Monday, September 15, 2008

Recent Links of Potential Interest

The first in a series of recurring posts drawing attention to things I found to be worth reading...

1. The House Next Door is reprinting articles from the late 24LiesASecond. The second paragraph of the first offering gives an example of how to make sure I read your essay in its entirety:
Through persistence and longevity De Palma has created a body of work that is as moody and recalcitrant as it is aesthetically unassailable. The intensity and perceptivity of his works insures that a discussion of De Palma's films is not merely a discussion of cinema but a discourse on the dynamics of human nature and our national psyche.
Though, really, the essay's title: Objects of Appalling Beauty: An Appreciation of Brian DePalma, was enough for me.

2. David Foster Wallace, RIP. Sad, sad news. Here's an example of why he will be missed by a person who never met him: David Lynch Keep His Head (Premiere Magazine, Septemeber 1996).

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Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Shortbus

SHORTBUS (John Cameron Mitchell, 2006)
not rated

Not rated as I didn't make it past the revelation that the film's (I'm assuming) central character (Sook-Yin Lee) was introduced as an acrobatic, enthusiastic sex partner, a couples counselor, and a sex therapist but had (gasp!) never, ever had an orgasm herself. It was a cheap reversal worthy of an Alan Ball script (I didn't make it through the True Blood pilot either, though I made less of an effort to do so in that case.) and killed what little interest I still had in the second film from the maker of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH. (That film's unappealing amateurishness kept me from finishing it as well despite my fondness for the show's songs).

My sole reason for writing about this film is that I learned the following: When you cast actors on the basis of their willingness to perform sexually graphic scenes, all of their insecurity as performers gets channeled into the other scenes. They earn my sympathy as fairly inexperienced film actors--game, but stranded--working for a not-especially-talented writer/director.

I'm sure my reaction has much to do with how they expose themselves in the film's opening sequence. I thought it interesting how so quickly I felt for them something distinctly different than the sorrow and pity I project onto actors in pornographic films. I saw nothing that makes me think I missed out a good performance by turning the film off but I'd be happy to be mistaken or even to know that any or all of these actors develop their talent such that it matches their effort.

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Monday, September 01, 2008

Pineapple Express

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (David Gordon Green, 2008)
** (Worth seeing)

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is funny but ultimately disappointing. And disappointing in what is ultimately a fairly unpleasant way: using anonymous, disposable Asians to choreograph an empty, violent third act shootout that undermines the better part of the film's effort to populate an action comedy with recognizable human beings. It's not that I think those involved lacked the courage of their convictions--the parts of the film that suceed do so quite consciously--rather that they failed to keep things weird through and through. Unable to work out the denouement for the plot thread on which they've strung many a delightful scene, they fall back on the inhumane source material they've thus far endeavored to transcend.

I think part of the problem lies in how producer Judd Apatow's particular gifts don't translate especially well from television to the movies. What was great about Freaks and Geeks and (perhaps, more importantly since we're specifically talking about commercial comedies) Undeclared revealed itself through both series' open-endedness and how story developed through incident and character rather than plot. THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN and KNOCKED UP both succeed (to the degree that they do) as films in that their resepctive premises are strong enough to support a long film despite the makers' disinterest or lack of aptitude with regard to plot. As cinema, there's little one can say for either beyond that every shot appears to be in focus. Their truths are delivered via improvisation and ensemble performance rather than mise-en-scene or montage.*

*Which reminds me, I'd like to see an Apatow/LaBute collaboration. It could be the callow, young male equivalent of Spielberg and Kubrick's A.I. with Apatow providing emotional connection and LaBute the moral ideas.

With this film David Gordon Green joins Jake Kasdan and Greg Mottola as one who has failed to make a film under Apatow's auspices that has much in common with their great debut films. I've enjoyed each of Apatow's productions but I would trade them all for any one of GEORGE WASHINGTON, ZERO EFFECT, or THE DAYTRIPPERS. Still, none of PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, WALK HARD, or SUPERBAD represents a personal filmmaker going so far off the rails as Linklater's dreadful FAST FOOD NATION.

