This past week, I sat down to watch Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s classic pulp noir The Killer Inside Me, hoping for a misunderstood masterpiece. The film had been much maligned for being “misogynistic” and “violent” and when I hear about films that are so divisive and controversial, it usually piques my interest – chances are, if that many people find something offensive, it’s probably not that offensive. Turns out, I was correct; the film is certainly misunderstood by most of the people who have written about it, but it’s also just as certainly not a masterpiece or even close to it. In fact, it’s pretty disappointing overall.

But the big positive of the film – the reason everyone should check it out – is that it marks the return ofCasey Affleck after a three-year layoff. It was three years ago that Affleck gave two brilliant performances in Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; his work in those films was so good that they completely changed my perspective on the work he had done prior. He plays two completely different characters in those films; in the first he’s an atypical hero with many layers and in the latter he’s a sort of atypical villain with even more layers. What I realized about Affleck when I was watching those films is that he’s never going to settle for the easy choice and he will complicate your feelings about these characters by the choices he makes.

I first remember seeing Casey Affleck in Gus Van Sant’s To Die For where he starred alongside future brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix and Nicole Kidman. Affleck was a live-wire, ready to fly off the handle at any moment. When he played a similar role in Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting, I just figured that that was who Affleck was, that he wasn’t doing much acting at all, especially in Good Will Hunting since the part was co-written by his brother Ben. But now when I look back on those films, seeing how subtle Affleck has been in his last handful of movies, they look like masterpieces of kinetic energy. He plays the character of Morgan inGood Will Hunting as such a stuttering buffoon and he plays it so well that we are convinced that it’s not acting at all.

But for me, it wasn’t until yet another Van Sant film, Gerry, that I really took notice of Affleck. Some would say it’s not really an actor’s film since it mostly involves Affleck and Matt Damonwalking through the desert, every once in a while stopping to say something unimportant about going to the “thing.” But, to me, there is no greater challenge for an actor than to try and command an almost bare screen. It’s really just Affleck, Damon and a bunch of desert. Even in Cast Away, Zemeckis allows Tom Hanks to befriend a volleyball and talk; Van Sant strips away the dialogue from Gerry, forcing Damon and Affleck to convey emotions with their facial tics and the way they stand or they way they walk. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that these were terrific performances, but I do think Affleck stood out to me because I realized that he was willing to be quiet on screen. Many actors are not so willing.

Then came Steve Buscemi’s Lonesome Jim, another film where Affleck was quiet, allowing himself to express his unhappiness and his loneliness with certain telling actions like a tiny hitch in his arm when he’s bringing a cup to his lips. His eyes are perpetually droopy, like he could not only fall asleep at any moment, but could actually just drop dead from a lack of enthusiasm about life. In other words, he is absolutely defeated, which is not an easy emotion to convey subtly.

And then there was an eye-opening performance in a terrible movie, the remake of The Last Kiss. In that film, Affleck plays a husband who is trying to make his marriage work and slowly faces the realization that if he’s truly going to make his newborn son happy, he’s going to have to extricate himself from an unhappy marriage. There are many other showy parts in the film, involving loud characters speaking at a high volume, but Affleck takes the most difficult part in the film – a nice, normal, loving husband and father – and makes it the most compelling element. In a film full of unreality, Affleck makes every scene involving his character feel painfully real.

Then came his breakout year in 2007 with Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, both terrific films and both performances were worthy of nominations, but only the latter received one. What really makes both of those portrayals so memorable is that Affleck undergoes changes throughout the course of both movies. A change in a character’s personality – from the beginning of the film to the end – is one of the most difficult tasks for an actor to be saddled with; it’s hard to make an audience believe that this change is convincing.

Most actors rely on histrionics and most roles require them to change perceptibly throughout the film. In both of those Affleck performances, he is noticeably different at the end of the film, but it’s tough to pinpoint exactly where the change occurred. It’s because there isn’t a single moment and it’s not a big change, it’s a subtle tonal shift that pushes through gradually and Affleck is a confident enough actor that he doesn’t feel the need to alert the audience by saying “look at me, this is my big moment.”

In The Assassination of Jesse James, the greatest work Affleck does is after the titular act is committed, when we see Robert Ford’s depression after the fact. We have witnessed Ford commit a cowardly act of murder for nothing more than fame, but instead of despising him for this, we truly pity him after seeing the effect of his acts. The choices that Affleck makes in his final, haunting scene are so out of the ordinary.

And that is what truly makes Casey Affleck one of the best actors today. Actors don’t have a lot of control over the lines they say or what the script commands them to do. What an actor can control is how they say those lines, how they stand, how they walk, how they carry themselves, how they drink a drink or eat their food. Acting is about choices and the great actors make difficult ones. And Affleck never makes an easy or conventional choice and as a result, his characters feel real.

The Killer Inside Me follows a sadistic deputy sheriff named Lou Ford. There were so many different ways that a role like this could be played, but Affleck makes the startling choice to be as soft-spoken and unassuming as possible. There are only three or four moments in the entire film where there is even a smidgen of emotion on his face and boy, are those big moments. But the calm way in which he approaches the role, allowing Lou Ford to seem like a decent fellow to most people, it almost suckers us into believing it too, that’s how good he is at being duplicitous.

It’s the film – and the filmmaker’s – fault that more couldn’t be done with Affleck’s performance or with the central conceit. Affleck is stranded because Winterbottom seems more interested in exploring the how-to instead of the how could. Winterbottom cheats a little bit by trying to explain away Ford’s sadist tendencies with flashbacks that pinpoint the root of the problem, but it feels a little flaccid and unformed. What I really wanted was to just see Ford live in this world a little bit more before his first rampage, allowing the character to breathe. Unfortunately, Winterbottom tries to get to the point too swiftly, showing Ford’s dark side within the first ten minutes of the film. But it’s to Affleck’s credit that he’s able to pull us back and confuse us for a bit longer. The beats of the film just feel off and there is no sense of propulsion except for Affleck’s performance, the only thing compelling us forward.

The scenes that have everyone up in arms are the scenes in which Affleck beats Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson. It’s the former that has everyone crazed as Affleck repeatedly punches Alba in the head until she is black and blue and bloody, her face mangled. What really makes the scene uncomfortable is not necessarily the act itself – which is certainly horrific – but the way in which Affleck plays the scene. He pauses a little bit between punches, like he’s relishing this moment – which, of course, he is.

(But therein lies my issue with the outcry from people claiming that this scene makes any of the filmmakers misogynistic. See, the character is a misogynistic psychopath. Just because you make a film about racism, it doesn’t make the filmmakers racist either. Sure, you could just not make the film, but then why make any art at all? Let’s just make more Smurfs movies!)

It’s too bad that Winterbottom’s build-up to that scene is a lot more interesting than the fall-out from it. The movie is pretty flat during the middle portion. But once again it’s Affleck to the film’s rescue in a scene where he ’s calmly chasing a man who has witnessed one of his murders through the town square. There is never a glimmer of doubt on Affleck’s face that he won’t get away with the crime he just perpetrated. The most amazing thing is the way Lou Ford, the character, tries to get into “character” by immediately saying to the man who witnessed this murder something along the lines of, “how could you do this?” The way in which Ford projects his own terrible act onto the witness and the way in which Affleck convincingly gets there is truly unbelievable. It’s too bad the rest of the film – and indeed, the rest of the actors – is on a different level.

Unfortunately for all of us, this is the last we’ll see of Affleck for a bit. He’s got nothing in production right now except for the documentary he directed about Joaquin Phoenix’s rap career. But Affleck is such a talent that we need to see him in front of the camera more often. A three year layoff and now at least another year more is unacceptable for me. Despite my issues with The Killer Inside Me, I have no qualms about Affleck in it. My only problem is that I want to see him again soon.

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

“Overkill is underrated.”

The above line is spoken to Liam Neeson’s character in the final third of The A-Team, a reboot/reimagining/remake/redo/reinvention/adaptation of the television show. I’m willing to bet that Joe Carnahan, the director of The A-Team, kept that line in the film as a bit of a self-reflexive joke since his film is all about overkill. But it got me to thinking about the idea of that line and its self-reflexivity: is overkill in the movies actually underrated?

Of course, the answer is no. Most movies you will see this summer have the same motto and will believe that too much is never enough. In other words, it’s not exciting enough to merely have a few scenes where our heroes hijack a plane or a helicopter and have drones firing missiles at them while one of them hangs out of the chopper and nearly plunges to his death. No, what we need is to have an army tank fall out of the chopper with parachutes attached while one of the men fires at the drones from the turrets. It’s all about topping the last action scene rather than trying to outdo other films in terms of story or characterization.

I was entertained by The A-Team, I’ll say that much. It moved quick and it was loud enough to keep me awake. But I’ve seen this movie before about a hundred times in various forms. There is not an original beat or character, it’s a paint by numbers flick. But, like many summer films these days, it seems to confuse stimuli with stimulation. Just because my eyes are drawn to the explosions on the screen does not mean that I am being moved by the images I’m seeing. Film is, indeed, a visual medium, but it’s also an aural and emotional and mental one as well. To focus your cinema solely on what images the camera can capture is to miss out on many of the other facets of what movies can offer.

The argument that is always made with summer films is this: “It’s mindless fun, just shut off your brain and enjoy yourself for two hours.” Which is basically another way of saying that overkill is underrated. Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t “shut off” my brain, it tends to keep running even when I tell it not to. So, when I see a film that defies not only the logic of the real world, but of the world that it creates, how do I tell my brain to ignore that? More importantly, if my brain recognizes that I’ve seen every beat of a movie before in different iterations, how do I tell my brain to pretend like it’s seeing something new and exciting? I have difficulty trying to fathom how someone can see these loud, dumb summer movies over and over again and not seeing a pattern emerge.

Here’s how it goes: set-up characters in a facile way, giving them all certain jobs and quirks that will define them for the rest of the film. Then, have them go on a mission in which they are double-crossed, but the villain will remain elusive despite the fact that we have a pretty good idea of who it might be. Have the heroes turn the tables on the villain and set-up a plan that will trap them and vindicate the heroes and thus setting up a large action scene – preferably at a dock or an abandoned warehouse. During this action scene, there will be large-scale destruction of public property, one of the heroes will be injured or killed, and there will be a long drawn-out fight scene where the hero will be beaten to within an inch of his life before somehow finding the strength to either a) kill the villain or b) ensnare the villain and expose his villainous ways. Then, quick scene setting up a potential sequel.

I’ve just saved you about a thousand dollars because now you’ll never have to see another summer movie again.

Of course, I’m being hyperbolic. And clearly I can’t take my own advice, since I did in fact pay to see The A-Team. And like I said earlier, I derived some enjoyment out of my time in the theater. But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. I’m a movie addict, so it’s like the equivalent of someone going to McDonald’s; you know it’s not good for you, that it’s going to taste the same today as it did yesterday, it has no nutritional value whatsoever, but it fills your stomach and it goes down easy. Well, that’s what summer movies are. The problem is, like with McDonald’s, if you eat too much of it, you start to feel pretty sick. Overkill on McDonald’s is certainly not underrated.

Since I started this column, I’ve often said that I will watch anything that comes out because I think it’s important to a) see what other people are watching and b) even the worst movies have something to teach us, even if that lesson is simply not to see that movie again. So here’s what I learned from watching The A-Team:

1) Bradley Cooper is a star. The dude is charismatic and easy to root for. If I’m a Hollywood executive, then I keep throwing star parts at him until something sticks. What I like about Cooper is that he makes interesting choices within the parts he plays, often inviting the audience to dislike him, but confident enough in his charms that he can win them back. It reminds me of Clooney before he really hit it big. I don’t know that Cooper has the depth that Clooney has or if he has the ability to carry a drama, but I know that I’d be willing to find out.

2) I like Sharlto Copley. I was not crazy about District 9, but I admired what Copley brought to it. And in The A-Team, he steals almost every scene with his manic energy. The only problem is that he’s not in the film nearly enough, often relegated to the background as an after-thought.

3) Joe Carnahan is exactly the director we thought he was and it shouldn’t be so surprising that he’s directing films like this just because his first one – Narc – was an indie flick. I could have told you from watching Narc that eventually Carnahan would wind up directing big-budget action flicks. His first film is so good because a low-budget means that you have to be inventive; when you have a ton of money, you focus less on character and more on tanks falling out of the sky. Carnahan is working with a bigger budget and is therefore less inventive. It’s not rocket science.

4) Liam Neeson’s late-career resurgence as an action hero is surprising, but not altogether unpleasant. He looks like he’s having fun in his role as Hannibal Smith in The A-Team and it looked like he was having a good time being the badass in Taken. I think these roles suit him well, but I’d still rather see him play Lincoln in Spielberg’s biopic that will probably never happen.

5) I’ve given her enough chances now and I’m comfortable saying that Jessica Biel is not a serious actress. If you look at her filmography, it’s really hard to find a film where she’s even trying to do something a little bit outside the box other than Rules of Attraction eight years ago. I had hopes for her when I heard she was starring in David O. Russell’s new film, but it looks as though that film, Nailed, might never see the light of day. It’s a shame because I think she’s got a certain magnetism that, if utilized correctly, could result in a powerful performance. But so far, haven’t seen it.

I suppose the biggest lesson I’ve learned from The A-Team is that overkill is actually overrated. And it’s not just overrated by every director who decides to make a big summer film, but it’s overrated by the audiences that flock to see films just because they have guns and explosions. The audience I was with ate up every corny line and every action scene like they’d never seen a movie before. And despite the fact that its opening weekend has been deemed a failure, The A-Team was still able to rake in about twenty-five million bucks. I’m terrible at math, but it means that millions of people in the US decided they wanted to see this film. And as long as millions of people want to see films that they’ve seen before, I’m going to have to write columns like this one.

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

I’m lucky enough to be spending a couple of weeks in Maui, so my movie-watching schedule has been somewhat disrupted so that I can snorkel and tan and all of that. And yes, I’m saying this to make you jealous. But I’m also saying this to let you know that I haven’t gotten a chance to get to theaters in a while. What I have been able to do, though, is spend time, lying on the beach, thinking about some filmmakers and actors who probably need to come back from their vacations and start making serious work again.

The interesting thing about Hollywood, for me, is that I find myself rooting for certain actors to succeed, hoping that when they finally become bankable stars that they will then get difficult films greenlit. It is to my perpetual dismay that when good actors become stars, they choose instead to attach themselves to films that don’t need them.

In other words, instead of using their newfound clout to star in passion projects, they cash in and pick the biggest blockbuster available to them. Oh sure, there are stars like Clooney, Pitt, and Damon who choose to attach themselves to either smart blockbusters or character-based work that allows them to grow. But unfortunately, this is not the career path that most choose and it’s disheartening.

Anyway, here are four powerful guys who I think need to come back from their “vacations” and get back to doing real work again.

Steven Spielberg
On Vacation Since: Munich, 2005

One of the very first columns I wrote for MCN was a passionate defense of Spielberg’s recent output, which was after Munich came out, but before the atrocity known as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I happened to be a big fan of his A.I. and I thought Catch Me if You Can was some of the best work he’d done, and I think Munich grows deeper every time I watch it. But in the five years since then, he’s only released one film and it’s a flat-out terrible one. Although, that’s not the reason I think he needs to come back from vacation.

The films that Spielberg has flirted with doing since Crystal Skull are not what I want from the man. I don’t think there is anybody in the world that is clamoring to see one of the world’s greatest technical filmmakers take on a remake of Harvey. Yet, that was the film that Spielberg was mounting. I also don’t want to see Spielberg join the hordes of 3-D nerds, teaming up with Peter Jackson for the Tin-Tin films that’s he’s been working on for a while. These flirtations, along with his remake of War of the Worlds, have me thinking that perhaps Spielberg is a much more cynical filmmaker than a passionate one. Perhaps the man isn’t necessarily out to entertain you, but would rather take known titles and give it that Spielberg touch and hope that people will turn out.

When Spielberg made Munich, I was impressed by the fact that he was willing to go to dark places and to tread difficult political ground. I thought it was the turning of a new leaf for Spielberg, that he had reached a point of success where he could just say, “you know what, I’ve made so much money, I’m just going to make the movies that matter to me.” And there’s no way that you can convince me that his latest Indiana Jones movie was as important to him as Munich or Schindler’s List. Considering the amount of time it takes for him to rally himself to direct a film, I want him to pick one that actually means something to him.

I think the movie that Spielberg absolutely must make is his Abraham Lincoln biopic that he’s been flirting with for a decade. Liam Neeson would be the perfect Lincoln, Spielberg is the perfect man for the job. Let’s get this done.

Tom Hanks
On Vacation Since: The Ladykillers, 2004

One could make the argument that Hanks was trying when he made Charlie Wilson’s War, but as much as I enjoyed that picture, very little of it had to do with Hanks and Julia Roberts, two stars who seemed to be coasting on their stardom rather than truly acting. The thing about Hanks is that he is a very gifted actor, charismatic to be sure, but he’s also had an ability to show a wide range. He’s at his best when he’s awkwardly charming, but he can be soft-spoken like he is in Saving Private Ryan or low-key and frazzled like he is in Catch Me if You Can or just flat-out magnetic and human like in Cast Away.

But with the choices Hanks is making lately, it’s hard to remember why we loved him so much to begin with. We loved him because we could relate to him. When he played a flawed character, we accepted him anyway because he was able to imbue every character with humanity and dignity. I used to watch the movie Bachelor Party all the time when I was a kid and it’s really kind of amazing the tightrope he walks in that film; he’s playing an absolute asshole. He’s crass and rude and uncouth, but he’s so damn charming that we understand why Tawny Kitaen would be smitten with him. Despite the script giving him very little evidence of it, Hanks makes sure the character has a heart. Hell, when I think of the movie Joe Versus the Volcano, I think of the tour-de-force performance Hanks gives in that movie, able to believably go from someone who is beaten down by life to someone who is invigorated, all while he travels to throw himself into a pit of lava.

