Just a regular day for Horse, Coybow, and Indian

A Town Called Panic
2009 | Belgium | Dir. Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar

I am not sure if the overly high trio that sat a couple of rows over heightened the movie going experience, but it certainly added to the wild, unpredictableness of the evening spent watching this absurdist animated film. Based on a cult Belgian television show featuring the exploits of Cowboy, Indian, and Horse, the feature-length version of the film is a strange, wild ride.  While a little too long, the bizarre ramifications of Cowboy and Indian’s purchase of 50,000,000 bricks does make for an entertaining film and one that I am really happy I saw. Favorite moment in the movie: the team of amazingly strong scientists with the penguin-shaped snowball-throwing machine.

John Connor checks out the Terminator factory

Terminator Salvation
2009 | USA | Dir. McG
Christian Bale, Sam Worthington

I will put this very simply - without time travel a Terminator movie fails.  Let me explain.  In the first Terminator film a bad ass robot comes back through time and is a real challenge to destroy because he is from the future and made of crazy technology.  T2: The same bad ass robot fights a more upscaled, badder ass robot from further in the future. T3: T2, but add boobs to make an even badder ass robot.  Ok, have you caught onto the trend?  The franchise works because it pits us versus almost unstoppable, future technology.  To have a Terminator movie in which you are already in the future and already using said future technology in which the most bad ass robot you fight is the same one from the first movie, well, what is the point?

Also, McG is not a name…

I still have a pile of films yet to review, but I am mostly through watching the majority of 2009 films that I wanted to see.  The last really outstanding one is The Hurt Locker and it is sitting next to my TV in that little red netflix envelope waiting for the right moment.  (Chances are the impending snow-pocalypse will be just the right time.)  And maybe I can squeeze in a screening of Crazy Heart while it is still at the theater. Hopefully, I will be able to buckle down and get the rest of my reviews posted before the Oscars.  In addition to the two I just mentioned, I still have to write:

- Sherlock Holmes

- The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

- The Road

- Gigantic

- A Town Called Panic

- Terminator Salvation

Getting a lesson in leaving your life behind.

Up in the Air
USA | 2009 | Dir. Jason Reitman
George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick

It only seems fitting that I am sitting in the Salt Lake City airport while writing this review.  I am a nervous flyer and normally dread visits to the airport. Up in the Air somehow managed to take all of the United 93 out of flying and instead instill the airport with an veneer of peacefulness and escape. While there were humorous scenes, particularly the one in which Ryan Bingham (Clooney) schools his fresh-out-of-college protégé about picking the right security line, the film settles into a moralizing zone common to Reitman’s other films. Thank You For Smoking and Juno both find the humanity and best in awkward and uncomfortable situations, Big Tobacco lobbying and teen pregnancy respectively. This film tackles issues just as difficult, job loss in the recession and isolation, in a way that is more profound than the other two and less tongue-in-cheek “cute”.

In addition to sterling acting by all three leads, the heart of the film can be found sprinkled throughout: interviews with real, non-actors who had been recently fired and were given a chance to say on camera what they wished they had the moment they were being let go.

This question has been posed to me a couple of times, so I figured I would post my response.

Why are there 10 movies up for Best Picture this year?  And do you think there were any glaring omissions in the nominations?

$$$$$$$$$ is the easy answer.  Basically, they alienated the main stream crowd last year when they did not nominate The Dark Knight.  So the plan for this year was to nominate 10 films, and therefore be more likely to catch the one that is “your” favorite and give you a reason to watch.  It also means more films in the industry can claim to be nominated for Best Picture and claim more revenue from people going to see them before the awards.

I think it is a pretty lame move and really dilutes the importance of the award.  I mean, what would baseball stats mean if this year we just decided it was 4 strikes and you’re out.

There were not many “blow me away” movies this year - and the only one that really did was A Serious Man and I am really happy to see that got the Best Picture nod - even though it does not have a prayer of winning.  I am a little disappointed that (500) Days of Summer and Sugar did not get one single mention…

(Thanks to S.E. for posing the questions above.)

Avatar
USA | 2009 | Dir. James Cameron
Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang

Ok, I will say this: watching Avatar from the second row in 3D was an incredible visual experience.  I just find it really sad that in the course of the twelve or so years Cameron spent creating this modern epic he did not leave the time to return to the screenplay and tweak a couple of things.  For a man who was able to make a film about a sinking ship (that we all know sinks) one of the biggest films ever, I expected to be wowed by an original story.

Avatar is an incredible visual spectacle…but it is also one of the lamest, most un-challenging storylines made in a really long time.  Honestly - I would hope (I know I am wrong) that Americans do not need further parables about how horrible it was we decimated the Native Americans, but I guess we do (with a bunch of confused nods to 9-11 and terrorism tossed in for good measure).  Cameron is a good story-teller and had me engaged for most of the film, but when the epic battle started, I had long stopped caring.  I knew who was going to win and was already sated with visual stimulus.  I cannot tell if the incredible oversea grosses mean that other countries like blue aliens more than we do or they are tapping directly into the anti-American “oops we raped the world” message in there.  I am excited for where this technology will take us, but not sure I could sit through the film again.  (See it in the theaters if you see it at all - it is not going to be worth your time on DVD or BluRay.)

