A Slow Weekend

Sometimes I worry that I like too many movies.

I understand the basic maxim, which states that no one ever sets out to make a bad movie. And sometimes I go on streaks where every movie works for me. Transformers 2 worked for me. Will I ever see it again? I don't know. Probably not, unless I'm drunk. Does that mean I didn't enjoy the 800 explosions? I did. I laughed. I laughed at the people clapping. That's fine with me. I knew what my free screening was getting me into. It certainly wasn't going to be Babel: Part Deux.


But this weekend, I don't know what was going on, every movie I watched just didn't hit the mark for me. One of the most important things I've ever learned from a film scholar was from Jim Emerson, who said that all you need to do during a movie is consistently ask, "How is the movie making me feel right. now." And in doing that, in consistenly setting off that mental and emotional alert, I have been able to quickly investigate why or why not a movie is hitting the bar.


And this weekend, not many cut it. I tend to put review/rants on here for movies that I adore. Not the case here:


Eagle Eye (2008)- This is the second time I tried to slosh through this one. For whatever reason, the consistent action puts me to sleep every time. I don't like Michelle Monaghan's character, she seems completely unnecessary. The film references are the only thing that really keeps me awake. In fact, this may be an important movie strictly because it forces modern audiences to reconsider the value of the shots that last longer than 1.2 seconds. A breathless snoozer. The Salton Sea (2002) is a much more interesting Caruso movie.

The Beach (2000)- Who'da thunk this was directed by Danny Boyle? The only evidence would be the meandering and way-too-serious voice over and the disjointed video game hallucinatory scene. This movie is really interesting strictly because it changes tones about 20 times. And I couldn't help but really dislike Leonardo Dicaprio's character, Richard. Not because of the acting; no, the character is an asshole. Totally unempathetic. He just sort of wanders around, does really bad things, and then voices over and expects us to feel sorry for him. Or in awe of his coming-of-age adventure.


The Incredible Hulk (2008)- Second posting on this one, just wanted to say that everytime the movie sets up an action sequence, the action is utterly disappointing. Watch the Humvee piece on the college campus, and then watch the tank sequence in Hulk (2003), which is infinitely better. Ang Lee's Hulk, while more incandescent and glow-lightish, possesses a weightlessness. that doesn't stick with Ed Norton's. While it didn't work with many moviegoers, I am sort of spellbound when I watch Hulk leap through the air, almost flying. This Hulk just sort of runs into things and grits his teeth really hard. Although, it is still really cool when he pulls apart the police car and uses each half as a boxing glove. It's a shame that's the only cool thing he does.


Halloween (2007)- Maybe the biggest disappointment of the weekend. I turned this on with an excited anticipation; I appreciate Zombie's seriousness towards the horror genre. He has a distinct look for his movies. And I love the original Halloween. But this one does not work. At all. And it's an interesting predicament. Why doesn't it work? Well, they spend way too much time on the back story of Michael Myers, which has two detrimental effects. The first is that the killing escapade is compacted into about 35 minutes. No build-up. Just knives and facades of suburban houses. Also, there's about 7 minutes of exposition towards Laurie Strode, who I cared for less than Jon and Kate. The other problem? Michael is not a sympathetic character. What is the point of showing his backstory? To identify evil incarnate? Isn't evil more scary when it's unexplained? This Michael seems too human, too Freudian. The most astonishing sequence in the original is the opening sequence, but the very end. With the iconic theme clinging, all Carpenter shows is the front of houses. It is this moment when we confirm that Michael can be anywhere. That he will never have to run. He is a supernatural presence. He is at your door, or my door. He is the thing that bumps in the night. Not a little boy who wasn't loved the right way. I will be interested to see where Zombie goes with the second one.


Lakeview Terrace (2009)- This was the only movie that had me somewhat intrigued. In fact, I liked the tension of this movie. Until it got a little too ridiculous. The end doesn't work very well, but the characters are believable, and the situation is credible. It's a shame the wife really pissed me off, but then again, I am more than likely a chauvinist.


We'll see about next weekend, I guess.