So what happened? It seems like Hanks thinks that his charm will just poke through in whatever role he chooses. When he decided to tackle the role of Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, it seemed like an interesting fit. Having never read the books, I can’t tell you if he’s playing the character accurately, but I can tell you how it comes across on screen: BORING.

If there’s one thing I never thought I’d say about a Hanks performance, it would be that it was boring. He’s the guy who we watched on screen for an hour and a half talking to a volleyball, yet when he’s racing around Europe in a high-concept adventure flick, he’s completely flat. There is absolutely nothing to the character and Hanks doesn’t even try to give him a hint of a personality. If I were to ask you about the Robert Langdon character, “What defines him?” you would probably say, “Well, he’s a symbologist.” Then I’d say, “Okay, that’s what he does, but who is he?” I guarantee you’d be at a loss.

That character, combined with profoundly uninteresting Zemeckis experiment The Polar Express, has left me wondering what happened to the Hanks I know and love. His next film is one that he wrote and will direct and star in and it’s called Larry Crowne. It’s clear, based on his involvement in the creative process, that this is a film that means something to Hanks, that it’s a passion of his. I hope it’s a return to form.

Robert Downey, Jr.
On Vacation Since: Zodiac, 2007

This one is more along the lines of: please don’t continue down this path you’re going down. I’m giving Downey a lot of leeway because he’s given us a plethora of wonderful performances. But the problem with Downey now is that he’s locked into playing two characters for the next few years in Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes, now that both of those franchises turned out to be huge successes. He’s fine in both of those roles, but it’s not as difficult as the work that he used to do.

Compare what he does in those films to what he accomplished in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang or Zodiac. The degree of difficulty for those performances is exponentially higher than what he does in Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes, franchises with built-in fanbases. In those films, all he has to do is look cool and say some funny lines while the majority of the audience waits for the next action scene.

There are some who will point to Tropic Thunder as one of the high points of his career. I will humbly disagree. I don’t think it’s a bad film or a bad performance, but it’s a one-note film and a one-note performance. He plays a white actor playing a black man, complete with black-face. It is, without a doubt, a huge risk. Or so it seemed. The way it’s played actually seems to repel controversy rather than court it. It takes a controversial and funny idea and then makes it as safe and as boring as possible. The joke doesn’t go anywhere you didn’t expect it to go. Downey mostly plays the same note repeatedly. And for me, the joke wore thin.

Either way, I look at the slate of films Downey is attached to: Due Date, the Todd Phillips movie with Zach Galifianakis, which I’m sure will be funny; although I wonder whether it’s the best use of Downey’s enormous talents, we’ll see on that. Then he’s got another Iron Man movie, another Sherlock Holmes movie and The Avengers super movie coming out. That’s a lot of time devoted to blockbuster films. For those who love seeing him play those characters, that’s great for them. For those of us who enjoy seeing Downey bring his manic genius to more intimate, character-based films, it’s a disappointment.

Johnny Depp
On Vacation Since: Sometime in 2004 (Secret Window, The Libertine, Finding Neverland)

It breaks my heart to see Depp this way. What hurts the most is the fact that he’s clearly still trying, it’s just that he’s trying with the wrong projects. It’s funny to see him play Michael Jackson in a remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but is it the best use of his time and talents? He’s clearly stretching with Sweeney Todd by singing, but he doesn’t bring the same intensity to that role that he’s brought to others, like he’s handcuffed by the project he picked.

The two things that have hurt Depp the most are: 1) staying loyal to Tim Burton, who clearly has no interest in being the artist he once was, instead spending his time remaking films that didn’t need to be remade and 2) continuing to play Jack Sparrow.

I want to delve into that second part a bit more. When he played Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean flick, it was a revelation. Everyone was stunned by the wacky performance he gave, except for those of us who’ve been following him since Edward Scissorhands and Cry-Baby. We knew that despite his good looks, he relished playing oddballs like the title character in Ed Wood or Hunter Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

But when Pirates became a blockbuster, people saw what Depp was capable of. So, of course, the studio ordered two more Pirates movies and Depp continued playing a character that was interesting and weird the first time, but not as interesting or weird the more we saw him. Now that he’s attached to playing the character a fourth time, it’s clear that it’s a money-grab.

At this point, I want Depp to stop playing Jack Sparrow and stop working with Tim Burton. I didn’t like his performance in Public Enemies nor did I think the movie was worth a damn, but I thought “at least he’s working with a good filmmaker.” On his slate, I see that he’s working with The Lives of Others director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck on the film The Tourist with Angelina Jolie, so that sounds interesting. Then there’s the Hunter Thompson adaptation Rum Punch directed by Bruce Robinson.

Maybe Depp is finally cashing in and making the films he wants to make, but if it comes at the price of more Pirates movies, I don’t know if I can handle it. I suppose I just miss the guy who played multiple roles in Before Night Falls and I hope he’s done with his vacation in Blockbusterville soon.

Noah Forrest
June 7, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

Alejandro Amenabar’s excellent Agora opened this past week in limited release and I can’t help but wonder why a film that resembles Gladiator (except smarter and more entertaining) is being dumped by its distributor at the end of May rather than given a wide-release on thousands of screens.

I thought the only reason this could be so is if the film was horrifyingly awful, but it’s not. In fact, it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year. So the only explanation for why a film that has an epic-scope but is being released as if it had an indie-focus is because of its about religion versus science.

The film is about astronomer/philosopher Hypatia (played perfectly by Rachel Weisz), a woman who was seen as an intellectual equal amongst the men in Alexandria in 391 A.D. She teaches a class at the Library of Alexandria about her theories on whether or not the sun revolves around the Earth or vice versa. In her class is the young, charming Orestes (Oscar Isaac) who is after her heart. At home is her smart and loyal slave Davus (Max Minghella) who has loved her for a long time. Outside the walls of the library, however, there is a war shaping up between the pagans and the Christians. The pagans have been in power for a long time, but the Christians are growing in numbers and are growing more violent by the day.

I’ll stop with the plot description now. The truth of the matter is that this is not a film about Christianity being inherently evil, per se. It’s about the mob mentality that can erupt when there is a combination of 1) lack of education, 2) poverty and 3) an influx of any religion. The movie illustrates how easy it is for the weak-willed to fall prey to fundamentalism and extremism (starting to sound familiar?). It’s not that religion is evil, it’s that it can be used as a tool for intolerance. This is illustrated best by the scene in Agora when the Christians ransack the library, destroying books and information. For what purpose? Because it is of no use for them to read books when they have the only book that matters.

I was especially struck by a scene in which Cyril (Sami Samir), the pope-like figure in Alexandria, asks Orestes to kneel before the bible that Cyril holds. When Orestes doesn’t kneel, the crowd turns on him, despite the fact that Orestes is a Christian. The reason he doesn’t kneel before the book that he believes in? Cyril has just called Hypatia a witch. For Orestes to kneel before the book in that moment wouldn’t just show that Orestes has faith in the bible, it would also show that Orestes agrees with everything else that Cyril has said.

This is a magnificent example of how religion can be twisted and poisoned depending on the person teaching and interpreting it. The logic becomes faulty if you believe every word out of the mouth of a sermonizer. When Orestes is escorted out of the crowd, he screams over and over again “I’m as Christian as you are” while stones are being hurled at him. Does this mean he is or isn’t a Christian? Is it Christian to stone someone who doesn’t believe the same way you do? Should any religion tolerate such a thing if we believe the words of their holy books?

Questions like these arise while watching Agora, but that is not to say that the film is just a polemic about why religion is evil. This wasn’t made by Christopher Hitchens (although I’d love to see that film). I think the target in Amenabar’s film isn’t really religion at all, it’s intolerance. D.W. Griffith may have used the title first, but it would be an apt one for this film as well. The character of Hypatia is not so much an atheist as she just doesn’t have an interest in religion. She is more fascinated by science. At one point a character says that she believes in “nothing” and she replies, “I believe in philosophy.” This scene illustrates perfectly the misconception about atheism, that if one doesn’t believe in god then one doesn’t believe in anything. Later on in the film, she tells someone, “you don’t question what you believe. I must.” That’s essentially the rallying cry of every agnostic in the world.

But look, this is not just a “smart” film about people in large rooms discussing religion (although there are a few scenes where that does happen). Rather, this is a film with epic scenes of battle and bloodshed. It might not have Russell Crowe fighting a tiger in an arena, but there are some pretty monumentally cool scenes here. It’s just that while other sword-and-sandal flicks might revel in the destruction in order to get the audience to say “oh cool, he just stabbed that guy,” this is a film that doesn’t glorify battle.

When it becomes apparent that the pagans will have to fight the Christians, Hypatia protects her students, saving them from the horrors they surely would have faced. And as audience, we are thinking, “thank goodness.” In any other film that is set in this era and deals with these circumstances, we would have been focusing more on those that did fight and what heroes they were. In Agora, the heroes are the ones who don’t react violently.

It’s not a perfect film. The love stories are not essential to the film, although it helps to deepen Hypatia as a character. She is someone who eschews the love of men. In fact, at one point she hands one of her suitors a cloth with her menstrual blood on it. She cannot understand how there could be any beauty in love since there is no beauty in her menstrual cycle. But the love story also is used to introduce us to the character of Davus who becomes radicalized when he becomes a Christian. He is used as a way of showing the audience how these things happen; he’s a slave, but he has more than so many others and he can help people by giving them the bread he has (although never mind that the bread isn’t his to give).

Rachel Weisz is truly astounding in this film, as she often is. Hypatia is not an easy character to play; she must be idealistic yet intelligent, a dreamer but a realist. Weisz is such a wonderful presence, so charismatic and likable that although her character is not as fleshed-out as she could be, she is still imbued with a certain vigor and humanism. The film doesn’t portray her as martyr, though, which makes sense because atheists don’t believe in martyrs anyway. Rather, they show the hypocrisy inherent in her secular humanism: she might be nice to her slaves, but she still has slaves. Hypatia is a good person overall, but she’s also a slave-owner.

The acting by the rest of the cast is all pretty spot-on, with Oscar Isaacs proving to be quite a commanding presence.

SPOILER WARNING

The final scene between he and Weisz is heartbreaking: Orestes is trying to figure out a way to beat Cyril, who has taken over the city. It is decided that everyone must be baptized, including Orestes’ closest advisor Hypatia. Hypatia refuses to do this and Orestes tells her that if she would just do it, then they could figure out a way to defeat Cyril, to which she replies, “Oh, Orestes. He’s already won.” Wow. Just wow. This scene is the most note-perfect illustration of why we cannot give in to religious intolerance and fundamentalism. But, truly, watch Weisz and Isaacs in this scene and how they make us feel what they are going through. Terrific work.

se

Sex and the City is one of the great disappointments for me. I’m referring not to the TV show or the movie, but the franchise as a whole – taken as one complete story. Disappointment only comes when there is the promise of something greater and the first few seasons of Sex and the City promised something wonderful, incisive, hilarious and poignant. I am an unabashed fan and admirer of the show, especially since it helped me gains some insight into the female psyche through my formative years.

As I was becoming sexually active, here was a show that proudly featured women not as sex objects, but as people with sexual wants and needs. More than that, the four main characters were single women in their mid-thirties who were – more or less – happy and proud of that fact. It was a show that boldly stated that strong, independent women exist and that they don’t need a man to prove their worth; hell, they were worth more than most men. And yes, women could be perpetual bachelorettes and be content with their lives thank you very much.

That is, until the show completely forgot its original mission statement and paired off all the central characters with their dream men. I’ve seen every single episode of the show multiple times (and I won’t pretend like it was just because I was “forced” to by some girl, I actually watched them on my own repeated times), so this is an informed opinion I assure you. What started off as a narrative about the freeing power of being by yourself (with the help of your equally independent friends), became a show that ends with all four of our heroines in lasting, committed relationships. It seemed like the creators forgot that the real happy ending would not be to have all the characters leaning on their men, but leaning on one another.

This, of course, was the least of the problems with the end of the series. The bigger problem is that the characters became exaggerated versions of themselves. Watch the first season of the show and you’ll notice that, despite the outlandish situations, these women all seem real and complete. But then as the show goes on into its later seasons, each of the characters becomes an embodiment of a certain stereotype of women and plays to only one emotion or character trait. So, Carrie becomes obsessed solely with shoes (and clothes) and is playing the “materialist”, Samantha makes everything about sex and is therefore the “slut”, Charlotte is the “prude,” and Miranda is the cynical “careerist.” If you watch the later seasons of the show, it seems like the writers lost the voices of the characters; basically, they all sound exactly the same except if you were writing for Carrie, you’d insert the word “shoes” in there somewhere or if you’re writing for Samantha, then you throw the word “vibrator” or “anal” in there. And instead of sounding and acting like women, they act and sound more like wealthy, stylish gay men.

It may have started off as a more reality-based show, but it became a fantasy about not only being in love, but about being rich. Yes, rich. This was never a show about class issues, it was about how these are four successful women who get by on their own and the different varieties of men that they met. Yet, isn’t it funny how three of the four women wind up with men who are more wealthy than them, therefore in a greater position of power? Carrie winds up with Mr. Big, a Donald Trumpish business man (this is after she dates a novelist, a world-renowned artist and a well-to-do furniture maker), Samantha winds up with Smith (just an actor when they met, but he eventually becomes a movie star), and Charlotte winds up with Harry the powerful and wealthy attorney. Even Steve, Miranda’s husband, is not just a bartender by the end of the show, but a bar owner. Would it be that terrible for all four women to be in a financially more powerful position than the men they wind up with? Wouldn’t that speak more to the original intent of the show?

Still, despite everyone getting the traditional happy endings (the show having become like a really long romantic comedy), they decided to forge ahead with a movie. I had a lot of trepidation about the movie, wondering how the characters would translate to the screen, but more curious about how there would be a movie. They gave everybody a happy ending, so to make the movie, I knew they would have to create different crises to shake up that happy ending just so they could give all the characters a different happy ending.

And how did they shake things up? Well, they had Big leave Carrie at the altar, only to change his mind five minutes later, but by then she’s so upset and humiliated she leaves. Then they don’t talk for a while, which is pretty ridiculous since I think I’d want to have a conversation with a person who left me at the altar, but okay. Then they did one of the most unforgivable things: they had Steve cheat on Miranda. I’m sorry, but anyone who has ever watched the show would know that the character of Steve would never, ever do that. They had built Steve up throughout his seasons on the show as someone who just out and out worshipped Miranda. He loved her so fully and truly that I just don’t buy that he would cheat on her, it’s not in the character that they created. And that was one of my biggest fears realized: that they would forgot about the characters they created and worry about the contrivances of the plot. Also, Samantha and Smith inexplicably break up by the end of the movie.

The movie did such a swift job of ruining so much of what had come before. The characters didn’t talk like people, but instead like caricatures. Charlotte screams at the top of her lungs about fifty times too many; they have Samantha “returning” from LA every five minutes to the screams and gasps of her girlfriends who seem to see Samantha just as regularly as they did; and Carrie tries on wedding dresses for ten minutes with a voiceover instructing us which designers are responsible for the dress, like the most expensive commercial for wedding dresses. Miranda was always my favorite character, the one who is most consistently real from the beginning of the series to the end of the first movie (in large part thanks to Cynthia Nixon’s acting), but her forgiving Steve also didn’t strike me as something in her nature.

Look, real people have foibles and idiosyncrasies and sometimes they do things that are out of character. But when you’ve spent six seasons building characters, the audience eventually gets to the point where they understand them enough to know how they’re going to react. Or at least, that’s what it should be. That doesn’t make it predictable, it makes it comforting, it makes it feel like we know these people. Look at Lost, for example, it’s a show that is unbelievably unpredictable, but if you tell me a scenario and say that Kate is in that scenario, I have a pretty good idea of what she’ll do. And it should be the same for the characters of Sex and the City, but their voices are now hollow and they move where the writers want them to move instead of organically.

It also doesn’t help that over the course of the show, the main heroine becomes more and more unlikable. Carrie is not a nice person. She is one of the most self-involved and uncaring people in the history of television by the time the series ends. She cares solely about her issues despite whatever is going on in her friends’ lives. Watch the episode where Charlotte gets engaged and Carrie gets dumped by Jack Berger when he leaves a post-it note. Charlotte is happy that she’s engaged and she’s discussing it, but Carrie makes it about the fact that she’s broken up with the umpteenth boyfriend. I’m gonna go ahead and say that Charlotte’s got the more interesting story there.

All of this is my way of saying that Sex and the City 2 looks awful. Part of why it looks awful is the fact that removing the “city” from the narrative is a terrible idea. The fifth main character in the show was New York City and to take the girls and have them go to Abu Dhabi is just idiotic. Nobody wants to see the Sex and the City girls remake Ishtar, but more than that, it reeks of “I don’t know what to do with them.” The first movie was so successful that a sequel had to be made, despite the fact that the characters have reached a dead end.

There is nowhere to go with these ladies that we haven’t gone before. Just putting them in a different city or a different country and bringing back old problems (like Aidan for Carrie) doesn’t mean the characters are actually pushing forward and growing and changing. Nothing has changed with these women for a long time and nothing will. Now it’s just an event for people to go to the movie theater and see what Carrie is wearing. These great characters have been reduced to little more than mannequins, the narrative nothing more than an elaborate red carpet show.

I’ll always remember the show fondly, despite my issues with it. I think overall there was more good than bad contained in its episodes. But its original mission statement has long since been forgotten, it’s not longer a show about real independent women. Instead it’s a show that reinforces what romantic comedies have taught us for years: ladies, without a man in your life, you’ve got nothing and you’ll be unhappy.

