Done got ourselves a Convoy.
Shutter IslandDirected by Martin Scorsese, 2010
Review by Joe McCulloch
(FUCK FUCK SPOILERS SPOILERS)
This is kinda bad, but also the kind of bad that deserves some consideration; it might look like a tricky high Technicolor suspense piece, but it’s really Scorsese taking one of his continuing obsessions -- the heroic narrative gone weird/sour/futile, a la Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, Gangs of New York -- and riding it straight into the movie buff pomo twilight of Quentin Tarantino. It’d make a great double feature with Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s hall of mirrors of WWII fiction, in that it functions as a pointed critique of that picture’s conceptual posture - while Tarantino fixates on movies as inescapable propagandist instruments, blunt like a bat and sharp like a knife, Scorsese emphasizes the necessity of escaping stories to understand empathetic realism.
In other words, if Tarantino has made a WWII movie about how WWII movies are awesome -- in both the “amazing” and “God destroying someone’s face via lightning” senses -- then Scorsese replies with a suspense movie, redolent with WWII aftershocks, about how you should probably shut up about this dumb shit and pay some attention to reality. It’s not a direct answer, granted, having gone into production prior to Tarantino’s film, and having been adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel -- via a screenplay by occasional comics writer Laeta Kalogridis (i.e. the Dark Horse graphic novel adaptation of Pathfinder; you know, the one with the Vikings?) -- but its uniquely filmic handling of Cocaine Comix scion Leonardo DiCaprio’s navigation of a HUAC conspiracy on the grounds of a remote mental institution to use Nazi science in the creation of brainwashed assassins, which, GET THIS, is actually an elaborate role playing exercise so that inpatient DiCaprio can come to terms with having shot his wife after she drowned their kids, suggests some fairly responsive themes, particularly given a denouement wherein Our Man regresses into fictive heroism, thereby discrediting the compassionate practices of the institution and guaranteeing plenty more lobotomies for our American future, his own most imminently.
All of this is accomplished cinematically through faintly unreal settings, hot-colored dream sequences and modular acting showcase encounters with colorful characters, all the more fitting for their structural artificiality. They’re movie-like, as a means of breaking through to DiCaprio that his overheated generic delusions are keeping him from coming to terms with his own guilt on a serious, substantive level, as well as indicating to us that cynical, web of lies, “everyone’s awful” narratives obscure good, moral, compassionate human impulses.
The big problem is that Scorsese, like Tarantino, pitches literally everything in a similarly pulpy suspense movie manner, even though he’s aiming for essentially the opposite effect, so that the picture happily putters onward with swelling music and dramatic revelations for big reveals that seem deliberately telegraphed in advance, leading to a climax that’s an absolute mess of chilly explication and overwrought confrontation. At one point Ben Kingsley unveils a chart to explain part of the plot; at least when Tony Scott did that it Domino it was supposed to be funny! Here, I have the sinking feeling I wasn’t supposed to find the doctors’ treatment to be as silly and convoluted as DiCaprio’s imaginary quest, which I suppose might be grist for a “Leo was right all along!” counter-interpretation, which, aside from contrasting mightily with Kingsley & Co,’s baleful, out-of-eyeshot glances in the film’s final scene, would convert the film into just an especially full-of-itself genre exercise.
I don’t think it’s that, but it ain’t Antonioni or Tarkovsky either - it’s surface thrills pop filmmaking with the surface skimmed off. It’s absolutely perverse, which will attract some strident defenders, make no mistake, but I found it honestly more could’ve-gotten-identical-substance-from-an-essay tedious than most of the overtly ‘experimental’ movies I’ve seen. By the time yet another character’s secret medicinal aspect was revealed, with much revelatory pomp, after much of the audience had probably caught on, myself included, I’d mostly gotten upset that Scorsese hadn’t retained John C. Reilly from Gangs of New York and The Aviator to declare the whole charade FOR YOUR HEALTH. Because, it basically is.