The script's failings aren't far removed from its successes. One wishes Green would have invested himself to make this film as weird an action comedy as ALL THE REAL GIRLS (another watchable and not bad film one wishes were as good as its best moments) was a romantic comedy. Though one has sympathy for young men succumbing to temptation given the opportunity to blow stuff up real good.

Had someone encouraged Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg to keep the Asian rivals to Gary Cole's drug enterprise off-screen and kept Rogen and James Franco's characters at the center of this film but on the fringes of the plot elements that precipitate their exodus the film could have done what it does best for its entire running time. Similarly, Rogen's girlfriend is used fairly well even if only to fill in his character** and Ed Begley Jr.'s cameo is quite amusing. However, once she's isolated from Rogen, her character falls away to no real consequence.

**These are young men's films to be sure. The limitations implicit in that are not simply the faults of the young men making these films. Though I'd like to see Apatow use his current influence to produce films made by women, he's far from the only man failing in this regard and many of those who are similarly failing don't make films as engaing as Apatow's.

Certainly PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is a cut above SUPERBAD (which quite clearly betrayed its adolescent beginnings) both in terms of craft and emotional maturity. Both Rogen/Goldberg scripts are very identifiably written by young men and, though charming, more about movie fantasies than life. If experience and confidence encourage them to develop their craft, I could envision them writing something equal to CALIFORNIA SPLIT. They're very good wtih character and dialogue. As mixed as my feelings are about SUPERBAD and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, Michael Cera's performance in the former and Franco and Danny McBride's work in the latter is to be cherished.

I still think the best film Apatow has produced in the wake of THE 40-YEAR-OLD-VIRGIN's success is the one most tangential to his gifted repetory company: Kasdan's THE TV SET. That film, portrait of both Kasdan and his TV mentor Apatow, is still a minor film compared to ZERO EFFECT. (Though one can't overvalue the joy of a (sadly) rarely glimpsed these days good performance from Duchovny.) Bear in mind I still haven't seen FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL.

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Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (Park Chan-Wook, 2002)
* (Has redeeming facet)

Park Chan-Wook musters vengeance but he can't manage to create tragedy. Thus, we're left with a juvenile film that contains some breathtaking compositions (mostly in the first half) and some tediously graphic but undisturbing violence (most of the second half). Still, the film's conclusion lingers with me.

SPOILER ALERT: The following will deal almost entirely with the absolute end of the film.

Briefly summarizing...the film's aggressively unlikable female lead is assumed to be a poseur of a revolutionary. Her seemingly delusional promise to the film's second Mr. Vengeance that her death at his hands will be avenged by her fellow revolutionaries brings something approaching poignancy to a scene of torture. Turns out, at film's end that she was telling him the truth and her heretofore off-camera comrades show up out of nowhere to avenge her death. Their arrival is staged after the Coens. It is obvious they are who she said they'd be. Park still replays her promise of vengeance in voiceover.

I do not think this is because he thinks it's unclear who is committing the film's final act of violence. I think it's extremely important to Park that Yeong-mi was being honest when she told her torturer that he would killed in retribution for killing her. I believe Park thinks he is making a moral point--either that violence underpinned by honesty contains a germ of fairness or that we rationalize our destructive actions from a germ of honest, straight-forward interpersonal exchanges. I can't decide if Park is horribly misguided or plain horrible, and, despite concluding an intermittently interesting but essentially marginal film, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the import I imagine that voiceover has for him.

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The Driver

THE DRIVER (Walter Hill, 1978)
* (Has redeeming facet)

The car chases are magnificent but the rest of the film is so flat as to make you unduly aware that the car chases are the reason for the film's existence. If the demonstrated proficiency in filming action made Walter Hill's subsequent career possible the film possesses extratextual value. Even then, I can only recommend watching this to Hill completists and car chase aficionados.

Ryan O'Neal's (as The Driver) willingness to completely surrender to the circumstances allows him to hold the screen during the interminable, static non-driving scenes. Bruce Dern (as The Detective) fights the script's gutter nihilism. The script wins as his obvious effort makes no meaningful impact.

Some of the supporting actors: Ronee Blakley (as The Connection), Joseph Walsh (as Glasses), and Rudy Ramos (as Teeth) are able to make something more of their bit parts.

