Self-therapy: 2014 in Review

Other Years in Review

Welcome to the cusp of 2015.

This was a banner year for me. I wrote my thesis, I graduated college, I worked a summer at Haverford, I spent a couple weeks in Minnesota, I slummed around, I got a job, I moved to Philadelphia. It's been one of those watershed years in which your life on December 31 looks nothing like it did on January 1.

Of course, 2014 was also the first year of Post-Credit Coda! One year ago today I was in a dire mood, so I made this blog and posted this post because I couldn't muster up the willpower to do anything else. That has grown into something of a hidden theme on this blog. I spent a decent portion of this year stressed, depressed, or suffering from severe writer's block. Oftentimes I would turn here as a sort of self-therapy; when there was nothing else in the world I could think to write about, I could always write about movies. It was my recourse, my outlet. MY SALVATION.

I may be giving the wrong impression. When a new Post-Credit Coda post pops up, you shouldn't be thinking, "Oh no! I do hope he's alright, the poor sweet dear." I come here just as often, if not more often, because I am excited about something. Sometimes movies electrify me in a way few things can, and I love sharing that energy with others.

MOCKINGJAY - PART 1: Rebels and Rubbles

In which it takes me two hours to figure out how to upload a sound file to Blogger.

Director: Francis Lawrence
Writers: Peter Craig, Danny Strong
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Sam Claflin, Natalie Dormer, Mahershala Ali, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Jena Malone
Runtime: 123 mins.
2014

For this winter's biggest cinematic event, the continuation of the massively successful Hunger Games franchise, Post-Credit Coda is releasing its first audio review! Click below to hear me discuss Mockingjay - Part 1 with my two esteemed guest stars, Brandon and Carson Rebel. (Hopefully it works; you might have trouble on mobile devices. I apologize for the sound quality, I did the best I could with zero microphones.)

WARNING: Spoilers are discussed for Mockingjay - Part 1, though if you ask me it doesn't matter that much for this movie. Nothing beyond the scope of Part 1 was discussed.

My reviews for movies mentioned in the discussion:

Top Ten 2013 (Catching Fire)
Edge of Tomorrow
Godzilla

2.5 / 5  BLOBS

TOP TEN 2013

It's the end of the year, and you all know what that means. Time for the top ten movies released not this year but the previous year! I am nothing if not timely.

I've been meaning to write this list for a long time now, but I couldn't bring myself to do it earlier because I had missed out on many of 2013's critical new releases. Even still, I haven't seen a bunch of potential contenders like:

The Conjuring, The Wind Rises, Blue Jasmine, Captain Phillips, 12 Years a Slave, The Counselor, Dallas Buyers Club, Blackfish, The Bling Ring, Spring Breakers, etc.

I have an assortment of excuses for this negligence. The first Post-Credit Coda post being published on December 31 of 2013, 2014 was my first year of writing about movies. Seeing new releases in 2013 had not been a priority for my college self. But I've finally watched my way through forty movies from 2013, enough material for a hearty if not comprehensive top ten.

Looking over my list, I can't help but call 2013 disappointing. Shame on you, 2013. Summer blockbuster season felt like a dry spell and the Oscars didn't blow me away. Despite this, picking ten movies proved a bit confounding. That's why lists are fun! Time warps impressions, and self-imposed limits force you to confront what you find valuable in your favorite and not-so-favorite films. Not every movie can be a big fat winner. Some movies are big fat losers. With that in mind...

TOP TEN 2012

[This post was originally composed for my personal blog, The Name Is Rebel. I am replicating it here for posterity's sake. As you might guess, the list would look a little different if I had written it today--but no alterations were made!]

In my time, some have called me a Movie Buff.  Some have called me a No You're Not A Movie Buff.  Regardless, I love movies.  They're one of my three favorite forms of media (novels and video games probably fill the other slots).  I live on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.  As such, I'm pleased to have viewed twenty-one films so far that were released in the good year 2012.  Of these, I present to you my top ten.  Unlike my Top 10 Books of the Year list, these are not culled from all the movies I have seen this year, but all the movies I've seen that were released in 2012.  I have no idea what all the movies I watched this year are.

