, co-wrote, produced, and edited his film, avoids that trap by focusing on real characters at the margins of society. There is no swelling music as the two men give each other significant looks in the rearview mirror of Solo's taxi. William's behavior doesn't change as the 10th day approaches. There is no scene where the old man breaks down and cries, because Bahrani understands that many old men are too tough and too foolish to shed a tear, even if their own particularly sad nature warrants a bit of self-pity. William's stubbornness only spurs Solo to continue seeking the truth behind why his friend wants to go out to Blowing Rock, but he remains a puzzle.
This is a tough, uncompromising film about people, no descriptive adjectives of phrases necessary. Bahrani, who grew up in Winston-Salem, where the film takes place, shows us places and people that many would avoid. He gives us a movie about those people and why they end up in those places. He filters nothing, even to the point of shooting scenes in natural sunlight, allowing the sun to wash out Solo's surroundings.
I liked every aspect of this film. How it starts uncertain and queasy and dark, how it opens up in the middle with a bit of charm and humor, how it lets the plot cook in the background so that the characters can take over. Souleymane Sy Savane and Red West are tremendous in their roles, so much so that they don't seem like actors playing a role in a movie, but people trying to figure out their role in life. This movie hits, and it hits hard
If this movie makes its way to your city during its slow trickle through the U.S., go see it. Otherwise, this kind of thing is the reason Netflix was invented.
The Dude Abides
The movie begins like a blind date. Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané), a Senegalese cab driver with aspirations of being a flight attendant, has picked up William (Red West), an old, white man who offers Solo a thousand dollars, cash, if he'll pick William up in 10 days and drive him to Blowing Rock National Park, where legend has it that the wind causes the snow to fall upwards and makes sticks thrown from the cliff fly back to the thrower's hand. There will be no return fare.
Solo takes William's deposit payment, but wants to know why he wants to go out to Blowing Rock. William doesn't want to tell him, but Solo is a persistent cab driver, and after getting some sad, wear-beaten looks from his fare, jumps to the worst possible conclusion. This is an awkward conversation, it feels awkward watching it happen on screen, and it only gets worse when Solo tries to goad something, anything out of William, who only wants to go to the movies. As he gets out of the cab in front of the theater, William is handed Solo's cell phone number. "You're a preferred client," Solo says, all smiles.
And so he is. Whenever William needs to go anywhere, which is usually to the movies and back to his apartment, Solo is the one to drive him. Always smiling, always chattering, Solo puts his cabbie charm through the paces in trying to crack William's armor, and slowly, he does. Eventually, William meets Solo's wife, ex-wife, step-daughter, and friends. He comes to know Solo's hopes for the future. He winds up living with Solo. He says he doesn't give a damn about Solo's personal life and requests some privacy when it comes to his, but over the course of 10 days, Solo and William wind up being like family.
If the 10 day span seems fast for such a relationship to develop, consider that William is an old man with no family, and that Solo is an immigrant who has a small family and a number of connections, but no true friends. Solo explains to William that in Senegal, the old are taken care of by their family. Seeing an old man with no family, Solo takes pity on William and tries to include him in his own.
The movie could have taken on a sappy, sentimental tone, but Rahmin Bahrani, who directed, co-wrote, produced, and edited his film, avoids that trap by focusing on real characters at the margins of society. There is no swelling music as the two men give each other significant looks in the rearview mirror of Solo's taxi. William's behavior doesn't change as the 10th day approaches. There is no scene where the old man breaks down and cries, because Bahrani understands that many old men are too tough and too foolish to shed a tear, even if their own particularly sad nature warrants a bit of self-pity. William's stubbornness only spurs Solo to continue seeking the truth behind why his friend wants to go out to Blowing Rock, but he remains a puzzle.
This is a tough, uncompromising film about people, no descriptive adjectives of phrases necessary. Bahrani, who grew up in Winston-Salem, where the film takes place, shows us places and people that many would avoid. He gives us a movie about those people and why they end up in those places. He filters nothing, even to the point of shooting scenes in natural sunlight, allowing the sun to wash out Solo's surroundings.