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John Dahl

Capsule reviews of John Dahl's films after the jump...

KILL ME AGAIN (1989)
** (Worth seeing)

Dahl co-scripted this genre debut and directed without an ounce of pretension. The last time Val Kilmer engendered empathy. After TOP SECRET!, REAL GENIUS, and this film (Dahl's debut) who would have thought that he would, in the future, only make an impression in stunt-performances (THE DOORS, ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, THE SALTON SEA) or embodying the withdrawn and perversely professional (TOMBSTONE, HEAT, SPARTAN). Kilmer shares the screen with an excellent Michael Madsen.

RED ROCK WEST (1992)
*** (A must-see)

A paragon of genre filmmaking that has aged well. The previous may be a thoroughly redundant sentence. The only things that make one nostalgic watching this film are Nicolas Cage's effective performance and the presence of the late JT Walsh.

THE LAST SEDUCTION (1994)
** (Worth seeing)

Linda Fiorentino's performance is justly praised but for too much of the film she runs roughshod over poor Peter Berg. The lasting impression is of Fiorentino matched against Bill Pullman's desperate, resourceful, and crooked doctor. Pullman's overmatched, too, but the deck's not so stacked against his character as it is against Berg's.

UNFORGETTABLE (1996)
** (Worth seeing)

Time has further helped recognize that the relative response to THE LAST SEDUCTION and this film were completely out of whack. The former wasn't nearly as good as common consensus would have you believe and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with this film if you're willing to give Dahl the freedom to inject a little science-fiction into his genre sketchbook. Ray Liotta is excellent and Dahl continues to give myriad supporting actors room to breathe.

ROUNDERS (1998)
* (Has redeeming facet)

Edwards Norton and Matt Damon do good work but to no real purpose for a film that started the slow burn of the poker fad, and, much more briefly made a vogue of screenwriters David Levein and Brian Koppleman's shallow, hand-me-down contemporary crime scenarios. In no way is this recognizably a film by John Dahl. Miramax produced so perhaps it truly is not.

JOY RIDE (2001)
*** (A must-see)

This is a genuinely excellent film. It works as a thriller, a car chase film, and a rare example of effective satire of middle-class entitlement. Pranksters Steve Zahn and Paul Walker discover that their actions have consequences. Not that those consequences are proportionate to the gravity of the mugging they engineer. The terribly damaging assumption that consequences should not be expected (or how they manifest themselves can be predicted) resonates more powerfully as this decade ends than it did at its dawn.

The DVD is especially recommended as it thoroughly and engagingly documents how the film was made.

THE GREAT RAID (2005)
Unseen

YOU KILL ME (2007)
** (Worth seeing)


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You Kill Me

YOU KILL ME (John Dahl, 20007)
** (Worth seeing)

It could well be an auterist/apologist projecting his own reservations about the picture but Dahl seems completely uninterested in the genre components of this film. Dennis Farina and Philip Baker Hall gain no traction in the Buffalo-set gangster scenes. I assume Dahl couldn't resist the premise: alcoholic hit man forced into rehab because his drinking affects his ability to kill professionally.


This vein of recovery for immoral purposes remains more suggestive than fully realized--a testament to the actors populating the San Francisco-set recovery scenes transcending the modest script. One watches this film for Ben Kingsley essaying a criminal that can stand alongside his Don Logan in SEXY BEAST, for Tea Leoni having some room to flail expertly, for what Bill Pullman can spin, and for the increasingly rare chance to see Luke Wilson display his capability for manifesting decency.


That Kinglsey and Leoni repeatedly walk backward down San Francisco's steep hills in the belief that it's good for you aptly analogizes Dahl's relationship to the material.


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Welcome/Welcome Back

After a 33-month hiatus, Film Is A Battleground returns.

Issues #1-#20 are still indexed here.

New posts will appear irregularly as befits the presumably idiosyncratic content. My film watching is mostly catch as catch can these days. I do not expect to be either current or timely and whether my notes are thorough or superficial should not, in and of itself, be mistaken for my regard for the quality of the film(s) considered.

If you have any interest in keeping tabs on what will appear in this space, I suggest subscribing to one of the RSS feeds on the sidebar.

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