So, without further ado... some preliminaries.

NIGHTCRAWLER: It's a Game Where They Crawl Around in the Night Like Worms

In which Jake Gyllenhaal finally makes his X-Men debut.

Director: Dan Gilroy
Writer: Dan Gilroy
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton
Runtime: 117 mins.
2014

The brilliant feat of Nightcrawler is that it manages to be scathingly political without ever emphasizing that that's what it has on its mind. I tend to be suspicious of art that brands itself as "political" because it's often obvious... on the nose... self-important. At any rate, I've found that every work of art is political in its own way, consciously or no, and the most effective art is frequently covert or subtle when it comes to that affiliation.

Nightcrawler is a savage takedown of capitalism and news journalism, without pretending to be anything more or less than a crackling thriller. Maybe movies like these are the most politically important, since the plot and premise are enough to get them greenlit by the studios, and the themes and motifs are enough to make the audience question established moneymaking systems like the studios that approved them. It's a neat trick, one that I noticed recently in The Lego Movie, of all things.

The catalyst for all the action that unfolds is Lewis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal): sociopath, fence-stealer, smooth talker, professional miscreant. The lurid fluorescent setting of Los Angeles does not surround Lewis Bloom--Lewis Bloom penetrates Los Angeles. Nothing happens outside of his desire for it to happen, a desire that is at once monstrous and coolly efficient. The machine of his will encounters resistance, to be sure; the world does not bend to accommodate Lewis, nor does Lewis bend to accommodate the world. He reaches out and forcibly twists the world into the shape of his choosing. He is a god to those around him, and this god in turn prays to the sacred altar of the television.

INTERSTELLAR: A Galaxy Far Near Away

In which LOVE was the universal constant ALL ALONG.

Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Bill Irwin, John Lithgow, Wes Bentley, David Gyasi, Casey Affleck, Josh Stewart, Topher Grace, Mackenzie Foy, and a secret
Runtime: 169 mins.
2014

Director Christopher Nolan has been something of a hot button issue lately. Ever since the cultural zeitgeist that was The Dark Knight released to rave reviews and ravenous ticket sales, Nolan has had a legion of devoted fanboys. I use that term particularly: I here consider fanboyism the state of devoting oneself to a cultural property to the point of ignoring and/or actively seeking to debunk that property's flaws. Not every Nolan fan is a fanboy, though he certainly has plenty--to the point of alienating many of those on the fence about his work. Understandably so. When you try to have a conversation about the quirky blemishes of a director's craft, only to be stonewalled with denials and insults again and again, I can see how you might sour on the director in question.

Thus a party of so-called anti-Nolanites has arisen, critical of Nolan's work, but more critical of the culture surrounding it. Meanwhile the Nolanites fire back with increased vitriol, and the fence-sitters shake their heads, possibly falling off the fence due to vertigo. The talking point at the center of all this hooplah has, of course, been Interstellar.

STARGATE: A Galaxy Near Near Away

In which Kurt Russell teaches an alien human how to smoke.

Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich
Cast: James Spader, Kurt Russell, Jaye Davidson
Runtime: 121 mins.
1994

Only after I started watching Stargate did I realize how complementary it was to Christopher Nolan's new blockbuster film event, Interstellar. Both feature humans traveling through wormholes to the far reaches of the universe. Both are directed by men known for their summer popcorn bombast (though Roland Emmerich wouldn't enter the cultural consciousness in a big way until his next movie, Independence Day). They're both... did I mention the outer space stuff?

I've run out of similarities so soon because, for all its flaws, Interstellar is a movie with heart, soul, and an artistic vision. Stargate is a movie with three independent fight scenes all taking place in the same poorly designed, Egyptian-themed, paintball-esque corridor.

