Of Popcorn and Goobers: Kathryn & Justin's Movie Blog

Take 2

2007-04-01T15:39:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed that this blog has been mostly dropped lately. No recent posts, no responses to comment(s), no love. The main reason is that it simply wasn't sustainable as it was. The posts were consistently too wordy, we stopped seeing so many new releases, and the posts were consistently too wordy. So, let's try again.

It's just me, Justin, now. Kathryn has her own blog happening, which is quite good and far more important than this one. You should check it out. Since it's just me, I don't have to ask before doing what's about to happen...

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Royale with Less Cheese

2006-12-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

Where’s my bag of superlatives?

Casino Royale is the best Bond movie I’ve seen (and I’ve seen them all) starring the best Bond yet (Daniel Craig). I know this qualifies as sacrilege for you Sean Connery fans out there, but I see little room to quibble about this. Connery was great as the original Bond, but Craig takes Bond places Connery never did…or could have, for that matter. The Bond series needed to grow beyond the same cheesy one-liners and misogyny that has been coming down the assembly line since Connery’s days. It’s a tribute to just how good Connery was that all the Bonds since have essentially been doing great (Roger Moore), good (Pierce Brosnan), terrible (Timothy Dalton), or forgettable (sorry, George Lazenby, but didn’t we almost have it all?) impersonations of him. Until now.

I’m not one to prize realism above all else, and I certainly understand that when watching a Bond movie, especially, it’s fairly silly to harp on what’s realistic and what’s not. That said, it is refreshing to see a Bond who is buff enough to do some of the things that wimpy James Bonds have been doing for decades.

Not to mention a Bond that actually seems at least slightly tormented by a touch of humanity—you know, that conscience thing that bugs you when you keep killing people or using them for sex and information to kill someone else before killing them or realize that your entire life is dedicated to saving a country that doesn’t know you exist. Villains have been challenging Bonds with this information for as long as they’ve been revealing their diabolical plots just in time for them to be foiled, but, for the first time, we have a Bond who confronts himself with this depressing truth.

With a few exceptions, there are fewer outlandish explosions, but nearly every other part of the Bond formula is there. The woman he may or may not be able to trust, in the end. The gambling (lots of it, and thank you, writers, for not making Le Chiffre’s tell as obvious as it at first seemed), the fast cars, the guns, the martini (kind of). But with Craig we’re allowed a certain depth of character that wasn’t revealed to us with the other avatars. And, with the exception of the pedantic explanations of Texas Hold ‘Em awkwardly threaded through the film, the dialogue is much improved, as well, as is the cinematography (dig that black-and-white intro).

Within the Bond genre, Casino Royale is the new king. Just where that genre fits into the broader world of movies…well, I’ll leave that for some other time.

-Justin Burton

Sc(c)oots On Over

2006-12-14T15:03:00.000-05:00

FYI: Justin has a 'guest posting' on Scott Haile's blog. Scott is a PhD student at Boston College and writes about many things theological. Somehow, he's let The Simpsons slip in... All the same, his place is a good read, J's post excepted.

The Departed

2006-12-13T22:53:00.000-05:00

Martin Scorsese intrigues me in a way that few directors can. I don’t love him, and I don’t wait with bated breath for his next movie to release. I think his films are gratuitously violent in unnecessarily fantasy-like ways. When they’re over, I think to myself, ‘What just happened here?’ Yet, when I’m in the middle of a Scorsese flick, I am fully engrossed, as he pulls me in in a way that only the best storytellers can.

The Departed is all about corruption, from the opening scene until the final bullet-through-the-head. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is a high-ranking policeman who actually works for local mafia boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) desperately wants to join the police force and can’t. Costigan is hired for deep cover to find the rat in the force. All of this we know from the get-go; there is no real suspense for the viewer, as the good guys and bad guys are delineated before the opening credits. Watching the dance between cops, mafia, supposed cops, and supposed mafia, however, turns out to be quite delightful—it’s a 2.5 hour movie that doesn’t require a watch glance.

Most of what is great about the movie is the acting. Damon and DiCaprio are seasoned veterans at this point, though their boyish faces make them seem like they are still new. And Nicholson justifies much of the raving about his role. Mark Wahlberg as Dignan, however, turns in far and away the best performance. I’ve been enjoying Wahlberg since Boogie Nights, as he’s proven himself profoundly suited for some of the quirkiest and most obscene roles in Hollywood. He doggedly abuses every character that crosses his path in The Departed, and, despite his calloused and insensitive bombast, he turns out to be the only moral compass in the movie that is not also cutely naïve (see Martin Sheen as Queenan).

One note on realism: It is refreshing to watch a movie full of cops and mafia where everyone shoots everyone else in the head. It is exceedingly frustrating to keep watching movies where a character gets shot in the chest and falls over, only to return to save the day minutes later because s/he was wearing a bullet-proof vest, after all. Why, I have often asked myself, can’t movie characters just learn to shoot people in the head? The movie depicts realistic Boston accents from all involved, and the characters are embarrassingly racist, just as the city itself is.

There is a good chance that Scorsese had some broad, overarching moral he wanted to convey with The Departed. The lesson I learned? Don’t join the Boston police force unless I want to get shot in the head.

-Justin Burton

City Lights

2006-12-07T08:15:00.000-05:00

We watch a lot of movies, but a particular weak spot for us is classics. I’ve seen a decent representation of AFI’s top 100, but Kathryn and I have always gravitated towards newer movies (there are good reasons, I think, that I do, but that is the stuff of another post). But when staying with our friends John and Alicia Pittard a few weeks ago, the four of us watched the 1932 Charlie Chaplin film City Lights.

