Thoughts on: Batman, Super Heroes, Special Effects

I thought about writing up some kind of response to Sean Collins's short, anti-Batman Begins, pro-Tim Burton Batman comment from his recent Carnival of Souls post, but I realized I had already said most of what I have to say about that here. At one point I know that I had meant to mount a more detailed defense of Batman Begins against the specific criticisms Sean had raised in his original post on the movie, but I now figure I'll save any extended writing on that subject for when the sequel comes out.

I will add now that I think the Burton Batman suffers from the same problem as Byran Singer's Superman Returns: a script whose cleverness undermines something integral to the central character. In the case of Batman, making the Joker the killer of Bruce Wayne's parents creates nice narrative symmetry but it reduces Batman's crusade into a conventional revenge story and neatens everything up. The sense that Batman can never truly avenge his parents' death by fighting crime is completely lost because he actually gets to avenge his parents' death. Likewise, the big reveal in Superman Returns undermines any poignancy that the character has for being someone trapped between two worlds, two lives that are not reconcilable.

Anyway...

Seeing Sean describe the Burton Batman as his favorite super-hero movie got me thinking about my own favorites: Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man movies, the first three Superman movies (yes - even III), the three X-Men movies (yes - even The Last Stand), Ang Lee's The Hulk, Batman Returns, and Batman Begins. And Batman and Superman Returns, because, despite my problems with their scripts, they have something most of the other movies (except for The Hulk, where the script also has some "cleverness" problems) on this list lack: a sense of visual poetry and design that characterizes the best super hero comics. For the most part, super-hero movies have only achieved this sporadically (some of the moments in Superman II and III and the first two X-Men movies), instead focusing on a very literal use of special effects to convince us that a man can really fly.

One of the few poetic fx-driven moments in recent super hero flicks...

The two Fantastic Four movies offer the clearest example of what I'm trying to get at: I think they're both fairly enjoyable as lightweight summer spectacles, but the nature of their spectacle is completely within the domain of blockbuster action movie conventions and doesn't even try to achieve an ounce of the power, grandeur, and poetry of the Jack Kirby artwork from the original comics. The movies are as far from the comics as The Man of La Mancha is from Don Quixote.

Better movies suffer from this, too: as much as I like Spider-Man, there's something off-putting about the obvious transformation of Tobey Maguire in a Spider-Man costume to CGI Spider-Man every time he puts on his mask and starts to leap around. In some ways, the much lower-rent sub-Matrix effects in the first two X-Men movies have more integrity.

Considering the ubiquity of special effects and their central place in many comic book movies, I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been more of any effort to deal more systematically with the "poetics of sfx".

I mean, it's practically begging you...

Another "Not Quite a Movie Recommendation":

So, when I finally got around to watching M. Night Shyamalan's The Lady in the Water (2006), I found that I actually liked it and thought that it was a pretty good movie. Which is not to say that I think it was unfairly panned by critics or that it was "underrated". Actually, even though I like the movie, it does three things that are impossible not to criticize and, while I was able to more or less ignore these things, if you can't ignore them or don't want to ignore them, my guess would be that the movie would drive you batty.

M. Night Shyamalan's First Annoying Thing:

He names the two species of fairytale creatures "Narfs" and "Scrunts". These words look silly enough on paper, but it is even sillier to hear actors say these words while keeping a completely serious look on their face. The silliness turns to something genuinely annoying, because we keep hearing "narfs" and "scrunts" over and over again. And while "narf" is just sort of ridiculous, someone involved in making the movie should have told M. Night not to give a fantasy creature a name that sounds like the combination of "scrotum" and "cunt". I expect this is fundamental to what killed the movie with the general audience.

M. Night Shyamalan's Second Annoying Thing:

In a rather petty, adolescent move, he makes the "jerk" character a movie critic (named Farber), I guess to get back at critics who didn't like Signs and The Village (or something). M. Night has always been bigger with the people than with the critics (although his first two films were fairly well reviewed for genre movies), but one would have hoped that he'd be able to rise above this kind of mean-spiritedness if only because he's been so successful despite what critics have had to say.

M. Night makes it even worse by giving his hero a speech that goes something like "How dare that critic interpret a story! How dare he assume that his interpretation is the only correct one!" This is so absurd because all of M. Night's movies are allegorical: they are crying out to be interpreted and at their best (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable), like any good allegory, they support multiple readings!

