Groundlingspeak

"I will never even think about going up in a tall building again..."

2010-01-13T23:02:00.007-05:00

While inexplicably enduring the uninspired and tedious action movies that I often subject myself to, thanks to their connection to a franchise I once enjoyed (thank you, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra) or a video-game I loved (looking at you, Max Payne), I usually find my mind wandering back to the film that remains my holy grail of the genre: Die Hard. As far as action movies go, it has remained my absolute favourite film for nearly 20 years. I watch it twice a year at the very least and seem to be incapable of enjoying it less with each subsequent viewing.

There are many reasons why Die Hard is a great film - using 'great' in a completely unironic fashion - but the one I've been thinking about today is the film's use of environments. This was brought on by my discovery (via Warren Ellis) of writer/essayist Geoff Manaugh's awesomely aca-fan-ish post on the film on BLDGBLOG, his blog about architecture and urban spaces. In the post, entitled 'Nakatomi Space', Manaugh talks about how Die Hard is 'one of the best architectural films of the last 25 years', an opinion that I have shared on some gut level, way back from when I first saw it as a eight year old who didn't know what the word 'architecture' meant. I never really had the conceptual language to communicate that instinct but Manaugh does - articulating wonderfully just what makes the movie so spatially fascinating and how that makes it that much more exciting. Go read.

This deft interaction between characters (antagonists as well as protagonist - "Shoot. The Glass") and their environments is at the heart of what makes Die Hard as compelling as it is, a lesson that needs to be learned by all the purveyors of epic-scale violence and empty explosions that pervade the genre. After a while, even the biggest explosions and gunfights get tedious and the films that successfully sustain a 90 minute adrenaline rush are the ones that exploit action on a smaller scale - simply by remembering that connection between the protagonist and his surroundings. Die Hard's director John McTiernan has always been good at this; see also his sci-fi actioner Predator - another enduring favourite of mine - for an example of further ingenious use of environment. It is no surprise then that the descendants of films like Die Hard are (in my opinion, anyhow) the best of contemporary actioners. Cases in question - the Bourne trilogy and the Bond reboots (very decidedly not their predecessors), particularly Casino Royale.

These films also rely on characters drawing from their surroundings to defeat the enemy, even subverting what might be construed as obstacles (extreme heights, security fences, walls) and using them to great benefit. Jason Bourne, in particular, uses built spaces as an extension of his body. As Matt Jones effectively puts it - "Bourne wraps cities, autobahns, ferries and train terminuses around him as the ultimate body-armour". Even combat sequences are up-close and personal (as in Die Hard) with hand to hand combat and gunfights in enclosed spaces ratcheting up adrenaline levels in this viewer far more than any of the city-wide explosions or other distancing spectacles that are so common in the boring movies I mentioned earlier. Large scales are employed judiciously and to much greater effect for that judiciousness.

The best action directors occasionally employ the two levels in conjunction - the bank shoot-out in Heat being the obvious example of this (along with being possibly the greatest cinematic shootout ever!). Heat's director Michael Mann (an admirer of McTiernan's) is brilliant at incorporating architecture into his filmmaking. In the film's central shoot-out, he reduces what is - on paper - a large scale gun battle to a series of tight tracking shots and close-ups inter-cut with establishing long shots in a superbly kinetic alternation between the intimate and the panoramic. A scene with a bunch of robbers shooting at a bunch of cops could have degenerated rather quickly into the rote series of bodies dropping and things blowing up that one sees in the average Michael Bay movie but by reining in a large scale engagement to an intimate perspective, Mann makes you forget to breathe until the last shot is fired. And at no point do the filmmakers forget that the downtown L.A architecture is as significant an influence on the proceedings as the people pulling the triggers.

It really is too bad that so many action directors these days forget that incorporating larger explosions, more bullets and armies of ready-to-die redshirt types does not always lead to a more exciting experience. McTiernan's one-cop-and-his-Beretta-trapped-in-a-building has them all beat.

Sin Nombre

2010-01-06T22:24:00.003-05:00

Cary Fukunaga's feature debut Sin Nombre is one of those films that dazzle you with its craft while you're watching it but then makes you wonder whether you've been cheated just a little bit, a few minutes after the Sundance-mandated high has dissipated somewhat.

