Category: Movies

An old joke for the subject, but appropriate enough. Because today we’re talking about tired old ground.

Now Magazine is a free weekly newspaper in Toronto. I’m sure you’ve got one or two just like it wherever you are. It’s a pretty radically left-wing (and I say that as a pretty left-wing guy myself; compared to Now, I’m practically Steven Harper), no-compromise, art-first! publication. So it’s somewhat surprising that they devoted this week’s cover story to this summer’s Hollywood blockbusters.

Or not so surprising, really, when it sums them up as

…new but familiar; edgy but unthreatening; well crafted but artless; ingeniously constructed but meaningless. It’s the product of adults labouring mightily to entertain children – or, as studio marketing departments like to say, “children of all ages.”

Oh, and Annie Hall is a more challenging and mature film than Star Wars.

All of which is incredibly, blindingly obvious. There’s really nothing with which I can disagree in the article, except for the very existence of the article itself. It says nothing new. It offers nothing but the author’s dismissive evaluation of Hollywood entertainment that’s already eminently dismissable. (For my part, I’m pretty excited about Spider-Man 3 and Ratatouille, kind of interested in Ocean’s 13, and generally indifferent to the rest.)

Are there people who were psyched about Pirates of the Caribbean 3 who’ll read this article and think “Oh dear, I never thought of that before. I think I’ll go to see the new David Lynch movie instead.” (It’s worth noting that the same writer continues his theme in the already-short review of Inland Empire.)

It’s self congratulatory, “I told you so” wankery. It’s the sort of thing I’ve pointed out in others before, and try to avoid myself (despite being a fairly negative and snarky person): Trotting out reviews and commentary for the sole purpose of reaffirming your apathy and disdain, getting in one more tired snark at a target the size of Nebraska. Which, I have to admit, is pretty cool when you’re in your early 20s, but a bit of a bore soon after that. My favoured free Toronto paper, Eye Weekly takes a more sensible approach: David Lynch on the cover, and a pretty inconsequential review of Spider-Man buried inside.

Because let’s face it: If you’re going to write about all your preconceived notions of art (as is my own wont), it’s at least more entertaining to do it about the stuff you actually like. You look like less of an asshole that way.

Hot Fuzz, like Shaun of the Dead before it, is a pretty clever piece of filmmaking. Edgar Wright knows his source material – zombies in Shaun, action movies here – and his cast, particularly Simon Pegg, is on the same page. Unfortunately, the execution continues to be sloppy, and the ideas have long run out by the time the film finishes its (rather excessive) two-hour running time.

There are really three films in Hot Fuzz: The first, and the one you’ve probably seen the most of in the trailers, involves hotshot London constable Nick Angel being transferred to the peaceful village of Sandford as a consequence of making everyone else on the force look bad. It’s a standard “Big City Cop in the Small Town”, and it’s the fairly safe sort of comedy one used to be able to watch on PBS on Saturday nights. It’s funny enough, though: Bill Nighy breezes through as Angel’s old boss, and Jim Broadbent gets a slightly meatier role as Sandford’s top policeman. Angel has to retrieve missing swans, allay the neighbourhood watch association’s fears about the encroachment of jugglers and living statues, and confiscate the arsenal of a farmer who’s been hoarding firearms since WWII. It’s not cutting edge material, but it’s funny enough. There’s also a great uncredited (and nearly unidentifiable, except in closeup) by Cate Blanchett.

It’s the middle third of Hot Fuzz that will have you looking at your watch. Nick’s partner, the rather lacklustre yet nepotistically gifted Danny, tries to befriend the Serious Big City Cop by introducing him to the local pub and the oeuvre of Michael Bay. It’s an attempt at character development with characters that are only slightly deeper than a Mr. Turtle pool; Hot Fuzz is mostly fluff – intentionally and generally enjoyably so – and errs greatly when it tries to delve into more serious material. It similarly takes another wrong turn in trying to spin a mystery, as Angel investigates a series of gruesome murders he’s convinced are connected. There’s depressingly little comedy in this section, though the murders offer some brief black comedy. And while the ultimate plot is revealed to be quite absurd, it’s delivery is so serious that there are no laughs to be had. It’s here that the greatest flaw of Hot Fuzz is most obvious: It’s too silly to be taken seriously, but doesn’t provide nearly enough humour to be a successful comedy.

Things pick up in the third act as the film jumps into full-on Super Action Cop Movie parody. After failing to clean up Sandford by following the rules and playing it safe, Angel takes care of business the only way a Real Man knows how: He grabs a bunch of guns and shoots things up. If Wright has missed an action movie cliché, it’s probably a pretty obscure one: There’s plenty of leaping through the air while firing two pistols, fisticuffs with big dumb brutes, splattering blood (and tomato sauce), and car chases.