RB

Oh, thought Mrs. Bentley. And then, as though an ancient phonograph record had been set hissing under a steel needle, she remembered a conversation she had once had with Mr. Bentley- Mr. Bentley, so prim, a pink carnation in his whisk-broomed lapel, saying, "My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You're always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear."


But Mrs. Bentley had stubbornly kept them.

"It won't work," Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. "No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen."

-"Season of Disbelief" by Ray Bradbury.




You ever meet those people who talk about the past as if it's something tangible? They fret over every little detail, musing over what was, but more dangerously, what could have been. The past is their present, and the days slip by.

Bad

I heard this in a movie. It overpowered the scene. People always talk about how The Edge's guitar has a unique sound. Well, it's absolutely stunning in this song. So is the drumbeat.

I'm not even a fan of U2, but this is making me reconsider. Something about it connects. How we feel about people who live self-destructive lives. How heartbreaking sympathy can be. How hopeless.

In one version, he says the song is about a friend addicted to heroin. And how he would do anything he could to save him. And himself, to walk away and forget. How we long for communication. Human beings thrive on it. But how it eats us. How we punish ourselves for the sake of others. Only the good can be bad.



"He trampled himself, to extinguish himself"- D.H.L.

Public Enemies (2009)

I went into this movie a little bit worried. My past experiences with Michael Mann have not been that spectacular. I fell asleep during Collateral and Heat, two of his most widely-regarded movies that really promote his auteurism. They were cold to me. I never really got involved emotionally. Detached killers fighting detached heroes. It all felt like business. I need to see both of them again before I can really endorse my distaste.

But Public Enemies kept me awake in an interesting way. Once again, I was not really emotionally connected to any of the characters, but I don't think any of them wanted my emotions. Once again, the movie feels like business. John Dillinger and his men are bank robbers, yes, but they are also very diplomatic about it. They (the good ones, at least) have principles that dictate their job. There is a hierarchy amongst the men. Dillinger is clearly the CEO of his little corporation. It's fascinating to watch them communicate and work.

And not just his men. This movie made me want to be a cop. I found Melvin Purvis as an extremely interesting character, totally committed to a blind ambition of serving Hoover and his dreams of establishing a federal police system. Purvis and Dillinger certainly serve as foils for each other; they are dedicated to their jobs. They love their jobs. They would die for their jobs.

But the movie is not about their battle against each other. It is, but Mann seems more interested in the grand scheme of things going on in the 1930's after the Depression. This is a period piece like no other. Using HD technology, Mann creates a historical America that feels extremely contemporary. The film has a documentary-grittiness to it. Rarely does the camera try and establish beautiful planned shots of the city; instead, we huddle in with these men in their cramped hotel quarters or claustrophobic FBI offices. This is one of the first movies where the gunfire felt absolutely real. The sound of the tommy gun firing in the streets is, like it should be, chaotically deafening. And the gunfire is messy. It's not pretty and dramatic when these men get shot. Watch Babyface Nelson continue to roll and fire as he is taken down in a dark forest. Watch the time Purvis takes to guarantee a hit on Pretty Boy Floyd. These gunfights did not bore me like most do. I sat up in my chair because I felt that this is what they really must be like. Chaotic, sloppy, terrifying.

My one problem with the movie was its failure to undergo this documentarian format all the way. Whenever Mann used non-diegetic music to convey emotion, it took away from the verisimilitude of the story. This includes the ending, which fell flat for me. This is not a movie of drama. The reality of it, the fact that it actually happened, makes it fascinating.


I'm still distraught as to why Melvin Purvis ended up killing himself. Will have to look that up or read the book.

Tom Brangwen and Women

Once, when he was drunk at a public house, he went upstairs with a prostitute who seduced him. He was then nineteen.

The thing was something of a shock to him. In the close intimacy of the farm kitchen, the woman occupied the supreme position. The men deferred to her in the house, on all household points, on all points of morality and behavior. The woman was the symbol for that further life which compromised religion and love and morality. The men placed in her hands their own conscience, they said to her "Be my conscience-keeper, be the angel at the doorway guarding my outgoing and in my incoming." And the woman fulfilled her trust, the men rested implicitly on her, receiving her praise or her blame with pleasure or with anger, rebelling and storming, but never for a moment really escaping in their own souls from her prerogative. They depended on her for stability.