Don't get me wrong - this is, undoubtedly, a very good movie that is worth the rental or theater ticket. Fukunaga has talent with a camera, creating some beautiful imagery even as he depicts some very ugly events, characters and environments. The film is about the crossing of two paths - that of gang member Willy as he falls out with his cohort, thus attempting escape and that of teenager Sayra and her family as they make that cinematic journey of journeys towards the United States border. The most striking aspect of the proceedings is the authenticity and immediacy with which Fukunaga delves into the story, making the first half of the movie the more compelling one.

He did his research - riding with immigrants on the train to the border and vetting plot points with actual members of the La Mara Salvatrucha (Willy's gang). The result is verisimilitude to the nth degree - tattoos, initiations, ten year old gangsters and heartbreak aplenty. The early sequences, establishing the violent world that Willy lives in, are mesmerizing. I was drawn in further by the setup afforded to the Honduran family setting out via freight train roof for the border and, eventually, New Jersey. The performances go a long way here. Edgar Flores is the right balance of vulnerable and intense as Willy and the mostly unspoken bonds between Sayra and her family as they have each other's back during the trip is conveyed in various simple but effective ways.

A shame then that this promising mix is let down a little by the cardboard characterizations for nearly all involved. The 'young gangster who finds conscience through the love of a girl' trope got tiresome a long time ago and, as good as the execution is, Willy's character arc is trite. Not to mention a little sketchily thought out. It's difficult to buy redemption from a character who executes a begging, unarmed man in the opening scene. There are many other overly familiar plot points and character types recycled from countless gangster dramas (when Willy's kid protege shows up in the beginning, how long do you think it'll be before they're on opposite sides in a Test Of Loyalty?). The female characters get criminally short shrift; their actions moronic to a fault.

It is, however, unlikely that all this will bother you too much as you watch the movie. There is a distinct uptick in suspense levels when Willy breaks (violently) from his gang and they decide to track him down as he rides the freight train north along with the immigrant family, crossing the redemption/immigrants story with the road thriller sub-genre. Above all, the environment and circumstances that the characters find themselves in are fascinating to the end. Many films have been made about immigrants trying to sneak across the US/Mexico border but I have never seen one that deals with the hardship they have to deal with on the way to said border. Some people may cry 'poverty porn' but their journey through various towns and out-of-the-way stations never feels less than authentic and remains on the right side of the exploitation line. Similarly, I have seen few genuine attempts at depicting Mexican gang culture (IN Mexico, that is, and not Los Angeles) and even fewer that do so outside of Mexico City. All this makes the movie enough of an evocative exercise in world-building (completely alien to viewers outside of Mexico and probably even many Mexicans)as to make you forget about the lame characters and the rather cliche third act.

In the end, the film falls short of greatness as the initially successful combination of naturalistic Sundance fare and gritty thriller wanders into by-the-numbers territory. This, in turn, draws attention to the two-dimensional characterizations and predictable ending. But you should watch it anyway. The craft, the performances and the realism of the first half will propel you through the 95 minute runtime and by the time the credits roll, you'd be ready to put this on your 'top 10 of 2009' list just as I was. It's only later that you think a little harder and realize that maybe it wasn't as good as all that. But no amount of thinking can detract from the fact that those 95 minutes were well spent.

My IMDB rating of the movie - 7/10

Avatar

2010-01-01T19:39:00.006-05:00

Oh James Cameron, how far you have fallen. This simplistic Disney-esque cartoon (Pocahontas in the stars, essentially), roided up with technology and space marines is the latest low point in his downward spiral. It's hard to believe that this film was created by the man who gave us two of the most intelligent, hyper-efficient action films of all time in The Terminator and Aliens and even, initially, managed to temper his fetish for spectacle with solid story and character work in Terminator 2. Avatar represents a complete turn to the dark side where Cameron stands side by side with George Lucas in prioritizing technology over writing/plot/characters, creating a childish pretense at an epic sci-fi story.