Going into this movie, I didn't realize that it was the source material for the decently popular decades-spanning television franchise that included the shows Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, and Stargate: Universe. It makes sense. A world in which we humans have discovered a centuries-old wormhole device that allows us to dial in to different destinations in the universe--the premise of the Stargate movie and the subsequent shows--would provide much fodder for syndicated entertainment. Indeed, the only part of the movie worth anything at all is the initial anticipation of what will be found on the other side of that portal. Emmerich is in a hurry to do away with that wonder. The characters enter the portal and nobody seems all that impressed by the alien world they have discovered, nor is it all that impressive. However, I'm guessing wonder plays more of a factor in the television show. It's always nice when folks can rip a good idea from the clutches of fools.

The Scariest Movies of My LIFE

In my continuing efforts to disavow all holidays, I will be celebrating Halloween by working at my dad's network tonight. Nonetheless, the last vestiges of my holiday spirit cropped up yesterday and demanded that I do a film-based retrospective.

So here we are. It should come as no surprise that the subject of this retrospective will be horror, one of my favorite of all movie genres. Something about the grotesque... the unknown... the tangible becoming intangible... intangible becoming tangible... it gets me.

Horror fans tend to obsess over their pet genre, tracking down obscure gems and popular turds alike for voracious consumption. My knowledge isn't nearly as encyclopedic as most horror enthusiasts, but hey, that's what the rest of my life is for. In the meantime, I'll focus on what I have experienced.

What you are about to see is not a list of the best horror films I have ever seen. You won't find horror masterpieces like The Thing, The Shining, The Cabin in the Woods, or Psycho. Rather, this is a list of the ten films that scared me the most when I saw them. It's a purely personal compilation. Well-constructed horror films are more likely to terrify, but each of us is frightened by such idiosyncratic things. Bob 1 might find insects terrifying but is unfazed by the threat of stalker psychos in a character's backyard. Bob 2 is unafraid of insects unless they talk, and unafraid of psychos unless they don't. Bob 3 finds anthropomorphic appliances disturbing on a deep existential level. It's a crapshoot: one that I find endlessly interesting. In fact, I would love to hear about your scariest movies.

I'm not a person who scares easily--it takes a lot for a movie to elicit any sort of visceral reaction from me--but we are about to embark on a tour of the ten movies that have done the most to shape the disturbances of my conscious and subconscious imagination.

As they say in the I Spy: Haunted Mansion computer game that I used to play: Enter if you dare... you're in for a scare.

Everything rhymed in that game.

ALL IS LOST: A Silent Monologue

In which a seventy-seven year old actor loses 60% of the hearing in his left ear because he decides to do his own stunts.

Director: J. C. Chandor

Writer: J. C. Chandor

Cast: Robert Redford

Runtime: 106 mins.

2013

All Is Lost asks the question: Why would anybody go on a boat?

The movie begins with a brief Hemingwayesque voiceover in which Robert Redford's character shares a few sparse sentiments. "I tried to be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right. But I wasn't." We don't know who he's speaking to--us? God? a loved one?--but he goes on to say that all is lost now, and that he is sorry.

This is the only significant dialogue in the entire movie, and it is dispensed with in the first thirty seconds. It's not specific, and the words aren't especially beautiful in and of themselves. But the essentialist quality of these phrases hangs over the essential action that is to follow, such that it gains much meaning and nuance and significance as we witness the eight days leading up to these words. There are many trials in this movie--the protagonist wakes to find his boat skewered by a shipping container filled with tiny sneakers, and he patches the ship up just in time to encounter a series of massive storms brewing on the horizon--but the focus is always on the man at the center of it all. Or maybe the trials are the man. And the man is the movie. It's hard to separate them.