Chaplin was quite a remarkable figure, writing, directing, arranging music for, and starring in his films. City Lights was a dying breed when it was released. Talkies had been around for half a decade, and one must assume that only someone of Chaplin’s reputation and stature would have expected much success with a silent film in 1932.

The most talked-about scene in the movie is the final one, which seems to produce divergent readings. Months after the tramp secures money for his unnamed object of desire (Virginia Cherrill) to travel overseas for a surgery that will end her blindness, he encounters her at her flower shop and, after an awkward exchange, she recognizes her benefactor. When she does, the tramp points to his eyes and says, ‘You can see?’ to which the woman responds, ‘I see now.’

What, exactly, is meant by this final statement is unclear. The optimistic reading says that she sees him for the kind soul he is—she, who has gotten to know the tramp’s inward goodness, is able to see him in a positive light that no one else has before. The more jaded reading says that she sees him for what he is—a homeless, penniless tramp who can offer her no sense of security or any kind of life together at all. Each sense of ‘see’ involves a new kind of understanding. In the former sense, the woman understands the tramp in a way that is new for him (positively); in the latter, she understands him in a way that is new for her (negatively).

Facial expressions help little. The woman maintains the sympathetic face she models throughout the movie. It could plausibly signify either love or pity. The tramp’s face is equally unhelpful. He seems both hopeful and nervous, which places him with the audience in trying to determine what it is the woman is trying to convey with the word ‘see.’

My tendency is toward the happier ending. It is, after all, called a ‘Romance Comedy,’ which rather predetermines my expectations. Whichever reading is applied, the ambiguity of the ending is a perfect conclusion to the brilliant scenes of pantomime that precede it, as the viewer has been drawn into an interactive medium where visuals are supplemented by her imagination, and she is left to supply the final verdict for the film’s climax.

What is up with it, Vanilla Face?

2006-11-19T17:25:00.000-05:00

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, is the most irresponsibly offensive movie I have ever seen.

Now, I realize that I am usually fairly liberal in my opinions on what works of art, including film, can do as regards the limits and boundaries of taste. What rubs me wrong here, however, is that Borat Sagdiyev, a sincere if sometimes bigoted Kazakhi, has been exploited by 20th Century Fox, as his misguided attempts at a documentary of America have been appropriated for the mocking laughter of a calloused and xenophobic world.

Borat, as I mentioned and as the title of the movie makes clear, is from Kazakhstan. His foibles—and, let’s be honest, there are many—result from his limbo-like positioning between being a newly converted Christian, on the one hand, and a dyed-in-the-wool secular humanist/communist, on the other. This duality produces in him a curiosity with the world and a desire to know (almost) as many kinds of people as he can, but it also means that he is left with the vestiges of misogyny and anti-Semitism. As Borat travels across America, we are supposed to pay more attention to what he doesn’t understand (like how to use toilet paper or more proper methods of proposing marriage) than to the valuable lessons he learns. And somehow, all of this is supposed to be funny.

But, even if 20th Century Fox tried to obscure them, the valuable lessons are there, nonetheless. One of my favorite scenes is when Borat is driving through Atlanta and pulls over to ask directions from a group of black teens. Instead of being afraid or making judgments about the teens based on their skin color, Borat engages them and ends up learning some slang as well as how to sag his pants. Now, of course, these things are still mostly foreign concepts to him, and it is actually funny to see him trying to master slang terminology and sagging a pant-and-underwear combination that was never meant to be sagged. But it is only funny because Borat himself knows that he is outside of his comfort zone and gets a kick out of the differences between his culture and the teens’.

And it is his willingness to embrace these differences that ultimately gives me hope for his evolution as a culturally- and socially-aware person. If he can learn to laugh and grope for some common ground with a group of Atlanta teens with whom he has nothing in common, then perhaps he can also learn that Jews, women, and whatever other group of people he currently misunderstands are more similar to him than he realized, also.

It is this lesson that should have rung true in the Borat movie. Instead, we are left with some sick executive’s idea of a joke at the expense of a sincere man who has made himself vulnerable by being willing to share his journey through film.

Obviously, I don’t recommend that you waste a cent on this horrendously mean-spirited movie. I hope, though, that those of you who have seen it, along with the millions of others who are flocking to theaters, are able to see past the production editing that attempts to highlight only Borat’s quirks and ‘foreign’-ness and realize that the real Borat is a little more like the rest of us—sometimes misinformed, often lost, but always yearning to be accepted.

And I hope that we can all realize that that is nothing to be laughed at.

-Justin Burton

Ranger-Man Diction (or something like that...)

2006-11-14T14:18:00.000-05:00

Stranger Than Fiction is a quite charming movie, upheld by predictably good performances by Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Dustin Hoffman. I was a bit surprised at how enjoyable the movie is, as I thought it looked like one of those flicks that shows everything you need in the movie trailer, then falls flat when it runs for 90 minutes (if we ever get the wherewithal to pull it together enough to pass out annual awards on this blog, I think Best and Worst Movie Trailers should be honored). Not so, however.

One of the main themes running through Stranger Than Fiction is agency. That is, who—or what—controls our actions? According to Fiction, not our selves. Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is controlled in this movie by patterns of behavior that he no longer thinks about, bureaucratic efficiency principles, a watch, and a third-person omniscient disembodied narrator’s voice. Crick is able, at moments, to impose his own will upon his own life, but he inevitably finds his steps redirected by outside forces. The movie climaxes with Crick agreeing to a particularly tragic set of events as set forth by Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), his narrator, but this is more a conceit to let us know that he is noble; there is no indication that he really has the authority to make this decision.