M. Night Shyamalan's Third Annoying Thing:

Maybe he could have gotten away with it if he had stopped with the first two annoying things, but I think this one really pushed him over the edge as far as movie critics were concerned. It's one thing to suggest that all critics are know-nothing parasites, it is another thing, though, to cast yourself as an author of a book of such world-changing importance that magical creatures go to war over your very survival. It's not even cocky or conceited or arrogant: it's just absurd! I mean: though M. Night has appeared in his other movies, it's always in small (though not insignificant) roles. Here, while he's not the protagonist, he's at the center of the film and you can't help putting the pieces together. That is: he casts himself in the role because he believes (on some level) that he is the author whose work will have world changing importance. How's that for setting yourself up as a target of ridicule and scorn?

My favorite goofy character in the movie.

Actually, it's the size and obvious deliberateness of these "Annoying Things" that make it possible for me to ignore them (more or less) and like the movie anyway. In a perverse way, I might even like the movie more because of them: not because they aren't really annoying, but because they are such obviously bad ideas that they're almost too easy to beat up on. It's like he's asking for the abuse.

So - what exactly is there to like in a non-perverse way?

Well, have you read any of James P. Blaylock's novels? He's one of my favorite fantasy authors (I recommend The Last Coin and The Paper Grail). I tend to describe his books as being like Stephen King's with the horror/scare-factor dialed way down, although they're a lot more modest. They're generally about a contemporary American everyman bumping up against the fantastic in the middle of everyday contemporary American life. Despite some of the megalomania that manifests itself in Annoyances 2 and 3 (not to mention the huge budget), The Lady in the Water is similarly modest movie. "The Everyday" is never overwhelmed by "The Fantastic": rather, "The Fantastic" is always creeping around the edges. And, as in Blaylock's books, the characters are all refreshingly low-key.

(Alas, the climax of the movie features the kind of half-assed mumbo jumbo hand-waving as most recent Stephen King novels.)

From a film geek perspective, I like all of M. Night's long takes and his willingness to give his actors room (both time and space) to develop their performances. And I also like the way he works in self-imposed limitations, like never taking us outside of the apartment complex. It's a bit of a stunt, but (somewhat paradoxically) a low key stunt that doesn't call attention to itself. It's more noticeably in retrospect. I like seeing someone making a big budget movie for popular audiences that doesn't pander and doesn't ape all the standard conventions of big budget filmmaking.

That said, Adam at Film at 11 is probably right to put the Strained Seriousness label on M. Night.

Not quite a movie recommendation...

Not quite a movie recommendation this time, but rather some thoughts about contemporary filmmaking practice (esp. with regards to comedies) and a link to a clip.

I'm reluctant to simply lead with the clip - from the original The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1963) - because the only version I could find on the internet isn't all that great. The scene - a complex car chase around a fountain in a small Swiss town, involving crooks and police officers, all in "fancy dress" costumes - needs widescreen presentation to really do it justice. Unfortunately, the internet clip crops the image and doesn't even show the entire scene: the rhythms of the editing and the camera movement seem a lot choppier than they should and the climax is missing. Still: there's enough there that what I'm saying shouldn't seem completely unfounded.

Here's the link.

What strikes me about this scene is not only how good it is as a gag, but also how its "goodness" (i.e. what makes it funny, what makes it interesting, what makes it work) is tied up with a number of (related) elements that are nowhere to be seen in contemporary Hollywood/Indiewood/Eurowood comedies (or movies in general).

They are:

(1) Longer takes/fewer cuts/camera farther away from the action. Everything here is accomplished with very little fuss in terms of camera placement, camera movement, and editing. Edwards stays (mostly) in long shots and doesn't do too much to "energize" or "push" the sequence. He achieves his effects through: the choreography of the driving, the silliness of the drivers, the reaction of the silent witness.

(2) It is primarily a visual gag, although by no means a "silent" one (the sound/image choreography is very important). It relies on a very inventive use of the location, precisely coordinated stunt driving, moments of visual rhyming, a playfulness regarding off-screen space and the edge of the frame (for instance: the "climax" - not seen in the clip - happens off screen - anticipating JLG's Weekend(?)), and a few basic camera movements (most noticeably the pans from one side of the circle to the other and the dollying in and out).