String Theory: The Trailer for AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

I've never done an analysis of a trailer before. Trailers are such contentious pieces of entertainment. Some people wait with bated breath for the release of trailers, and ogle them ten, twenty, a hundred times before the movie arrives in theaters. For them, anticipation reaches a fever pitch--and they are often disappointed, as I was with the release of Spider-Man 3. I had watched the trailer so many times that the real film paled in comparison to the ideal film that reeled around in my head. My feelings were kind of hurt.

Other folks avoid trailers as if they were sources of eye infection. The idea behind swearing off a trailer is that you want to come into the movie fresh, on its own terms, free of bias and expectation. I believe I adopted this method before seeing The Grand Budapest Hotel. I knew it was a critically acclaimed Wes Anderson film, so I needed no further information to convince me to see it. Thus, I had an excellent movie-watching experience in which Anderson's colorful world unfolded before my very eyes, complete with unexpected cameos and untainted gags.

Right now I fall in between these two camps. Ideally I like the purism of the second approach, as it seems the most fair to let a movie express itself outside the dirty, necessary confines of advertisement. On the other, trailers are exciting. They give you a glimpse into a new world and let you hope for the best.

It's with both of those attitudes in mind that I dig into an analysis of the hot-off-the-presses Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer. There was no way I was going to avoid this one, especially because we all already have loose expectations about the film. Why not use it as a platform for speculation and observation? Besides, the movie doesn't come out until May. We'll both have forgotten that I wrote this by then.

See my Age of Ultron review here.

GONE GIRL: Gone in 149 Minutes

In which Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry are both cast in a thriller for the first and last time ever.

Director: David Fincher
Writer: Gillian Flynn
Cast: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry
Runtime: 149 mins.
2014

David Fincher feeds on twisty structures and mind games. It's his lifeforce. His body of work is one sinister game after another: Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network, House of Cards, and the most cheekily named The Game. He thrives on these house-of-mirror thriller structures, generally at the expense of real, convincing, or meaningful characters. Go ahead and try to name one truly memorable character from Fincher's filmography--and before you say Tyler Durden, Frank Underwood, or Mark Zuckerberg, let me add one more caveat: a memorable character who isn't a sociopath. The list runs thin, doesn't it?

Fincher has made a career of taking trashy source materials/ideas and elevating them to the level of Serious Cinema. To be clear, I love trashy stories. They don't have to be mere entertainment, although they can be. They can also be fodder for all sorts of interesting intellectual interpretations. Fincher clearly believes this, and he has always walked the fine line between giving genre fiction the attention of craft that he feels it deserves, and taking it all rather too seriously to the point of losing perspective. His best work tends to be the former, and if it can be said that any of his films have "failed," they belong to the latter category.

Lucky for us, Gone Girl features both a twisty-turny thriller structure, and characters who are designed more to be avatars than believable people--a Fincher special! Double lucky for us, Gone Girl may be a serious affair, but it never mistakes itself for what it's not. This movie is a thriller all the way down.

PRISONERS: Scares and Scars and Cares and Cars

In which we have fun watching twitchy Jake Gyllenhaal twitch.

 

Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writer: Aaron Guzikowski
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrence Howard, Paul Dano, Viola Davis, Melissa Leo, Maria Bello, David Dastmalchian
Runtime: 153 mins.
2013

Before seeing the movie, there was nothing in particular that enticed me about Prisoners. The promotional posters were dour, the trailers forgettable. The title didn't inspire. Jackman and Gyllenhaal can be strong actors, but have an equal propensity for coasting. Even the premise itself, a dark gritty child abduction thriller, feels been-there-done-that.

It took a very direct and specific recommendation for me to seek the movie out, and I'm glad because most of my preconceptions were askew. As far as thrillers go Prisoners manages to be thrilling for most of its bloated 153 minutes, which is high praise for a genre subject to more cliches than most.

HER: Artificial Emotional Intelligence

In which I am uncharacteristically honest and sensitive.