My Name is Khan
Directed by Karan Johar, 2010
Review by Joe McCulloch
This has been in theaters for a week and a half now, and it’s turning into a considerable worldwide success, having grossed over $32 million (USD) total, including $3 million from North America - unheard of for a Bollywood picture so new into its release. But then, I understand Johar had built up something of a reputation for international success (haven’t seen his prior three pictures, though), and certainly his approach here strips down some of the "masala" style, the something-for-everyone song 'n dance ('n adventure 'n familial struggle 'n slapstick 'n romance 'n etc.) often attributed to big money Indian pop cinema, in at least the causal U.S. consciousness; it does often seem to turn on the songs, of which there are only a few here, and just one in which the characters sing and dance, and that’s at a church service, where logic abides.
But, you know, don’t dare underestimate the simple, heat-from-the-sun presence of lead actor Shah Rukh Khan (as the credits read; it’s often spelled compressed as “Shahrukh Khan”), maybe the biggest goddamned movie star anywhere on planet Earth, his North American semi-obscurity notwithstanding. Johar is a longtime cohort, pairing him up with a popular leading lady, “Kajol” (Devgan), all for a big-ass, old-fashioned feel-bad-but-then-feel-good prestige picture star vehicle, in which Khan plays a man named Khan, an Asperger syndrome sufferer and practicing Muslim who emigrates to San Francisco and spends roughly the first hour of the picture’s 161-minute runtime pursuing and ultimately wedding an effervescent Hindu single mother, only to see their happy life fall to pieces following 9/11; the implicit challenge to political strife in Hindu and Muslim Indians cohabitating is cruelly aggravated as Khan’s bubbly bride gradually finds life becoming hard from her association with Islam, climaxing in her young son’s murder and a screaming separation (at the crime scene!) whereupon Khan is charged with tracking down George W. Bush to duly identify himself and inform the Commander in Chief that he is not a terrorist, contrary to many beliefs. Heartwarming inspiration ensues across America, and we learn that there are no good or bad Christians or Muslims, but only good or bad people, just like momma taught him, before she died because her heart was too big. That’s in the movie.
There’s a lot of stuff in this movie, quite a ruthlessly comprehensive piece of anxiety entertainment; there’s a neat little bit up top where Khan’s nervous habit of praying is framed and scored in a way to make him seem like the twitchy terrorist villain of a suspense thriller, the eyes of America’s melting pot uneasily taking him in. The script in exceedingly tidy, with virtually every big comedic line getting a poignantly dramatic reprisal later on. Asperger syndrome can be easily diagnosed by its applicability to metaphor: Khan has an intense interest in fixing things, but can he fix his marriage and a nation’s wounds? He accepts all statements at face value - all the better to see through duplicity! All action rises toward a perfectly untenable 45-minute crescendo involving the torture of suspected terrorists, plucky college reporters who restore a complacent newsman’s idealism, a Muslim extremist’s terrorist scheme, a media sensation of raw idealism exploding onto America’s dinner tables and a Hurricane Katrina stand-in annihilating a community of poor blacks just as Obama clinches the 2008 election. Meanwhile, Kajol accepts the entirely predictable position of vengeful philosophical Goofus to Khan’s Gallant, although screenwriter Shibani Bathija at least affords her the dignity of remaining hurt inside yet fundamentally good as Khan naturally embraces her once more, the film knowing that nothing has been accomplished to actually end worldwide violence, no matter how many would-be killers are shot down with homespun wisdom and denounced as Satan, which is one thing Forrest Gump never pulled off. (Or was that in Gump and Co?)
Still, as smooth-polished and soft-humming as this thing is, and as patience-testing as its melodramatics can get -- interestingly, Johar is now preparing a leaner cut for further overseas penetration -- it’d be a mistake to dismiss the whole affair as a purposeless bromide. Khan really is married to a Hindu woman (Gauri Khan, one of the film's producers), and, as the Economist reports, the picture’s Indian premiere was marked by threats of disruption following Khan’s expression of support for a Pakistani cricket team; tinny as the film’s “we’re all just people” theme can ring as surrounded by its plot mechanics -- and make no mistake, it is not especially deep -- it does speak to an imminent, personal political reality, if then raising several questions surrounding Khan’s own status as a public Muslim figure in and outside India, ably surveyed by examining the comments to said Economist piece. Likewise, its focus on American political climate change can only blur a bit from its of-the-moment starry-eyed thrill over a President Obama, introduced from behind in mighty silhouette like Christ in Ben-Hur and left a mighty rhetorical force to sweep us toward the end credits. That’s Bollywood?