(3) Builds as a gag/built to as a sequence. Edwards takes some time to set things up and then goes through a few variations, which get more complicated (and funnier) until the final, capping moment. But more importantly: the entire car chase itself builds on some of the movie's earlier gags. The two gorillas meeting echoes their earlier interaction in an homage to the Marx Bros. "mirror" sequence and throughout the movie Edwards has built gags around the edges of the frame - for instance, Sellars's stymied romancing of Capucine in the hotel room. That means that the sequence can't be completely appreciated divorced from the movie as a whole, not just in terms of plot and character (i.e., why that guy is doing that thing and what it means in the big picture of the story) but also in terms of filmmaking choices. We're still (somewhat) used to seeing that kind of deliberateness in Hollywood action movies (e.g. 300), even if it is not always appreciated, but it is virtually absent from most comedies. And when we do come across a comedy with this kind of elaborateness/deliberateness, it is usually carried by the dialogue (e.g. The Big Lebowski) or the set design (e.g. Dick and Down with Love) or both (e.g. Wes Anderson's movies).

(4) The whole scene is presented from the POV of a "background" character. This seems like a little detail, but it might be one of the biggest differences between this sequence and the kind we're most likely to run into today. It isn't just that we spend the whole scene without ever seeing the faces of the stars, but adding another pov helps to open up the movie. That is: the movie doesn't limit itself to the povs of the stars. This kind of choice is digressive from a stylistic standpoint (although not a narrative one): these kinds of digressions are rare in contemporary Hollywood-style movies.

(In David Bordwell's terms, these are all things that have been lost because of the move towards "Intensified Continuity" as the default style for popular narrative filmmaking).

So what does this all mean? Well, to get back to Judd Apatow...

As much as I like Superbad and as funny as I think it is, it doesn't come close to The Hollywood Knights. My somewhat glib reason: unlike Superbad, The Hollywood Knights was made by a filmmaker, not just someone who (to borrow from my friend Nick) turns on the camera and lets the actors be funny.

To be fair to Mottola/Apatow/Rogen/et al.: they are near the top of this school of moviemaking, but their main gift - nailing down a certain kind of post-slacker dude banter - manifests itself on a scene-by-scene basis, without ever coalescing into something bigger.

And, to be realistic about Blake Edwards's movies specifically and earlier comedies generally, many of them are made with much less care and thought than Superbad or Knocked Up. (Most of the later Pink Panther movies are pretty lousy pieces of hackwork: none are as bad as, say, Evan Almighty, but, after Return of the Pink Panther, none are really as good as, say, Bruce Almighty.)

Still: Superbad and Knocked Up were two of the best-reviewed and best-received comedies of last year and I can't help thinking: "Is this all we expect of a 'great' comedy?" Not that they aren't funny or that they don't have some memorable/rewatchable moments/scenes/etc. - they made me laugh, they presented some very true-to-life characters, they capture the dynamic of guys engaging in that kind pop culture one-upsmanship that is a substitute for conversation - but they're scrawny when compared to The Pink Panther or The Hollywood Knights.

Placed next to The Pink Panther, we can see how limited their repertoire is: with only a few exceptions, the humor is either verbal or based on facial expressions. And it's not only that there's no physical humor or what I'd call cinematic humor (like the car chase from Pink Panther: gags that rely on staging, composition, choreography, etc.), the verbal, dialogue exchange-based humor is all of the same type and pitched at the same level.

Placing Superbad next to The Hollywood Knights or Knocked Up next to (say) The Apartment (because Andrew Sarris has suggested that Apatow has received the same kind of critical acclaim as "Billy Wilder"), we can see how limited the Apatow movies are in terms of range of insight and experience. By which I mean: the women characters in Superbad seem to exist mainly as props - they are important as characters only in terms of their relationships to the leading guys; the women characters in The Hollywood Knights (I'm thinking especially of Fran Drescher's character), though they may not have as much screen time as the guys, have their own motivations, desires, and integrity.

Both Knocked Up and The Apartment document shifting social mores. But though Knocked Up does a good job describing/depicting the contemporary phenomenon of extended male adolescence, it does so in a vacuum (how exactly any of those guys really maintain that lifestyle is never addressed, the women characters are only sporadically believable). The Apartment's take on alienated, urban office workers is grounded in a well-realized social context.

Movie Recommendation: Hallelujah I'm a Bum

Hallelujah I'm a Bum (Lewis Milestone, 1933)

Hallelujah I'm a Bum, like Rene Clair's A Nous la liberte or Le Million, is, from a film history perspective, interesting as an example of a movie that suggests alternatives to what was then becoming the conventional way of making sound pictures. That is: (1) Milestone's staging, which often made use of elaborately choreographed camera movements, and the strategic use of rapid-fire, rhythmic editing feel like techniques carried over from silent filmmaking; (2) the relationship between sound and image, though not as playful as that in Le Million or A nous la liberte, has more variety than that in conventional "talkies" (its most noticeable feature in this regard is the spoken-sung dialogue written by Lorenz Hart).