Director: Spike Jonze
Writer: Spike Jonze
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Chris Pratt, Olivia Wilde
Runtime: 126 mins.
2013

I try to sound smart on my movie blog. I try to identify and engage with what I deem to be the key aspects of any given movie. I talk about things I know a little bit about, like performance or story. I talk about things I really know nothing about, like sound design or editing or cinematography. I try to be honest. But perhaps more than that I try not to sound stupid or inane.

I do this because I'm afraid of being wrong. That has always been my fear. So I try to make ironclad arguments instead of tossing out a bunch of unsystematic sensory impressions. Sometimes, during the act of watching a movie, I am already formulating what sort of points or narrative I want to craft in a potential future post.

That's probably the right tactic for a movie blog, but it's not the conversation I want to have about Her. The golden rule of criticism should be to approach a piece of art or entertainment on its own terms, and evaluate how successful it is within those parameters. As I was watching Her, it became apparent that the right way to talk about the movie would be to share how it impacted me on a personal level.

Top Ten TV Time!

More than any other entertainment medium,* the way we interact with television has changed the most in my lifetime. It used to be that our lives were structured around the TV. If you cared about a show enough to keep up with it, you had three options.

*A good argument could be made for video games. I might respond that even as the games themselves have taken massive leaps, the way we orient ourselves to video games has stayed much the same, with the clear exception of online gaming. Not being an online gamer, I'm not in a position to compare. Though it's interesting that in both cases (online games and streaming television) the new factor is the internet.

1. Make sure your schedule was clear every ___________ night at __ o'clock.
2. Finagle with your VCR with the hopes of recording the episode on a VHS.
3. Hope like hell you could catch the missed episode in a re-run.

Television lent itself to tradition. Families like mine set aside sacred time every week to watch the new episode of Survivor or CSI. People squirreled away tapes of their favorite shows collected over the course of months, like I did with The Simpsons and Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Folks surrendered their fates to unpredictable re-runs, maybe a previously unexperienced morsel of entertainment, maybe a purgatory of that one episode you've seen half a dozen times and then some.

The Netflix model changed everything. Of course it had its precursors in TiVo and other digital recording services, but the sea change happened with Netflix. It killed the video stores.

Netflix, and streaming television in general, gave television viewers what filmgoers had for years: agency. No longer do we have to respect the sacred space-time of a regularly scheduled program. Instead, television bends to our individual humanistic whims. Sneaking bits and pieces of TV on public transportation or binging a show in the middle of the night, we have profaned television with our vulgar desires.

I like it a lot better that way.

NOAH: An Ark of a Different Color

In which the Bible gets weird.

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Writers: Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Jennifer Connelly, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth
Runtime: 138 mins.
2014

Noah could have gone one of two ways.

It could have catered to its Christian audience, presenting a souped up but conservative Noah narrative that would please the religious crowd and hopefully nab the sad group of Russell Crowe fans that remain loyal. In other words, it could have gone the way of God Is Not Dead, a fundamentalist narrative about the triumphs of faith that was released around the same time as Noah, and is of course laughably inept from a filmmaking perspective. But it makes the Christian audience happy. I don't mean to pick on Christian movies, fundamentalism in general makes for bad filmmaking: we need only look at the recently released conclusion to the Atlas Shrugged trilogy, which is apparently one of the most embarrassing excuses for a movie trilogy to ever be ejaculated onto the populace.

Alternately, Noah could have abandoned the Christian (and Jewish, though I can't imagine they would mind nearly as much) audience by taking loads of silly liberal liberties with the Noah narrative, in an attempt to appeal to the sort of folks who get excited about a Hercules movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Fundamentalist Christians would have become this film's enemy, going on crusades about how the Hollywood machine has tainted Truth yet again. Most others would have ignored it as a version of Evan Almighty that didn't pretend to be funny.

I let Noah slip under my radar because I wasn't interested in watching either of those possibilities. I made a mistake. It turns out Noah is a PG-13 action movie that doesn't fall into either of the above categories. It falls into a category of its own. It is like nothing you've ever seen before.