But unfortunately, Wright seems to have left out much of the humour and leaned more towards an homage: After a promising opening in which Angel delivers a flying kick to the face of an old woman (er… yes, but it’s funny when you see it), Wright trots out the same gag for the next ten minutes or so. Yes, he’s exchanging automatic weapons fire with a bunch of mild-mannered and middle-aged villagers. We get it. Can we move on to something else? While earlier sequences hint at Wright’s gift for glorious excess, there’s not nearly enough on display as the film builds towards its climax: It’s all kind of stupid, but falls short of actually being funny. The modern action movie is ridiculous all on its own, and requires something more than simple imitation to make a successful satire. One wonders if Wright isn’t too in love with the source material: He’s so busy blowing shit up that he’s lost sight of the fact that other directors have been blowing shit up in far more interesting ways for several decades. The one thing Wright could bring to the mix – his sense of humour and gruesome excess – is sadly missing.

There is an old bit of dramatic advice that says if there’s a gun on the mantle in the first act, someone had better get shot with it by the third act. Hot Fuzz takes this a tad too far: Not only is there a gun on the mantle (metaphorically speaking), but someone picks it up, waves it around, and loudly proclaims that they are going to shoot someone with it at precisely 3:42 next Tuesday afternoon. When the setup is that blunt, one would hope for a punchline that involves a bit more complexity, but alas: It would be difficult to telegraph the jokes any further without handing out script pages to the audience. Are all those mentions of a scene in Point Blank going to relate to the story in some way? Is that conspicuous placement of a notebook in a breast pocket completely superfluous to the plot? What do you suppose is going to happen after the director is finished cutting back and forth between shots of a woman on a bicycle and a man sitting in a parked car? To some, these may be unfathomable questions; to those who have, you know, read a book or watched a movie, they can probably be fathomed a little bit.

Hot Fuzz has a pretty funny trailer. There are even a few funny moments that don’t appear in the preview, and the shoot-em-up climax offers a decent spot of entertainment. But the middle third sucks the life out of the film, and two hours is entirely too long for this sort of parody. Some more judicious editing at the script stage might have helped keep it afloat, but even at 90 minutes I suspect the film would feel like a 15-minute sketch that somehow mutated out of control. Hot Fuzz falls far short of the satire mark set by the likes of Blazing Saddles and Airplane, and it’s equally unimpressive when set against all but the most mediocre action movie. Save for a few bright moments, it combines the worst attributes of bad action movies and bad comedies. And dear god, we’ve really got enough of those already.

Yes, I realize “why I don’t care” posts are the height of self-involved lameness. Bear with me. I mentioned this the other day, but keep thinking about it.

When I went to see 300, there was a trailer for Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse. While I’d been half-curious about the film since it was announced, the trailer is generally supposed to be the figurative knife in the guts – the revelation that, hey, this really is going to be awesome and that I simply must see it. It’s even opening on my birthday – what kind of perfect timing is that?

Instead, I felt nothing. Occasional sparks of interest – the biggest seeing Six Feet Under‘s Freddy Rodriguez appearing outside of a funeral home – but nothing that actually made me want to see the film.

Partly, it’s the genre. I’ve never been a fan of slasher/gross-out flicks, so the idea of watching an homage to them isn’t terribly appealing. (Also, hasn’t every other horror film released in the past five years been a slasher homage?)

But mostly, I’m getting bored by Tarantino’s schtick. Granted, he’s never been the most original director; I know that Reservoir Dogs is largely ripped off from some movie I’ve never seen. But Kill Bill just took things to a whole new, blatant level, one he seems to have stayed at for Grindhouse.

To be fair, I loved Kill Bill when I first saw it. But in offering a love letter to the films that influenced him, Tarantino showed up his own flaws: As I gradually tracked down some of the “classics”, the homage just seemed less and less impressive. Kill Bill became less of a movie in its own right than a collection of choice scenes and plot elements Lady Snowblood, The Vanishing, Master of the Flying Guillotine, Goyokin, and others with a fresh coat of paint that most of them didn’t even need in the first place. (I’m not sure if Goyokin is explicitly an influence, but it simply can’t be beat for a duel in the snow. If Tarantino wasn’t aping it, he should have been.) It’s becoming impossible to watch one if his films without picking the influences apart scene by scene, and I still haven’t seem a lot of the films in his chosen oeuvres.

I understand the appeal in doing a mash-up of your childhood icons, but that’s the sort of gratuitous hero-worship most directors get out of the way with their first couple films. Tarantino actually seems to be getting worse, and abandoning any real pretense of adding anything new to cinema. It’s still probably better than 85% of films being made, but at some point he just needs to get over it: No one’s going to be doing Quentin Tarantino homages in 30 years at this rate.

(All this goes for Robert Rodriguez, too, but cut by about half: He never showed quite the same talent as Tarantino – though I do love Desperado – so doesn’t produce the same level of disappointment at squandering it.)

This isn’t even remotely news now, but Joss Whedon is no longer doing the Wonder Woman movie.

On the one hand, this is disappointing: I like Whedon’s style, and Wonder Woman could have been a fun movie. True, there would have been the inevitable “They cast who for the part?!?!” but that would probably happen anyway. Also, this completely crushes any remote hopes I had for Eliza Dushku taking the part.