I hope I’m proven wrong, but this story has been derailing for a while now. What upsets me most is that I know so many people are going to show up to cheer on the train wreck.

Noah Forrest
May 24, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

One of the first few columns that I wrote for Movie City News, way back in 2007, was about Ridley Scott and how I felt he was overrated. I look back at that column now and I can see that I’ve improved as a writer since then, that my points could have been stronger, etc. But I think the basic foundation of the piece was solid. It was an opinion piece, like all of my columns are, and I think I made a solid effort to go through Ridley Scott’s filmography and express my opinions about his oeuvre in less than 3,000 words. I expected a dozen or so e-mails, as I usually received, but instead I seemed to have unleashed hell.

I knew Ridley Scott was a revered filmmaker to some movie fans – some of my best friends are Ridley Scott fans! – but I didn’t realize he was such a sacred cow that to say that the man behind 1492: Conquest of Paradise was anything less than a genius was blasphemous. A large portion of the e-mails I got at the time were along the lines of “I agree, glad someone said it,” but there were more than a few that were vicious in their attacks on me, often using my age as a way to refute my claims – of course a 24 year old can’t appreciate the genius of Legend! – and it got nasty. One fellow even wrote to my boss and told him to fire me and then proceeded to list all the reasons why I was “wrong” in my opinion and why I should be struck by lightning.

All of this is my way of saying: villagers, grab your pitchforks because I’m about to tackle your hero once again.

I saw Ridley Scott’s tired Robin Hood this past weekend and I was underwhelmed. It’s not a bad movie. Scott rarely makes bad films, just frequently uninspired ones. I went into it, like I go into every movie (even Sir Ridley Scott’s), with the hope that it will be the greatest film I’ll ever see. Even when I say that I want to hate something, I really don’t. I want to love everything. So, I don’t derive some sick pleasure from seeing a Ridley Scott film and having him reaffirm my beliefs. I want him to prove me wrong so that I could write a long mea culpa because now I finally get him.

I just see very little evidence that Ridley Scott is a more gifted filmmaker than many others who do what he does (like, say, his brother Tony). That doesn’t make him terrible, it doesn’t even make him mediocre, it just makes him overrated. I think he is overrated, by which I mean: he’s held in high-esteem by most critics and film fanatics but I think this is without merit. That doesn’t mean that I think he’s a bad filmmaker. He’s worlds beyond someone like Brett Ratner, for sure. But he has been coasting on Alien and Blade Runner for almost three decades now. The former is a true classic, the latter is silly to me but is loved by sci-fi geeks all over the world and I’ve accepted that. But he hasn’t made anything since those films that could be considered game-changing. Even Gladiator was just an updated sword and sandals flick, not exactly a re-invention of the wheel.

(Digression: Gladiator won Best Picture the year it was released, which is still a tragedy to me. The acting is all over-the-top, which would be fine for a film in this genre, except for the fact that Scott seems to be trying to bring realism into the picture. It was a fun summer flick that people remembered going to and being entertained by. Which is fine, it succeeds on that level for some people. But that does not make it a great film or a film worthy of winning Best Picture at the Oscars. People remember the scenes where Crowe bellows at the crowd and fights a tiger, but those same folks gloss over the fact that the film is too long and there are a lot of scenes of trite dialogue being spouted while the audience goes out for popcorn in between action scenes.

There is an absence of elegance to the film overall, no matter how many times we see Crowe’s hand gliding across the tall grass. Images like that don’t give a film meaning, they are just images. They need to be imbued with meaning by the emotions of the characters. And the characters don’t have real “emotions,” they just do what the plot tells them to. More than anything, what does Ridley Scott do in this film that makes it better because of his involvement? Sure, it looks amazing, but directing is about more than making things look amazing.

He’s the guy in charge of the finished product, how it’s edited, what it looks like, the acting, the flow, etc. Is Gladiator a bad film because it’s too long, pretentious and filled with over-the-top performances? No. It’s not a bad film. Is it Ridley Scott’s fault that it’s too long, pretentious and filled with over-the top performances? Absolutely. It’s just a film that is rated too highly by many folks. It’s fine for what it is, but for me it was ultimately kind of forgettable. If Scott is a great director, then he should be elevating it beyond being something similar to Braveheart. End of Gladiator rant.)

But lately, it seems like Scott doesn’t even care.

Body of Lies had Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe and a script by William Monahan. I was ready to love it because I know that Scott, while overrated, is competent enough to make things look decent. But a large part of directing is helping your actors to make choices. DiCaprio and Crowe are excellent in almost everything, so I understand that you might want to let them run wild, but Ridley Scott is supposed to be a respected filmmaker at this point and has the clout to say something like:

“Hey Leo, I know you really want to do this Southern accent for no real reason because you feel like acting but it’s not really important and it might be a little distracting for our audience. We just want the story to run as smoothly as possible. And Russell, that’s great that you’re such a committed actor that you want to gain a bunch of weight for this particular role, but it doesn’t really add anything to the character. Being slightly overweight is not an acting choice that helps the movie in any real way and I would prefer if you chose a more subtle method of acting.”

Instead, in that movie, it seemed like Scott was very busy fiddling with the camera and as a result, the performances feel disjointed. The movie fails in its look as well, which is unpleasant and kinetic, but it fails first and foremost because it strands its actors. More to the point, I think Scott stranded his actors by allowing them to make choices that were more about them than the film. In other words, sometimes even the best basketball players don’t know that they shouldn’t take thirty shots a game and they need a strong coach to rein them in and get them to play more of a team game. In Body of Lies, Leo and Russell are trying to be MVPs instead of trying to win a championship and it was Ridley Scott’s job to get them to keep their eyes on the prize.

But the biggest problem with Body of Lies is also the biggest problem with Robin Hood and it’s something I never thought I’d say about a Ridley Scott film (other than 1492): it’s boring. As I look back on some of his recent output, though, I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised by this. For the past decade, almost every single one of Ridley Scott’s films have been twenty minutes too long, filled with shots that are beautifully framed but contain nothing that moves the plot forward.

The story of Robin Hood, just like the story in Gladiator, is not really that complicated. Or, it shouldn’t be. We just need reasons to like the characters, to root for them to succeed, and hopefully have a few action scenes that compel us forward. I understand that most Robin Hood stories deal tangentially with the Crusades, but we spend way too much time on them in this iteration. Beyond that, the entire film is a first act to a more interesting story. It seems like the film is really two hours of exposition leading up to the beginning of a fascinating film that doesn’t exist. You could say that that’s the fault of the story, or of the screenwriter, but Scott is the director and has enough clout at this point in his career to point the film in the direction he wants. He had a say in what story he told and this is the story he decided to tell, so the blame does rest with him ultimately.

Speaking of which, I was much more interested in the idea of this film when it was called Nottingham because that was a story I’d never seen told before. And there was the interesting twist of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham being the same person. That sounds like a reason to update the Robin Hood tale, a new take on old material. But just another plain old Robin Hood story, even an origin tale? At least the Kevin Costner one – you know, the one where his accent completely disappears halfway through – was trying to be fun. Scott’s version seems to be saying, “this isn’t a fun Robin Hood, this is the real, serious Robin Hood.” Except for the fact that there is no real Robin Hood, so purposefully trying to bring real-world stakes to a folk tale seems pretentious.

I don’t really fault Scott that much when his films fails, though, nor do I think he takes anything off the table when he signs on to do a film. I just think he doesn’t really add anything either. As a result, he will always make a movie that will be exactly as good as it would be with or without him, and no more. He’s a league-average filmmaker, not a visionary artist.

Real artists – like P.T. Anderson or Spike Lee or Lukas Moodysson – wouldn’t sign on to do a Robin Hood movie. Or, if they got paid a fortune to do it, they would make sure it was imbued with something original and unique; they fine-tune it and wouldn’t be afraid to get messy and change things around. In other words, they would make, even of an unoriginal tale, a vision that was uniquely theirs. I don’t think Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood has any vision whatsoever. It’s just a tale told. And not particularly well.

Ridley Scott defenders will always point to the “look” of his films as proof of why he’s great. Well, the “look” of Robin Hood is exactly the same as the “look” of Kingdom of Heaven, so that must make him an auteur, right? Not exactly, since the look of both of those films is similar to the look of something like Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur which is similar to the look of something like Braveheart or going further back, Excalibur. In other words, highly stylized depictions of medieval England all have the same sheen. Know what else this movie looks like? Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. That’s right, the Kevin Costner Robin Hood.

My favorite of Ridley Scott’s films (besides the great Alien) are Black Hawk Down and Matchstick Men. I don’t think either of them are brilliant masterpieces, but they are fine films that are executed perfectly. They look great, to be sure, but they’re also about something. And more than that, the looks of the film deepen our appreciate for what happens on the screen rather than just having swooping camera shots to “wow” us.

Black Hawk Down takes us down to the street level of a modern firefight in a way that had never really been portrayed on screen in such a thrilling way. Scott’s style in the film obscure the actors’ faces often, which doesn’t make it easy to know exactly what’s happening, which is a flaw. But I think it’s a useful flaw, making us understand the chaotic nature of being in a foreign country surrounded by gunfire. And with Matchstick Men, I was impressed by the fact that Scott was willing to step aside and allow the story to unfold naturally. It’s a character piece and Scott allows the characters to stay front and center, with Nicolas Cage and Sam Rockwell’s eccentricities given room to play.

Know what other Ridley Scott movie I really like? A Good Year. It’s nothing wonderful, but it looks beautiful and it’s fun. That last word is a big one because not many of Scott’s films are fun, even the ones that should be. There is a decided lack of fun in Robin Hood or American Gangster or Gladiator, films that should be enjoyable to watch in certain parts. Instead, they all feel cold.

The one thing that A Good Year has going for it, that elevates it, is its warmth. Instead of feeling removed from the characters and their plights, we feel close to them and close to the action. In other words, less wide shots and more close-ups. It’s probably my favorite Crowe performance in a Ridley Scott movie because he’s allowed to have fun and, more than that, he’s allowed to grow as a character. Most of the folks populating Scott’s films remain the same from start to finish. But with those three films – Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, and A Good Year – I thought I might be warming up to Ridley Scott. Alas, his last three films have been big-budget, bloated films that felt cold. I wonder if the critical drubbing of A Good Year hurt Scott enough to make him return to what audiences seem to love.

I want to go back to Scott’s handling of actors, though, because I don’t think Russell Crowe’s collaborations with him have been particularly fruitful for the actor. Crowe’s best performances have all been with other directors (L.A. Confidential with Curtis Hanson; Master and Commander with Peter Weir; and The Insider with Michael Mann), yet he keeps returning to Scott. Is it because he won the Oscar for Gladiator? Because Crowe wasn’t so great in that film, especially not compared to his other performances with better filmmakers. Gladiator consisted of him yelling a lot and fighting people and had a complete absence of subtlety or nuance. What you see was what you got with him; when the character felt something, we knew it immediately because Crowe would express it by exaggerating the emotion.

But to look at the bigger picture, has there ever been a great performance in a Ridley Scott film? There have definitely been good ones because he has worked with great actors like Susan Sarandon, Jeff Bridges and Joaquin Phoenix. But, I don’t think any of them are all-time great performances. The closest would probably be Nicolas Cage in Matchstick Men, which was a truly terrific portrayal and Ridley Scott wisely let Cage run wild with his tics. Sigourney Weaver in Alien was good, but the character truly became iconic in the sequel. If half of directing is coaxing great performances from your actors, then what does it say about a filmmaker who hasn’t gotten many objectively amazing performances from his casts?

Look, you can hate me for having this opinion of Ridley Scott. Clearly, there are a lot of people that will defend the man for every mistake he makes, but I don’t see how you can defend Robin Hood. More than that, there is a basic disconnect between me and Ridley Scott fans because I am not seeing the greatness that they’re seeing. He’s got about eighty movies in the pipeline, maybe one of those will be the masterpiece that turns me around. But so far, I remain unconvinced.

Okay, commence with the hate mail — or better yet, the reasoned arguments to convince me I’m wrong about Ridley Scott …but, please, avoid the personal attacks this time.

Noah Forrest
May 17, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

That’s a bit of a misleading header, since the film was actually released last year, but it’s still true. I’m betting most of you folks never saw the movie since it was in and out of theaters so quickly, but you’re in luck because it was just released on DVD and Blu-Ray this past Tuesday. I’m talking of Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, his finest film since and possibly since The Conversation. That’s high praise, for sure, but I think the film has earned it.

The film follows a young man named Bennie who goes to Argentina to see his long-lost older brother named Tetro, who has been living for years in Buenos Aires. Tetro is a writer, but he never shows anyone his work. Both of the boys are the offspring of a famous composer (played by Klaus Maria Brandauer) who rules the roost and takes what he wants. He remarks at one point, “There is room for only one genius in this family.” Perhaps, we think, that’s why Tetro got the hell out of there.

I placed Coppola’s masterpiece on my year-end Top Ten list last year. I had it at number four, in fact. I think if I was going to do the list over again, I would place it even higher; I might even put it number one. It’s grown that much in my estimation as the months have gone by. Critics have referred to the film as “operatic” or “melodramatic” and I think they’ve used those words to dismiss it, as if realism is the only way to tell a story. I’m a big of realist films myself, but Tetro winds up hitting at real truths by telling its story boldly and with broad strokes. But those brushstrokes belong to a true artist and Coppola has returned to form.

Although, to be completely honest, I was one of the five people who actually loved Youth Without Youth. I found that its time-bending story was a fascinating experiment that sucked me in because of Tim Roth’s committed performance. It’s also a film that, like Tetro, seems intensely personal to the filmmaker, as it’s about a man who is struck by lightning and gets a second chance. Perhaps Coppola feels similarly struck by creative lightning and now has a second chance at the career he truly wanted from the beginning. Tetro was apparently even more personal to the filmmaker, who was inspired by his relationship with his father and by his father’s relationship with his uncle. Coppola said about Tetro: “Nothing in it actually happened, but it’s all true.”

This is a film about brothers and it’s also a film about fathers and sons. It’s about the promises we make in those relationships and how those promises – whether they are fulfilled, or especially if they aren’t – come to define who we are. When Tetro leaves, he writes a note to Bennie saying that he would come back for him one day. When Bennie finds Tetro, Bennie is still clinging to the hope that Tetro wants him around, that Tetro would have come back one day. The other interesting aspect of all of this is: how does it feel to be the brother who is left behind? And, also, how could Tetro leave Bennie behind with their father?

In a strange way, this film reminded me a lot of The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson’s masterpiece about three brothers traveling through India hoping to find enlightenment. Tetro is about brothers as well and it’s also about a journey in a foreign land. But the journey is much more introspective in Coppola’s film. It’s really a journey towards unearthing the secrets of a family, the ones that are painful, the ones that people make art about rather than deal with.

The intimacy of this film is something that sticks with me as well. It’s tightly focused on three characters for most of the running time, with a fourth proving important as well. There is a big ensemble behind the main actors, as well, and they all have their parts to play and we grow to like and understand the rest of the gang. But it’s truly a tale about these two men, trying desperately to have a different relationship than their father had with his brother. That kind of intimacy, that kind of focus, is so important when you’re telling a story about siblings because nobody really knows you like a sibling can. And the relationship between Bennie and Tetro, the love that Tetro has for Bennie, is threatening to Tetro. He’s frightened to death of his love for Bennie because when you love someone that much, more than you can possibly love someone who isn’t your blood, it makes you that much more vulnerable. And Tetro, as we’ve learned, is someone who runs away from that kind of vulnerability, preferring to leave those kinds of emotions locked up in his journal.

If for no other reason, see Tetro because it has a breakout performance by Alden Ehrenreich as Bennie. Many folks have remarked that Ehrenreich is the “new DiCaprio.” Well, I don’t like that comparison and it’s not because DiCaprio isn’t a fantastic actor. I don’t like the comparison because it puts a ceiling on Ehrenreich and based on his performance in Tetro, I think there is no ceiling for him. If he were a rookie athlete, I would say that his upside his incredible and that he has all the tools to be a superstar. Just watch him on-screen, one of the remost charismatic young men since River Phoenix, and you’ll see just how magnetic he is. Mark my words, given the opportunity, he will be one of the best young actors we have.

I don’t want to take anything away from Vincent Gallo in the title role either. Gallo has had such a fascinating career, taking a circuitous route to being the lead in a Coppola film. I admire Gallo as a filmmaker – Buffalo ’66 and The Brown Bunny are nothing if not envelope-pushing and full of vitality – but I had never been particularly drawn to him as an actor. His acting style can be abrasive and off-putting, but in Tetro it works. He’s angry and tortured as many of his characters are, but here it’s because he’s an artist and a genius. He’s pushing people away because of a deep-seeded issue that he has. There is a reason behind angst. And when we find out that reason, oh boy it knocked the wind out of me. This is a film where the twist is not integral to the enjoyment of the film, but man does it help.

Did I also mention that this is one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen? The black and white cinematography is stunningly gorgeous, the smoke from cigarettes billowing in the air like nothing I’ve seen, masking the actors’ faces, giving a dream-like quality to the proceedings. It’s as if Coppola saw Antonioni’s L’avventura a dozen times and decided, “I’m going to try and do that.” And not only does he effectively get the same sheen, but he improves upon it. This is black and white photography that is so crisp that it’s almost like I could touch it. Every line on the actors’ faces is clear and it gives the talent the largest possible canvas for them to paint on. It makes every performance better because we can so clearly intuit what they are feeling. This is a transporting film and Buenos Aires has never looked more inviting. I could easily throw this on before I went to sleep every night and dream of the images I’d just seen.