A lot of people called it bad. Everybody called it weird. I call it confusing, exciting, beautiful, and tremendously uneven. I don't understand what it all means, but I have a review to write, so I'm going to pretend.

PROXY: A Dead Baby Joke

In which our protagonists turn out to be antagonists and our antagonists turn out to be antagonists.

Director: Zack Parker
Writers: Kevin Donner, Zack Parker
Cast: Alexia Rasmussen, Alexa Havins, Kristina Klebe, Joe Swanberg
Runtime: 120 mins.
2013

Proxy is fundamentally deceptive. It's the kind of movie that makes you hate everybody, then tricks you into hating them for all new reasons that subsequently turn out not to be true. It tries to be high-minded and succeeds in being low-brow. It's a massive crock of M. Night Shyamalan plot twists, if Shyamalan turned out to be a teenager and also a sadist. It's like wandering through a winding maze full of cupboards, and behind each cupboard is a punch in the face. Proxy is deliberately designed to be a face-punching labyrinth.

So why, instead of just being hateful, is it also boring?

THE LEGO MOVIE: Everything Is Meta

In which we behold Will Ferrell's face with a sense of awe.

Directors: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Writers: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Cast: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Will Arnett, Charlie Day, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman
Runtime: 100 mins.
2014

There are three types of movie watchers. (Okay, there are a million types of movie watchers, but I'm trying to construct a framework here.) Thoughtless movie watchers, Thoughtful movie watchers, and Thoughtfilled movie watchers.

There's nothing inherently wrong with Thoughtless movie watchers. Most folks watch movies this way. Passive entertainment to be digested and promptly set aside. They're the kinds of folks who think that another Transformers movie sounds pretty good, why not. Or another Marvel movie. Or another Liam Neeson action thriller. Or another kids' movie based on a familiar property. If it strikes them as good and comfortable, they'll see it. You could get into ethical/political arguments about this type of filmgoer, and whether they should be more thoughtful about the ramifications of their choice of media consumption (the studio system gets screwed up by the popularity of movies like Transformers and ends up churning out more crap like it--not to mention the dangerous sexism and racism and political sentiments those movies espouse, etc. etc.). But that's another argument for another time. Thoughtless movie watchers are fine. They would enjoy a movie like the movie I'm writing about today.

For Thoughtful movie watchers, passive digestion isn't enough. They bring a critical eye to their consumption, and tend to appreciate films more on the level of craft. They're careful about what movies they spend their time and money on, and they want to discuss them after the fact. They go crazy with writing self-important movie reviews to post on a blog nobody reads. They are the kinds of people who would be immediately suspicious about everything surrounding a movie like The Lego Movie, which has Corporate Cash Grab written all over its cylindrical yellow face. They would be primed to dismiss the movie as capitalist tripe and move on to the next Scorsese or Tarantino film. Until they started hearing glowing reviews for The Lego Movie pour in, which would pique their curiosity. They couldn't help but investigate the hype, and they would watch The Lego Movie, wary but cautiously open-minded. And once they acclimated themselves to the strange animation style and gag-heavy energy of the beginning of the film, they would be totally on board.

Thoughtfilled movie watchers are a different matter. They are the folks who are trying to be critical and thoughtful about movies, but are unwilling or unprepared to approach a film on its own terms. Instead, their heads are filled with mountains of preconceptions and assumptions about media that they have not yet digested, and as a result their perspective will often be skewed. Like the Thoughtless movie watchers, they will give you a weird look whenever you talk about a movie that is somehow foreign or off-kilter to their sensibilities (although the look from the Thoughtless movie watchers will contain more confusion, and that of the Thoughtfilled will contain more condescension). Like the Thoughtful movie watchers, these folks will come to the conclusion that The Lego Movie is a Corporate Cash Grab immediately after it enters their radar. They might even look down on the ignorant masses who will no doubt flock to the theaters to throw their money at such a ploy. They will avoid this movie if they can, reviews be damned. And if they happen to see the movie, they will cynically pick it apart as well as they can, because no movie based on a kid's toy property could possibly be an intelligent, unique, energetic, engaging, worthwhile, socially conscious piece of cinema. Right?