On the other hand, it’s kind of a blessing. Whedon might be able to make the best Wonder Woman film, but Wonder Woman almost certainly wouldn’t be the best Joss Whedon film. The nature of a big-budget, mega-property film like this means that individual artistic vision takes a back seat to marketing and financial concerns. Just like Christopher Nolan on Batman Begins and Bryan Singer on X-Men and Superman: Good films, sure, but nowhere near the quality of their more independent and personal projects. There’s little doubt Wonder Woman would have turned out similarly: Probably with Whedon’s distinct touch, but altogether feeling like the product of a committee.

Studios say they want the quality and vision of a great filmmaker, but what they really want is someone who’ll stay on budget, do what they’re told, and produce a competent yet marketable film.

What this means, of course, is that Brett Rattner should probably be expecting a phone call any minute now.

The problem with “Best of the Year” lists is that they’re inevitably made at the end of the year, so it’s entirely possible I forgot something awesome that came out in February. Of course, I did include something I saw at the Film Festival back in 2005, so I’ll say this: If I’ve already forgotten about it, it probably wasn’t that great. These aren’t in strict, concrete order of preference, but something vaguely close to it that could change but probably won’t.

Pan’s Labyrinth: Guillermo Del Toro’s grim fantasy set during the Spanish Civil War offered beautiful visuals, a wonderful performance from 12 year-old Ivana Baquero, a brutal and horrifying (in the best possible way) villain by Sergi Lopez, two applause-inducing scenes capped off by the lovely Maribel Verdu, and a dark and elegant story of childhood innocence set against brutality and cruelty. Del Toro has always been a pretty good director with a flair for the macabre (particularly well demonstrated in Devil’s Backbone, as opposed to his still entertaining Hollywood work), but Pan’s Labyrinth ushers him into the ranks of Gilliam, Burton, and Jeunet. A beautiful and terrifying film.

The Fountain: It’s not perfect, but at the worst it’s one of the most striking and beautiful failures to come along in some time. Darren Aronofsky may have set his sights too high – his original vision, before star dropouts and subsequent budget cutbacks, was much longer and more grandiose – but still produced a film that stayed with me for several days. It gets a bit esoteric towards the end, and Hugh Jackman isn’t quite versatile enough to pull off the part, but Aronofsky compensates with beautiful visuals, the nearly divine Rachel Weisz, and a heartbreakingly lovely score by Clint Mansell (which I ran out to purchase the day after watching the film). I’d rather watch an ambitious failure than a placid success, and The Fountain isn’t anywhere near a failure.

Babel: Alejandro Inarritu’s latest mix of multiple narratives is even stronger than 21 Grams, and benefits from less monkeying around with non-linear editing. Bradd Pitt and Cate Blanchett ate up most of the advertising material, and they are very good – Blanchett is the rare actress who can be captivating even though she spends most of the film bleeding, moaning, or just unconscious, while Pitt gives a powerful and restrained performance. But the real star, and perhaps the main reason for the film making my list, is Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi, who turns in a stunning performance as a deaf and mute schoolgirl starved for affection. Kikuchi gets relatively little dialogue, but imparts powerful emotion to her role. In a film that is, to a large extent, about communication, it’s striking to see how Inarritu has constructed a film that relies on relatively little dialogue: The acting and storytelling get all but the most complicated plot points across. There are scenes that are riveting, like the midnight car chase or Tokyo club sequence, and others that will linger in your brain, like the closing shot of Chieko on her balcony. Like The Fountain, it has its flaws, but they are far and away outdone by its strong points.

Stranger Than Fiction: I already wrote a full review of this, so I’ll just summarize here: A funny, dopey, and sweet performance by Will Ferrell, manic eccentricity courtesy of Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhall being flat-out adorable is enough to make for a pretty good film. Combined with a sharp, smart, but still accessible and emotional script, it makes for a great one. It’s smart, funny, and genuinely moving: Even setting aside the meta-fictional tendencies, it’s a great story about changing your life, reaching out to others, and making sacrifices. The fact that it’s similar to Charlie Kaufman’s work without feeling like a ripoff sets it apart even more.

Lady Vengeance: It’s hard to categorize this as a 2006 film, since I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005 (and wrote a review of it then), but 2006 was the year of its domestic release, so here it is. A far more restrained and elegant film than Chan-Wook Park’s earlier films, Lady Vengeance is, naturally, about vengeance and the consequences it has on the people who exact it and those who receive it. Everything seems more refined than the visceral (yet still intensely effective) Oldboy, from the subtle black humour to a plot that involves more planning than punching to the elegant lead performance by Yeong-ae Lee. It’s probably not what fans were expecting after Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, but it may be superior.

Honorable Mention: The Descent isn’t a great film, but it is an incredibly scary one that will have you on edge long before the monsters show up. Volver is hamstrung by some hammy plot twists, but buoyed by wonderful performances. I liked Superman Returns, but it has too many flaws – like a lousy Lois Lane – to compensate for the wonder and awe it brought to the character.