What is striking is that the moral of Fiction, if there is one, is that we should stop striving to control our lives. Crick finds ultimate contentment when he finally stops struggling and yields to Eiffel. At the heart of this moral seems to be some localized notion of chaos: much of our lives are happenstance or luck, so why try to make them otherwise? The first part of this many of us would be served well to ponder. Realizing the role of happenstance helps us better understand that, for instance, we are not members of a class of the richest 1% of the history of the world because of anything we have done. But, to follow such a realization with some form of nihilism is simply irresponsible. While there is much about our lives that we did not or will not be able to control, there is much that we can and should.

The end of the movie was a bit fluffy for my taste. Without going into too much detail and ruining it, I can say that I thought the opportunity existed for the perfect ending, but it was missed. Late in the movie, Kay Eiffel and Prof. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) are discussing her latest book in his office, when the matter of the ending is broached. The conclusion I wanted would’ve had Hilbert saying, ‘The ending sucked.’ Then cut to black, cue music, and roll credits. Give it a try when you see it and see how it strikes you, and feel free to submit your own ideas for endings.

-Justin Burton

My Irrational, Emotional, Hormonal Ex-Girlfriend (She's Super, Too!)

2006-10-31T07:11:00.000-05:00

My Super Ex-Girlfriend is an odd cross between campy action flick and romantic comedy. On the surface, it seems too silly, too flimsy, too full of holes to be much more than another mindless summer movie. But, though it may be tragically flawed, it is not fatally so. Even after we enumerate all of the missteps and miscalculations, something remains that engages us, and we find that it does so not always in spite of, but sometimes because of, its flaws.

The movie wastes little time with plot set-up. Our first introduction to Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) and pal Vaughn (Rainn Wilson) is also the first meeting between Peter and Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman) a.k.a. G-Girl. Of course, Matt, who has just seen G-Girl’s picture in the paper, doesn’t recognize Jenny, who disguises her super identity with red hair and glasses—so clever, those supers! Matt quickly determines that Jenny is a bit neurotic, but, spurred on by the audaciously awful advice of Vaughn, dispensed with clockwork precision, Matt decides to move forward with Jenny. For the sex, naturally. But the film is called My Super Ex-Girlfriend, after all, so, even after finding out that Jenny is G-Girl, Matt moves on to date his co-worker Hannah (Anna Faris), receives the business end of an airborne shark, and finally joins G-Girl’s archnemesis Prof. Bedlam (Eddie Izzard) in a ploy to drain her super powers.

Unfortunately, the plot doesn’t get much more focused than that. My Super Ex-Girlfriend is missing the little things. Matt mentions early on that he’s ‘not ready’ to start dating again, but we’re given no sense of what is holding him back. Prof. Bedlam is described as a super villain, but we only ever see him spying on G-Girl and riding in a limo—no plans to conquer the world, no attempts to hijack a high-powered weapon, no nabbings of state dignitaries. Prof. Bedlam’s brawniest henchman is injured nearly every time he is on screen; the conceit is funny, but no character in the movie bothers to acknowledge his poor luck, so the slapschtick fails.

Moreover, the acting is sub-par. Uma Thurman plays crazy fairly well, but Izzard, who should be equally unstable, is a bit too collected and casual for the role. Luke Wilson, like his brother, hasn’t proven that he can carry a movie as the sole leading man. The Wilsons are a tremendously talented writing team, and their acting peaks when they are teamed with the likes of Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Vince Vaughan, or even each other. Alone, however, their characters tend to fall flat. While Rainn Wilson is capable of being tremendously funny (see Dwight Schrute on The Office), his character isn’t sufficient enough to bring the best out of Luke Wilson. In fact, Rainn Wilson has the unenviable (and possibly impossible) task of trying to shed his Dwight-ness for other roles. In this movie, he chooses the superhero route of hiding Dwight Schrute beneath the veneer of heavy-rimmed glasses, though audiences, I trust, are a bit savvier than the Lois Lanes of the world.

But plots and acting are not the only things movies are made of. Since movies are culture-specific—that is, created within the context of a specific time and specific place—they are thereby bound up within while also able to contribute to a culture’s perception of itself and its world. And, if we believe My Super Ex-Girlfriend, our culture still isn’t too keen on powerful women. The neuroses of Jenny Johnson are multiplied ad absurdum. Sure, she can save the world, but she’s still that stereotypically hormonal, irrational, unpredictable woman passed down to us from the dawn of phallocentrism. By all accounts, Prof. Bedlam has suffered the greater trauma in his life, yet, as mentioned above, he is mostly stoic, calm, and rational. Matt is able to converse plainly with Bedlam, while any dialogue with Jenny devolves into holes in walls, holes in ceilings, and junior high insults burned into foreheads.

G-Girl is a hero, but she is dangerous. If the safety of our world rests in her hands, then we have no real safety at all. Even the pettiest jealousy can distract her from her obligations, we learn, as Matt (thank goodness for rational men!) has to plead with her to re-route an errant missile set to hit Metropo—oops, I mean New York City. And dangerous women must be eliminated. So it is that, as we understand that G-Girl is set to lose her powers, we don’t mind too much. It seems remarkable that we would prefer the supervillain to get his way, but this is really nothing new. In Bizet’s opera Carmen, Carmen dies, and we breathe a little easier. In Woody Allen’s latest drama, Match Point, Chris shoots Nola and, while we don’t like him, we can’t really think of what other options he really has—that woman was crazy. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ seems to be an axiom that is burned into our collective DNA; it courses through the veins of common knowledge. Jezebel lives, sure, but we rarely let her see the dénouement.