Its status as a kind of "transitional" film between the silents and the talkies comes through in the casting: Harry Langdon facing off against Al Jolson. Its take on socialism vs. capitalism also makes it interesting as a piece of history, but the movie has virtues that go beyond these curiosities. Namely: a fully-realized star performance from Al Jolson, a great supporting cast that includes vaudevillians Frank Morgan and Chester Conklin; some of Lewis Milestone's most inventive filmmaking. Milestone is operating here as what I tend to think of as a "full" filmmaker: that is, one who makes use of a wide variety or techniques and styles, rather than working with a more limited palette. ("Full" here isn't meant to imply that filmmakers who make use of fewer available options are somehow "lesser" filmmakers: both approaches are valid, but I do think they represent a difference in philosophy).

Schlubs and the women who love them

Jim Emerson's post on whether or not the "Apatow Schlub" is too ugly for the girl inspired a comment from me:

My problem with the "Apatow Schlub" in Knocked Up specifically, is not that I think Katharine Heigl is too attractive for Seth Rogen in some cosmic sense, but that I don't believe that their specific characters would ever think "Hey, let's start a relationship!" (I can just barely buy that she'd go home with him in the first place). For me, this shows a lack of imagination on the part of Apatow & Co.: why not make the her character an up-and-coming comedian/writer on some kind of MAD TV-type show (just as a for example)? In other words, make her a character who (a) might be attracted to Rogen's character for his humor or laid-back attitude and (b) would be enough of an outsider not to be turned off by his lack of ambition.

In movies like The Disorderly Orderly or Billy Madison or Norbit, it doesn't matter that the schlub ends up with a woman who (realistically) seems way out of his league, because those movies don't really try to make sense on that level. At this point, I'd say that the schlub (or loser or whacko) with the babe has become such a convention of these kinds of Jerry Lewis-style comedies that in Dumb & Dumber the Farrelly Bros. get laughs by subverting the convention.

But Knocked Up, in that it is trying to observe and comment upon a real cultural phenomenon (the extended adolescence of post-slacker dudes), should try to make sense on that level. It doesn't (for me, at least), so that's why I think it's only half successful (well, a little more than half: Leslie Mann and Kristen Wiig manage to pick up some of the slack from Heigl's under-realized character).

I'm playing a similar tune in my post on Superbad, here.

Movie Recommendation: Track of the Cat

Track of the Cat (William Wellman, 1954)

The movie is, rightly, known for its striking design: Wellman shot on color film, but the set design and choice of locations emphasizes blacks, whites, a greys, making the few bold colors - like Robert Mitchum's red wool coat - pop out at you. (It's a kind of an analog version of some of the color effects in the the adaptation of Sin City). The exterior of the ranch - built on a soundstage and seen through an fx-created snowfall - has a haunting, otherworldly quality.

That said, the movie has a number of other strengths: a screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides from Walter Van Tilburg Clark's novel that at time seems to anticipate the style and tone - not to mention the dysfunctional families - of Sam Sheperd's Buried Child and True West; a strong lead performance by Robert Mitchum that makes the most of Bezzerides's off-kilter dialogue; fine supporting performances from Teresa Wright, Beulah Bondi, Philip Tonge, and Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer; a pretty great gag involving an alcoholic's hidden stash(es); and some tense, Val Lewton-like, action scenes.

Jean-Luc Godard

I've been posting trailers for Jean-Luc Godard movies (along with other interesting video clips) at my tumblr blog.

Just so you know I haven't completely dropped off the face of the internet.

Recommendations

I wanted to comment on this quote that I posted on my tumblr blog:

I was reminded of Roger Ebert’s story, which he relates in his latest Answer Man column (I just now published it online), about a phone call he once got from a reader:

Caller: “We live near the Wilmette Theatre, which is showing ‘Cries and Whispers.’ What can you tell us about it?”

Ebert: “I think it is the best film of the year.”

Caller: “Oh, that doesn’t sound like anything we’d want to see!”

-Jim Emerson (commenting here)

What's interesting to me: I'm much more likely to recommend a movie that I enjoyed but don't feel too strongly about than a movie that I am passionate about. Let me elaborate just a bit and add that it really depends on who's asking for a recommendation.

