TO: Tavis, Lin, Levi
FROM: Boltron
RE: Off and Running!
Well, we're off and running — and I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised to find we aren't all agreeing on the exact same things.
Tavis, I spoke to you face-to-face after you saw Juno and not one iota of your reaction indicated "one of the year's best." You were relieved that it wasn't brilliant, but seemed to feel (or expressed to me, at any rate) that it was pretty mediocre. Were you underplaying then, or are you just trying to get a rise out of me now?
(HA! Won't work. I'm above such pettiness. By the way, I didn't slash the tire on your bike. Honest. It was somebody else. Really, swear to God!)
I confess, the main reason I'm staying away from the film is my blood pressure. I need to hold off until the name "Diablo Cody" no longer makes me transform into an angry, green behemoth (you wouldn't like me when I'm angry). I know my response is completely irrational — envy being my greatest sin — and I understand that I need to keep my distance until I no longer have such a knee-jerk reaction. Then I can view the film (probably on HBO by then) with clear eyes and a clearer mind, and see it for what it is rather than what I resent about it.
If there's one thing I heart about Juno, however, it's that the film's success seems to hinge entirely on VOICE. And yes, that particular voice aggravates the fuck out of me, but at least it's a strong, distinctive voice, something that too often gets crushed under the gold treads of the megaplex machine. The frosted side of me likes to think this bodes well for a post-writer's strike future of films with strong, distinctive voices, while the whole wheat side of me suspects it just means we're headed toward a crop of snarky-quirky Diablo Cody rip-offs.
I've been somewhat heartened (in that cackling, waxy-mustached, Daniel-Day-Lewis-in-There-Will-be-Blood-villain way) by the blogosphere's Juno backlash. Alas, almost everyone who rails against it uses some variation of the phrase "It's fake-independent, just like those bullshit middlebrow flicks Little Miss Sunshine and Sideways." The problem is, I liked Little Miss Sunshine and I love Sideways!
What's wrong with middlebrow independents? Why must the door only swing between zero-budget "integrity" films about Croatian farmers who fall in love with the rain, and mega-budget turds about Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots (featuring the voice of Jason Lee)?
Which reminds me: Lin, I think I appreciated your list primarily because I hadn't even heard of several of those movies. I know you and I don't always get excited by the same things in film, but I also know I don't make it down to the
Then again, as Lin learned this year when Uncle Sam's House was rejected by Sundance and Slamdance, the middlebrow indie seems to have run ragged over the indie scene. Viewing the lineup for both fests, it seems nobody gets in without at least two or three big-name (or at least recognizable) actors in the cast. Granted, Randy Quaid isn't exactly Will Smith — but he's a helluva lot more expensive than we could afford to cast in a flick that costs under ten grand!
So, are we seeing the death of come-from-nowhere indies? Would Kevin Smith and Edward Burns have made a similar mark if they'd tried to get Clerks and The Brothers McMullen into Sundance today? And if they didn't succeed — would that be such a bad thing? (Whoops. Trying to stay positive and I slipped... again. Damn it!)
Which brings us to Once. I loved it. It was absolutely the film I needed to see at a time when the formula of mainstream
That scene was something like ten minutes long and held me spellbound. Afterward I thought to myself: In the Hollywood version it would be a lot of quick jump-cuts where Hugh Grant is trying to play the melody for Drew Barrymore, and she bursts out laughing as she keeps screwing up in oh-so-adorable ways, and then they'd get up in front of an audience, totally unprepared, and she'd magically belt out the song just perfectly! And I would vomit in my over-buttered popcorn bucket.
Then again, it's perhaps unfair to slag on good ol' Hollywood — and what a silly, nonexistant blanket term that is, like the film version of "military industrial complex" — in a year with two sensational mainstream entertainments like Ratatouille and The Bourne Ultimatum.
Ratatouille was just brilliant. I've seen it twice and it continues to thrill me. I remember, after being gobsmacked by The Incredibles a few years back, I was completely bowled over by the end credit: "Written and Directed by Brad Bird." You just don't see that writer/director credit in animation — not when most animated films have a pool of a half-dozen or more writers cranking out endless gags and pop-culture references — and to see it on two such amazing films (whether animated or live-action) made me want to sing the "Ode to Joy."