This, though, is a happy summer movie, so we can’t just nix our hero. Rather, this shrew needs to be tamed. Put a stable man in her life, give her a superhero girlfriend with whom she can commiserate, and G-Girl may just be domesticate-able.

But this is the twenty-first century, right? Surely this caricature is a bit too overblown, too grotesque to tell us anything we didn’t already know. We know by now that women can have power without succumbing to some sort of innate irrationality, that there is nothing generalizable about women that precludes them from the same sort of leadership positions men have traditionally held. Yet, it was only two years ago that Teresa Heinz-Kerry felt the need to hope aloud ‘that, one day soon, women—who have all earned the right to their opinions—instead of being labeled opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are.’ And we are only two years away from seeing what sorts of cheap shots may be taken—from either side of the aisle—on Hillary Clinton or Condoleeza Rice, as they possibly pursue their parties’ tickets. What would happen inside a voting booth if one of these two women were to be on the ballot? Outside the booth, we can all say the right things—we just want the person most qualified for the job, man or woman—but what will our actions say?

Voting for a man for president is by no means conclusive proof that a person is a misogynist, nor is it even indicative of such. And My Super Ex-Girlfriend makes no attempt to paint with so broad a brush. The point is not that the whole world still can’t handle powerful women; rather, by being disarmingly silly, a movie like this one is able to unthreateningly personalize the issue for us. We live in a world where gender roles are still being defined and debunked. My Super Ex-Girlfriend simply presents us with what is presumed to be the outdated model and asks, ‘Does this seem reasonable to you?’

In the end, a movie doesn’t have to be super to be relevant.

Let Them Eat Popcorn

2006-10-23T20:25:00.000-04:00

Sofia Coppola asks us to trust what our eyes see more than what our ears here. Marie Antoinette, like Lost in Translation before it, works more through pantomime than through dialogue. And, when her lead players do talk, it is often with lines so trite that we do not mind, really, if we didn’t quite hear them—the facial expressions tell us all we need to know.

Coppola weaves a couple of themes predominantly through her narrative.

One is privilege. We first meet Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) as she awakes in her Viennese palace on the day she is to be carriaged to France to meet her fiancée, Louis Auguste (Jason Schwartzman), heir to the throne of France. Her existence is effortless: others dress her, prepare her meals, drive her carriage, and, in the instances where she must actually do something herself, tell her what is proper to do. As she becomes increasingly indulgent at Versailles, we realize that she has no concept of life otherwise. It is not so much her wastefulness we resent as it is her naiveté (and, I suspect, not because we wish her to lose it, but because we wish we could gain it).

Another is gender roles. Here Coppola paints a more stereotypical picture. Versailles is the locus of man: it is at Versailles that Antoinette is indulgent and self-centered. Petit Trianon, then, becomes the locus of woman. It is in the country, and it is here where Antoinette embraces the pastoral life, communing with nature and relishing in her motherhood.

What is particularly odd to me about Antoinette’s womanhood, which is portrayed as something of an achievement, a goal that has been reached, is that it is only available to her after she fulfills her duty by finally consummating her marriage with her reluctant husband. It is as if Antoinette can only be a woman if a man gives her permission to be.

If Coppola is out to prove anything, it seems to lie somewhere between what we see and what we hear. We see very important people in very important clothes—people who have access to everything and should be quite intelligent, given their advantages. Yet we hear them conversing about truly pedestrian matters, moving deeper than the surface rarely, if ever. We see late-eighteenth century French royalty bandying about in powdered wigs and nausea-inducing tailor patterns. Yet we hear them talking about revolution across the globe and growing unrest among the populace with the politics of home. We see early-Industrial culture, lighted by candles, entertained with cards and games, transported by horses. Yet we hear the angst-ridden indie rock of our own decade peppering our ears and constantly upsetting the more period-sounding claviers of the underscore.

Sofia Coppola asks us to trust what our eyes see more than what our ears here. Yet, it is what our ears hear that ultimately subverts what our eyes see, undoing all that is proper, all that is refined, all that is as it should be, both in Marie Antoinette’s world and our own.

Superman v Captain Jack, Part II

2006-10-09T19:53:00.000-04:00

Who beats Superman? Captain Jack beats Superman. Audiences flocked to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest in record numbers—numbers much more super than the Man of Steel could muster. Dead Man’s Chest plundered (c’mon, how am I supposed to resist that?) $135.6 million its first week, more than $20 million ahead of the previous box office record-holder, Spiderman. Dead Man’s Chest’s success is remarkable for a number of reasons.

First, it is the second installment of a trilogy, or, more precisely: it’s a sequel. With the exception of Lord of the Rings and Matrix Reloaded, sequels aren’t supposed to out-gross their predecessors, yet Dead Man’s Chest ($420 million domestically after two full weeks) easily outpaced The Curse of the Black Pearl ($305 million in the US). Second, the critics greeted Dead Man’s Chest considerably more coolly than they did Black Pearl, complaining that the sequel lasts too long, presents a too-sprawling plot, and sags too much under the weight of being the middle child of this franchise series. Third, despite the flaws the critics have found, Dead Man’s Chest’s success is not simply predicated upon the success of Black Pearl. After the huge opening week, Dead Man’s Chest followed with a respectable $62.2 million in its second week, tripling its closest competition. That is to say, those who were first in line to see the movie did not kill its buzz; rather, the public continued to want to see this movie, despite the critics’ attempts to bury it. Why was Dead Man’s Chest such a smash?