Said story is absolutely ridiculous, seemingly dashed out by Cameron years ago as an excuse to play with shiny toys. His hype-machine claims that he had to wait till technology caught up with his story and vision are, in retrospective, quite funny. The story's been done (better) by numerous others (see The New World) and as for vision, well...Exhibit A: Princess Mononoke. It's a bunch of paternalistic and preachy nonsense about human ambassadors being plugged into an alien society (via the titular avatars) to clear the path for the colonizing Company that wishes to raze a holy site to mine...get this...unobtainium! Geeky in-joke to laugh-out-loud stupid in one step. Naturally, our hero - played by Sam Worthington who is Michael Biehn with all the limited range and none of the scrappy B-movie appeal - decides to go native and ends up becoming more native than the natives, more human than human, the saviour of all things Na'vi. With the help of the aliens, a trash-talking Latina marine (certainly no Private Vasquez) and Ripley minus the badass, he takes on the Company as represented by psychotic Colonel Quaritch and evil corporate flunky Selfridge (definitely no Carter Burke).

There is little more to the story . Cue 'soaring through the flora and fauna' sequence as representation of spiritual freedom, a metaphor made even more thudding by the fact that our hero is wheelchair bound in his human form. Cue 'falling for a native' sequence, complete with enormous watery doe eyes (undoubtedly easier to CGI in an emotionally compelling way than human-size eyes). Cue tribal coming-of-age, medicine women, jealous natives and final spears vs bullets showdowns. The film is a 160 minute collection of every cliche you can imagine. The screenplay does little to alleviate the pain, rehashing stock dialogue from a million other films ("You are not in Kansas anymore!") and giving the actors almost nothing to work with. Contrast Stephen Lang's restrained and powerful performance in Public Enemies with the scene-chewing caricature you see here and it illustrates just how terribly Cameron wastes the few decent actors he did round up for this project.

There is a definite place for 'stupid and simplistic' in action sci-fi of this kind (I've lost count of how many times I've watched The Road Warrior) but it is clear that Cameron aspires toward 'deep and meaningful' and that the film needs to be judged on that basis. Much has been made of the film's politics and whether they're liberal or conservative. Honestly, each side of the spectrum should be happy to concede this movie to the other, given how badly thought out it is. The environmental and anti-colonial messages (however much I may agree with them) are preachily executed and done to death, not to mention under-cut by the fact that the white man saves the day and is better at tree-hugging than all the tree-huggers. The racial undertones are condescending and tedious - the N'avi embody every stereotype of Native American culture that has pervaded pop culture in the last century. And how did Cameron go from Ellen Ripley, one of the greatest female action heroes in modern cinema, to "You're a warrior now. You can choose your woman"? It only makes me more inclined to believe that he didn't think a single aspect of his execrable screenplay through and recycled a lifetime's worth of bad-movie-watching into his word processor over the course of one drunken night.

So, are there any saving graces? Many have forgiven the terrible story and characters due to the enjoyment derived from the immersive alien world Cameron has created. While the technical abilities of his crew cannot be faulted, even the world did not actually do that much for me. Technology requires the foundation of imagination and inspired character design. In my book, Avatar did not provide this. The Na'vi designs are flat and boring and barely even alien. They are simply ten foot tall, gangly humans with some catlike features and blue skin, reminiscent of Smurfs crossed with Thundercats. They even cry and kiss and chant and eat. So much for alien civilizations. The world itself, gorgeous and beautifully rendered as it is, resembles a hundred other jungle paradises I have seen in videogames, films, comics and TV shows. For all the technology, the first appearance of the Na'vi does not begin to measure up to the first time a xenomorph comes onscreen in Alien or when human special effect Arnold Schwarzenegger takes a knife to his eyeball in Cameron's own The Terminator to show us what lies underneath. The technology behind those characters was comparatively primitive but it was used to animate designs that, in my opinion, were infinitely more creative than the ones on display in Avatar.

I will give the film this - Cameron still knows how to stage an action sequence or two. It was quite an achievement on his part that even though the film was nearly three hours long and had a story that reaches Lucas-ian nadirs of awfulness, I didn't nod off once. The final battle between the Na'vi and the Company forces is undeniably exciting and Cameron, true to form, uses mecha-based combat in an entertaining fashion. It's all shot and edited very well and moves along at a good pace. Best thing I can say about it, really.