I'm still at a loss to explain why Bourne was so terrific. Really, there was almost no plot, the stakes were virtually nonexistent (the series lost its one truly human element by killing Marie in the second film), and if there was any real sense of advancing the series by the end, I must have missed it.
And yet, none of that mattered to me while watching it. The sheer, hyperkinetic thrill of the chase was all-encompassing and perfectly delivered. Every action sequence was so beautifully timed, and the payoff richly rewarding. After Michael Clayton and Bourne, I wonder if there's anything more thrilling (beyond the chase sequences and big-budget F/X) than a smart character who stays one step ahead of the audience and thinks his way out of a mess.
And was there any film all year with more visceral action sequences? You felt every crunch of bone and metal, your heart raced along with Bourne as he leaped over those rooftops, and I know I held my breath when Bourne was soaring toward that window — along with everyone in the audience. When these sorts of films are done well, they're absolutely riveting.
Compare Bourne to Live Free or Die Hard, which I was surprised to find I enjoyed, albeit in a cotton candy sort of way that didn't stick with me at all. By now John McClane is a superhuman action figure who can leap off a Harrier jet, land on a collapsing bridge, and just limp away. The problem is, there's no good explanation for this within the context of the film; he's not a highly trained government assassin like Jason Bourne, just a
After United 93 (the best movie of last year, in my opinion) and his Bourne entries, I'm signed on to the Paul Greengrass Fan Club. I cannot wait to see what he'll do next, and I've got Bloody Sunday eagerly cranked to the top of my Netflix queue. The man has style oozing out of his ears — and it's a genuine style, not simple affectation. I get the feeling he lives and breathes his films, whether it's a straight-faced docudrama about the most traumatic day in our country's recent past, or a white-knuckled action thriller about a kick-ass superspy.
If The Good Shepherd (which I loved — anyone else?) didn't cement this for me, then Bourne finally did: Matt Damon holds the screen like nobody since George Clooney. The camera loves both these guys, in completely different ways: Clooney's charge is more suave, effortless, while Damon seems to me like the working-class hero made good. Still, they both have that undefinable charisma that made stars of Cary Grant, Paul Newman, and other giants of yesteryear.
My litmus test for how successful an actor is would be how riveted you are when they're doing nothing, just thinking. Both Damon and Clooney absolutely own that — you can't always tell WHAT they're thinking, but there's definitely something going on, and you're fascinated, you absolutely MUST know what it is.
I wasn't especially wild about Ocean's 13, although it was head and shoulders above that embarrassing previous entry in the series. To me, a good revenge flick pits the underdog against the top dog and has the underdog win by the skin of his/her/their teeth. But Al Pacino never stood a chance — and Ocean's crew is better financed than most governments. By now they could drill through
But dear, sweet God, did Michael Clayton sizzle! I'm with Tavis on this: the film was slam-bang first-rate, but reading (more like consuming) Tony Gilroy's published screenplay brought a charge I didn't get from a single fiction book I read this year, let alone a screenplay.
Well, Charlie Kaufman's script for Synecdoche, N.Y. was mesmerizing and confounding and brilliant and chaotic — I read it on a train and it messed with my head so badly that everything felt absurd and unreal to me for the next hour. But even that masterwork (oh, how I can't wait for next year!) lacked the gut punch of
Um, I seem to have gone on for a VERY long time. And I haven't even gushed about The Lookout yet! Has everyone seen this masterful, character-heavy crime film?
Is now the right time to talk about sma-smortion?
Or should we table that and swap MASH notes on Sweeney Todd and No Country for Old Men?
And what about the WORST of the year... or dare we tread that dark terrain?
2 comments:
I have an early pick for worst: Gone Baby Gone. Laughably bad.
Anonymous (can I call you Nonny?), I didn't love Gone Baby Gone — but I didn't hate it enough to put it on the "worst of" list. It just felt like a mediocre episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit set in Boston.
Casey Affleck was too young and soft to play the hardass he tried to be (anytime he stepped up to some genuine hardass I thought, Why doesn't he just get pummeled? This is bullshit.). He and Michelle Monaghan lacked any real chemistry, and she definitely needed a character (to see what Michelle can do with a solid character and good chemistry, check out Kiss Kiss Bang Bang).
It left me wanting more, but I certainly didn't hate it. And I must admit, I was pleased with a downer ending.
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