I’ve spoken a lot about the acting and the way the film looks and used a lot of platitudes to describe the movie, but why exactly is this film so amazing? Well, I just think of a flashback scene where Tetro’s girlfriend Miranda (played wonderfully and subtly by Maribel Verdu) recounts how she first encountered Tetro in a mental institution. Tetro was roaming around in a daze, constantly clutching his large manuscript to his chest, keeping it close to his heart. And while this is an image and an idea that is blunt in its symbolism, it’s a powerful one for anybody who has ever created anything. Art to an artist is something very close to your heart, something that you not only feel connected to, but something you feel protective of. And that protectiveness of his art – and his art is his way of expressing his inner turmoil (art = heart) – is a self-defense mechanism for Tetro, and indeed for most artists. We use our art, our writing, our filmmaking, as a means of expressing something we don’t know how to express otherwise and we clutch it tightly when we have nothing else.

That scene did it for me. When I think back on that scene, I am filled with joy. And watching it unfolding before me when I first saw it, I was mesmerized. See, it’s not just the gorgeous cinematography, it’s the way that photography helps us to see these characters and this place more clearly. It’s not just the fantastic acting, it’s that the acting helps us to see some kind of truth. It’s not just the writing, it’s the way in which the writing strives to explain something that is fundamentally unexplainable. The film might not be perfect, but it’s perfect to me. And I think it’s a movie that demands to be seen by everyone and rewatched by those who have seen it before. This is amazing filmmaking, people —  and if you disagree then I’d love to hear why.

Noah Forrest
May 10, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

SPOILER ALERT: This column contains spoilers for the movie The Human Centipede.

This weekend I saw a horror movie and it wasn’t the needless remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Instead, I decided to flip on my movies on demand and watch The Human Centipede. I’d heard a lot about this film, about how controversial it was and how some audience members were sickened and various film writers are getting up in arms and on their high horses about the content of the film. So, I needed to investigate and I made sure I did so on an empty stomach, just in case.

Unfortunately, the anticipation of something scary – or at least, sickening – turned out to be unnecessary. Ultimately, I’m left a little baffled by the film; more accurately, I’m baffled by the reaction to it.

This is what people are going crazy about? It’s just a schlocky B-grade horror flick that blatantly rips off the Hostel concept – a concept, by the way, that I was never a fan of to begin with. I could understand, if the film was high art or if it was truly gratuitous or even if it was mildly effective as a horror film, how people could have had such a strong reaction. But it’s really like watching a campy flick from the ’70s that you happen to catch on cable one night and continue to watch out of morbid curiosity and then fall asleep watching because it was silly.

If you don’t know by now, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is a film about two American women visiting Germany. There is a brief mention that perhaps the women are porn actresses, which has absolutely no bearing on anything and is never mentioned again. They’re headed to a club, but their car breaks down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere (this never happens in horror movies!) and eventually find the house of Dr. Heiter.

He is creepy from the first glance, but the girls decide to go into his house anyway even though he doesn’t do anything that resembles normal human behavior. Before long, he has drugged them and they wake up strapped to gurneys and he explains to them – and Katsuro, a man who only speaks Japanese – that he is going to connect all of them through their gastric system. Apparently he used to separate conjoined twins and then became deranged somewhere along the way and decided it would be cool to see people connected ass to mouth. Somehow he terms this a “human centipede,” although I’m not sure that’s what I’d call them. Anyway, our “hero” is the girl in the middle.

And yes, to answer the question on everyone’s mind, there IS a scene where Katsuro (the “lead” part of the centipede) has to empty his bowels and when there’s a woman whose mouth is connected to your ass, you can imagine Katsuro feels pretty badly about that.

Okay, so is any of this scary?

Well, no, not to me. There’s nothing really scary in my view about the Hostel films either. When someone says, “I’m going to torture you” and then they torture that person in the exact way they describe, there’s a marked lack of tension or suspense. It might be gross, but gross doesn’t equal scary. Instead of screaming or haunting my nightmares, I just think, “yuck” and then forget it and move on. When the “centipede” comes together, it’s almost a relief because getting there is so excruciatingly boring. It takes about forty-five minutes to set everything up, including half-hearted escape attempts that lead nowhere.

The other thing that doesn’t work in the film’s favor is the tone director Tom Six has chosen. With a concept like this, the easy way out is to make an exploitation type of B movie. The difficult thing is to make a film like this earnestly. Of course, Six takes the easy way out and the film winds up being exactly what you would expect. Throughout the movie, I kept thinking of Rob Zombie’s “preview” for Werewolf Women of the SS from Grindhouse. The whole film seems to borrow its tone from Zombie’s “preview.”

The acting, especially by Dieter Laser as the deranged surgeon, is so ridiculously over the top that we never find ourselves rooted in anything real. The tagline of the film is “100% medically accurate,” which is all well and good, but when the people in your film don’t approximate real human beings or have any real motivations, being medically accurate doesn’t matter. In other words, what is the point of being accurate and truthful in one aspect of the film if you’re not going to use that same effort on things like building characters.

I have to give credit to the other actors for the “bravery” of starring in a film like this. It takes a big risk for a fledgling actress to make this one of their first big-screen forays and Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie deserve a lot of credit for that. I know a lot of actors in New York City who say they will do anything to get where they are going, but I don’t how many of them would be willing to spend half of their first starring roles without the ability to speak and their head buried in someone else’s ass. I say this with all sincerity that I admire their dedication to their craft. But all that admiration doesn’t help the fact that their characters are cardboard cutouts at best and then they’re unable to speak and do nothing but whimper and cry for the second half of the film.

One of my basic problems with the film is the ending. But I knew I was going to have a problem with the ending before I even started watching the movie. The reason is that when you hear this concept and you find out these people will have their patella tendons removed and their faces surgically grafted to someone else’s buttocks, well, what is the happy ending here? That they defeat their captor?

Even so, I’m reminded of the story William Goldman wrote about in his book Which Lie Did I Tell? about adapting Misery and how attached he was to the original “hobbling” scene from the book where Annie doesn’t just bash Paul’s feet at the ankles (as she does in the film), but instead cuts his feet off using an ax and a propane torch. Goldman then talks about how Warren Beatty, who was interested in the role, said that he had no problem with the “hobbling” scene, but if you do this, then the character would forever be a cripple and a loser. Eventually, they changed it to the scene that currently exists. The point is, even if the people in the “centipede” extract themselves from the situation, what kind of life are they going to lead? What can I realistically hope for? So, halfway into the film, as soon as they are attached to one another, the happy ending is impossible and so the second half of the film is listless.

So then the final question is: did this film offend me?

The answer to that is a firm no. It wasn’t even offensively bad. I didn’t like the film, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen. And no, no, a thousand times no, it did not offend my sense of morality. It’s a disgusting concept, to be sure, and it’s not something for everyone (or anyone, maybe) but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. If the filmmaker was actually creating a human centipede, I’d be offended, but I’m reasonably sure that all the actors are alive and well (and separate). Some people have attacked Tom Six personally, as in “what kind of person could create this?” Well, the worst thing that happens in this film is someone ingests someone else’s feces, which is certainly disgusting. But we don’t see it because they are all attached. By that rationale, if that is what is most offensive, then Passolini was far sicker for the coprophagia scene in Salo.

The point is: it might not be art to you, it might not be art to the filmmaker either, but I’m not about to deny someone the right to say what they want to say. Nobody is forcing me to watch it, I can turn away if I’m uncomfortable, and if it’s not your cup of tea then you can say so. But Tom Six is just another filmmaker – who might be a talent someday – who gave it his best shot. Although the idea of him making a sequel, entitled The Human Centipede (Full Sequence) is not the most appealing to me. I think one centipede was enough for my lifetime.

At the very least, though, I can say that he had a fairly original idea. And that’s more than I can say for the people behind the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Noah Forrest
May 3, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

Comedy is subjective. What one person finds hilarious might leave someone else cold. So, when people tell me that they think certain comedians or films are funny and I don’t agree, I don’t really see the point in arguing. You will never be able to convince someone of what is funny; you either feel it or you don’t.

I happen to think Steve Carell and Tina Fey are two of the funniest people on the planet right now and a lot of people seem to agree with me on that point. I’m sure they have their detractors, people who don’t really respond to their self-deprecating deadpan humor, but a large portion of the population enjoys their work.

Their new film, Date Night, is objectively not funny.

Now, I know some of you will say, “but Noah, I saw Date Night and had a couple of chuckles, so you’re clearly wrong.” My answer to that is to say that laughing is a mechanism, an instinctual response to a sight, a thought, a smell, etc. When we see two people who have been funny in the past, our reflexes are telling us to laugh at what they do or say if it’s even remotely approaching comedy. And sure, there are parts of Date Night that could elicit that kind of response, but I know that I didn’t even so much as smile once throughout the entire movie.

Back to the objective part of my analysis, though. When you sign up Steve Carell and Tina Fey to star in a film called Date Night, you have a title and two leads that are sure to garner interest. The next step is actually creating a story worthy of these two, something that lives up to the promise held in the title. To make a long story short, here’s what I don’t want when I walk into a movie with these elements: long chase scenes, gunshots, murders, etc. Instead of putting Carell and Fey into 48 Hrs, I’d like to see them in After Hours. To me, that seems like a no-brainer. Of course, if the script was anywhere near as good as 48 Hrs, I wouldn’t be complaining at all.

When it comes to comedy, it’s all about timing and tone. The latter is especially key in a film. We have to understand what the stakes are and how serious they are and then, as an audience, we can become comfortable enough with the tone that we can laugh at what we’re supposed to laugh at. The first fifteen or twenty minutes of the film sets up a tone of a light, relationship comedy, like something Nancy Meyers would direct if the couple had millions more dollars. Then there’s a kidnapping and gunshots fired at our two leads. When you fire a gun in a comedy, it’s very hard to make things funny after that because our heroes have just experienced a very real threat of death. It’s possible to do, as countless movies have done, but only if the tone has been established and the spine of the film can handle it. A tone was established, but not one that can support an element like that.

Another reason the film fails is that our two heroes, played by the funniest people in the film, are the least funny characters in the film. Carell and Fey were hired to essentially play the straight men and then get scenes stolen by the likes of James Franco, Mila Kunis, Mark Wahlberg, William Fichtner, and pretty much anyone else that comes along. I suppose they’re funnier than Leighton Meester, but the point is that why would you hire Carell and Fey to star in a film and then handcuff them by not making their characters inherently funny? Instead, they are the most normal couple ever. That’s the point of the film, that this normal couple has a series of hijinks and misadventures, but I don’t want to see Steve Carell and Tina Fey play a “normal” couple. What I want is for them to be as quirky as possible and then hopefully be half as funny as they are on their respective television shows.

Look, I know that director Shawn Levy doesn’t have the best reputation as a filmmaker and his filmography is littered with middling films that made a ton of money, but I don’t think the blame can be laid solely at his feet. The problems with this film start before he even gets behind the camera. It starts with the fact that this is the wrong project for these two actors and that the script isn’t that great. The writing is credited to Josh Klausner, but I doubt very much that he was the only cook on this one. I’m sure Carell and Fey did a polish and everyone brought in their own writers and I’m sure the end product hardly resembles the original script.

Having said that, just because you have actors that are great at ad-libbing doesn’t mean that you don’t have a funny script to begin with. It’s an issue when you don’t have funny situations to put funny people in and then expect them to come up with something that saves the scene. The film is 88 minutes and there are several dead zones where the film isn’t even trying to be funny. The actors might be trying to jazz it up, but the film isn’t giving them any tools to work with.

I’m not even saying this is a bad film because it’s not. It’s competent enough and short enough and enough things are happening that you’re not going to get bored, but it is a supremely disappointing film because of what it isn’t. I don’t like to judge a film for what it isn’t trying to do, but I don’t think this film even meets its own meager goals that are outlined in the first ten minutes of the film. This is a couple that is stuck in a rut and the idea is that in the course of the next eighty minutes, they will get out of that rut. But, the truth is that while this couple runs around and gets chased and has a few fights, I don’t really see the relationship improving at all.

But the film ends with our happy couple making out and rolling around on the grass outside of their suburban home, so I’m just supposed to say, “aw, cute, yay,” and then walk out with a smile on my face. Instead, I’m left wondering why the hell they’re so in love with each other after this. Carell and Fey have good chemistry with one another as friends, but they never had any tension between them to suggest that these were sexual creatures. And I think both of them are attractive people, but they don’t seem attracted to each other in the movie.

Ultimately, the film does very little right considering the talent they acquired. It’s like drafting Tim Tebow and asking him to be a pocket quarterback. Similarly, Carell and Fey are misused and I’d much rather spend the time re-watching The Office or 30 Rock episodes.

Noah Forrest
April 26, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

I remember reading about how Kick-Ass blew the roof off the Alamo Drafthouse when it played during Harry Knowles’ birthday party. I grew up reading AICN every day and I still do out of habit, but it’s been a while since I read anything on the site without taking a heavy dose of salt first.

And it’s cool, I still enjoy reading the site and there’s some really talented writers there. But it’s basically the same as getting your news from Fox News; you understand that there is a conservative bias coming with the reporting. In this case, with AICN, I understand that there is a bias towards comic-book films, anime adaptations, genre flicks, etc.

Basically, there is a geek bias with AICN or CHUD or any number of film websites. They do their jobs extremely well catering their film news towards that particular — and particularly vocal — sect. And I enjoy keeping myself informed about all things geeky, just as I watch Fox News from time to time to inform myself in regards to the conservative positions.

But there was something about the hysteria regarding Kick-Ass. It played during the same twenty-four hour period as a new Scorsese film, Avatar and a handful of others and it seemed to be the consensus favorite. I saw the previews, wasn’t extremely impressed, but I figured they must be hiding all the good stuff; after all, this was an R-rated film about superheroes, which is a pretty cool concept. I had read varying reports about how it was a send-up of superhero films and others saying that it was one of the best superhero movies and then recently there was a spate of critics and parent organizations up in arms over a character in the film named Hit-Girl.

With all that swirling about – in addition to my own blah attitude towards comic book films – I bought a ticket for Kick-Ass, sat down in my seat and was ready for whatever came at me. And what I feel is…

Really geeks? All the fuss over this?

Don’t get me wrong, Kick-Ass is a fine movie. I’d even go so far as to say it’s “good.” But, this isn’t exactly the re-invention of the wheel. In fact, it’s not really a re-invention of anything so much as a regurgitation of everything you’ve ever seen before in a superhero film. I understand that it’s hard to be original and that the “originality” of this film comes from the fact that it winks at you while you’re watching it, but it’s basically a repackaging of a lot of ideas taken from films that have come before. And there are a few curses and a more adult subject matter.

My biggest problem with Kick-Ass, though, is the fact that its tone is all over the place. It starts out, for the first twenty-five minutes, being a light-hearted take on what would happen if a geeky teen decided to wear a scuba suit and fight crime. There are a lot of jokes and it sets up the world of the film as something to be taken lightly. In other words, while I was watching the beginning of the movie, I thought to myself, “okay, this is going to be a satire.” The middle section of the film has no discernible rhythm or energy or tone, it’s all over the map. Then the ending quarter of the film is melodramatic, heavy-handed and sappy. But then Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” plays during a fight scene, ironically I think, and I suppose it’s trying to be a reminder that this film is quirky.

The odd tonal shifts in the movie aren’t deal breakers for me. I rolled with the film, for the most part, because I found the characters to be interesting enough. As with most people who’ve seen the film, I agree that Chloe Moretz as Hit-Girl is basically the whole show. Watching her fight people much larger than her, like she’s Yoda in the Star Wars prequels, is quite entertaining and there’s a germ of an original thought there. This idea of a pre-teen girl who is adept at fighting and shooting guns and stabbing people, raised by her father to be the greatest vigilante ever…there’s something to that. The idea of how this could warp her or that her father – Big Daddy, played eccentrically by Nicolas Cage, although I suppose that’s redundant – is brainwashing her is something that I would have liked to have seen explored more. As such, it’s only fleetingly referred to.

(Speaking of Hit-Girl, I’d like to address the controversy about her: what controversy? Do the critics actually believe that Chloe Moretz murdered people or that she will now murder people? Are we worried that little girls are going to watch this R-rated superhero movie and want to emulate her? I’m not really sure who is being psychologically harmed by this. Sure, one could say it’s “morally wrong” for one reason or another, but that’s completely subjective. The movie is too frivolous to really have me up in arms about this. And from what I can tell, it doesn’t seem like Moretz was doing a whole lot of her own stunts.

I just find it hard to believe that a kid is going to watch her cursing and killing people and then saying, “wow, I want to do that.” Just like I find it hard to believe that someone would watch any superhero film and try to emulate those characters. I don’t think just because, in this case, the character is eleven, that other kids will want to be like her. Usually, kids want to be more like adults they see doing cool things than kids their own age. Okay, can we stop talking about this “controversy” now?)

Director Matthew Vaughn was the producer of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch and previously directed Layer Cake. He is clearly very familiar and comfortable with the gangster genre. It really shows in this film, which is supposed to be about superheroes, but really spends a good portion of its running time dealing with Mark Strong as the head of an organized crime ring. I love seeing Strong on the screen, but every time it flashes to him, I just felt like, “okay, I get it, he’s a gangster, I’ve seen this movie before.” When it flashes to Hit-Girl, I think, “okay, this is something a little different, let’s get more of this.”

But the biggest mistake Vaughn makes (although I guess the blame should be shared with co-scripter Jane Goldman and the creators of the comic, Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.) is focusing the film on the character of Kick-Ass. Aaron Johnson seems like a fine actor — although it bums me out when they cast great looking guys to play “nerds” — and I’m sure he’ll have a great career ahead of him and he makes the main character in Kick-Ass sympathetic and all that. But the character of Kick-Ass is without a doubt the least interesting in the entire film. We spend half the movie watching Dave Lizewski (Kick-Ass’s real name) trying to get the girl of his dreams, pretending he’s gay, hanging out with his friends, etc. It’s all so tedious when we know that there’s a better, more exciting movie going on wherever Hit-Girl and Big Daddy are.