This film has been hailed as the future of cinema for a long time now, way before it even hit theaters and if this is the case, we are all doomed. As filmmakers like Cameron rely more and more upon technology, writing and acting and other old fashioned human being-ish activities take a backseat, much to the detriment of the movie. Ridley Scott has already shown interest in using Avatar's FX technology for his upcoming adaptation of Joe Haldeman's seminal and jaw-droppingly affecting sci fi/war novel The Forever War and I am keeping my fingers crossed that he remembers that there's a story to tell underneath all the CGI. Having technology overwhelm a terrible story is one thing but it would be a tragedy if a preoccupation with spectacle was to compromise an adaption of Haldeman's book which is - at heart - about very human experiences. Curious that Cameron started off with a film like The Terminator (I'm not counting his directorial debut Piranha II!) which is one of the more paranoid cautionary tales about the dangers of tech-dependence that I can recall. I only wish Cameron would go back to those tech-noirish roots and forget about being king of the world for a little while.

My IMDB rating of the movie: 3/10

How Does 'The Proposal' Bag More Nominations than 'Moon', You Ask?

2009-12-30T19:33:00.007-05:00

One of my top 5 favourite films of 2009 was Duncan Jones' sci-fi feature Moon. A real science fiction film in an irradiated wasteland of pretenders, it includes a heartbreakingly layered performance by the (criminally underrated) Sam Rockwell who blows most 2009 awards contenders out of the water. Yet it barely shows up on any critics' lists or nomination ballots. Neil Miller from Film School Rejects talks about why. More about Duncan Jones' thoughts on the matter here.

These links via Neil Gaiman's Twitter feed. Whose word-count may soon eclipse that of the entire Sandman series.

Really though. Everyone who hasn't should go and watch Moon at the earliest convenience. It's left the theaters but there is always Netflix.

Frostbitten

2009-12-18T23:40:00.003-05:00

This Swedish vampire film is a solidly entertaining piece of work which, in its attempt to do something clever with the genre, brings together diverse influences ranging from Sam Raimi and old Hammer horror films to Frasier-style sitcom hi-jinks and Scream's postmodern (I know, I know) self reflexiveness. The basic concept is familiar to Steve Niles fans - a mother/daughter pair move to a Swedish town that experiences polar night (a month of darkness), the former looking to work with a genetics expert (naturally) at a local hospital. Naturally, mysterious deaths start occurring, small animals start disappearing and the geneticist turns out to be more than just a doctor, with all the goings-on possibly related to the pre-credits WWII sequence where a group of Nazi troops take shelter in a very dark cottage in the woods. After the initial killing (the guilty party's identity a little unclear), vampirism spreads rather quickly through the town's younger inhabitants.

First off, it is not a rip-off of 30 Days of Night. It was actually made before that film (albeit after the publication of the IDW comic book) and, unlike it, does not do very much with the concept of a month of darkness other than use it as an excuse for mayhem to occur without inconvenient daytime intervals. The film is much more concerned with having a sense of humor and blending the various genre elements successfully (which it pulls off about two thirds of the time). This is not to say that it is an all-out comedy like Shaun of the Dead or entirely obsessed with post-ironic gags in the Scream style. The horror element is reasonably strong, especially in the first half. The pre-credits sequence is suitably claustrophobic and the initial build-up of atmosphere as the protagonists arrive in the town quite effective.

The vampires are surprisingly traditional in nature, despite the trait originating and spreading via virus. When the first wooden stake was hammered through the first heart, I realized just how long it's been since I saw a vampire being dispatched that way in a movie. No silver-loaded Uzis or UV lamps here. The monsters cringe away from crosses, react badly to garlic, don't show up too well in mirrors and generally come off as 21st century renditions of the familiar Hammer Horror/Universal types. This is also where the humorous element kicks in as the filmmakers blend that traditional-style monster story with the more contemporary teen horror tropes. This leads to budding teenage vampires being put in decidedly uncomfortable situations - one infected kid has to come to grips with his rapidly developing vampirism while at dinner with his girlfriend's parents, entree of the night being sea trout in garlic sauce. It's a great scene that reminded me of the similarly hilarious dinner-with-the-parents sequence in Drag Me to Hell.