I liked every aspect of this film. How it starts uncertain and queasy and dark, how it opens up in the middle with a bit of charm and humor, how it lets the plot cook in the background so that the characters can take over. Souleymane Sy Savane and Red West are tremendous in their roles, so much so that they don't seem like actors playing a role in a movie, but people trying to figure out their role in life. This movie hits, and it hits hard
If this movie makes its way to your city during its slow trickle through the U.S., go see it. Otherwise, this kind of thing is the reason Netflix was invented.
The Dude Abides
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Chuck Norris remembers Michael Jackson
When The Jackson 5 were young, I was a six-time undefeated world middleweight karate champion.
-Chuck Norris
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Movie Review: Away We Go (2009)
Away We Go is a movie about two people who are so nice and so passive that their nice passivity might come across as rude and condescending. Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) are unmarried, self-employed, and at least one of them did not finish college. They live in what amounts to a shack, complete with cardboard windows and fuses that blow at the flip of a switch. They drive a bad car. They are in their thirties. They are expecting a baby. They have no idea what they want to do with life.
Six months into the pregnancy, Burt and Verona have dinner at Burt's parents' house. The two live near Burt's parents as an apparent favor - the expenses they incur on their road trip (rental cars, gifts for friends, plane tickets) imply that Burt is doing just fine at his stay-at-home job - but they aren't exactly appreciative. After an awkward conversation about the baby (Burt's mom wants to know how black it'll be), Jerry (Jeff Daniels) and Gloria (Catherine O'Hera) drop their big news: They'll be moving to Antwerp, before the baby is born.
While that isn't a problem for Burt's parents, who are quick to remind the couple that they've been planning their trip for 15 years, it's certainly a problem for Burt and Verona: What are they going to do?
The short answer is that they won't live in their dilapidated shack, full of the sort of nick-nacks that belong to people who can do everything but can't decide to do just one. The long answer is the film, which is a trip across America, taken by plane, train, and automobile, with a stop in Montreal, which is an under-appreciated city.
Along the way, Burt and Verona meet up with relatives and old friends, normal people and eccentrics. They hope to learn from these people the kind of life they want to provide for their child. For the most part, they are unsuccessful, which is kind of the point.
The movie, a series of vignettes that smash-cut to title cards for the next city they plan on visiting, are either funny, sad, or a bit of both. In Phoenix, they meet with Lilly (Allison Janney), who was Verona's boss in Chicago, a city to which the couple will definitely not be returning. Lilly is an absolutely brutal drunk - it's the early afternoon, and she is hammered. She says awful things about her breasts, her 12-year-old daughter's weight and future sexuality, and her willingness to leave her husband (Jim Gaffigan). What she says is funny and sad. Her family is shellshocked, barely there. Burt and Verona are shocked and don't want to be there.
Their trip takes them from Phoenix to Tuscon to Madison to Montreal to Miami - there are no examples of the absolutely perfect family Burt and Verona wish to emulate. This is familiar ground for director Sam Mendes, whose Revolutionary Road was a powerful movie about the tension between two people who, on the surface, have a perfect relationship. By contrast, Away We Go is a much lighter movie, but it still carries a lot of weight. How many of us have inconsiderate family members, insufferable drunks, and whacked out losers in our lives? The friends with the near-perfect relationship? The sibling in need?
Burt and Verona are passive to a certain point, and they are truly, sincerely nice people - the kind of people your parents want you to be friends with. Maybe it seems strange that the movie's perfect couple is off looking for another couple to emulate, not realizing that most of the people they visit with envy them for being every bit the couple they aren't, even without tying the knot. If anything, it proves that Burt and Verona aren't rude and condescending people at all. If they were, why bother with living by Burt's parents in the first place?