Out of Vaughn’s three films as a director, this was my least favorite. I thought Layer Cake was good and Stardust was even better. I think he’s growing as a filmmaker, though, even if this isn’t perfect. I think he’s got an excellent eye and a flair for flair, but he’s a bit more restrained than Guy Ritchie. I would like to see him do a smaller picture that’s more character-based because he really does seem to care about interpersonal relationships in his films. I just wish they were at the forefront.

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie overall. I didn’t look at my watch more than a few times and felt entertained mostly. But I still cannot understand why the geeks are wetting themselves over this one. Maybe I’m not viewing the film through my special geek spectacles, but I can’t discern what makes this film more appealing to geeks than any other comic book movie. There are cool action sequences, but nothing that blows away the scenes I’ve seen in other films. There are funny moments, but nothing that made me more than chuckle.

The only thing I can see is that perhaps it’s because the lead of the film is a geek who becomes a superhero and isn’t that just the ideal fantasy of every geek in the world? They become a superhero, kill bad guys and get to bang their dream girl. So I suppose there must be some wish fulfillment aspect that is appealing to the geeks. Or maybe they just like seeing themselves represented on screen. They can look at Aaron Johnson in this film and say, “wow, that’s just like me and my friends.” But if that’s all it is, then isn’t that kind of boring to just see yourself reflected back to you? I could see how it would be interesting to see that reflection if it was done in a real, gritty way. But seeing a perfect version of yourself doesn’t seem all that appealing to me. Then again, I was never the biggest sci-fi or comic book fan.

All in all, I think Kick-Ass is a film that is worth seeing. But ignore the hype that you hear from the IT guy at your office who tells you it’s the best thing in the history of the world. It’s a pretty good movie that’ll entertain you for two hours — and you’ll most likely forget about two hours later.

Noah Forrest
April 19, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

It’s funny how, as I’ve gotten older, the “thrill” of summer movies aren’t what they used to be. I remember counting down the days until I got Entertainment Weekly’s Summer Movie Preview and reading every story about every film, marking the magazine up with check marks, all the films that I wanted to see immediately if not sooner.

I always fancied myself as something of a film snob, but I still get a little bit of the same thrill when I see previews for a glossy, big-budget Hollywood summer flick. The realist in me knows that films like Clash of the Titans are going to be dreck, but my heart remains hopeful that I’ll be thrilled in some way. Unfortunately, special effects just don’t set my heart on fire anymore; nothing can take the place of a good story.

So, I’ve looked at the calendar for the next four months and picked out the ten films I’m most excited to see this summer. I’ll be right about some, wrong about others, but that is the joy of going to the movies: the thrill of finding out whether something meets your expectations. As always, release dates are subject to change.

Iron Man 2 (Dir. Jon Favreau) – May 7th

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first Iron Man. I thought it was a slick, fun package and it delivered exactly what it set out to do, which was to entertain everyone for a couple of hours. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s got a great lead performance from Robert Downey, Jr. and some great effects. The last half hour is excruciatingly awful, but I can forgive it because of everything that came before. Although, it seems to be a problem with most superhero films; the build is great, exciting and fresh and then it all ends with some kind of boring showdown that lasts too long. Watching two big robots fight for twenty minutes is not that exciting. And it seems that the filmmakers behind these films think that the longer the fight lasts, the cooler it is.

It also seems like with each installment in a superhero film, the filmmakers find the need to add more bad guys. Apparently one bad guy isn’t enough. But what happens is that we can’t focus on the story of our hero versus this one villain. Instead, we have the storylines of two or more villains swirling about and then the story of our hero’s journey in the latest installment. As a result, most sequels to superhero films lack focus because it’s hard to find an organic way to integrate all of these storylines that are based not on a need to drive the plot forward, but on a need to sell merchandise.

Regardless, the preview for this one looks fun. Although I wish Downey would use his success to get smaller pictures off the ground instead of being the go-to guy for every Hollywood franchise that wants to be a little bit eccentric (like Johnny Depp), he still remains a charming and charismatic screen presence.  I’m excited to see how Favreau juggles Downey, Paltrow, Rourke, Cheadle and Johansson. And really, no matter how terrible a movie looks, if it’s the first “big” movie of the summer – like this one is – it’s hard to keep me away.

MacGruber (Dir. Jorma Taccone) – May 21st

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think SNL’s MacGruber skit is hilarious and those who think it’s idiotic. I am firmly in the former camp.

I watch SNL every single weekend. Luckily, with the aid of DVR, I no longer have to be a nerd who stays home on Saturdays in order to watch it. I’ve seen almost every SNL episode for the last ten years and have seen many of the ones in the previous decade. I love SNL. Yes, I know, it stopped being funny years ago, blah blah blah. SNL has always been a hit or miss affair. Sometimes it misses the mark badly and frustratingly, but sometimes it’s hilarious and game-changing for the comedic world. Love it or hate it, SNL is an interesting barometer for what’s happening in comedy and it still remains a fertile breeding ground for comedic talent. This year’s cast is especially talented, with Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Jenny Slate, Abby Elliott, Seth Meyers, and a whole host of others. But for the past few years I’ve thought one person was just about the most hilarious and irreverent and underrated cast member.

Will Forte.

There’s something about Will Forte that just makes me laugh and I think a lot of it has to do with his skill at staying completely in character. He seems to have a total commitment to whatever it is he’s doing, whether it’s a nerdy office worker trying to talk his co-workers into a threesome or the closer organizer trying to catch water and dirt or singing his heart out in the Bon Jovi “opposite band” Jon Bovi.  He’s hysterical to me. And I love MacGruber.

MacGruber is a character based on MacGyver, except he’s terrible at his job. There are usually three or so short skits that run throughout the course of the show, involving MacGruber trying to defuse a bomb and failing miserably. Meanwhile, there’s usually another thread happening, like his drug problem or his son’s homosexuality, that plays itself out as the timer counts down to zero. Check out some of the clips on Hulu if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, MacGruber plus Val Kilmer – someone I’ll always have a soft spot for – equals me at the theater on opening day. Can’t wait.

Sex and the City 2 (Dir. Michael Patrick King) – May 28th

This is a tough one for me. While I was a fan of the show’s earlier seasons, I think the last few seasons and the last film essentially killed the characters.  The last movie had the characters acting completely at odds with what the show had spent years trying to build. Suddenly, Steve cheats on Miranda, despite the show beating us over the head with the idea that Steve would never do such a thing because he’s so head over heels for her. Carrie has become more and more of a despicable person that is absolutely impossible to root for.

In the beginning of the series, she was charming and focused on her relationships. In the last film, she cares about nothing except materialism. Samantha and Charlotte are caricatures of themselves. Charlotte spent the last film doing nothing but screaming and Samantha kept “surprising” everyone with her visits from LA every ten minutes until it wasn’t that surprising anymore. Oh, and a show that was supposed to be about how single women shouldn’t be judged and that it’s acceptable to be a single woman in your thirties ultimately became a series about how women need men to be happy.

Yet, I feel like since I’ve seen every episode of the show and seen the last film, I have to see the new movie.  I’m sure it’ll just be the final shovelful of dirt on the coffin that was the show’s original conceit, but I can’t miss the funeral.

Toy Story 3 (Dir. Lee Unkrich) – – June 18th

I can no longer doubt the Pixar folks.

When I first heard that Toy Story 3 was in the works, I thought it sounded like nothing more than a cash grab (which, it very well might be). But even if it is, I have faith that the Pixar people will still make it something better than average because that’s what they do. The closest Pixar has come to making a bad film was Cars, which was perfectly decent. So, if somehow Toy Story 3 isn’t up to snuff, it’ll be the biggest surprise of the summer, as it will be the first misstep Pixar would have made.

But, I doubt that will happen. The first two Toy Story films laid the groundwork with compelling characters and real emotions, despite the fact that the films were about toys that could talk and move and all that jazz.  So if the newest installment just continues to allow those great characters to roam about in the world that’s been created already, then it should at least be two hours well spent.

Knight and Day (Dir. James Mangold) – June 25th

I am an unabashed Tom Cruise fan.  I think his acting has been unfairly maligned for two reasons: 1) he’s a good looking guy and 2) he’s apparently a bit unhinged. But I have always been pretty good at compartmentalizing these things. If someone is a great actor or filmmaker, then I don’t really care what they do off-screen. And if I do care, I don’t let it affect how I look at their work. Sometimes the greatest artists are also the most fucked up people, which helps them create their art. I might not want to hang out with Tom Cruise, but I love watching him on the screen because he’s a great actor. That’s right, I said he’s a great actor.

If you disagree, then I would ask that you watch Born on the Fourth of July, Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, Jerry Maguire, and Collateral.  Oh, and when you’re done with that, please watch Risky Business, Vanilla Sky, The Firm, A Few Good Men, and Rain Man. You might have issues with the movies, which definitely have their faults, or you might say that some of them aren’t “high art,” but I dare you to find a flaw with any one of the performances given by Cruise. He commands the screen and he does so with panache. He’s a great actor that happens to be a movie star.

I think James Mangold is a serviceable director. He’s never made anything I’ve outright hated, but he hasn’t made a film I’ve loved either. And I think Cameron Diaz suffers from the same problems that Cruise has, because she’s pretty damn good too when she wants.  Just watch Being John Malkovich, Gangs of New York, or In Her Shoes. Unfortunately, she has a few too many films like What Happens in Vegas on her resume, overshadowing her undeniable talent.

Okay, so this film has two charismatic stars in an action comedy. And Cruise has always done well with comedy and I’m excited to see him given the chance to finally, once again, carry a comedic film.  I doubt that this is going to be a film for the ages, but it the preview makes it look like the perfect summer film, much the same way that Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a few summers ago. Fun, loud, funny, entertaining, with two beautiful leads. Sign me up.

(When it turns out to be atrociously awful, please feel free to copy and paste the last few paragraphs e-mail it to me with taunts. I give you my permission.)

Inception (Dir. Christopher Nolan) – July 16th

Even if you weren’t a fan of The Dark Knight (and I wasn’t), this has to be everyone’s most anticipated film of the summer, right?  Besides the fact that Nolan is an incredibly talented filmmaker, there’s the cast that consists of Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, and the triumphant return of Tom Berenger. So, before there’s anything else revealed, I’m already on board.

Which is a good thing because nothing else has really been revealed. The plot of the film has been kept closely under wraps. What we know is that the film takes place in a future where people can invade each other’s dreams in order to get information. So it’s sort of like The Matrix by way of Luis Bunuel. Which sounds pretty awesome to me. And that trailer looks insane.

My one worry is that when any film or novel deals with dreams, you’re entering very tricky territory.  Kubrick and Bunuel were experts at navigating the world of dreams, but the problem that is easy to run into is this: 1) nobody cares about other people’s dreams and 2) dreams don’t really matter.  That second part is crucial.  Dreams have no consequence because what happens in a dream doesn’t have an effect on our real lives, not really anyway.  I’m guessing there will be a few “dream sequences” in this film and the hard part is to make those scenes matter in a real way.  Anything can happen in a dream, so our natural inclination is to shrug everything off as “oh, well, it’s just a dream, who cares?”  But hopefully the concept that Nolan has will help these dreams have some stakes.

I have the confidence in Nolan and DiCaprio and the enormous budget that we’ll be seeing something pretty epic.

Dinner for Schmucks (Dir. Jay Roach) – July 23rd

I love Paul Rudd and Steve Carell.  Individually, they are both fun to watch but combined, they are terrific. Watching the two of them riff off one another was one of the greatest joys of watching Anchorman and The 40 Year Old Virgin. There’s something about the two of them, with Rudd’s sarcasm and Carell’s deadpan, that just works so well and so effortlessly. When we watch the two of them interact in those films, it just feels natural and organic and there’s no forced chemistry. And now, with Dinner for Schmucks, that rapport will be front and center.

The film is a remake of a French film that I never saw, but the plot follows an executive (Rudd) who is invited to a dinner party by his boss where the goal is to see who can bring the biggest idiot. And Steve Carell plays that idiot. And Zach Galifiniakis plays another idiot, I’m guessing.

For me, that’s all I need. That logline and those actors either have you opting in or out.  And considering how much I love the actors, I’m in.

Salt (Dir. Phillip Noyce) – July 23rd

Angelina Jolie is a terrific actress, capable of giving gripping and haunting performances like the ones she gave in Changeling and A Mighty Heart.  But it seems that what Jolie really longs for is to be an action star. With the Tomb Raider films, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Wanted on her resume, Jolie seems intent on being one of the world’s biggest action stars.  That’s no small feat for a woman to do.  We’re used to Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone saving the planet and we’re okay with Matt Damon kicking some ass as Jason Bourne, but Angelina Jolie?  Apparently, we’re cool with that too.

I’m not really a fan of when Jolie does these action movies because I find films like Wanted to be excruciating to sit through. But Salt doesn’t seem to be a typical action film, instead it seems to be going for something more in the Bourne vein, where there are great action scenes that are integral to pushing the plot forward, rather than a plot that is structured around action set pieces.

Phillip Noyce is one of those action directors who isn’t afraid to inject some politics into his films, like in his masterful The Quiet American or Rabbit-Proof Fence.  Even his Val Kilmer vehicle The Saint is about the political ramifications of cold-fusion.  That gives me hope that this film, about a CIA officer who is accused of being a Russian spy, will be more than just the typical summer action flick.

The Adjustment Bureau (Dir. George Nolfi) – July 30th

I’ve made no secret of my man-crush on Matt Damon. I think he’s one of the top five mainstream actors today and aside from just being good at his job, he always seems to pick films that are just a little bit out of the ordinary. He’s not afraid to take risks, like gaining a ton of weight for a satire (The Informant) or playing a lead role quietly and subtly (like his masterful work in The Good Shepherd). He’s also got a knack for choosing quality scripts with talented filmmakers. This isn’t a guy who is just out to make some money and some shitty films. Matt Damon is an actor that seems to care about his output and his legacy as an actor.

The Adjustment Bureau will hopefully be a return to form after the hiccup of Green Zone and the beginning of a hopefully stellar year for Damon (which also includes the Clint Eastwood flick Hereafter and the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit).  The Adjustment Bureau is based on a Philip K. Dick story about a politician (Damon) that meets a beautiful and mysterious ballerina (Emily Blunt). It’s described on IMDb as being a Romance/Sci-fi film, although it’s hard to discern where the science fiction aspect would come in, having not read the story.  Either way, a romantic sci-fi film with Damon and Blunt, based on a Dick story sounds like it’s worth a shot.

Eat Pray Love (Dir. Ryan Murphy) – August 13th

I have a soft spot for films about characters taking journeys across the country or around the world while also going on a spiritual journey.  I like to see the beautiful locales in far-flung places that I might never visit for the same reason that I enjoy watching the Travel Channel.  There’s a wish-fulfillment aspect of seeing a film that has a character doing what you wish you were doing, whether it’s Russell Crowe running a vineyard in France in A Good Year or Diane Lane moving to Italy in Under the Tuscan Sun, I just enjoy seeing beautiful people in beautiful places. It’s one of the joys of going to the movies.

I didn’t read the book this is based on and Julia Roberts hasn’t made an interesting choice since playing “herself” at the end of Ocean’s Twelve, but I’m going to the theater for the reasons state in the first paragraph.  And honestly, the trailer makes the film seem very appealing.  I always enjoy a good romantic comedy too, so if this film has some believable romance, a few laughs and some location footage of India and Italy and Bali, then it shouldn’t be too much of a chore to watch.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Dir. Edgar Wright) – August 13th

I’m really torn on this one.

Every geek in the world is telling me that this is going to be the most epic movie ever made ever!  But, the trailer looked absolutely horrific to me.  I can’t get over the fact that Michael Cera can’t seem to stretch beyond what he first showed us on Arrested Development and I don’t really “get” what the big deal is with this movie or the comic that spawned it.  So, he has to literally fight his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriends?  What is the world this taking place in?  The trailer left me confused and cold.  I had wanted to see the film pretty badly based on the chorus of geeks raving about the comic, but the preview was just a jumble.

I know I’m supposed to love Edgar Wright, but I thought Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz were merely okay.  I enjoyed them both, but I didn’t see why they were so highly praised by the geek community except for the fact that Wright seems to be a geek himself who is familiar with what geeks enjoy.  I still trust me geek friends enough to believe that this film is worth seeing, but I’m not feeling the excitement that I should be feeling.

Noah Forrest
April 12, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

Watching the ads for Jennifer Lopez’s latest film, I can’t help but feel a bit wistful. I think about the potential that was clearly there, but more often I think about how stupid she made me seem.

For years I defended Lopez and her abilities based on the talent displayed in the remarkable Out of Sight.  She would make terrible film after terrible, forgettable film and I’d say to anyone who would listen, “no, no, she’s really talented, she was so excellent in Out of Sight and that couldn’t have been just a fluke.”  Besides, she was also pretty good in Bob Rafelson’s Blood and Wine and she was great as the femme fatale in Oliver Stone’s underrated U-Turn. But she has spent the last twelve years proving me wrong over and over again.

Since Out of Sight, she has made thirteen films (including her newest, The Back-up Plan) and she has not given a good performance in one of them. The closest thing to a good film was Tarsem’s beautiful looking The Cell, but she was wooden and dull while looking spooky and cool in her extravagant makeup and costumes. Seven of the films she has chosen have been romantic comedies and none of them are memorable to me, despite the fact that I’ve seen all of them (no, I don’t know why). I wonder who was guiding her to those roles because romantic comedy is clearly not her strong suit. She doesn’t have the ebullient personality that would work best for these characters.  But it seemed like she was trying to project an image to a certain kind of (wider) audience.  There isn’t a film that she’s chosen in the past decade that has half the ambition of even something like The Cell.