The movie actually sustains that level of funny for a while, stopping just this side of trying too hard. The director is as good with creepy atmospheric shots of the snowy Swedish landscape as he is with clever visual gags -at one point a shadow of a man with a hammer approaching a sleeping woman morphs into an old guy with a rose. Funnily enough, the guy happens to have a hammer in his coat anyway. Throwaway gags like this abound and not all of it is visual. The dialogue is snappy and well-written with the town high-schoolers providing witty and pop-culture-obsessed vessels for the rapidly spreading vampirism trait. You haven't heard an Evil Laugh until you've heard one coming from the throat of a vampire who has just inhaled helium.

Unfortunately, the film also suffers from a major case of third-act-disintegration. The clever setups of the teenager subplot and the old-school grand guignol of the old doctor subplot come together in a Carrie-esque transformation of a high school party into a massacre that is sadly by-the-numbers. The movie concludes very abruptly in a fashion that suggests not so much an open ending as it does the filmmakers running out of material. The grandmaster vampire proves to be a poor hunter indeed and resembles every lazily done and (bad) CGI-enhanced generic goblin put on film in the last 10 years. Why they didn't stick to the effective physical effects, I do not know. Having done a good job of assimilating various influences, they finally drop the ball by trying to pull of a large scale action sequence inter-cut with a clumsy stalk-n-slash bit, leaving this viewer disappointed.

Still, in a wasteland of bad vampire movies, it's 100 minutes not too badly spent. There is very little going on under the surface. No nihilistic 'God/No God' philosophy as in 30 Days of Night, no hidden eroticism, no metaphors for the human condition; this is just a straightforward horror romp.

My IMDB rating of the movie - 6/10

A Boy and his Dog

2009-12-17T02:50:00.004-05:00

Before the blasted post-apocalyptic wasteland (or, at least its R-rated manifestation) became a widespread cinematic trope, there was this curious 1975 adaptation of Harlan Ellison's short story of the same name. Practically tailor-made for cult status, it follows a scraggly Don Johnson looking for sex and food (in that order) in an irradiated Southwestern USA with only his telepathically communicating dog who performs dual functions of company and walking detector of food/women.

It's a decent film when not being severely dated (see 'misogyny') or adversely affected by the fact that it was a cobbled-together production (and I'm not talking Miramax/Paramount Vantage-style indie here) being handled by first-time director L.Q. Jones on a shoestring budget. I haven't read the original story but it's clearly a compelling example of post-apocalyptic hellishness, complete with hideously mutated 'Screamers', animals that are smarter than humans, warlords, cannibals and out of control androids. It's played as black comedy more than anything else (the opening title card reads 'The politicians have finally found a way to solve urban blight!') and wisely avoids an FX-heavy epic scale. The final result, however, is frustrating. Parts of it are exciting and funny, even insightful. Others are clumsy, misguided or outright offensive. Whether or not you want to watch it will depend on your mileage for this kind of subject matter.

Our protagonist is put through an interesting mix of experiences. He starts off in the nuclear desert, tangling with raider gangs for food and taking time out to relax in outdoor b/w porn theaters to provide relief to his raging libido (women are scarce in this society and his dog's primary purpose is to locate them). He does eventually find a woman though not without having to face competition. Eventually, he ends up being kidnapped by an underground utopian-but-not-really society as a sperm producing machine so that he can be used to beef up their population (life in the darkness apparently not being too good for the utopians' sperm count). He bumbles through all this like some kind of rapist, amoral Candide (albeit with a reversed character arc) inducing in this viewer equal doses of amusement and horror. The dog is, of course, a lot smarter than he is but also happens to be a total bastard, something that cute dogs in films should never be.

The underground community sequence is the part of the film that takes a stab at social commentary what with the sci-fi movies of the time aspiring to a status as intellectually relevant as the literary equivalents, leaving behind the 50s glut of space invaders and giant mutant animals. There is the seed of a good idea there (possibly better enunciated in the original short story) about how it may be better to rove around in a cannibal-infested wasteland with just a talking dog for company than to live in comparative luxury under the thumb of a thinly veiled totalitarian government. It's a fascinatingly bizarre depiction too - the society in question embraces a pre-WWIII 50s look as filtered through some kind of funhouse mirror. The fashions are exaggerated versions of clothes from that era and everyone is in whiteface makeup as they sit around eating desserts while watching skewed versions of high school marching bands. The community leader (played by Jason Robards) looks like an aged version of Alex DeLarge, complete with makeup, white clothing, suspenders and stick as he queues up the young women who are to be impregnated (via a sperm-harvesting machine!) by the hapless Vic.