In a lot of ways, this movie could have fallen flat on its face. The end of the film is predictable, even if the situations Burt and Verona observe are murky and uncertain. I felt that there was a need for that though - the protagonists are deserving of nice things; a bleak outlook would have been unnecessarily overwrought and without explanation.
It's the acting that propels just about everything. Krasinski shows that he has chops beyond staring into a camera, at Jenna Fischer, or reacting to what's going on around him in the Office. I'd much prefer to see him in movies than Rainn Wilson. The real surprise of the movie is Rudolph, who was always teetering on the brink of being a main player on Saturday Night Live, but just never seemed to take off. Her character is the emotional center of the movie, the mother who doesn't want to screw everything up, the girl whose parents died early in her life, the thirtysomething who wants to grow up.
The supporting cast is also stellar, but special credit goes to Maggie Gyllenhaal, playing a childhood friend of Burt's who grew up, changed her name to LN, and wound up indoctrinated in late-1960's hippie psychobabble. She hates strollers because they involve a constant pushing away of children, for example. The character is entirely weird, and I have a hard time believing that a university would employ such a woman (at least one co-worker seems to hate her), but Gyllenhall effectively skewers academia - its eccentricities and its potential ugliness. She has the best line in the movie, about why there are so many seahorses in her home.
Some smugness might creep in at the edges, but I didn't find fault with the characters. As a quirky road trip movie, Away We Go is aiming for Little Miss Sunshine, right down to the uplifting music playing in the background as the couple's boxy, awful little car drives out into the distance. The music doesn't change when the car does. It is all Alexi Murdoch on the soundtrack, doing his best to emulate Nick Drake, who kept taking me out of the picture. Little Miss Sunshine had its fair share of indie-folk darlings doing songs, but they really were in the background, lyrics cut for the theatrical flare of the music. Away We Go also felt much less organic than the standard bearer for this kind of movie. There are times when Burt and Verona seem like aliens being exposed to various facets of the human experience for the first time, likely because the script necessitates that the two be pure and naïve so they can run through a gamut of depressing, awkward American home-life scenarios. Maybe it works better with one scenario, one family, one destination, with all the character quirks and life situations in-between. Maybe Mendes, a Brit, doesn't understand the American myth of the open road. Maybe that myth is dying. I don't know, but it's still a game try.
I also don't know if I could call this a comedy - there are laughs to be had, but I have a feeling that they aren't the point. Mendes, working from a script by the talented husband/wife team of Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, delivers a somewhat hip slice-of-life/road trip film that examines the secrets lying just beneath the surface of most relationships. It is skeptical, but there's hope. Burt and Verona don't keep secrets. They seem to be doing fine.
Far Fucking Out
Six months into the pregnancy, Burt and Verona have dinner at Burt's parents' house. The two live near Burt's parents as an apparent favor - the expenses they incur on their road trip (rental cars, gifts for friends, plane tickets) imply that Burt is doing just fine at his stay-at-home job - but they aren't exactly appreciative. After an awkward conversation about the baby (Burt's mom wants to know how black it'll be), Jerry (Jeff Daniels) and Gloria (Catherine O'Hera) drop their big news: They'll be moving to Antwerp, before the baby is born.
While that isn't a problem for Burt's parents, who are quick to remind the couple that they've been planning their trip for 15 years, it's certainly a problem for Burt and Verona: What are they going to do?
The short answer is that they won't live in their dilapidated shack, full of the sort of nick-nacks that belong to people who can do everything but can't decide to do just one. The long answer is the film, which is a trip across America, taken by plane, train, and automobile, with a stop in Montreal, which is an under-appreciated city.
Along the way, Burt and Verona meet up with relatives and old friends, normal people and eccentrics. They hope to learn from these people the kind of life they want to provide for their child. For the most part, they are unsuccessful, which is kind of the point.