One possible answer could be star power. With Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann), and Johnny Depp (Captain Jack Sparrow), Dead Man’s Chest certainly carries a good deal of name cache. Yet, of the three, Depp is the only one to deliver. Bloom is distressingly opaque; his banality is such that many of his scenes would be better if he were neither speaking nor visible. Knightley has proven herself to be an intriguing actress, but in Dead Man’s Chest, she seems disconnected from the rest of the movie, almost an afterthought. She probably deserves a pass, though, since most of her lines are sucked into the black hole that is Bloom.

Depp, however, is worth the price of multiple admissions. Who would’ve known that the man to take down Superman would prance, wear jewelry and mascara, and be generally androgynous? But has the strong, stoic ‘masculine’ gender construction really yielded to something more ambiguous, something more, well, Jack Sparrow? What Depp realizes, and what Jack Sparrow’s crew realizes, is that the title—‘Captain’—carries with it all the connotations of traditional ‘manliness’ necessary. This leaves Depp free to play with the boundaries of gender in a way that allows Sparrow to both fulfill and resist masculinity—an ambiguity that helps to blur the rest of his character. Sparrow is at once fearless and fearful, a success and a failure, a friend and an enemy, good and evil.

As it turns out, the clarity of Superman is too much of a stretch. Audiences want a hero that is a little less obvious, a little less well-defined. And it is this indefiniteness, most apparent in Sparrow, that proved to be a treasure chest (I just had to get one more in) for Warner Bros.

Dead Man’s Chest has no ending. It juggles too many subplots. Its hero seems equally content to leave a friend to die as to save him. All of these things are true, but do they spell doom for a movie? After more than four years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, at a time when Israel is intermittently at war with its neighbors again, at a time when countless Sudanese are dying senselessly in Darfur, perhaps the ambiguity of Dead Man’s Chest is comforting. Art works in tandem with the culture that produces it, so it is no wonder that prolonged indefinite times are home to prolonged indefinite movies. The crispness and clarity of Superman Returns can be saved for another day. For now, give us the blurry boundaries, the delayed ending, the sagging middleness of Dead Man’s Chest. It comes from a world we can understand.

Superman v Captain Jack, Part 1

2006-09-27T14:30:00.000-04:00

**I realize I'm a bit late posting on Superman Returns, but, well, better late than never? Actually, the next two or three posts are movies from the summer that I didn't post about at the time but would like to talk about now. Even though it's old, chime in, if you like. We'll get newer ones in soon enough.**

Remember the superhero ‘Who would win?’ game? As in, who would win in a fight between Aquaman and Spiderman (apparently Aquaman, according to the world of Entourage) or Mr. Incredible and Batman (please, he’s not that incredible). The game is interesting enough, especially for the Comic Book Guys of the world (for whom, I sometimes fear, it is no game). But it always stalls out for me at the same point: Superman v. Anyone Else. Who beats Superman? He’s faster than a speeding etc., able to leap tall buildings in a single whatnot, more powerful than a so it goes. Sticky webs, high-tech gadgets, cranky sea creatures, and general stretchiness are no match for Superman. In a world of humans with superhero alter egos, he is a superhero with a human alter ego. The only way to conquer Superman is to craft a plot, find some Kryptonite, and hope for the best.

Such is the plot of Superman Returns. Lex Luther (Kevin Spacey) secures crystals from the Fortress of Solitude, lifts some Kryptonite from a New Yo—oops, Metropolis—museum, and tries to grow a Superman-repellent continent out of the Atlantic Ocean. Spacey, who combines his natural tendency towards sumgness with his ability to portray casually self-confident, Kaiser Sosé-like villains, makes for an appropriate Luther. In any other movie, a widow-swindling, land-seizing, malcontent capitalist hiding beneath a transparent populist veneer could be truly detestable. But when said villain plays opposite Superman, we are mostly left to feel either sorry or embarrassed for him. Perhaps a truly wicked Jezebel could evoke some hate from us, but even Luther’s companion Kitty, played by an always amusing Parker Posey, begins sympathizing with the good guys as soon as the diabolical plot is revealed.

Of course, without Kitty, Superman Returns would deprive us of any sense of moral ambiguity whatsoever. No corrupt cops, no verbally abusive insecure fiancées, no criminals forced into their deeds by desperation. Instead, we are greeted with a squeaky-clean society inconvenienced by the occasional cackling gunman or natural disaster. The only character who isn’t thrilled to have Superman back is Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth)—presumably because she still loves him. Bosworth gives us a Lois Lane who is self-assured and self-reliant; she is no damsel in distress. Yet, while her attempt to resist Superman is a slight breath of fresh air, it is not enough. What was the premise of that Pulitzer Prize-winning article, ‘Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman,’ anyway? And are we really to believe that the return of a unilateral flying policeman who abandoned the world five years ago sparks no sort of political debate or special-interest group demonstration? Superman is so extraordinarily powerful, so unbendingly good, so uncritically accepted that we are given no chance to decide to like him ourselves—his likeability is forced upon us. Either we choose Superman and the world, or we’re in camp with Lex Luther and his nefarious band of career criminals.

So how likeable is Superman, anyway? Brandon Routh is neither disappointing nor delightful. Considering the one-dimensionality of his character, though, he, like the rest of the cast, does well with what he is given; I would simply enjoy the opportunity to see what he could do if given more.

It would not have been surprising if Americans had flocked to Superman Returns in unprecedented numbers, hungry to see a fearless, capable, unconquerable hero who triumphs in the face of chaos. Considering the face of global politics and the US’s current international relationships, perhaps a clearly defined sense of good evil would have been refreshing. But box office numbers were tepid, and Superman Returns faces an ambiguity its characters never do, occupying the limbo between outright blockbuster and big-budget flop. In the end, audiences were looking for another kind of hero altogether...