It’s not even just that she’s chosen romantic comedies; it’s that she’s chosen ones that aren’t particularly good.  Even if Lopez was up to the task or right for her roles, these still would not be good films.  She hasn’t had chemistry with any of her leading men since George Clooney. One of the worst screen pairings I’ve ever seen is Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes in Maid in Manhattan.  They looked gorgeous together, but there was nothing between them that compelled us to root for them as a couple.  I was completely indifferent to whether or not they made it to their inevitable happy ending.  And the same could be said of Matthew McConaughey in The Wedding Planner or Ben Affleck in either Gigli or Jersey Girl.

But I keep going back to Out of Sight, a film that truly jolted me awake when I saw it in theaters.  It’s just a perfect crime film slash romance that is believable and funny and haunting and fun.  I hadn’t been anticipating it too highly because I didn’t think much of Clooney at the time and I thought it would be another one of those Tarantino rip-off flicks, coming hot on the heels of Tarantino’s own Elmore Leonard adaptation.  But Soderbergh is a true visionary and he aimed to make a film that was unique unto itself and it had the brilliant idea of a timeline that weaves back and forth.

However, the real treat of the film, the secret weapon if you will, is Jennifer Lopez as the badass Karen Sisco. In fact, Lopez made such indelible impression and crafted such a compelling character that there was a short-lived TV show based on the character.  It’s a wonderful character, to be sure; the tough, beautiful chick who happens to be a US Marshal.  But, there’s nothing on the page that would make her intrinsically more fascinating than George Clooney’s Jack Foley, a man who has robbed more banks than anyone on record. And as fantastic as Clooney’s Foley is – and he is truly great and was robbed of a nomination – it’s Lopez that really makes the screen pop.  She’s electric.  And it convinced me so completely of her abilities as an actress that, like I said, I spent the next decade defending her to everyone.

What surprises me more than anything is that Lopez has only played one more law enforcement official since and it was in the dreadful Angel Eyes. But in the nine years since that film, she hasn’t returned to the kind of role that made us all love her. I would love to see her play a tough police officer or detective trying to solve a case and interrogating bad guys. This is the kind of role she would own so completely, but instead she’s been spending her time in cloying romantic comedies or sparring with Jane Fonda in the inane Monster-in-Law. It’s bad that Fonda chose that film as her big comeback, but she also has two Oscars and a lot of great films on her resume. She also took more risks at Lopez’s age, starring in the strange Godard film Tout va Bien with Yves Montand.  The film was terrible, but at least it was a risk worth taking, with a great filmmaker.  If only Lopez would take such risks.

Ideally, Lopez should have taken the jump to the small-screen and played Karen Sisco in the television show. But I suppose that would have been seen as a step back.  But she could have played Sisco in a series of movies, as well. Either way, I don’t know why Lopez has abandoned what seems to have been a perfect fit for her talents. I understand that she wanted to be a pop star, but that shouldn’t have precluded her from picking riskier projects. In fact, it should have emboldened her to take more risks because she had another career.  After all, she took the “risk” of playing a lesbian in Gigli.  But she does wind up with Ben Affleck in the end, so I suppose that’s not much of a risk.

(Side-note: I remember watching Gigli for the first time when it came out on DVD.  I bought it so that I could watch it with a girl I was dating, figuring it would be a hilariously bad film that we could enjoy laughing at.  But it was worse than that.  It had gone so beyond bad that it was funny. There was nothing enjoyable about that film whatsoever and it has zero redeeming value. It’s just unwatchable and it’s a chore to sit through and I couldn’t believe that it was as bad as everyone had been saying for months. Martin Brest, what happened man?  I’m speaking as one of the guys who loved, yes loved, Meet Joe Black.  Brest really needs to make another film because that bad taste has been lingering in my mouth for seven years now. End of digression.)

Lopez hasn’t made a film in four years and I would think that during that hiatus, she’d be reflecting and trying to return to a place where she could love acting once again.  I can’t imagine that The Back-up Plan is the film that’s going to wow us.  And I stopped defending her sometime around An Unfinished Life.  And not to be cheesy, but I feel that way about Lopez’s career, that it’s unfinished.  I’ll hold out hope that she’ll choose a good project and that electricity will return, but I think ultimately her acting will be a footnote to her music career.  And that’s a real shame.

Noah Forrest
April 5, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

As a film essayist, the question I get asked most often is, “so, what’s the last good movie you saw?” When I say something like, “well, I just saw Ophuls’ La Ronde and thought it was spectacular,” I’m inevitably met with blank stares. When most people ask about the last good film you’ve seen, they want it to be an answer that they are familiar with; they want the answer you give to be something that is playing in theaters.

It seems that the majority of people prefer to hear about and see the latest films, whether good or bad, because they are the ones that are the most relevant right this second, despite the fact that they will be irrelevant in a week or two. When a movie is first released and there is a marketing push behind it, people become more aware of that film that any other. So, while seeing a Tarkovsky film for the first time is exciting to me, it doesn’t matter to most people. They want to hear about Hot Tub Time Machine.

Unfortunately, I have yet to see Hot Tub Time Machine, although I’m planning on a double-feature of that film and Greenberg later today.  But, I have seen a lot of other films that are playing in theaters right now.  And rather than answer the question of “what’s the last good movie you saw?” I’m going to just give you some thoughts about what your options are right now.  I don’t know if I could say that any movie I’ve seen lately is great, but I can tell you which films are more deserving of your money and time.

She’s Out of My League

This movie surprised me a little bit.  It’s certainly not good.  But it’s really not that bad.  You’ve seen every scene in this film a million times before and there isn’t a single original idea in 100 minutes.  But, it’s an easy film to take because it understands the key to any romantic comedy is to cast two appealing leads that have an easy chemistry with one another.  Neither Jay Baruchel or Alice Eve are likely to be Oscar nominees any time soon, but they’re likable and charismatic in different ways.  In other words, it’s easy to root for them to wind up together against all odds.

The film is about a sad-sack TSA agent who happens to be a swell guy and a gorgeous event planner somehow dating.  The whole film feels a bit like a riff on There’s Something About Mary and Alice Eve is a good enough facsimile of Cameron Diaz in that film, the gorgeous girl who can hang with the boys and loves hockey and doesn’t wear underwear, etc.  But where There’s Something About Mary was oddly subversive in the way it turned conventions on its head – even Mary’s disabled friend turns out to be a stalker – this is a film that wants to employ every convention known to man, but use Apatowian vulgarity to make it seem hip.

There are a few funny scenes involving Baruchel’s awkwardness mixed with Eve’s grace, including a chuckle-inducing scene where he’s surprised to meet her parents after a particularly aggressive dry-humping from her.  But every scene that involves Baruchel’s friends is a groan.  Baruchel’s best friend is named Stainer and every scene with him is absolutely painful and I don’t think it’s the fault of the actor, T.J. Miller, but the fact that his job in the film is to be the boorish best friend and there’s really nothing new that can be brought to that type of character.  Although the actor’s delivery is a bit like Dane Cook on acid, which isn’t pleasant.  Eve’s best friend in the film is played by Krysten Ritter, who I found a bit forgettable in her appearances on Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls, but seems to have found her rhythm playing the best friend role that might have gone to Zooey Deschanel seven or eight years ago.

Ultimately, this is a film that if you want to kill some time one afternoon, this is a nice enough romantic comedy that provides a mild diversion.  It won’t cause you too much pain.  Speaking of pain…

The Bounty Hunter

Sometimes I see a film that is just absolutely flabbergasting in its awfulness and it’s actually a good thing.  You see, I believe that I must see even the worst of films in order to appreciate the very good ones.  If I just watch good movies all day and night, then I stop appreciating their greatness.  And thank goodness for films like The Bounty Hunter because they make films like She’s Out of My League seem like works of art.

No disrespect to everyone involved in this atrocity, but how in the world did this happen?  There isn’t a single scene that has any of the following: momentum, comedy, romance, fun, adventure, conflict, life, stakes, or realism.  It’s a film that defies the very nature of entertainment because it lacks soul in every possible way.  Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler have both been winning in other roles – although not many, let’s be honest – but here they just seem lifeless.  The whole film is like the plot of a 22 minute sitcom episode that has been stretched to feature-length simply by adding more diversions.

The film is about an ex-cop bounty hunter (Butler) who is hired to bring his journalist ex-wife (Aniston) to jail.  Meanwhile, they’re being chased by bad guys involved in a story that she wrote.  It’s Midnight Run meets War of the Roses minus anything good or redeeming.

Andy Tennant is not exactly David Fincher, but he’s done serviceable films before.  He even did a pretty good film with a Friends cast member (Fools Rush In starring Matthew Perry), so I know he’s capable of making a film that is watchable.  But I just don’t know how films like this happen.  It seems like it would make sense that somewhere along the way, someone would intervene and say, “hey, this script needs work before I agree to do this” or “hey, this take doesn’t work, let’s do another.”  Pinpointing the problems in this movie is a futile act because there are just too damn many.  More interesting – and easier – would be finding the things the film did right.

Please don’t see this.

Repo Men

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a story about how much I miss Jude Law as a leading man.  Well, be careful what you wish for, I guess.

The film Repo Men most resembled, to me, was Equilibrium.  That film also had a really good actor in a film about the future that was really just an excuse for lots of gunplay and violence.  Repo Men has an interesting conceit – albeit one that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense – of a future where organs are repossessed if the receiver of that organ can not keep up with the payments.  And then, in a classic turn of the tables, one of the repo men is now on the run.  And he’s like, the most bad-ass repo man of all time, dude.

I like Jude Law a lot, as I expressed in that column.  But he is not a believable action hero.  Law doesn’t come across as particularly menacing or threatening in his actions scenes and it seems below him to try and pretend to be Jason Statham.  And the film is really a notch below something like Crank, which at least moves quickly enough that you don’t have time to think about how dumb it is.  Repo Men moves too slowly and as a result, we’re too busy thinking about the implausibility of everything to really enjoy the action scenes.

Utterly forgettable.

Green Zone

What a shame.

Green Zone reduces the entire Iraq War to one good guy soldier versus one bad guy politician.  Oh, I didn’t realize it was so simple.

I think one of the biggest problems Green Zone faces is that is being released on the heels of The Hurt Locker, which is not only the best film about the Iraq War, but also one of the best war movies of the last decade.  Green Zone, in comparison, seems downright conventional and trite.  Granted, the movies have very different goals, but Green Zone doesn’t really get moving.

My ultimate problem with Green Zone is an issue of verisimilitude.  Perhaps everything it does is accurate and realistic, but I didn’t believe it for a second.  I didn’t believe that one soldier could go rogue the way Matt Damon does in this film.  I didn’t believe that he could keep Freddy, his Iraqi interpreter, around for much of the running time without anyone asking more questions.

Damon is solid as always and Khalid Abdalla is excellent as Freddy, but Amy Ryan is completely underutilized and Greg Kinnear is forgettable as always.  I think Paul Greengrass might be one of the most overrated filmmakers working today.  Bloody Sunday was great, but his Bourne films aren’t as good as Liman’s first one and United 93 is the single most over-praised exploitation film in the history of cinema.  His shaky handicam shtick has worn thin and I don’t think it’s ever been used correctly.  Here, he’s finally working in the war genre, where having a shaky camera would make most sense for getting us involved in the chaotic nature of war and he still doesn’t use it appropriate.  The camera is shaking in scenes where two men are talking, for no particular reason.

We don’t get a better sense of place or space from the way in which Greengrass operates his camera.  And as a director of actors, he doesn’t coach a lot more than is already there.  Nuance and subtlety are foreign to Greengrass, evidenced most by a line Freddy says near the end of the film that is something along the lines of, “this is our war, not an American war” or something to that effect.  It’s a line that is so blunt and shoe-horned in there to actualize the film’s political bent through dialogue, but it sounds completely absurd.  And then when Damon confronts Kinnear at the end of the film, I couldn’t believe that anyone involved in making that scene though it worked.  Because it doesn’t at all.  The ending of the film is an objective failure.  And the film as a whole is, objectively, a disappointment.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Easily the best thing I’ve seen in theaters in a while.  Don’t buy the hype that it’s the greatest mystery ever, but it’s really very good and engaging.

A lot of the attention from the critics has been focused on the co-lead of the film, Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace), because she is a detective unlike any other seen in cinema or literature.  She is a goth hacker with lots of piercings, short cropped black hair, a ton of dark make-up and lots of metal-studded leather clothing.  She also may or may not have Aspberger’s.  She’s a wonderful character and makes the film seem dangerous and exciting, but I found her more typical co-lead to be even more engaging.  Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) is an investigative journalist who is headed to jail in a few months for purportedly libeling a powerful business tycoon.  But before he goes to jail, he is hired by an elderly man to solve a forty-year old mystery.

The film feels fresh and relevant because of its themes of anti-corruption and anti-patriarchy, but there are some old standbys as well, including a large subplot about Nazism in Sweden during and after WWII.  The biggest theme in the film is the idea of men taking advantage of women and how, despite all of our advances, we still live in patriarchal society.  It’s very rare to see any film delve into an issue like this, rarer still for it to be a genre film with chase scenes.

There is a really fascinating subplot where Lisbeth is sexually coerced by a despicable man who then later rapes her violently.  When we find out that Lisbeth has some evidence, we expect her to do something with that evidence, but instead she has one of the greatest revenge schemes.  Let’s just say that Lisbeth believes in an eye for an eye, so to speak.  The interesting thing about Lisbeth’s revenge is how we, as an audience, react to it.  Our natural inclination is to cheer for this rapist to get his comeuppance.  But, then, aren’t we cheering on the very same thing that horrified us to begin with?  It’s a slippery slope and something that seems to belong in a Michael Haneke film, rather than a detective flick.

But that’s one of the film’s failings; it loses sight of its main goal a lot of the time, which tends to happen in a film with a running time of 150 minutes.  Our main focus is to find out the answer to two central mysteries, but there are so many diversions along the way that we get antsy.  We’re getting wonderful side-stories that deepen the characters, but Lisbeth and Mikael don’t even hook up until almost halfway through.  And that’s when the real mystery-solving begins.  But then once the dominoes start to fall and we get the answers to the mysteries, they aren’t particularly shocking.  It’s not like it’s been someone we’ve suspected all along or someone who we never would have guessed.  The revelation is downright shrug-worthy, actually.  And then the film drags on for another half an hour.

But for a two and a half hour film with a lot of digressions, it certainly moves swiftly and there’s never a moment where you can be bored since there is a lot of interesting information being thrown at you.  I think Rapace is excellent and I hope to see her more often.  I already loved Nyqvist after his work in Lukas Moodysson’s Together, where he played an abusive husband who is oddly sympathetic.  He brings that same sympathy to a complicated character here, except now his face is more weathered, like an older William Holden.  He’s really a fantastic actor and he holds the film together, keeping it tethered to something familiar.

It’s definitely one of the five best films I’ve seen so far this year, although that is sort of faint praise.  But I do think it’s something you should seek out and see before Hollywood destroys it with the inevitable remake.

Noah Forrest
March 29, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

I generally shrug when I hear about this or that film being remade or “reimagined” or whatever buzz word that is supposed to make you forget that you’re seeing a retread. I know a lot of people get upset when they hear about one of their favorite films being remade and how it means that Hollywood is out of ideas and they are sullying the classics and all that jazz. I, however, have never felt that way.

I’ve always felt that just because some schmuck wants to remake a classic, it doesn’t somehow make that original film any better or worse nor does it change my feelings about the original. I think the merits of the original film are usually untouchable and that remaking that film, it’s just going to be an uphill struggle for the filmmakers behind the redo. In other words, it’ll be much harder for those filmmakers to make me forget how much I loved the original than it will be for me to forget the remake.

But (and you knew that was coming)…it’s getting a little bit ridiculous, isn’t it?

When I went to the movies recently, there was a promo for the remake of Death at a Funeral and my friends and I were amazed by it. First of all, there is zero point in remaking a film that just came out three years ago, but especially since it was, you know, in English. It’s not like you could use the excuse that it was a foreign film that had subtitles and people are too dumb to read subtitles, so we have to remake it in English. No, this is a film that was in English and directed by an American and for some reason, it needed to be remade? And based on the trailers and the promos, it seems to be the exact same film except for the fact that much of the cast is African-American.

(A couple more things about Death at a Funeral: 1) what the hell happened to Neil LaBute? Remember when he was supposed to be one of the great American filmmakers? The Wicker Man, Lakeview Terrace and now this remake of Death at a Funeral? I don’t want to call the guy a sell-out, but let’s just say that I bet none of these films were “personal projects.” 2) Remaking a three year old British film is bad enough, but Death at a Funeral was a pretty mediocre one. I’m all for remaking mediocre films in order to improve upon them, but like I said, this one seems to be almost identical. They even got Peter Dinklage to reprise his role. 3) I love Chris Rock as a stand-up comedian. He’s one of the brightest, funniest guys working in that realm. But the guy is just not a movie star. He just isn’t able to carry a movie and my friends and I had a long discussion about why that is and my buddy Jack came up with a great theory: he can’t do deadpan. He’s too over-emotive. When he’s doing stand-up, that’s a plus, but in film it’s okay to be subtle because the camera picks up a lot. Okay, end of digression.)

Looking at the calendar, however, the upcoming slate is littered with remakes. There’s the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, Clash of the Titans, Chloe (a remake of the wonderful French film Nathalie…), Robin Hood, and that’s just the next month and a half. And don’t forget about the remake that currently owns the box office: Alice in Wonderland. And look at how talented some of these directors are: Tim Burton, Atom Egoyan, Ridley Scott (okay, maybe not Ridley Scott).