Watching Regular Lovers was one of the richest, most rewarding, most interesting, and most emotionally compelling movie experiences I've had recently; watching Juno, on the other hand, was moderately enjoyable. But if I had to recommend a movie to most of my co-workers, most people in my family, most of my (non-movie buff) friends, it'd probably be Juno. Why? Because Regular Lovers is not the kind of movie most people would be open to and/or interested in. Even among my movie buff friends, I'd be hesitant to recommend it without a few words of "warning" ("Almost three hours", "French", "About May '68") and, in fact, there are a bunch of other movies that I didn't like quite as much (Once, The Hoax, Zodiac) that I'd be more likely to suggest.

I wonder if this makes me kind of a lousy champion for a movie to have: I mean, if I love Regular Lovers so much, shouldn't I be singing it's praises to everyone I meet and trying to get them to see it, too?

I don't know:

Part of me thinks that I should stick to my guns, recommend the movie ("Try Regular Lovers: it's one of my favorite movies of the year"), and hope that a few people (or at least one person) will act on the recommendation and feel like watching the movie was a worthwhile experience. But another part of me wants to avoid situations where I'm trying to sell the movie or convince someone they should see it. (My thinking here is: the kind of people who are likely to really respond to it are also likely to discover it without my help.)

Related question: is it more elitist for me to recommend a film like Regular Lovers (because it shows off what a sophisticated film-goer I am) or to not recommend it (because I can't imagine my co-workers/family members/friends would be able to get it)?

Milkshakes

A post expanding on something I already linked to on my tumblr blog:

As much as I love the ending of There Will Be Blood, I really, REALLY hope that [“I’ll drink your milkshake”] doesn’t become the next “say hello to my little friend.” Catch phrases are just intolerable, and I don’t want to see the power of that ending diminished by having it pass into pop culture as a campy one-liner to quote with your friends.

-Ed Howard commenting at The House Next Door

Now, I don't think There Will Be Blood is a great movie, but what's so bad about a phrase catching on like this? Will it really diminish the power of the ending? And, playing devil's advocate, if the ending really is powerful, can the line getting turned into a jokey catch phrase really hurt it? Does the pop culture ubiquitousness of "Luke, I am your father" diminish the ending of The Empire Strikes Back?

Even the movie's fans seem to admit that the ending is pretty loopy - as Sean Collins says it "blasts [the movie] into the ionosphere". Surely the milkshake line is meant to be some kind of funny: to provoke, or maybe better, to dare nervous laughter.

Anti-Fascist

Speaking of Noah -

Just like I'm trying to call attention to the problems with critics using the phrase "transcend the genre" (or its variations), I'd like to suggest a moratorium on using the word "fascist" to describe some aspect of a work of art/pop culture/etc. unless, you know, it actually is fascist. That is, a lot of critics and culture vultures seem to use the word "fascism" as a catch-all term for almost any kind of political/moral ickiness and/or a synonym of "anti-liberal". (Pauline Kael was a big offender here and maybe we can blame her pervasive influence. But, as the song goes, those were different times.)

For instance, over here, Noah writes that old-timey super-hero comic book artist Fletcher Hanks "is a law-and-order fascist."

So, what makes Fletcher Hanks a law and order fascist as opposed to an adherent of some kind of home brew Nietzscheanism? Maybe there is something there: I haven't read all of the comics, so maybe Hanks does make an appeal to nationalism to argue for centralized, authoritarian state control of the justice system. Barring that, though, the word "fascist" just muddies the waters.

I had the same reaction to Matt Zoller Seitz's recent comment on this piece:

[That] piece goes on my list of "Pieces I Wish I'd Written," for how deftly it summarizes a persistent and supremely annoying tendency in movies of all types. I hate, hate, hate it when the movie itself validates a character's behavior or viewpoint, whether through approving music cues, reductive characterization of the hero's adversary in a scene, or cutaways to some third banana observing the hero's bad-assness and exclaiming, "He's goooood!" It all falls under the heading of kissing the audience's ass -- providing objective confirmation of their fantasy of being smarter, handsomer, braver and tougher than they actually are, and Telling Off the Dummies...

I enjoy "Terms of Endearment" and other Brooks films for their likable performances and clever repartee, but cannot defend them as art because of their penchant for pulling crap like that. Aurora is an out-of-control bitch in the hospital scene of "Terms of Endearment," but the movie endorses her showboating fury simply because she's the heroine and our audience surrogate and maternal Life Force fantasy; it doesn't just ask us to understand and empathize, it all but commands us to cheer, with the same corrupted brand of populism displayed in the "You're not from New York" scene cited [in the piece]. It's this kind of mentality that makes virtually all of John McClane's government/law enforcement counterparts in the first couple of "Die Hard" movies out to be pompous dolts, and that encourages us to cheer Erin Brokovich as she smugly dresses down her boss and coworkers in the manner of a diva movie star chewing out an assistant who failed to purchase her preferred flavor of Starbucks frappucino. It's this type of mentality that is primarily responsible for four out of five Robin Williams comedies about the wacky iconoclast sticking it to The Man.