The Last Kiss

2006-09-18T13:52:00.000-04:00

So, I am not a huge Zach Braff fan. (In fact, I don’t even know if he is a “ch” Zach or a “ck” Zack. I have never really gotten the “ch” variety b/c we all know that “ch” does not make a “ck” sound… but, anyways…) But, I did enjoy this movie. Was it earth shattering? No. Does it fit nicely into one particular genre? Also no, which might be why I liked it. It had funny parts, but was not a comedy. It was a drama, without being overly dramatic. I don’t think it is very often that you find a true coming of age story for our age group (mid-20’s to early 30’s). (No, I didn’t fully think that statement through, but it feels right.) I felt like this movie had a good dose of reality about growing up in our generation. We’ve watched parents divorce, we want things to be different than that, we have trouble committing to one person, one occupation, one geographical location, etc… Plus, we have tons of options. We are well-educated and self-sufficient, for the most part. So it takes a whole lot to put our trust in the institution of marriage and in one other person. AND, we mess up. Or at least we think about messing up. I feel like this self-sufficiency and option-laden situation we find ourselves in often causes us to be selfish. We are definitely always asking the question, “Will this make me happy?”. What price are we willing to pay in order to be happy? The happiness of others?

I also appreciated the length of time it took for the main characters to reconcile. Things are not always easy… Forgiveness, especially, is not always easy.

So, don’t expect to be laughing the entire time. Don’t expect to cry either. Just ignore Zach Braff’s weak chin, and enjoy a good dose of reality.

That Just Happened

2006-09-11T09:36:00.000-04:00

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is, like its star Will Ferrell, a bit off-beat. We now have two feature-length collaborations between writer/actor Ferrell and writer Adam McKay (the other is 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy), and there are a slew of similarities.

The plot arc for Talladega Nights is basically the same as Anchorman. We meet a self-absorbed ‘man’s man’ who is at the forefront of his profession; he’s rude, stupid, and irresponsible, but he’s good. His small, comfortable world is threatened by the Other—a woman newscaster in Anchorman and a gay, French, Formula-1 racer in Talladega Nights—and, because he is ill-equipped to deal with anything that is too different from himself, he monomaniacally attempts to unseat his nemesis and succeeds only in spelling his own professional demise. Redemption is offered, he accepts, and reconciliation is sealed with a kiss. But, at least through two movies, this formula hasn’t spoiled. Perhaps it is because of the drastic difference in detail—from 1970’s San Diego to ostensibly modern-day Nascar. Perhaps, though, it is because Ferrell and McKay’s formula is itself a dig at the traditional comedic formula, so that, while his own movies are similar to each other, they are still different enough from the norm to seem fresh.

Ferrell and McKay create characters that begin as stock comedic parts, then tweak them just enough to keep audiences off balance. They offer a fairly straightforward scenario, then devolve it into gleeful bizarreness. Much of this is accomplished by adding an objective self-reflectivity to his characters. For instance, Ricky Bobby is quirky, his colleagues are idiots, and his wife is only interested in celebrity and money—all of which is nothing new for a comedy. But, by allowing each character to offer commentary on his or her actions as the story progresses, all of them realizing their limitations without showing much interest in self-betterment, McKay and Ferrell stretch and deepen the genre in a delightfully refreshing way.
Ultimately, the reflexive nature of the hero is what allows Ferrell and McKay’s movies to crest. At the end of Talladega Nights, Ricky Bobby’s friend and racing partner Cal Naughton (John C. Reilly) is still a feeble-minded dolt, his wife Carley (Leslie Bibb) is still a heartless money-grubber, his new ‘lady’ Susan (Amy Adams) is no sweeter than she was at the beginning of the movie, and his dad Reese Bobby (Gary Cole) is still a no-account, multiple-time loser who has trouble caring about himself, much less anyone else. The only thing that has changed is Ricky Bobby himself. For Ferrell and McKay, fear of the Other is simply a symptom of a self-ignorant malaise. By merely looking inside to become a more fully-realized version of himself, Ricky Bobby (like Ron Burgundy before him) is able to overcome his aversion to that which is different. Not coincidentally, Ricky’s sons Walker (Houston Tumlin) and Texas Ranger (Grayson Russell), the Superego to Ricky’s Id, outwardly enact their father’s inward journey, morphing from foul-mouthed hellions into even-tempered angels. The central figure of Ricky Bobby, then, acts as a lynchpin that ignites dynamism in the otherwise static secondary characters; his change allows them to be completed. Ricky’s family becomes more functional than it ever had been, his ex-wife and best friend are reconciled to him, he finds a woman who loves him beyond his money, and even his nemesis Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G and Borat) is released into his long-awaited retirement with his mate. Ferrell is consummate in this role. His grasp of an eccentric character and impeccable feel for comedic timing have made Ron Burgundy and Ricky Bobby—characters who, in most hands, would have fallen into tedious parody—successes.

Beyond Ferrell and McKay, though, the supporting cast in Talladega Nights is not to be ignored. Amy Adams as Susan has an unfortunately unsubstantial role, but she capitalizes on her limited screen time with a particularly fiery motivational speech to push Ricky back into racing. Sacha Baron Cohen makes Girard both threatening and loveable. Here is a character whose only enemy is Ricky Bobby; audiences may recognize all the trappings of a villain in him, yet they are most likely to simply wish him the best. From accent to facial contortions to quirky Europeanisms, Girard is a cartoon character saddled with the sad predicament of having skin. John C. Reilly is typically brilliant as the endearingly clueless Cal. Reilly has acquired the ability to play any part and seamlessly integrate himself into the lifeblood of whatever movie he is in. Like Cal, Reilly rarely soaks in the spotlight; rather, he is willing to place himself second in the better interest of the film. Greg German and Molly Shannon are an entertaining pair as owners of Ricky’s racing team. German’s nervous chatter combined with Shannon’s drunken spatter make them a fairly classic teaming. Will Ferrell will likely garner most of the attention for the film, and he is quite good, but Talladega Nights succeeds because it is carried by solid professional performances across the board.