That’s one of the biggest struggles for me as a film lover; the fact that by choosing to sign on for a remake, talented filmmakers and actors are spending months and years of their time making films that I’ve already seen. Instead of watching Johnny Depp create a character out of thin air, I have to watch him fill the shoes of Gene Wilder. Instead of seeing Amanda Seyfried break out with a performance I’d never seen before, I have to settle for watching her play a role that was already perfectly played by Emmanuelle Beart. The original films will continue to play just as well as they always have when I go to revisit them – and in fact, will probably play better in comparison to the remakes – but I can’t stand the fact that Tim Burton is spending his days remaking everything that isn’t nailed down instead of creating something unique and original. We want our artists to create things, not mimic or “reimagine.”

Sure, part of me is interested in seeing Jackie Earle Haley play Freddy Krueger, to see what he can do with such an iconic role. But, again, it is an iconic role for a reason and that reason is because Robert Englund imbued the character with a particular sensibility. The filmmakers and the studio are betting on the fact that the character is bigger than the actors who play him, which may very well be true, but I know that I will always think of Robert Englund no matter how good Haley is.

But I suppose the filmmakers are hoping for that kind of generational divide. Therefore, all the people who loved the original will check out the remake for comparison purposes and all of the people who never saw the original will either rent it or buy it in anticipation of the remake or go see the remake or both. And a large portion of the audience that will be sneaking into Nightmare on Elm Street will not have seen the original and will then live their lives thinking that Jackie Early Haley was the definitive Freddy Krueger. And I’m okay with that. I prefer Christopher Lee’s Dracula to Bela Lugosi’s, so I suppose that’s okay. But I also know that Lee owed a lot to Lugosi’s original portrayal.

I was reading recently about how Ridley Scott plans on remaking the Red Riding trilogy for American audiences. Steven Zailian is writing the script and they’re moving the action to the US. Now, for me, this doesn’t make me like the original films any less, but it sure makes me like Ridley Scott a lot less (if that were possible). Again, the Red Riding films are in English. But not only that, they are so uniquely tied to the location of Yorkshire and sewn into a narrative that features a real-life murder case. David Peace, who wrote the novels, did an enormous amount of research over a number of years in order to make sure that everything fit together just so. And the filmmakers similarly worked diligently to bring those novels to the screen. Now Ridley Scott rolls in and is like, “yeah, that six hour trilogy that is set in England and is so uniquely British…I’m going to make it a two and a half hour flick set in the States!” The point being: there is no way that the film could possibly be as good as the original and so what is the motivation there? It must be: wow, good story, I’m going to make it into a smash hit. Which is, you know, not the best way to make a quality film. But please, all of you Ridley Scott apologists, defend him.

So ultimately I get just as frustrated by remakes. I suppose my biggest problem is that I see a lot of movies. Therefore, almost nothing I see nowadays seems original to begin with. When I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I enjoyed quite a bit, I couldn’t help but see callbacks to almost every other mystery film, whether it was Chinatown or The Long Goodbye or The Big Sleep. So when a film actually sets out to be a remake, it makes it even less fun for me. I know Broadway puts on a lot of revivals and people enjoy them, but I can’t relate to that. When I see a remake, I’m not enthused by the prospect of seeing it. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised and I wind up really liking or even loving a remake (Scorsese’s The Departed is a great example), but it’s more difficult to drag myself to the theater to see a remake of a film I’ve already seen and enjoyed.

When great filmmakers attach themselves to remakes, I think there must be some kind of ego involved, that there’s this desire to improve on greatness, that they are talented enough to overcome the flaws of the original, etc. But if they really want to challenge themselves and their egos, then the greatest achievement is to take a blank page and a single great idea and turn it into a great film. A lot of people complain that Tarantino is a filmmaker who takes past ideas and repurposes them, but I can honestly say that each of his films seems completely original to me. He has never taken a past film and decided to flat-out remake it because he knows that it would handcuff him. Other filmmakers like Arnaud Desplechin and Lukas Moodysson operate the same way. And of course, Woody Allen and Spike Lee have never directed a remake. And I think a good motto for all filmmakers is: what would Woody and Spike do? The answer: not a remake.

Noah Forrest
March 22, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

Jude Law has to be one of the most underrated and overexposed actors out there and the two go hand in hand; folks dismiss Law as just tabloid fodder with a pretty face and because of that, I think the public at large doesn’t appreciate him for being what he is.

And what is he?  Only someone with movie star good looks who commands the screen with his charisma and seemingly has zero interest in looking “cool.”  Or at least, that’s the trajectory his career was taking until recently, which of course meant that he was fast on his way to obscurity.

So I guess it should be no surprise that he signed up to play Dr. Watson in the blockbuster remake of Sherlock Holmes and is now starring in the futuristic action flick Repo Men in an attempt to build back some star power.  I haven’t seen Repo Men and I hope it’s excellent, but it seems to be a far cry from the type of films Law used to be attracted to. And I can’t help but wonder, how did he get here? He used to make such interesting choices, both in the films he chose to star in, as well as the character choices. He seldom played a part the way you expected it to be played, so why does it feel like he’s now playing by the rules?

I was looking through Law’s filmography the other day and I was astounded and how many good films he’s been in and how great he’s been in most of them.  1997 was the year I first noticed him.  I didn’t see his wonderful performance in Wilde until years later, but I remember being blown away by his range and his magnetism in both the brilliant Gattaca and the criminally underrated Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  I remember thinking, to paraphrase Butch and Sundance, “Who is this guy?”  Who is this guy who would spend the majority of his screen time in a wheelchair in Gattaca and yet seem so energetic and boisterous that when a climactic moment arrives where he encounters a set of stairs, we think, “holy shit, that’s right, how is he going to overcome this hurdle?”

It’s to Law’s credit that despite his disability being one of the most important aspects of his character, he helps to imbue the character with such energy and nuance that his disability gets backburnered.  Similarly in Midnight in the Garden … it’s astounding that someone who is killed within the first twenty minutes can remain such a presence, hovering over the rest of the film.  When I saw that film at the end of 1997, I knew that he had to become a major star.

Skip forward two years and we’ve got eXistenZ, the David Cronenberg videogame thriller, and Anthony Minghella’s sumptuous The Talented Mr. Ripley.  It’s the latter film that cemented Law as both an Academy Award nominee and someone the world could recognize.  Here was this tanned, beautiful man who commands the screen opposite some incredible actors, including Matt Damon and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

But I’m even more admiring of Law in eXistenZ, which was not a perfect film, because he (and the wonderful Jennifer Jason Leigh) are tasked with having to keep us engaged in a plot that is continually changing.  The narrative threads are purposefully loose and it’s up to Law and Leigh to help us navigate those waters and keep us interested.  And they pull it off.

He was the best thing about Road to Perdition and showed a willingness to de-glamorize himself; he knocked it out of the park as Gigolo Joe in the masterpiece that is A.I. and I enjoyed him in both Enemy at the Gates and the so-so Cold Mountain.  But I’d like to skip forward to 2004 because I think that was the Year of Jude Law and I think it helps to shed some light on where he is now.

In a span of four months, Law starred in four films, narrated another (Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events) and had little more than a cameo in the other (The Aviator).  Because of this release schedule, America was going to be inundated with Jude Law whether they liked it or not.  Let’s take a look at Law’s four major films that year —  two of them mediocre and two brilliant. First we have the needless remake of Alfie, which was doomed to fail from the start.

No matter how charismatic Law was (and is) in the part, there was no way he was going to make anyone forget about Michael Caine. When I think of the character of Alfie, I will always associate it with Caine. He owns that role. It also didn’t help that the remake version seemed to de-ball the very essence of the original film.  It seemed like Law was comfortable enough being the cad, but either the filmmakers or the studio wasn’t comfortable with a film where their hero impregnates his best friend’s girl.  At the end of the original, it seems as if Alfie is lost.  At the end of the remake, he is on his way to redemption.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was supposed to change cinema.  It didn’t.  Law plays his character, a comic book fighter pilot, pretty well.  But he’s lost in a sea of green screen.  It’s just not an actor’s film.  And to be completely honest, I remember very little about it, other than when I said to myself, “oh wow, this all looks incredibly fake.”

The two biggies for me are Closer and I Heart Huckabees.  In both films, Law is playing despicable characters and I think they are the two best performances of his career.  While Closer is a film that hews a bit closer to “reality,” both of his characters felt real to me.  In Closer, he is playing a man who is probably the biggest villain in the film, the way he deceives everyone including himself.  His character actually believes that he is the biggest victim because he can’t see past his own ego and his own self-absorption.  There’s such a high rate of difficulty for a performance like that and he absolutely nails it.  In the opening scenes, we are deceived by him as well, waiting for him to make amends somehow for all his wrongs throughout the film.  But just when we let our guard down and begin to trust him again, he lets us down.

But his performance as Brad Stand in I Heart Huckabees is the one that made me say, “hot damn, this guy is a treasure.”  He’s playing someone that is eminently unlikable, but by the end of the film, we grow to understand him despite the fact that he doesn’t really undergo any massive changes. By the end of the film, he is still someone who is (hilariously) obsessed with status, wealth and materialism, but the difference is that he becomes aware of it and it scares the shit out of him to really look inside himself and to hear his own words parroted back to him.

It’s a funny film, but he has a genuine crisis in this film, realizing that the only thing that is compelling him forward at the company he works for is the fact that he can bullshit and tell a good story.  I felt such an odd mixture of pity and justice when he vomits in his own hand at the board meeting.  I felt like he was getting what he deserved because he’d been a prick the whole movie, but the message of the film is about how we’re all vulnerable at times and we’re all human beings, and that scene drives that point home.  It’s a testament to Law that he is willing to go there.

In the six years since that landmark year, Law has been seen far less.  He starred in Minghella’s last film, he was in the tragically mediocre Wong-Kar Wai film My Blueberry Nights because how can you say no to working with Wong-Kar Wai? He played the handsome brit who romanced Cameron Diaz in The Holiday.  He was in the remake of Sleuth opposite Michael Caine and he was very good in it.  But it seemed like his career and his acting suddenly lost a lot of personality.

He’s not working in film as often and I wonder if it has to do with the general reaction to the films of 2004.  Or, more likely, the fact that he was always promoting films during that year and his love life was being played out in newspapers across the world.  He couldn’t focus on his craft, perhaps. Whatever it is, I miss Jude Law.  I didn’t want him to play Watson in the Sherlock Holmes film, but I was glad he was there.  I was happy to see his face and I thought he played that part as well as he could, given the constraints of a big-budget film.  And I’ll be happy to see him in Repo Men.  But I can’t help but wonder if we’ve all missed out.

I think there were so many great Jude Law performances that we didn’t get to see for one reason or another.  In 2004, he was straddling the line between being a huge movie star and being that great actor who never broke through.  He was, in a lot of ways, like Johnny Depp before Pirates of the Caribbean.  And now, with Sherlock Holmes, he’s like Depp after Pirates.  And just like with Depp, I liked Law better before.

Noah Forrest
March 15, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

As an elitist film snob, I subscribe to the “auteur” theory. I believe that the director is the true author of the film and that it is my job as a film writer to trace a filmmaker’s themes and creative tics through their filmography. When Truffaut wrote about the Auteur theory, he was speaking mostly about ascertaining whose creative vision each film was and also about his role as a critic, but to call a director an “auteur” has become a shorthand for praising the filmmaker for having a unique and distinctive vision.

Most auteurs are directors who return to the same material or setting often and/or emply a specific visual scheme and design. In other words, to be considered a true auteur, one should be able to look at a fragment of that filmmaker’s newest film and be able to recognize it immediately as the work of that particular director.

Today, there are very few auteurs left. In the rest of the world, there are many distinctive filmmakers like Arnaud Desplechin, Lukas Moodysson, Wong Kar-Wai, Ken Loach, and a handful of others. But surprisingly, the majority of filmmakers I consider to be auteurs are in America. We’ve got Spike Lee, Woody Allen, Terrence Malick, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Richard Linklater and a handful of others. To be not be considered an auteur is not necessarily the worst thing in the world. Many great filmmakers don’t fall into this category. Although, the truth of the matter is that most of the time, to be considered an auteur is indeed a compliment.

Tim Burton practically defines the word “auteur.” Look up the word in the dictionary and you’ll probably see his scraggly hair. He has repeated visual motifs and production designs that resemble abstract art, lots of deep velvety black hues dominating the palette and bright yellows and greens when they do pop up, oddball and outcast characters often at the center of his films, Danny Elfman scores, and a seeming desire to never allow his films to become too serious or consequential. That last comment by the way has only been a recent development, applied solely to the films he’s made in recent years. And it’s become something of a detriment to his recent work, which feels mostly as if there are no real stakes. And even when there are stakes, it doesn’t feel real.

Now, one could say, “hey Noah, you twit, he made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory not The Seventh Seal, give him a break!” But, my argument would be that one can make a so-called “light” film and have it have real stakes that are important to the characters and thus the audience. When Burton made Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, we truly cared whether or not Pee-wee got his bike back. He wasn’t trying to cure cancer or save the world from nuclear destruction; he was just an odd man-child who wanted his bike back more than anything in the world. The whole movie has diversions and distractions as Pee-wee hits the road, but we never forget the purpose of his journey. With something like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the second that Johnny Depp shows up doing his Michael Jackson impression, we forget the purpose of the journey. Charlie Bucket becomes a secondary character and the stakes disappear until the ending when we’re reminded of Charlie’s plight.

This has been a common problem in the last few Burton films, including his newest smash hit Alice in Wonderland, which never feels real, never feels like anything more than a dream. And it’s hard for dreams or fantasies to have any real weight to them unless you’re Luis Bunuel. Regardless, Burton’s last few films, from Planet of the Apes onward, have lacked that intensity and momentum. Instead of having some emotional or physical conflict at the center of the story, we are instead left with over-emotive performances from an admittedly charismatic Johnny Depp. Instead of probing insight into the human psyche and condition through the use of metaphor and visual splendor, we are left with predictable oddballs and eccentrics signifying very little.

In other words, the point I’m getting at, is that in the case of Tim Burton, becoming an auteur has hindered him. More than that, it’s not enough for him to simply be an auteur.

Instead of being excited by the fact that Burton was tackling something like Alice in Wonderland, which is right in his wheelhouse, I was worried that Burton would be typically Burtonesque in his adaptation. The sad fact is that when I heard the name Tim Burton and Alice in Wonderland I felt like I could already see the movie in my head. He’s the first auteur I can think of who is so predictably unpredictable that I don’t need to wait for a musical cue or a single image to appear on screen to say, “oh yes, of course, this is so Burton.” I already can predict and visualize the entire thing. This “outside” artist seems like he has let the studios co-opt his point of view. Now it doesn’t seem like Burton is this rebel voice working within the studio system, but rather that the studio can claim Burton’s mise-en-scene as rebellious and sell it to the cool kids. He has become the film version of Hot Topic.

The first clue to that transition came with his remake of Planet of the Apes. It looked and felt like a slick studio product from all the promotional material. But being the young cinephile that I was, I rallied all my friends to see it on opening day because, come on, I couldn’t miss the new Tim Burton film however awful it looked. And my worst fears were realized. It was exactly what I thought it was going to be. It felt lifeless. By the time Mark Wahlberg kisses the ape-woman played by Helena Bonham Carter, I was ready to cry for what Burton could have been. He had done the unthinkable and made a straight-up payheck job.

But then I thought he would bounce back with his next film, Big Fish. I figured, wow, now Burton’s gonna wow us; he’s making a film with an interesting storyline, great cast, but it’s also a bit weightier because there’s a dying father involved. This, I felt, was going to be Burton’s masterpiece. Boy, was I disappointed. This was a film that truly had no stakes because we’re being told the whole story from the perspective of a man who lies and exaggerates, so we know that what we’re seeing on screen is probably not the actual way things went down. And it felt like a big excuse for Burton to show us a bunch of carnival sideshows. It looked breathtaking, of course, because Burton has always been able to wow us with his images. But it felt empty and Burton does not do saccharine well. The tender moments felt too clumsy and overall, it seemed like a bad fit for Burton, like he couldn’t bring a story like this to life in the correct way, with the right amount of heart.

I really wanted him to go back to the stories and visions that didn’t require giant budgets. If he would make a small, independent film with a bunch of unknowns, I would be the happiest guy in the world. I truly feel like these big budgets are harming his creativity. We always root for these strong indie actors and filmmakers to break through so that they could get enough money to finance their bigger visions or to get the chance to star in the films they really want to make. But it’s like electing a president who says he’s going to end corruption; it’s the system, not the guy. So, the actors and directors wind up being seduced by the big bucks and then destroying their legacy. Who am I to judge? I’d probably do the same.

I will always have love in my heart for Burton. This is, after all, the man who gave us Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Ed Wood. Each of those films feel personal and distinctive, yet all from the hands of one particular author. When I see a film like Sweeney Todd, I can see clearly that the work is from the same man, but it feels devoid of any passion. There isn’t one scene in the past ten years of Burton’s work that has the same combination of beauty, longing and heartbreak as Edward Scissorhands being unable to hold the thing he loves the most without harming it. There is nothing that has the same joyful insanity as when the Maitlands change their faces in order to visit the spirit world. And there is nothing that Burton has displayed in fifteen years that makes it seem like he loves cinema the same way that Ed Wood did.

Now, who am I to say what Tim Burton should and shouldn’t do? Clearly the man has amassed a wild fortune and has created such an indelible body of work that MoMA did a retrospective on him this past year. He is an artist, first and foremost and what made him so appealing was the fact that he seemed to be a visual artist that was heavily influenced by Vincent Price and Hammer horror films and cheesy sci-fi movies. In other words, he wasn’t an abstract artist who seemed to take himself super seriously. His films mattered, though, because he was combining his unique style with storylines that were both original and slightly unhinged.