Touches like these confirm Norman Mailer's belief in America's latent potential for fascism.

Although I'm with him most of the way, I think it is a pretty big leap from Terms of Endearment and crappy Robin Williams movies to fascism, latent or otherwise. And while I agree with Mailer, my agreement is kind of trivial: why shouldn't Americans have the latent potential for fascism? Are we so different from the Italians, Germans, French, Hungarians, Romanians, etc.? The idea that we are exceptionally prone to fascism strikes me as naive as the idea that we are somehow exceptionally immune to it*.

*This is a variation on a point that Sean Collins often makes.

Catching Up, Part II

I owe some links:

First, David Cairns left a comment on my riff off of his essay on William Wyler. David let me know that his blog, Shadowplay, is here. I've added it to my blogroll, too. Here's an example of David doing the kind of research that I can definitely get behind.

Second, Noah Berlatsky left a link to a new site he has curated, Gay Utopia. I haven't read through everything there yet, but I did like his essay on "fecund" horror (and hope to comment in more detail later). (Also - fans of erotic horror fiction - you know who you are - should check out this story ).

Catching up...

I've been having fun with my tumblr blog at the expense of this one.

I owe a bunch of responses to comments here as well as some new posts.

Hopefully, I'll get to them over the next few days.

My Tumblr Blog...

...is here.

So...

As of 5:45 yesterday afternoon, I'm unemployed.

Cons: hassle of looking for a new job, general stress from reduced funds.

Pros: more time with my dog, more time to play around with my blog, can finally sit around all day and watch YouTube videos (that site was blocked for me at work).

Film Critics

I have mixed feelings about pieces like this recent anti-snobbery one from Richard Corliss:

On the one hand, I sympathize with the idea that a lot of this year-end, best movie stuff is choreographed posturing. On the other hand, Corliss comes off more as blaming his peers rather than engaging in honest self-reflection.

On the one hand, I'd like to see more personal, interesting Best of the Year choices. On the other hand, my own tastes aren't all that different from those of most critics. Who am I to say that those guys aren't voting with their hearts/guts/souls/etc.?

On the one hand, I, too, am suspicious of the way this shapes the conversation about movies, so that critical discussions get co-opted by the movie industry marketing machine. On the other hand, I like a lot of these big, meaty, year-in-review style discussions of a bunch of movies that we can expect most film buffs have seen. It can get lonely talking about movies like The Tripper all the time.

On the one hand, I agree that giving these awards to movies that haven't even been released yet is kind of a drag. I mean, the whole game of releasing prestige pictures at the end of the year seems a bit bogus. I know that I'm more likely to cool on a movie over time, so showing all of these movies to critics during the weeks before they cast their votes seems to me like a cynical move. On the other hand, I'm not sure I buy this kind of populism from Corliss, whose Best Horror Movie list seemed to be willfully perverse in the way it turned up its nose on the favorite horror movies of horror fans and general moviegoers alike.

Movie Chat: The Tripper

The Tripper

My wife was away last weekend, so I took the opportunity to have a movie watching marathon. I went out to the theater to see Beowulf and Michael Clayton and watched The Invisible, Exiled, Hostel, Hostel Part II, L'Iceberg, Mr. Brooks, and The Tripper on DVD. Out of all of them, the movie I'm most interested in talking about is The Tripper.

So, The Tripper is David Arquette's homage to Z-grade exploitation movies: part sub-Friday the 13th slasher flick, part psychedelic freak-out a la Psych Out or The Trip (duh). It's a designer cult movie, like Planet Terror or The Devil's Rejects: it's transgressions of good taste and the rules of good filmmaking are all calculated.

Arquette really nails the feel of these movies, but I couldn't help wondering exactly what kind of achievement that is. How impressive is it to purposefully make a really bad movie? More importantly, how enjoyable is it to watch a movie that's trying to replicate that really bad movie experience?

My answer to both questions is: sort of.

(1) What Arquette pulls is sort of impressive. For one thing, he manages to achieve a consistent style and tone. For another, he gets lots of little details right: the awkward editing during the action sequences is awkward in exactly the right z-movie manner, as if each shot is always a few frames short of what it should be. Or the way the location seems like it was chosen because it's on land that one of the filmmaker's relatives owned and not because it really makes all that much sense in terms of the story.