For now, then, Ferrell and McKay have a winning formula. But, as we have seen with the likes of Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler, what is at first a fresh schtick can become tiresomely stale quickly. Carrey (The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Sandler (Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish) have found ways to break out of their early molds, allowing each actor to remain relevant and enjoy success in a variety of genres. Even Woody Allen, a more direct analog to the writing duo, has used movies such as What’s Up, Tiger Lily? and Match Point to flesh out his world of rom-angst-ic comedy Ferrell and McKay should take note. Anchorman and Talladega Nights have been wonderfully funny movies, but theirs are writers who are gifted enough to explore and manipulate other formulae, as well. Here’s hoping they’re up to the task.

The Syrian Bride

2006-09-03T08:04:00.000-04:00

So, mostly we're supposed to be talking about new releases we see, but it is, after all, our blog, so we'll talk about what we want.

Like, say, The Syrian Bride.

This is a French/German/Israeli film that is set in a Druze village in the Golan Heights. Subtitled, so, if you don't read, you might have a hard time following...

The basic plot centers around a Druze woman, Mona (Clara Khoury) who is marrying a Damascus man, Tallel (Derar Sliman). The catch is that the Druze are claimed by both Israel and Syria, and, by marrying Tallel and crossing into Syria, Mona is giving up her right to cross back into the Golan Heights to visit her family.

Not really the perfect setting for a comedy. But comedy it is, mostly. The movie manages poignance by emphasizing the funny absurdities of bureaucratic and political squabbles. The main joke, if you want to call it that, is that polities, which ostensibly exist for the good of their peoples, are often structured in ways that make life difficult for all involved.

The best part of the movie is the final half hour, where the wedding parties gather on either side of the border and attempt to have a wedding.

Though it's called The Syrian Bride, the central figure is really Mona's sister, Amal (Hiyam Abbass), who manages to be a stabilizing voice of reason for her entire family, despite the fact that she herself is stuck in a woeful marriage to a disastrously stupid man, Amin (Adnan Trabshi). Abbass plays her part well, coming off as a classic, if not stereotypical, behind-the-scenes sort of strong woman. The neck that turns the head, perhaps.

All in all, a good viewing. Definitely recommended to those who enjoy foreign films, and also to those who have any particular connection to or interest in this particular area of the world.

Little Miss Sunshine

2006-08-22T20:03:00.001-04:00

Little Miss Sunshine is a nearly-perfect movie. Funny, dramatic, heady, adventurous, and poignant, the whole experience is downright delightful. It’s the first movie I’ve watched this year that made me start thinking about possible Oscar nominations, which is always an exciting moment coming out of the more overtly box office-driven summer flicks.

The opening sequence introduces us to six characters whose relationships to each other are unknown, and we are immediately able to glimpse their cores; this musical number is stunningly economical and pushes the film into its first scene—mostly around the dinner table—which connects all of the characters while confirming and deepening our original impressions of them.

The procession of the narrative reminds me of Rob Gordon’s advice for a compilation tape in High Fidelity (the movie, not the book). ‘You gotta kick it off with a killer, to grab attention, then you gotta take it up a notch. But you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you cool it off a notch.’ As the movie settles into its main sequence of events, a road trip, it maintains the momentum afforded by its spectacular opening without peaking too soon. And when it’s time to reach the climax, we reach it in an unexpected and unforgettable way. I don’t want to spoil it, but I can tell you Rick James is involved.

Little Miss Sunshine’s greatest strength may be the actors’ abilities to be so sincere that they make us squirm. Though the movie is certainly an ensemble set-up, Steve Carell’s Frank is the central character. He mediates nearly every other relationship in the movie and seems to be something of a misery sponge, soaking up everyone else’s problems in a manner that allows them to grow and experience happinesses that seemed previously unattainable. He also wears mostly white, has scars on his wrists, and is able to penetrate others’ thoughts in a way that they themselves are often unable to do. ‘Christ figure,’ I believe, is the term.

Carell’s performance is refreshing. When I saw him in Bruce Almighty, I hoped he would be able to be that funny all the time, and he has proven he can be. But, until now, he has mostly hammed it up. He stole scenes from Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty (and is now the focus of the franchise, with the upcoming Evan Almighty) and Will Ferrell in Anchorman, and now he is regularly seen on NBC’s The Office as Michael Scott, one of the most absurdly ridiculous TV characters ever. But what is refreshing about his performance here is his ability to blend into the fabric of the movie. Sure, Michael Scott (his Office character) comes out to play every now and again (listen for his banter about ‘a la mode’), but, for the most part, Carell graciously plays it straight, allowing himself to engage in the (mostly) more understated and ironic comedy of LMS.

But Carell does not carry the movie alone. Every major part is covered expertly. Greg Kinnear (why am I always surprised by him?) plays the loser-in-denial Richard, who, in lieu of being a winner himself, has decided to dedicate his life to making others feel like losers so that he can (fail to) build them into winners, so perfectly that much of his ill-timed and poorly-reasoned ‘advice’ received audible grunts or groans from the audience in the Princeton theater where we watched LMS. Toni Collette, as usual, nailed her part, Sheryl, a well-intentioned mother who could probably be much better if she didn’t spend all of her time fixing Richard’s screw-ups. And Alan Arkin as Grandpa is indulgently irreverent and irresponsible.