When you have someone as talented as Burton and as distinctive and you watch his earlier work, it’s like watching a young basketball player who is already able to score thirty points a night, like Kevin Durant. And you say to yourself, “wow, if this kid ever puts it all together, he could be a perennial MVP candidate.” And with Burton, it seemed like, “wow, when he puts it all together, he is going to make one of the greatest films of all time.” Now, I don’t know whether it’s the team around him or if he’s just one of those guys that never fully realizes their talent – a guy who never develops that mid-range game. But I do know that I will never stop rooting for Tim Burton. He’s been one of the most prominent auteurs in cinema for the last two decades, but I think it’s simply not enough anymore to give us exactly what we’re expecting.

Noah Forrest
March 8, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

There are too many damn movies.

As a cinephile, I feel it is my duty to see as many films as possible. But unfortunately, Hollywood won’t just give me time to catch up on all the ones I’ve missed since they keep churning out new films every year. So I try to see somewhere between a hundred and fifty to two hundred new releases in any given calendar year. I try to see the films that aren’t good too, because I feel it’s important to gauge a film year and the films in it only after you’ve seen what that year had to offer. So, no, I didn’t need to see Legion, but I think it helps me to appreciate films like Red Riding even more.

Regardless, my commitment to the new releases and being able to stay abreast of what’s going on in the culture right now makes it difficult for me to find as much time to dip back into the classics that I have yet to see. I’ve seen the majority of the “important” films like any good film geek, but I have some gaps in my cinematic knowledge because it’s harder to find the time to watch some of the older films. Life gets in the way, to be sure, but it’s also because so much of my movie-watching time is devoted to watching a lot of crappy newer films. It’s enough to make me consider rethinking this devotion to seeing what’s out there now.

But the great thing about the months of January to April is that it gives me a lot of time to catch up on some of the classics. There aren’t as many films coming out in theaters right now that I feel the urge to rush out and see, so I often spend a lot of these winter months watching films that fell through the gaps or sometimes films I hadn’t really thought of seeing, but seem interesting to me. Basically, I feel like a kid in a candy store, seeing if there is anything in the next week that I can DVR on TCM (best channel on television) or if there are older films that I can stream on NetFlix. And then when April rolls around, I wind up doing a lot of catch-up on the films that I missed during those first four months of the year.

The point is that I had such a wonderful movie night a couple days ago, taking in a double-feature of The Ox-Bow Incident and Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai. I hadn’t seen either of those pictures before and I enjoyed the hell out of both of them. Henry Fondaand Dana Andrews are both excellent in the former picture and I loved Orson Welles’ Irish accent and Rita Hayworth’s short blonde haircut in the latter. They were both such pleasures to watch because I just really wanted to watch them and since I’d heard of them and read a bit about them, I knew they must be pretty good. Besides, anything directed by Orson Welles or starring Henry Fonda sounds like a much better use of my time than seeing Leap Year.

I want to talk a little bit about both of those films, but first I just want to say that the film media does a terrible job of remembering its past. There is such an emphasis on what is coming out now, due in large part to the marketing department and the diligence of many PR people. So often what we wind up reading has to do with what’s out in theaters right now or what’s new to DVD, but there are so many outlets now that cover the same releases. And all these different outlets didn’t exist fifty or sixty years ago.

So while it might be easy to find 200 reviews of Shutter Island, it’s much more difficult to find a lot of different points of view on some classic films. Even worse, there are hardly any modern points of view on these older pictures. I understand why the emphasis is on now, but I think there should be more film writers willing to talk about the films of the past. Especially films that aren’t named Citizen Kane or Casablanca or anything else on the AFI Top 100 list. There are so many good movies that are somewhat acclaimed, but don’t get the attention.

Take The Lady from Shanghai, for example. It’s not a perfect film, the last ten minutes are a little hokey, but it’s a really entertaining and thrilling film that holds up well against the thrillers that have come out in 2010. I’d rather re-watch The Lady from Shanghai over watchingEdge of Darkness or Shutter Island again. It’s much more taut and exciting than either of those films, although it does have the resolution problems that the Scorsese picture does. I think it often gets lost that Orson Welles was a terrific actor in addition to being a world-class director and in Shanghai, he is able to flex both of those considerable gifts. He creates a heroic character who says from the beginning that he isn’t a hero, but who might be the only character who actually has a moral compass in the entire film. He is surrounded by wealthier folks who have no integrity, but he’s a man who is rich with it. We understand this man. And Welles does an Irish accent that, to my American ear, seemed pretty impeccable.

The Ox-Bow Incident is, I feel, one of the strongest arguments against capital punishment that I have ever seen. I think it makes a stronger case than Dead Man Walking did, to be perfectly honest. It’s all about how we can compromise our humanity in the name of justice, a theme that applies to the world we live in today where we routinely torture suspected terrorists and hope for torture for the ones we haven’t caught yet. The argument in the film is about whether or not these three supposed killers deserve a fair trial or if this posse should just lynch them immediately. But if they’re wrong about these suspects, then wouldn’t they just be murderers too? It’s a slippery slope to enact justice. And Henry Fonda is great as always, but I found the performance of Dana Andrews to be especially moving. There are some problems with the film, including a potential love interest that seems kind of shoe-horned into it, but the evocation of emotions and the truths it unearths about human nature are just top-notch.

I hope that this column encourages all of you to seek out not just these two films, but all classic films that seem to be of interest to you. Don’t get caught up in the hype of the new releases or let your friends drag you to see Cop Out because you heard it was really funny. You don’t have to be a film snob and stay home and watch The General, but there are so many hilarious films that have come out since cinema was invented and it seems silly to see a comedy just based on the fact that it’s the one playing on a big screen in a theater. In other words, you have more options than what the marketing gurus want you to believe. So, before you pay your eleven bucks for a movie ticket, think long and hard about whether this would be the best way to spend your time.

And then maybe watch The General.

Noah Forrest
March 1, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

Last week, I spoke of the virtues of Martin Scorsese and why all film geeks everywhere should be excited to see his newest film, Shutter Island.  The opening of a new Scorsese film was something that I felt was a cinematic event more exciting than the first weekend of any blockbuster.  So, just know that when I went to Shutter Island at a midnight showing late Thursday night with two of my best viewing companions with a room full of five hundred people, there was a palpable excitement.  I was seeing this film in the best of circumstances, in good seats in a theater with great sound and picture.  I was so unbelievably prepared to love whatever I was going to see.

Well, you can see where this is going.

Let me start by saying that Shutter Island is not a bad film by any means.  It is a perfectly acceptable film that is worth your time and money.  But as a Scorsese film, we naturally hold it to different standards and next to the other films he’s directed, it’s not one of his finest accomplishments.  I walked out of the film still wanting to love it, but within ten minutes of discussing the movie with my buddies Jack and Jonah, the holes started to become more and more apparent and I’d started to question everything about the film except for the beautiful photography.  It’s a testament to Scorsese that he can still inspire heated discussions, even when he makes a middling film, but if any other director had made the film, there would be no discussion at all.

When the film started, it seemed as if Scorsese was setting a certain mood.  There was the loud, ominous score and about fifteen minutes of exposition done in an almost comically outsized way.  But I was with it.  I turned to my buddy Jack who seemed concerned and I whispered, “I think I know what he’s doing.”  And Jack turned to me and asked, “What is he doing?”  I felt like the beginning of the film was setting things up to be Scorsese’s take on a Val Lewton kind of horror film, heavy on atmospherics.  I also, obviously, saw touches of Hitchcock – who seems to be a stronger influence as the film goes on.  But, I was with it, I felt like I was in the hands of Marty Scorsese and he knew what he was doing.

The movie drags for a little bit as things get set up and I found myself shifting a little bit in my seat and worrying.  The set-up for the film felt like it should be smoother and easier, but Kubrick took his time setting up The Shining too, so I tried to keep that in mind.  Then, when our lead character Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) go to the house of Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and there’s a sudden flashback to Daniels in Nazi Germany, I felt instantly jolted back into the story.  I was confused in the best possible way, wondering how this would play into the plot that I was watching unfold.  “Scorsese and Nazis?  I’m in,” I thought.  I turned to Jack and said, “Wow, this movie just got a hundred times more interesting.”

(This is a good place to mention that I don’t really talk much while watching a movie, contrary to the stories I’m telling here, but when I do have something to say to my neighbors, I do so in a barely audible whisper.  I make sure that nobody around me can hear the muffled sounds of my whispers.  Movie theaters are a shared space and it would be good if more people remembered this, so that everyone can enjoy it.  Whispering to your companion is an unacceptable thing, but talking in a regular voice about something is not.)

So about half an hour into the film, I was really starting to get into it.  I felt like I was seeing a master at work and I loved the way he was using misdirection to throw us off the trail and the way the flashbacks and dream sequences seemed both vital and yet elusive.  Then I turned to Jack and suggested a theory about what might be happening on the island.  He turned to be and suggested something else.  And as soon as Jack said it, I knew he was right.  And even if he hadn’t said it, I would have realized it five minutes later.

You see, Shutter Island is a film with a pretty big twist.  And once that twist is figured out, there is still some enjoyment to be derived from watching the pieces fall into place, but ultimately the film is dependent on you not knowing that twist.  As much as I hate to say it, this is essentially Scorsese doing an M. Night Shyamalan film, only in a much more graceful and tasteful way.  This proves the point that if you give Scorsese a mediocre script, he can make it into something more than what’s on the page.  But it almost seems like an experiment for Scorsese and the cast to try and elevate what is essentially a straightforward tale that tries to obscure its true colors – unsuccessfully – for its entire running time.

As I mentioned earlier, the Hitchcock references start coming fast and furious towards the end of the film.  In a scene at the lighthouse at the end of the film, as DiCaprio climbs the stairs, every single person in the theater should be screaming to themselves, “VERTIGO!” because it’s that obvious.  It’s a little too obvious, to be quite honest.  And then the very end of the film, after the twist has been revealed, feels exactly like the last seven minutes of Psycho, in that everything has been explained and the story is basically over and then we are given an unnecessary coda.

There is a flashback towards the end of the film where we see the actualization of something in Teddy’s life that has only been hinted at.  It is gut-wrenching and beautiful and tragic and it hit me hard.  And as the camera pulled back and we started to look at the scene from above, I was thinking, “if you end it here, you’re brilliant.”  But he didn’t and then we have the Psycho ending where we get a lot of psychobabble.  I’m trying to be as vague as possible, so as not to spoil anything.

The two things that really make this film worth watching are the acting and the cinematography. Bob Richardson continues to prove that he is one of the finest artists in the business.  Just look at the way the colors pop in almost all of the flashback scenes and the compare it with the dingy grays and browns that take place in the island.  The way he and Scorsese work together makes every movement of the camera seem important.  I love the way the camera whip-pans in the beginning of the film as one of the guards points out the three different wards.  The image of Michelle Williams standing next to a little girl as a car blows up and a fire rages behind them is now etched into my memory permanently and it’s frightening and gorgeous.

I think DiCaprio’s first outing with Scorsese, Gangs of New York, was not entirely successful.  But in the other three (The Aviator, The Departed and now Shutter Island) he’s been excellent.  He’s always had the boyish looks and a ton of charisma, but this is the first film where I watched him and felt like I was watching a real man, the kind of hero from a different era.  It’s not as complicated a performance or as subtle as the one he gave in The Departed nor is the degree of difficulty as high as The Aviator; but it is a performance that the whole film hinges on.  If DiCaprio rings false in any scene, then the whole movie falls apart and he assures that it doesn’t.  Mark Ruffalo is typically good in kind of a typical Ruffalo role.  Kingsley is similarly good, always a pleasure to see him.  Max von Sydow is excellent and Michelle Williams is flawless.

But ultimately – and I feel like a pretentious asshole for saying this – this is “minor” Scorsese.  And I don’t mean that in the sense that, “well, he’s not doing a three-hour long biopic so it’s clearly not a major work.”  I think of horror films and thrillers as being capable of great heights, but I just don’t think Scorsese hits those heights here as much as he might try.  He’s made a moody and atmospheric film that just doesn’t pop the way it should and that is too reliant on pulling the rug out from under you in the final minutes, but he’s already shown his hand too much by that point.

My biggest issues with the film were things that I didn’t think would be a problem with a Scorsese film; namely focus and point of view.  I think the focus of the film drifts too often, like the picture is trying to figure out what it’s supposed to be from moment to moment.  And the point of view is an issue that I don’t think Scorsese every truly got a handle on.  It’s tough to figure out, when looking back at the entirety of the movie, whether or not we’ve had an unreliable narrator.  But is this character really the narrator?  Are we seeing things through their eyes or are we seeing things play out the way they naturally would?  There are scenes and moments that suggest both.

This is certainly not the worst Scorsese film.  It’s not even in the bottom five (which would be, in order from worst to best, Bringing Out the Dead, New York New York, Cape Fear, The Color of Money, and Kundun).  But it’s probably at the bottom of the next tier of Scorsese films.  And considering that even the worst Scorsese picture is better than the average film, it shouldn’t be a bad thing when Scorsese doesn’t hit one out of the park.  And Shutter Island is a solid single and a stolen base, which is nothing to sneeze at.  But with Marty, we expect so much more.

Noah Forrest
February 22, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

Scorsese the Underdog

I haven’t seen Shutter Island yet, although it seems like the rest of the film community has.  That’s fine by me since I wouldn’t want to see it any other way than on Friday afternoon with a crowd full of film fans, rather than a screening room full of critics.  Seeing The Departed on an early Friday morning the day it came out was one of the best film experiences I’ve ever had; the whole crowd was just with.  There was even a homeless man, complete with a shopping cart full of empty bottles and cans that he set to the side, sitting down and munching his popcorn in the front row.  That’s New York City, for you, even the homeless come out to support the new Scorsese film…

Anyway, it got me thinking that Martin Scorsese might actually be underappreciated.  “What?” you say, “How can that be?” you ask.  I think he’s been justifiably lauded over the years for his impressive resume, his incredible attention to detail and is regarded as one of the finest film historians we have.  But, quite frankly, I think we all take him for granted a little bit.  While film nerds wet themselves over the fact that James Cameron – a true visionary, don’t get me wrong – released Avatar, I don’t understand why there isn’t similar excitement for the latest Scorsese picture.  I’m not getting the sense that there is a palpable buzz.

What really bothers me is that most people think of Scorsese as merely a “gangster” filmmaker.  First of all, Goodfellas and Casino are two of the best films to ever inhabit the genre, so it’s not like he’s merely made a few gangster films.  Second of all, even if you include The Departed and Gangs of New York, the vast majority of his films are about so much more than that.  The Last Temptation of Christ is one of the most spiritual and moving films I’ve ever seen; Kundun falls into that category as well.  And I happen to think of After Hours as a bit of a spiritual/existential meditation.  So, I suppose I could just as easily call Scorsese a “religious” filmmaker.  The bottom line is that he’s not someone that can be easily pigeonholed.

I recently re-watched The Age of Innocence for the tenth or eleventh time and it’s probably my favorite Scorsese film.  It’s the best evidence that the man, while being one of the most singular voices in American film, is capable of being a chameleon.  His camera movements in the film, the long sweeping shots in the party scenes, is one of the few indicators that we’re watching a Scorsese picture.  But, the man is also an auteur and he puts his stamp on that film.  The other film in his filmography that I think The Age of Innocence most resembles is, oddly enough, Raging Bull.  They are both the stories of men filled with emotions; one expresses them through punches and the other one suppresses it.  Both men wind up miserable.  Thematically, both are stories about how we punish ourselves.

Scorsese is one of the few living masters of cinema and his latest film is being treated as just another February release that just so happens to star Leonardo DiCaprio.  He got a write-up in the New York Times and a few other outlets have come out with their own half-hearted Scorsese pieces.  But nothing really has explained to the people that no matter if it’s as terrible as Bringing Out the Dead, this is important cinema. I recently saw someone describe the film as being something like Scorsese’s The Shining.  I mean, holy shit, how does that not get you completely geeked out as a film nerd?

Unmade Movies

I haven’t seen Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman yet.  It doesn’t have to do as much with who diddirect it as much as who didn’t.  The original director, Mark Romanek, left the project four weeks before shooting, which is when any excitement I had for the project disappeared.  Nothing against Johnston, but he’s not the visionary that Romanek is.  Based on not just his debut feature, One Hour Photo, but his beautiful collection of music videos, it’s clear that Romanek has an interesting point of view, one that would make his direction of an Andrew Kevin Walker script of The Wolfman a film that I would put on my must-see list.  But, alas, it didn’t work out that way and so instead of showing up on opening weekend, I’m content to wait a week or two.

This was certainly not the first time I’ve had an experience like this.  A few years ago, I was unbelievably excited to see David Fincher’s Lords of Dogtown based on a script by Roger Avary.  What we wound up getting was Catherine Hardwicke’s Lords of Dogtown based on a script by Stacy Peralta.  I thought the idea of making a fictionalized version of events that we’d seen in a stellar documentary might be unnecessary, but with Fincher attached, I knew it would probably be breathtaking.  There were a lot of good things in Hardwicke’s picture, most of them due to the presence of Emile Hirsch as Jay Adams, who was so full of vitality and charisma that it was difficult not to be awed by what he was doing.

But, I couldn’t help but think of what the picture could have been. Jay Adams was 12 years old when he started out, younger than the rest of the kids in the Z-Boys by a few years.  And the documentary shows us that he was a little smart-ass and prankster.  I loved Hirsch’s performance, but he was too old to play Jay Adams by at least four years.  I feel like if Fincher had directed the film, he would have hewed more closely to the facts.  I imagine it would be something akin to what he did with the Bay Area in Zodiac, only with Venice Beach skateboarding in the 70s.

Fincher’s Lords of Dogtown is one of my most recent most disappointing unmade films.  What are yours?

Noah Forrest
February 15, 2010

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.