Big Fan
Starring Patton Oswalt, 2009
Playing the "look at how these poor white people find joy" song, Big Fan is Robert Siegel's attempt to do the same thing he did in his script for the Wrestler (sans romance) and vaunt himself into the library alongside the rest of the sentimental middle class clucking filmmakers. There's a decent chunk of acting to go around--Kevin Corrigan's great, Patton Oswalt handles himself well--but at its core, Big Fan can't decide whether it wants to feel sorry for its characters or ridicule their choices. The lack of direction either way might be an attempt to force the audience to choose, but it's half-assed from the get-go.
The Hit
Directed by Stephen Frears, 1984
Although there's a couple of cliched twists thrown in early on--hey, this is a criminal that reads!--there's not much to complain about when a movie consists of Terence Stamp, John Hurt, Tim Roth & Laura Del Sol on a road trip to oblivion. While everybody has to jockey with a stunning Spanish countryside for attention, and the sparse dialog doesn't allow for a lot of hamming it up (which Hurt and Roth are both exceedingly good at), The Hit ends up being more than an interesting diversion.
In The Heat of the Night
Starring Sidney Poitier & Rod Steiger, 1967
As a movie, In The Heat of the Night is dated, predictable, and at times, just bad. But as piece of film history, it's a wikipedia article waiting to happen. Sidney Poitier described the experience as one that tested his skills to a degree none of his work until that point had, Haskell Wexler definitively eviscerated the standard--yet ridiculous--belief that black actors should be lit the same as white, and a film company went to bat financially for a film that initially wouldn't even appear in theaters below the Mason Dixon. Norman Jewison probably isn't at the top of anybody's favorite directors, but if Pictures at a Revolution is to be trusted, he was as integral to the film's lasting memory as Steiger & Poitier, the two contributions that haven't aged a bit. While Sidney spends a good bit of the film wearing a seething rage that his previous roles as a self-described "Angelic Negro" had forced him to hide, Steiger's sweltering Method-based performance carries the film's overblown script in every available direction. (Almost every door, trinket or physical surface that Seiger touches is shaken, thrown, slammed--according to Poitier, Steiger's go-for-broke, out of the box style was so unusual that he wasn't quite sure at first whether his co-worker was sane enough to be around.) That's not all, either. Everybody in the film was chewing on ice chips prior to takes, all to hide that they were filming the movie in the freezing cold up North--because Poitier understandably refused to take a chance on filming a movie down South after his wife came home to a burning cross. In the infamous slapping scene, Larry Gates reveled in what he knew would become an iconic moment, happily exhorting Sidney to hit him as hard as possible. Now, sure--that's trivia, and it doesn't fix the bungling of the film's central mystery, it doesn't make the movie a better one, it doesn't even help to determine whether or not the film is courageous, or merely right-time exploitation. Then again? If something from 1967 still held as the high water mark for a race relations story after forty-three years had passed on by, that wouldn't be something to take pride in either.
The Hangover
Starring Ed Helms, 2009
This? Maybe it works better in a theater, with people laughing around you, but one to one, it's not that funny. It's just another disconnected run through of comedic sequences, some of which are amusing, most of which feel a bit stale, all of which are heavily dependent on the idea that grown men acting like high school boys is inherently clever, no matter what it is they're doing. Which--hell, that's pretty true when it's a clip, a gag, which is probably why the follow-up to the Mike Tyson scene--"I think he's mean"--was actually pretty funny when it was in the preview, whereas here it's just another goofy thing that Zach Galifianaksi says. There are scenes that work pretty well, the best of which being the one where Ed Helms snaps after finding out he'd been doped up the night before, but the overall effect is as scattered as the film that contains it.