As the kids, Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin shine as Dwayne and Olive, respectively. Olive comes across as a mixture of sweet-and-innocent with overexposed-and-misdirected. Dano, who is mute for the first half of the film, pulls a wide range of expression from facial contortions, stares, and body language. In a stellar cast, Dano may very well outshine them all.

Each character is deeply flawed, and the behavior of the family throughout the movie ranges from ill-advised (driving a van without a clutch) to criminal (leaving a hospital with a dead body). But, somehow, we love them anyway. They engage us by showing us some of what is worst about ourselves but tempering it with well-timed comedy and a relentless drive towards redemption. And who couldn’t use a little redemption?

Step Down

2006-08-22T20:03:00.000-04:00

Step Up?
As most of you know, J and I see quite a few movies. We have strategized about how fill our movie-watching need cheaply and have ended up with a couple of “frequent customer” cards at our local theaters. It was due to my knowledge that if we went to Regal on Monday night that I would get to purchase candy for $1 that J and I saw the movie Step Up. (Okay, okay… I also kind of just wanted to see it. I knew that it would be dumb, but held out hope for a high entertainment value…) Step Up is a teen dance movie. Boy from the projects meets rich girl at Art School while doing community service… she teaches him her style of dance… he teaches her his style of dance… You know a happy ending is to follow. Now, for my friends who don’t get to many movies in the theater, this is probably NOT one I would suggest. Yes, I enjoyed it with my cheap box of Goobers (plus we got a free small diet coke), but I can’t say that the entertainment value to quality ratio was drastic enough for entertainment to trump the lack of quality… Recommendation for best teen dance movie is… Save the Last Dance. It is now going on our Netflix queue.

MUST SEE SUNSHINE

2006-08-22T19:59:00.000-04:00

So, I think I can already name my favorite movie of the year. Little Miss Sunshine. You must see it. MUST. It will engage all of your emotions with a great blend of seriousness and humor. You will be glad to be alive and convinced that optimism will rule and good people will win. You will not be concerned about looks, gender, social status, or race. You will be convinced that all you need to do is be the best human you can be (not in the army…). Families will survive, and little girls will rule the world. Steve Carrell, Greg Kinnear, Alan Arkin, and (always wonderful) Toni Collette, are joined by Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin. GO SEE IT. And let me know what you think.

Step Up, or So You Think You Can Act?

2006-08-22T19:17:00.000-04:00

Dance movies are not too dissimilar from martial arts films or fast car flicks. Often, the dazzle of the visual is obtained by sacrificing quality acting, interesting dialogue, non-formulaic narratives, or any number of other characteristics of a truly engrossing film. Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan have contorted their bodies in some amazing ways, but no director would consider casting either in place of John C. Reilly or Tom Wilkinson. The Fast and the Furious franchise provides some rather jaw-dropping car racing scenes, but, somehow, the Academy hasn’t carved out an Oscar for any of the trilogy yet. Step Up, the latest dance movie, really is no different.

While it’s true that Channing Tatum (Tyler) and Jenna Dewan (Nora) probably won’t be crafting any acceptance speeches outside the MTV and Teen Choice circles any time soon, it’s equally true that I’m glad neither John C. Reilly nor Anne Hathaway was cast for either of these roles. (And I love—almost unhealthily—John C. Reilly) A poor script with sub-par acting is one thing when the movie is supposed to be about narrative and dialogue (think Gigli), but, when the movie is about fantastical fighting or cars or dancing, script and acting can suffer for the sake of the visual.

Of course, it’s not a given that stunning visuals (and I’m focused here on human-performed visuals, not computerized graphics, which is a whole ‘nother post) and less-than-spectacular acting go hand-in-hand. The original Fast and the Furious featured Vin Diesel, who has proved (elsewhere) that he can act. And Save the Last Dance features Julia Stiles, who is a quite good actress. Step Up, on the acting front, does best not to get in the way of the dancing and, for the most part, succeeds in this goal (though Tatum’s ‘ghetto' accent is difficult to stomach on occasion). I'm no dance expert (regretfully), but, from what I can see, the dancing is spectacular. And the music that accompanies it is good, too, combining hip-hop beats with string accompaniments in most cases—a clash of 'classical' and 'contemporary' that serves as a theme for the entire movie.

As for narrative arc, Step Up makes an honest effort to subvert or at least delay a few generic expectations in its plot. Though the narrative deals mostly in tension-release tactics, there will be an extra ‘success sequence’ here, or a delayed reconciliation there. In general, if you enjoy watching dancing, if you are, say, obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance, then Step Up is definitely a must-rent, I’d say. And, if you’re adventurous or bored on a rainy afternoon or just a lover of popcorn with butter-like substance on top, check it in the theaters. If, though, you’re the kind of person who sees three or four movies a year in-theater, I wouldn’t recommend allowing this one to make the cut.

Can I Put My Own Butter That?

2006-08-16T16:15:00.000-04:00

Welcome to our little blog. We are Kathryn and Justin, we are married, and we have a thing for movies. We have for some time been viewing and discussing movies, and we finally realized that we see more movies than the average couple. That doesn't make us experts on anything, but it does mean that we have financially commited ourselves to the business of watching movies. So, we thought we should take all of the movie thoughts swimming through our heads and put them into cyberspace, where they probably belong.

So, before you leave for the movie theater, stop on by. We promise no spoilers (without adequate warning). And when you get back home from your favorite cinema, give us your ratings. (bags of popcorn and boxes of goobers are the preferred rating method around here.)