The movie, a series of vignettes that smash-cut to title cards for the next city they plan on visiting, are either funny, sad, or a bit of both. In Phoenix, they meet with Lilly (Allison Janney), who was Verona's boss in Chicago, a city to which the couple will definitely not be returning. Lilly is an absolutely brutal drunk - it's the early afternoon, and she is hammered. She says awful things about her breasts, her 12-year-old daughter's weight and future sexuality, and her willingness to leave her husband (Jim Gaffigan). What she says is funny and sad. Her family is shellshocked, barely there. Burt and Verona are shocked and don't want to be there.
Their trip takes them from Phoenix to Tuscon to Madison to Montreal to Miami - there are no examples of the absolutely perfect family Burt and Verona wish to emulate. This is familiar ground for director Sam Mendes, whose Revolutionary Road was a powerful movie about the tension between two people who, on the surface, have a perfect relationship. By contrast, Away We Go is a much lighter movie, but it still carries a lot of weight. How many of us have inconsiderate family members, insufferable drunks, and whacked out losers in our lives? The friends with the near-perfect relationship? The sibling in need?
Burt and Verona are passive to a certain point, and they are truly, sincerely nice people - the kind of people your parents want you to be friends with. Maybe it seems strange that the movie's perfect couple is off looking for another couple to emulate, not realizing that most of the people they visit with envy them for being every bit the couple they aren't, even without tying the knot. If anything, it proves that Burt and Verona aren't rude and condescending people at all. If they were, why bother with living by Burt's parents in the first place?
In a lot of ways, this movie could have fallen flat on its face. The end of the film is predictable, even if the situations Burt and Verona observe are murky and uncertain. I felt that there was a need for that though - the protagonists are deserving of nice things; a bleak outlook would have been unnecessarily overwrought and without explanation.
It's the acting that propels just about everything. Krasinski shows that he has chops beyond staring into a camera, at Jenna Fischer, or reacting to what's going on around him in the Office. I'd much prefer to see him in movies than Rainn Wilson. The real surprise of the movie is Rudolph, who was always teetering on the brink of being a main player on Saturday Night Live, but just never seemed to take off. Her character is the emotional center of the movie, the mother who doesn't want to screw everything up, the girl whose parents died early in her life, the thirtysomething who wants to grow up.
The supporting cast is also stellar, but special credit goes to Maggie Gyllenhaal, playing a childhood friend of Burt's who grew up, changed her name to LN, and wound up indoctrinated in late-1960's hippie psychobabble. She hates strollers because they involve a constant pushing away of children, for example. The character is entirely weird, and I have a hard time believing that a university would employ such a woman (at least one co-worker seems to hate her), but Gyllenhall effectively skewers academia - its eccentricities and its potential ugliness. She has the best line in the movie, about why there are so many seahorses in her home.
Some smugness might creep in at the edges, but I didn't find fault with the characters. As a quirky road trip movie, Away We Go is aiming for Little Miss Sunshine, right down to the uplifting music playing in the background as the couple's boxy, awful little car drives out into the distance. The music doesn't change when the car does. It is all Alexi Murdoch on the soundtrack, doing his best to emulate Nick Drake, who kept taking me out of the picture. Little Miss Sunshine had its fair share of indie-folk darlings doing songs, but they really were in the background, lyrics cut for the theatrical flare of the music. Away We Go also felt much less organic than the standard bearer for this kind of movie. There are times when Burt and Verona seem like aliens being exposed to various facets of the human experience for the first time, likely because the script necessitates that the two be pure and naïve so they can run through a gamut of depressing, awkward American home-life scenarios. Maybe it works better with one scenario, one family, one destination, with all the character quirks and life situations in-between. Maybe Mendes, a Brit, doesn't understand the American myth of the open road. Maybe that myth is dying. I don't know, but it's still a game try.
I also don't know if I could call this a comedy - there are laughs to be had, but I have a feeling that they aren't the point. Mendes, working from a script by the talented husband/wife team of Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, delivers a somewhat hip slice-of-life/road trip film that examines the secrets lying just beneath the surface of most relationships. It is skeptical, but there's hope. Burt and Verona don't keep secrets. They seem to be doing fine.
Far Fucking Out
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