All the same, it was filmed in something like fifteen days, the only non-people-talking/walking movie that the cinematographer has produced is Casper Van Dien's Shark Attack, and it's a cheap American comedy that didn't trawl through Freaks and Geeks to come up with its cast. That's something?
A Day In The Country
Directed by Jean Renoir, 1936
A brief film that reveals its orphan status in the way that what it purports to be about doesn't get going until about halfway through, Partie de campagne--also translated as Party Like It's A Campaign--deals with a woman who is engaged to a French comedy stereotype, only to find herself falling in love with a French romantic stereotype. If you're wondering if the boatmen in this movie have amazing mustaches and wear shirts covered in horizontal stripes, wonder no longer: they do, and one of the mustaches arrives bearing a tiny bra that's specifically created for the only the fanciest of mustaches.
It's Renoir, so yes, it's brimming over with moments of beauty, and it's one of those period pieces that portrays something as taken-for-granted as a backyard swing in a way that captures how that must have been one of the most exciting moments in someone's life. (You know, before people came up with shit to do.) Those few minutes match up to anything in Renoir's catalog, while still never erasing the fact that the film is unfinished, badly truncated in the final minutes, and it looks like the star's face is covered in candle wax whenever she's crying.
Army of Shadows
Directed by Jean Pierre Melville, 1969
Most of the Melville library has made it over to America through the efforts of revival movie houses and the Criterion Collection, often to a motley choir of praise--these being movies now embraced by high end East Coast film critics and John Woo. While Army of Shadows isn't that much more "serious" in tone or form than Melville's crime thrillers, it does focus on a bunch of underground French patriots during the German occupation, making it the go-to film for those looking for a Melville cause to safely champion. According to the literature that Criterion makes available with their various Melville releases, the primary reason that most of these movies were initially ignored back in the day boiled down to the disdain of one publication--Cahiers du Cinema--who had dismissed the guy's work as unworthy of consideration, or something to that effect. (The various essay writers never quote Cahiers directly.) Whatever was said at the time was taken to heart by the various companies involved with the distribution of foreign cinema in the States, thus leaving Melville's films to stew, only to finally arrive at a time period where anybody watching them must have initially wondered what exactly the problem was in the first fucking place.
That isn't to imply that the films aren't arty, they are, but that they aren't far removed from something that Michael Mann might release, all wrapped up as they can be inside the lives of inscrutable criminals directly pursuing objectives. Melville's crime may have been tied into his unwillingness to innovate the crime thriller, but even if one acknowledges the more dated aspects of his movies, it's difficult to see what exactly was so unworthy of attention. The Red Circle, The Samurai, Bob the Gambler--they're all brutal, stylish entertainments, sexy little pleasures that follow some of France's most compelling actors at a perfect distance. Not enough Marx? Who could tell.
The ironic twist to the rapture with which the American release of Shadows was received is that Shadows--for all of the tortured prose that attempted to locate a place inside the New Wave history--is a deceptively old school patriotic war film, albeit one that explodes with modern trappings. Viewing it alongside Inglorious Basterds, a film that unmistakably apes Melville's first act of violence for a late stage character revelation, it's even more pointed. Of course, that's possibly a road towards criticism as well--Melville's commitment to realist (read: respectful) results ends up depicting his patriots as being successful mostly as nihilists, accidently proving true the old stereotype that the French are most successful at violence when they're attempting to kill one another, whereas Tarantino's refusal of fact allows him to leap directly towards the happy ending of his choosing. (Making it that much more complicated when Melville breaks from realism and uses a completely fantastic plot twist to keep his primary pieces in play for a little bit longer.)
Like Mann, the oft-repeated complaint with Melville is framed in how often he arguably favors style over substance. There's obviously some truth to that, especially in the case of Samurai, a film where style IS the substance, but in Shadows, the scale seems a bit more level. The question of whether or not the film's creator realized that--whether he grasped how ineffectual the results were from all of this sexy brutality--may be more difficult to answer, but that certainly doesn't make it any less compelling. The answer he reaches for at the movie's final minutes, in the moment when he freezes upon his characters, telling us in a bloodless white font how each of them met their end, seems to be that what happened doesn't really matter, that the intent with which people live their lives--their own style, if you will--is what determines the rate of their success.