And though the whole thing is, of course, tongue-in-cheek, the wink-wink, nudge-nudge stuff is, as these things go, subtle. The sense that what you're watching isn't a real bad movie mostly come from some of the actors giving believable, low key performances (Lukas Haas). Luckily, a lot of the actors give appropriately lousy performances to make up for that (Paul Ruebens).

Still: is this an example of a filmmaker realizing some kind of "artistic" vision or more an example of a filmmaker making a virtue of necessity? That is: if you don't have any hope of making a good movie, try your hardest to make a bad one instead.

(2) I thought that the movie was only sort of enjoyable to watch.

I started comparing this to Grindhouse:

Death Proof took a z-movie idea and filtered it through what I would consider an almost European art film sensibility (i.e, the overly talky scenes, the repetition, etc.). That is: it doesn't function like a z-movie at all, really. It helps to have some knowledge of z-movies to pick up on its references and to appreciate the way it plays its variation on the crazy macho killer theme, but, to me, watching it felt more like watching an art house movie* - more late-David Cronenberg than early-David Cronenberg.

The Tripper, though, functions and feels just like a z-movie. On its surface, it really does look like the kind of movie you might find on MST3K.

Planet Terror was a mash-up of every crazy z-movie trope, but it was kind of a mess: it was all high points and it also went out of its way to let you know how funny it thought its jokes were.

In some ways, The Tripper is a better film: lower keyed, better paced, with more consistency of style and tone. It's a better recreation of genuine z-movies. But as bad as I thought Planet Terror was, it served its function of getting the audience revved up. The problem with The Tripper is that it ends up being uninteresting in the same way that a lot of actual z-movies are uninteresting. What can be fun about watching z-movies is that every once in a while something completely, accidentally cool/gonzo/ridiculous/beautiful/amazing/hilarious happens. But it's not as much fun (for me at least) when these things are done on purpose, especially since The Tripper doesn't really give me anything else (i.e. interesting characters, elaborate set pieces, etc.). So, while Planet Terror is, I think, not as thoughtfully made, The Tripper calls into question the whole idea of "thoughtfulness" when it comes to making a z-movie pastiche.

*This may be why this movie wasn't really a hit with audiences.

My Yearly Crisis of Faith (A Self-Reflection)

Note: If you have a low tolerance for navel-gazing masquerading as soul searching, skip this and check out my angst-free post on David Arquette's The Tripper.

I.

I think I might have turned into too much of a wimp to be a good film critic. I mean: even when I see a movie that I really don't like - Spider-Man 3, say - I'm perfectly willing to lay out what I didn't like about it, but I'm just not interested in arguing with someone who did like it. And while I definitely enjoy writing about movies and I enjoy reading other people's writing about movies, I'm just as definitely not writing to convince anyone of anything or reading anyone to be convinced of anything.

A couple of things from The House Next Door triggered this. (1) This negative review of Juno and some of the responses in the comments. Is letting people know that I like/don't like Little Miss Sunshine so important I have to be nasty about it? (2) This line from Steven Boone inhis piece on Armond White: "A.I. is just one of those tests I use to separate the blind from the sighted." Man - I like A.I., but that's such a pompous, infuriating thing to write. I mean, I think the idea of holding up any movie as a litmus test is pretty obnoxious, but if you have to, choose Grand Illusion or The General, but certainly not a movie like A.I. that divides even Spielberg's biggest fans.

II.

I'm looking at all of the "Year's Best" lists that are flooding the internet right now. I'm torn: God knows I love making these kinds of lists myself (and am working on my own for this year's crop), but seeing them all together (like, for example, this pdf) is a little bit depressing. The same movies pop up again and again, or, if not the same movies, the same "gambits", i.e. "I'll include a dumb teen comedy to prove my credentials as a populist."

My standard take on these lists is that they're best seen as a way to start a conversation, but reading them one after another gives the impression that these critics are engaged in a ritual that, while public, is essentially solitary. It seems to be less about engaging with all these movies and with all these other movie buffs and more about staking out your claim. It's territorial, even.

III.

I've been keeping up with new movies as best as I can. Mainly, I bother because the annual list party I go to has consistently been the most fun/interesting/engaging/enlightening time I have all year. I like blogging about new movies, here, too, and I certainly enjoy the internet discussions I get into, but without a face-to-face social event to spur me on, I'd probably be writing more posts like this and this and fewer posts like this. Without the social element, watching all these new movies would be too much of a mechanical exercise: keeping up with new releases can make me feel too much like a cog in the machine.