If all this sounds wonderfully clever and strange, don't get too excited. There is plenty to dislike - primarily a brutally misogynistic streak that runs through the entire movie. The women in this world are sexual/reproductive objects and absolutely nothing more. Our protagonist basically wanders around looking for people to rape. This could be explained away as being an organic societal development, given the circumstances. But that doesn't really cover the fact that the main female character is a devious sociopath who pretends to enjoy being raped in order to trick Vic and, later, goes on to do many terrible things. Yes, pretty much everyone in the film is an appalling excuse for a human being but all this does go against the grain.

L.Q. Jones has a talent for widescreen compositions and the grungy post-apocalyptic look of the film is quite authentic, undoubtedly providing a template for many future films (not to mention video-games - I couldn't stop thinking of the Fallout games while watching this). He is not, however, as good with the action sequences. A major shootout is all but incoherent - terribly shot, lit and edited. It's impossible to tell who is shooting at who and there is no sense of spatial relations. Editing also fails in terms of pacing, especially in the underground sequences.

The film, then, is a mixed bag. It runs with an always reliable set of sci-fi tropes and ideas at a time when not many movies had sunk their teeth into them but does drop the ball quite a few times. Taken in context, it is clearly an important piece of work that is worth the time a viewer would put into it. That said, the same ideas and atmosphere can be engaged with (complete with superior execution and polish) by playing Fallout 3 and Bioshock one after another. This is not to mention the scores of films that do better at one aspect or another of this one's premise. They number in the hundreds, ranging from The Road Warrior to A Clockwork Orange.

Ultimately, my opinion of a film suffers when one of the main characters is an adorable looking dog who still fails to entice any sympathy/tears/lumps in throat from me when he gets hurt.

My IMDB rating of the movie - 6/10

"First, give him the Forest Whitaker eye..."

2009-12-14T18:13:00.002-05:00

...as the first step in the Troy Barnes system of self defense. One of many reasons to watch Community.

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

2009-12-13T21:35:00.001-05:00

Can you say 'Oscar bait'?

All right, no, that's an overly cynical take on what is a very handsomely mounted and well acted (but isn't that to be expected?) enterprise. At least it's not about children losing their toys in politically contentious regions or a dying old man finding meaning through the love of a child or one of the other child-related tropes that non-US films routinely have to trot out to get critical attention. It is, however, a disappointingly superficial examination of what is ultimately a very relevant (and AMPAS-y) subject - the motivation behind social/political dissension and the line between that and terrorism.

Part of the problem is that the film is a bit too ambitious, trying to cover the entire decade that the Red Army Faction (the movie's subject) spends front and center in German history. Too many events and characters are crammed into the runtime with too little time spent on building a context for the events or fleshed out motivations for the characters. The performances go a long way, making the broadly sketched characters watchable at the very least. Special mention should be made of Johanna Wokalek's energetic portrayal of Gudrun Ensslin. She does, admittedly, have the most material to work with. The other two principals - Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof - are boiled down to a hedonistic adrenaline junkie and a manic depressive intellectual, respectively. The acting remains solid throughout, though, with Bruno Ganz as one of those outwardly senile, inwardly astute policemen and Moritz Bleibtreu playing yet another hipsterish rebel-with-or-without-a-cause effortlessly. It feels like an extension of his role in Munich.

Speaking of Munich, director Uli Edel seems to have watched it several times, taking copious notes. He employs Spielberg's method of enclosing what could be a dialogue-heavy historical docudrama within a thriller framework to hook the audience and keep them involved. It works for about half the film, with frequent well-choreographed action sequences keeping things moving as the RAF roll out their campaign of assassinations, bombings, arson and - later - go on the run from police and military. Even the look of the films is similar; plenty of steely blues and grey tones, verite camerawork, globe-hopping and what looks to be meticulous research as far as production design/costumes/set dressing goes. The films even share the disturbing tendency of showing close-ups of people getting shot right in the face and the resulting cheek/teeth/jaw trauma and bloody sputum. You don't see that very often. Most filmmakers stick with head-shots.