Now when Tom Brangwen, at nineteen, a youth fresh like a plant, rooted in his mother and his sister, found that he had lain with a prostitute woman in a common public house, he was very much startled. For him there was until that time only one kind of woman- his mother and sister.

But now? He did not know what to feel. There was a slight wonder, a pang of anger, of disappointment, a first taste of ash and of cold fear lest this was all that would happen, lest his relations with woman were going to be no more than this nothingness; there was a slight sense of shame before the prostitute, fear that she would despise him for his inefficency; there was a cold distaste for her, and a fear of her; there was a moment of paralyzed horror when he felt he might have taken a disease from her; and upon all this startled tumult of emotion, was laid the steadying hand of common sense, which said it did not matter very much.

But it had shocked him, and put a mistrust into his heart, and emphasized his fear of what was within himself.

Excerpt from D.H. Lawrence's 'The Rainbow' Ch 1, pg 15



I am stunned with how easily Lawrence sums up the back and forth motions of love within a man. That bitter and acrid taste of fear inverts the forwardness of carnal desire. Often times I find myself doing something that I know is wrong for me, completely and totally wrong, yet I cannot stop. I cannot stop because I am too scared to be caught in my tracks. I have to go through with it, because that fear of incompletion is too real.

Yet, don't I often find myself more disgusted afterwards? That fear is only replaced with loss and shame, like a little boy who just got away with a white lie to his parents. I stand there in the dark and hate the guilt that was there all along.

Thus, I'm amazed with D.H. Lawrence. His ability to pinpoint that back and forth in the heart of man. He and Thomas Hardy understand the finest points of love and its paradoxical nature. We want the angel of the hearth to watch over us, we want the maternal figure to guide us, to put us to bed. Yet, how pathetically we struggle against the whore. How frail our minds are when provoked with temptation.

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire (2009)

Warning: Not for the light-hearted.

This is a movie that takes risks. 'Precious' tells the story of its self-titled heroine as she faces insurmountable obstacles in 1980's Harlem. Raped and impregnated by her father for the second time, the obese teenager looks for hope as the drowning waters crash around her. Her mother (Mo'nique, the other spark of the film) would make all of the Wicked Stepmothers of fairy tale lore whimper in their beds.

We watch painfully as Precious' greasy father mounts her on a bed of filth and tears and sweat and tells her that he loves his baby. This is not shocking; what's shocking, then, is what Precious sees. Grimacing in clear disgust, she focuses on a crack in the ceiling, which crumbles away to reveal Precious in one of her glamorous escapades of stardom, riches, and excitement. Hope springs eternal.

The pain continues to deepen, however, as Precious does everything she can to hang on to this aching world. She's good at math, we learn, and not just because she has a crush on her teacher. It has kept her in school, which in this society can be interpreted as a small miracle. Especially since she cannot even read or write. Her education gets her a ticket to an alternative school, where escape from this wretched life seems possible.


Here is a story that we naive suburbanites simply cannot make up on our own; I believed it only because I would have felt ashamed to accuse it of melodrama and then find out it was real. There is a moment early in the film where we first meet Precious' mother; she goes off on a rant against Precious that seems neverending. Just when you think the verbal abuse is about to stop, she amps it up again. When we see Precious, her face shows clear and honest hurt, and we start to understand that nurture is so much to our childhood. Without it, we are wounded and lost. Sticks and stones may break bones, but these words can kill.

The movie does not stop with these eye-opening expositions of a broken adolescence. Director Lee Daniels forces us into this all-too-adult world. One scene in particular will have you gasping in disgust and admonishment. However, a few scenes will have you tearing up with joy.

It's the kind of movie that yells across the screen. The last shot, and the closing dedication, spring hope and love for all the girls out there who are lost and cannot find their way home.