-Joe McCulloch & Tucker Stone, 2010
Dang, Shutter Island sounds kinda like Silent Hill 2, only sapped of all supernatural tomfoolery and probably a whole lot less depressing.
Posted by: david brothers | 2010.02.25 at 02:20
With the lobotomy scar Leo was sporting for most of the movie and the intentional inconsistencies, I'm thinking that Shutter Island'll be something completely different on rewatch. I'm pretty sure the whole thing is a series of broken flashbacks and none of it was the "real" story, which I guess makes the ending more Haneke-does-Bunuel-y.
Thats not to say its good you understand.
Posted by: sean witzke | 2010.02.25 at 02:29
Haneke strikes me as an odd comparison. He doesn't really do deception--if you're referring to the end of Cache, I always saw that as another audience test, a case of you-see-what-you-want. I might be misunderstanding you though. (or being hyper-defensive of my surrogate Austrian sweetheart.)
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2010.02.25 at 02:34
Haneke - anti-viewer genre dissection part. Not the deception part.
Posted by: sean witzke | 2010.02.25 at 02:36
Ah, Funny Games. Gotcha. As much as I like the original, sometimes I wish it wasn't part of his catalog. He's got so much more pain to give!
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2010.02.25 at 02:39
Karan Johar movies are freaking awesome! The best of them are melodramatic and silly, but it's a fun sort of melodramatic and silly sort of like Degrassi High, but with singing and dancing. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is one of the best movies I've ever seen. Also, Shahrukh Khan and Kajol are the best movie coupling of all time. There's no other pairing that has quite the same chemistry. I haven't seen My Name is Khan yet, but it's certainly not for lack of desire. But Karan Johar's films aren't quite typical of Bollywood; Johar's films are usually a bit more risque and try to challenge a lot of conventional Indian cultural practices. Of course, being Bollywood, all that really means is he simply has a character point out that a given situation doesn't make a lot of sense. Subtlety has't really arrived in Bollywood, or India for that matter, yet.
It sounds like Scorsese's Shutter Island has all the same faults as the book. The charts at the end with all the unnecessary and boring exposition were there, too. In the book, it became pretty obvious pretty quickly DiCaprio's character was the 67th patient, but it was just so stupid, I kinda sat there hoping against hope Lehane wasn't going to go for so obvious a conclusion. He did, and it was a shame, because had he dumped the whole stupid role-playing thing, he would have had a good thriller on his hands. Oh well....
I had the same experience with The Hangover. I watched it by myself in a room full of people who told me it was comedic genius and would walk in and out of the room saying stuff like, "Has this scene happened yet? No? It's really funny," or "Ooooh, this part is hysterical!!" I think no comedy can possibly be funny with those conditions, but I still think The Hangover was stupid.
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2010.02.25 at 09:01
Dammit, I want to go listen to the soundtrack for Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Om Shanti Om (non-Johar, but catchy music) right now....
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2010.02.25 at 09:02
I thought the Hangover was funny, myself - but in a "watch this with a group of your buddies, go to the bar afterwards" sort of way. It's nonsense, sure, but I like nonsense.
Posted by: Lugh | 2010.02.25 at 11:42
Heh, Shutter Island sounds weird yet interesting. Still gonna watch it, since I'm so gay for Scorsese it's stopped being funny. Only one of his films I actually disliked was Cape Fear (original had motherfucking Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum)
also I watched Hangover in a room with buds so that might explain why I laughed so much. that or someone replaced my meds with flinstone vitamins again
Posted by: Nathan | 2010.02.25 at 12:27
Aw, man, "The Hit." "Willie? You mouth!" The mod gangsters singing "We'll Meet Again." Myron's last word: "Eh?" Just an underseen li'l gem, yeah?