However, just like Spielberg, Edel doesn't quite manage to keep things going till the end. The last hour of the film could use a good editor as it sags unbearably through multiple scenes where the three protagonists fight amongst themselves and rail ineffectually at The Man. The depiction of the seven month trial is especially tedious when it should actually be the heart of the film.

Having said that (apologies to Larry and Jerry), the film is not entirely bereft of ideas. There's a lot going on here. We see how Meinhof's initially journalistic and peaceful approach to social change gets hijacked by Baader's militant approach. This is coupled with the sequences that seem to indicate that Baader is in this as much for the fast cars, hot girlfriend and frequent opportunities to kick someone in the spleen as he is for social reform in the Fatherland. On the other hand, the 'fascist' police chief is not the remorseless demon that Baader would make him out to be as he tries to understand why the group would do what they do. Admirably, the film does seem to refrain from taking sides too explicitly. There are many grays between the poles represented by the RAF and the 'let-the-Nazis-get-away-with-it' generation but they are only played with in the film. The rest is kept going with good acting, some nice shootouts and taut direction. It could, however, been that much better.

Still, there are NO children. Except one that happily took a lot of pictures of people getting shot.

My IMDB Rating of the movie - 7/10

They're Made Out of Meat

2009-12-13T20:32:00.000-05:00

"Meat made the machines"

With that one line of dialogue, Ben Bailey's deadpan anthropologist provides a better-than-most description of the sci-fi genre in this clever and offbeat short film. Stephen O'Regan's vaguely Lynchian movie (based on Terry Bisson's Nebula-nominated short story of the same name) suggests that the extraterrestrial reaction to discovering human life might be more Douglas Adams than Steven Spielberg. Tom Noonan is a perfect foil to Bailey as an incredulous colleague, wielding his Tooth Fairy-esque creepiness to full effect. Hilarious and philosophical in equal measures, it's well worth your eight (very) odd minutes. Thanks to my brother for passing it on.

My IMDB rating of the movie: 8/10

First

2009-12-11T20:14:00.000-05:00

As I added the 1168th film to my IMDB viewing list today, it occurred to me that it might be a useful exercise to start a film diary. It's simultaneously sobering and hilarious to think back to my reactions to movie experiences past. Examining my viewing history, I had myself a giggle at the realization that ten years ago, I thought The Shawshank Redemption was the pinnacle of cinematic art and that movies could never get any better. And that eight years ago, I was so frustrated by Mulholland Drive that I recall pegging it mentally as one of the worst movies ever. Things change. I now think that Mulholland Drive is one of the best films of the oughties (it still frustrates the hell out of me, though). The Shawshank Redemption remains a watchable film but a solidly middle-of-the-road and sentimental one, prison through a sparkly golden filter, sort of like Oz written by Forrest Gump.

On the other hand, some things remain the same. I still believe the first Terminator film to be one of the most efficient, engaging and thoughtful bits of sci fi cinema ever. I remain as much of a Point Break fan as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I can still recite all of Kurtwood Smith's lines from Robocop. And my continuing assertion that The Apu Trilogy remains unbeaten in Indian cinema still lays me open to accusations of being a Bollywood-basher (a badge I wear proudly).

I watch movies regularly enough that keeping a simultaneous and sustained record might reveal certain patterns - evolutionary/devolutionary. It would also point me to holes in my movie-watching, leading me to revisit periods/filmmakers/countries I'd dismissed in some burst of misguided reflexiveness. I also find that since my 'movies watched' count increases at a rate inversely proportionate to my brain cell count, some of the images and sensations are starting to fade. I'll watch some little movie that I had strong feelings about. Then, two years down the line, I'd have a vague recollection of the title but trying to call it up, fail to remember anything more. Hopefully, keeping this diary will help on all those fronts. Not to mention further indulge the obsessive compulsive tendencies that the IMDB voting already indicates.

Given that I plan to write my entries here within a day or two of watching the film in question, they're not going to be proper 'reviews' per se. Just random thoughts and opinions. Given that I write 'proper reviews' in other places, I'll probably have expended all my writing energy elsewhere and will end up saying 'this movie is awesome' under half the entries here. So be it.

Let's see how long I keep doing this.