Still - unless you're a professional critic (and thus have access to special screenings/screeners), it's nigh impossible to come up with a Top Ten List anytime before March or April of the following year. I bet at least 50% of my work-in-progress list will change by March of 2008:

1. No Country for Old Men
2. 28 Weeks Later
3. The Hoax
4. The Simpsons Movie
5. Superbad
6. Grindhouse: Death Proof
7. Offside
8. Curse of the Golden Flower
9. The Host
10. Zodiac

IV.

What kind of conversation do I want to start with that list?

Well, for one thing, I'm becoming more and more accepting of my own fairly mainstream tastes. I used to be really concerned about posturing and/or making a statement with these lists. All part of the normal process of getting older?

And, no, this really isn't meant as posturing now. No Country for Old Men and 28 Weeks Later really are my top movie experiences of the year. Do I think they were the "best" movies I saw all year? Eh - I don't know. They're certainly the two movies I'd be most likely to recommend to people who don't mind violent movies. (The Hoax and The Simpsons Movie would be the two movies I'd be most likely to recommend to just about anybody).

Another thing: looking at this list and thinking about my favorite directors of the last 15 years of so (that is, of most of my career as a movie buff) - the Coen Bros., Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, i.e. the usual suspects, no surprises that a white 30-ish American college educated quasi-artsy comic book-reading guy would be into them - I wonder how much of my "taste"/"sensibility"/etc. is just a by-product of my time and place. That's partly why whenever I have one of these "crises of faith" what I want to do is go watch a bunch of old foreign movies.

Also - I think it's funny that my blog post dealing with my "#1 movie" consists of me complaining about it.

V.

But I do like lists. I can't help it! Part of it, though, is that I think (or should that be I hope) they can help to get across the idea that I like different things about different movies. I mean: there's no single movie that magically sums up everything I like about the movies and if I had to give one - twist my arm and I'll say The Night of the Shooting Stars - I'd feel like I betrayed all those movies I like for completely different reasons - like Caddyshack, for instance.

VI.

To get back to how I started this post: I do like reading other people's take on movies. But I'm finding that the people who's takes I most enjoy reading are not necessarily the people who I actually agree with all that much. For instance: Michael Sicinski is currently my favorite movie critic-type guy, but I rarely actually agree with him. Or, rather, while I think he almost always makes interesting points, his overall judgments don't really line up with mine. They kind of do: my favorite movies he tends to rate 6/10 and his favorite movies tend to be the ones that I admire but ultimately don't care for very much. I can't imagine, though, reading his negative review of Hostel and telling that not liking Hostel proves that he's blind or even that he's wrong not to like the movie. I understand what he's saying about that movie and why he's saying it, even if, for me, the movie doesn't work that way. I can talk about how it works for me and maybe why it works for me, but, right now, that's as far as I really want to go. It would have been a different story back when I was an undergrad.

Comments

I spent the morning catching up with comments on my posts on these movies:

Transformers
Next
The Mist

Thanks to all the commenters for joining the conversation.

Little Miss Sunshine, Take 2

I saw this again (on cable) and I have to say I was both right and wrong in my first post.

Right: going into the movie with expectations that its some kind of masterpiece is a recipe to be disappointed.

Wrong: I think within its modest scope, it's pretty damn beautiful. Maybe it was having read this line from David Edelstein:

The key to Little Miss Sunshine is that every single one of these people is going to come up against a major obstacle and, in the great American tradition . . . lose. Lose crushingly. Lose enough to make a person want to pack it in. But when life hands them a lemon, they don’t just make lemonade. They learn to spike it with whiskey and dance their friggin’ heads off.

Or as Smokey Robinson told us: You gotta dance to keep from crying.

My favorite bit this time around: the desperation-inspired, Clark Griswold-like insanity that overcomes Greg Kinnear as he makes the decision to steal his father's body from the hospital.

Craft

Sean Collins writes:

"Craft is the enemy" is a weird motto for film critics of all people to embrace.

Agreed, but this is a sentiment that keeps popping up throughout the history of talking about the movies. See certain defenses of neo-realism, Cassavetes, the Dogme films, etc.

Partly this is because in the movies "craft" gets conflated with "money" or "studio" (Big Media). So "craft is the enemy" becomes a political statement.

I also have the suspicion that many people who watch a lot of movies eventually get burned out on "mere craft". This happened to me (temporarily) during the time when I was in a cinema studies grad program, working in a video store, and watching two or more movies a day. Fortunately, I'm not suffering from this affliction anymore.