**********

For further reading, here is a link to an incredible article the NY Times did about the inherant racism in the film: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/opinion/08brooks.html

And below is one of the funniest, but so spot on, summaries of the film’s only-too-conventional plot (by Matt Bateman)

Boom

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
USA | 2009 | Dir. Michael Bay
Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox

It is with great pride that I pin the only “One Star” of the year on Transformers 2 - a film that, even in the company of a good friend, a pile of beer, and the desire to be mindlessly entertained, could not pass muster.  Of course it is sad that this horrible dud of a film was one of the top grossing films of the year, but I will ignore what that says about the American population and their film going taste for now.  Transformers 2 fell victim to the writers strike and the huge action sequences were left without material to bridge them.  After watching it, I was convinced that there was also a editor, continuity editor, and director strike going on as well.  The obviously glaring errors such as the Aspen forest contiguous to the UPenn campus and the scene in which a cast mysteriously appears on Shia’s arm aside, the real fault of this film is a shocking lack of plot and characterization.  The first Transformers, while in no way a great movie, took the time to provide each of the robots and humans with motivation, back-story, and personality.  I am not sure what quality of writer was kept from Hollywood in the strike, but I had hope that even without their professional services someone with a pen out there would have been able to fill the 150 minutes with something other than gratuitous explosions and racist jokes.  I was so wrong.

The Young Victoria
UK | 2009 | Dir. Jean-Marc Vallée
Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany, Jim Broadbent

Guest Review by Emily Eisen

I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t go see The Young Victoria in large part for the costumes, the love story, and the royal drama. But the film succeeds beyond the typical period romance or historical reenactment in two ways: it creates natural suspense and tension in a chain of events to which most of us already know the ending, and the historical characters seem like real, identifiable people without cheapening the sense of historical place or customs of behavior.  (Unlike, say, Kiera Knightly’s star turn in Pride and Prejudice…)  These successes stem in large part from Emily Blunt’s studied portrayal of the Queen; she uses changes in posture and an oddly awkward toothy grin to create Victoria as a person growing up under the most intense of circumstances. I came away from the film with a picture of this period of British royal history explored, but not exploited. With Rupert Friend as the quietly endearing Prince Albert and Jim Broadbent stealing a few scenes as a wildly fun King William.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox
USA | 2009 | Dir. Wes Anderson
George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray

It was commented in one review that Wes Anderson has been making stop-motion films his whole life with live actors and Fox is the first film in which he has finally matched his visual style and wont for control with the correct medium.  Unlike other of Anderson’s films, however, it is hard to not look at Mr. Fox from two competing angles: the technical brilliance of the animation and the strange Anderson spin on the storyline.  As an exercise in animation craft, Fox is breathtaking.  The figures and detail are simply breathtaking and the color palette is full of rich Fall colors.  The way the fur on the animals moves and bristles would be remarkable in a short film, let alone a feature-length one.  In terms of the story, it is very obvious that Noah Baumbach had a hand in the writing credits and they went in not with the aims of making an “animated” [read: children's] film.   There are so many elements that will be well above a child’s head - the film is made for adults that throws a bone to kids rather than visa versa (Shrek).  As long as one goes in expecting a Wes Anderson film, one will not be disappointed.  But if you are looking for a classic retelling of a Dahl tale…best pop in a copy of The Witches.

I seem to have stumbled into two overlapping film projects, one intentional and the other a lucky byproduct.  The premeditated series is the Cary Grant marathon that Emily and I embarked on a couple of months ago, slowly backfilling both of our knowledge of the Cinematic Titan.  The other intersecting marathon has been tracing the birth of The Hollywood Comedy from Silent to Vaudeville to Screwball.  In just a few months, I feel like I have a new appreciation of how Hollywood adapted to new technology and stars to make America laugh - and to see what still works today.

Vaudeville

A Day at the Races (1937)

The easiest place to start in this journey is with the Brothers Marx.  Luckily the Ambler Theater has recently shown both A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races in their 35mm glory.  Both screenings were to packed houses, providing Groucho, Chico, and Harpo’s antics with a real laugh track.  (I have tried many times to watch Marx Bros. films from the comfort of my couch, but found there is a magic the Brothers only posses on the big screen that is lost in translation on my 19″ monitor.  With the audience laughing with you, the routines escalate to a point where you cannot seem to control yourself.  Hard to get on a roll like that by oneself.