Posted by: John Pontoon | 2010.02.25 at 17:05
Jewison is underrated. After in the Heat of the Night, he made The Thomas Crown Affair, a movie that was 100 times cooler and superior to its remake. The commentary on that DVD is great.
I also don't mind the musicals: Fiddler and Jesus Christ Superstar.
Posted by: Jonathan Baylis | 2010.02.25 at 18:16
Rollerball is a near-perfect film too.
Posted by: sean witzke | 2010.02.25 at 18:36
I also kinda liked Russians are coming!, and that one where Pacino played a lawyer. for the life of me I can't remember what it was called.
agree on Heat of the Night, but Steiger and Poitier were both good enough for me to overlook enough to like it
Posted by: Nathan | 2010.02.25 at 18:45
A Soldier's Story is one of my favourite movies. Jewison forever.
Posted by: Lugh | 2010.02.25 at 19:02
Let's keep this going, there's got to be some F.I.S.T. defenders out there.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2010.02.25 at 19:16
Pacino's first foray into ranting like an utter lunatic is "And Justice For All", a solid two and a half star movie with a couple of three star moments.
As for F.I.S.T, Joe Esterhas's screenplay is a stand-out of 1970's cinema and Stallone's performance rivals Rocky, and might arguably be his bes... oh fuck it. This film's shite.
Posted by: Jonathan Baylis | 2010.02.25 at 19:55
And Justice For All was the first movie I ever bought at a gas station.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2010.02.25 at 19:59
so what 2, 3 dollars?
Posted by: Nathan | 2010.02.25 at 22:42
All of the VHS titles at the Circle K were $4.99.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2010.02.25 at 23:02
What year was this, never seen gas station VHS that price
must have been when I was a kid and was only concerned with Chevron cars at the gas station
Posted by: Nathan | 2010.02.26 at 01:52
Robert Siegel wrote "The Wrestler," not Robert Smigel (although that would be fun to imagine).
Posted by: Steely Dan | 2010.02.28 at 09:20
Yeah, that would have been fun. I'll fix that, thanks.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2010.02.28 at 11:44
saw Shutter Island. This was certainly an interesting flick. But it either had a shitty script or a shitty book. But seeing as I liked Gone Baby, Gone and Mystic River (shut up) I'm leaning on script.
Posted by: Nathan | 2010.02.28 at 16:04
I thought the Hangover was fascinating for a lot of reasons, none of which involve the humor, which was practically non-existent. It shifted the audience identity character two characters over, and it was a movie that ended with people foregoing the immediate, happy event to look at photos. And there was this total balls to the wall ad campaign which should have backfired but didn't. This was the strangest hit comedy ever.
Posted by: Tom Spurgeon | 2010.02.28 at 17:43
Joe, you really don't think the chart scene in Shutter Island was supposed to be funny? My audience cracked up, and it sure sounded with-it-not-at-it to me.
Posted by: Sean T. Collins | 2010.03.02 at 07:05
I mean, that scene opened with Ben Kingsley calling Leonardo DiCaprio "baby." Know what I mean?
Posted by: Sean T. Collins | 2010.03.02 at 07:10
Oh, that's odd, my other comment didn't post. I was just saying that I think the chart thing in Shutter Island was clearly funny on purpose.
Posted by: Sean T. Collins | 2010.03.02 at 07:10
Ah, and now it DID post. Unless it was there ALL ALONG...?!?!?!
Posted by: Sean T. Collins | 2010.03.02 at 07:12
I liked Big Fan as an homage to Paul Schrader. The ending subverted the Schrader formula in a brilliant way that made it all worth it.
But admittedly, it's no Taxi Driver, or even The Wrestler.
Posted by: Ebrey | 2010.03.06 at 06:45
I used to watch The heat of the night television show, until my grandfather forbade it, as the actor playing ole tibbsy got busted with a snootful of yak, or some such. I bet Carrol O'Connor felt personally betrayed, and may have had a private Archie Bunker thought or two. only the shadow knows for sure...
Posted by: mateo | 2010.03.10 at 13:26