Of the two, I would easily say that Opera is the better.  The routines are just more polished (as they should be since they road tested them for months before they shot the film, honing in on the best timing and jokes) and there is more at stake in the film for the audience to connect.  The contract scene is one of my favorite Marx Brothers moments. (My favorite, however, would have to be the mirror scene from Duck Soup.)  Something, however, falls apart in the space between the “The End” of Opera and the start of Races in which the humor seems less cohesive.  There are moments, but the tutti-frutti ice cream truck scene and the ballroom scene never seem to fit into the story the way all Opera ’s gags did previously.  And then there is the detachable blackface musical number - purposefully disconnected from the plot so it could be edited out for screenings in the South.  Up until that moment, my brother (who refuses to watch movies made before 1996) and Emily (who was doubtful after many failed attempts to make her laugh by viewing the Contract Scene) had written the viewing off as “another dumb film Chris dragged us to” - luckily the sheer absurdness saved the evening and gave us a shared uncomfortable horror.

From Stage to Screen

The obvious first step in sound film was to bring the Vaudvillians to the screen and following close on their heels were adaptations from the Stage.  Twentieth Century is a play within a movie, based on the play, in which a overbearing director tries to coerce his leading lady back to the stage after a stint in Hollywood.  Billed as one of the first Screwballs (1934) based on its fast-paced dialogue and Carole Lombard’s wild performance, TC claims a spot as the pivotal change in Hollywood comedy.  I must confess to not finding Twentieth Century all that funny, although it is a great performance by John Barrymore and worth watching for his wild acting a gestures - particularly THE IRON CURTAIN -  his transition into sound did not diminish his amazing stage presence and gesticulation.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

The other two stage adaptations we saw were The Philadelphia Story and Arsenic and Old Lace, both of which benefited from the addition of sets beyond what the Stage could hold, but both seem especially stagey.   (Neither film really fits into the Grand Arc of Hollywood comedy history, but I just thought I would mention them as films we watched.)  Philadelphia Story has some wonderful moments and interplay between Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart, but still remains one of those films that while you need to see it as a famous Hollywood moment, it is not one that I eagerly look to re-watch.  That said, the drunk scene with Jimmy and Cary is one I could watch over and over and over.

Arsenic is just a madcap farce replete with murdering old ladies, a man who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt (and runs up the stairs yelling CHARGE! as often as he gets the chance), and a Boris Karloff-look-a-like murderous mobster, Peter Loore…and Cary Grant making exhasperated faces.  While a brilliant cast and a film that I think everyone should see, I do think it is one that would be much better seen live.

Still Cringing After All These Years

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

The medium of sound allowed for perfect scripting and delivery to crack us up and not simply pratfalls.  Of course, as with any comedy, some jokes work and others fail and still others cause us to cringe as we watch fantastic stars fumble around the stage.  With the vaudeville acts and stage shows starting to give way to a new breed of Hollywood comedy based on quick wordplay and less slapstick there were bound to be films in between the transition that are neither one nor the other.  Now I know that Bringing Up Baby is one of the classics of the Screwball genre, but Emily could not take it - just one embarrassing moment after another.  She kept calling it the obvious precursor to Meet the Parents and There’s Something About Mary, movies that rely on awkward conflicts to fuel the laughter.  It was interesting to see how far back the style could be traced (especially knowing that it tanked at the box office in ‘38 - way before its time).  Grant and Hepburn have a great chemistry, but there it takes a real concentration to sit through the film, especially with Grant’s inability to take control of anything and Hepburn’s wild ditsyness.

Screwball Gold

His Girl Friday (1940)

The best of the movies we have so far viewed can be distilled down to the following criteria: leading men and ladies on an equal footing dueling with witty banter and not too much slapstick.  His Girl Friday and The Thin Man are probably my favorite of the screwball genre and keep getting better each time I return to them.  Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are a perfect match for each other in Friday, and there is just enough mayhem to keep the laughter meter going.  The Thin Man still has some of my favorite moments, not to mention one of the best characters in cinema history.  I guess I am saying a lot about myself when I say that the martini swilling husband and wife detective team of Nick and Nora Charles that never seems to get flustered (or a hangover) while locking up the case is a future I eagerly aspire to.

Both films have perfectly timed humor and Friday has the most incredible fast-paced dialogue of any film.  It is not hard to see the connections between what Howard Hawks took from directing Twentieth Century and Bringing Up Baby and was able to make perfect in Russell and Grant’s interactions. (Both were trained with both sets of lines so they could jump in and finish each other’s sentences.)  Finally with the right elements in place, the perfectly matched acting duo, witty dialog, and a script that allowed them to one up each other without relying on physical humor, Friday finally comes out as the winner of the Hawks comedy experiment.  What’s interesting is that W.S. van Dyke was able to make The Thin Man work just as well in 1934 - the same year as Twentieth Century.

In Summary

Not really being a scholarly article, there is not much in terms of a real conclusion that I am going to draw here other than there is an amazing period in the 30s where comedy was forced to reinvent itself.  We still have a decent pile of films to watch and I know there are some glaring holes in terms of oversights and some quick summation.  Feel free to tack on any film suggestions below and/or comments.