RIGHT????

Surprise surprise, The Lego Movie defies all expectations and somehow manages to be all those positive qualities I just mentioned. And you know what? I think my theory might be wrong in this case. Unlike other movies like this, I honestly believe that if you managed to sit a Thoughtfilled movie watcher down in front of this movie, they would be converted by the end. That's the unprecedented power of The Lego Movie.

NEBRASKA: Recollect Your Winnings

In which we learn that it's not important whether you win or lose, but how much you talk about winning.

Director: Alexander Payne

Writer: Bob Nelson

Cast: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Bob Odenkirk

Runtime: 115 mins.

2013

Nebraska is more than the sum of its parts. Part of that is that I'm not partial to parts of its parts. But on whole, the whole of it takes hold of some holes at the center of the "wholesome" American experience, while offering a viewing porthole into ill-represented parts of said experience.

In other words, I like the movie more for what it goes for rather than how it goes.

Nebraska follows everyman David Grant (Will Forte), whose life is settling into a vacant sense of normalcy only interrupted by the escapades of his father, Woody (Bruce Dern). David's mother Kate (June Squibb) repeatedly calls upon him to retrieve Woody, who keeps trying to walk all the way to Nebraska from his home in Montana. He wants to go there because he has received a letter in the mail declaring him the winner of one million dollars! Of course it's a scam, but there is no convincing Woody, who is stubborn and shows early signs of dementia. Eventually David decides that the only way to lay this problem to rest is to take a road trip to Nebraska to claim the false prize. He sees it as an opportunity to spend some time with the father who was often drunk, usually vacant, and always emotionally distant. So they go, and things happen along the way.

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES: The Cone Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree

In which we still don't learn how to spell Synecdoteeodcee, New York.

Director: Derek Cianfrance
Writers: Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, and Darius Marder
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Dane DeHaan, Eva Mendes, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Emory Cohen
Runtime: 140 mins.
2012

The Place Beyond the Pines strives to be epic with every fiber of its being. In a lot of ways, it fails. Yet it remains a textbook case of how much mileage a movie can gain from a strong start. In fact, I have to admit that I was sold from the very first shot:

We open to blackness, with an undercurrent of indistinct noise. As the title cards pass before us, we hear a new sound: a crisp, repetitive clinking noise that is vaguely reminiscent of the clanking of train cars steadily passing by. When we finally cut to our first image, we see the tattooed torso of Luke (Ryan Gosling), his hands expertly snapping a butterfly knife as he paces back and forth in a small trailer. His body language is restless, the click-clacking of the knife metronomic. He suddenly embeds the knife in a wall and leaves the trailer. The continuous shot... continues... as we follow him, a colorful fairground opening out before us, the previously dulled sounds of carnivalesque carousing now raucous and all-encompassing. The camera trails behind Luke, in a manner familiar to anybody who watched The Wrestler, or Breaking Bad. Luke passes fluorescent rides and games, pink and blue lights illuminating the night. He takes a turn into a darker, more subdued part of the fairground and heads for a tent. When he enters the tent, we are met with the sounds of revving engines, cheering fans, and an incomprehensible announcer. He heads for two other motorcyclists, and joins them on a third cycle of his own. The mounting of the cycle is the first moment we see Luke's face, a brief glimpse before he dons his helmet. Then the cyclists enter the steel cage, a metal sphere barely big enough to accommodate the three of them. The crowd erupts as the cyclists each begin circumnavigating the inside of the sphere, weaving in and out of each other's paths in daredevil fashion. The first shot ends.

Everything that is good and right about The Place Beyond the Pines is encompassed in that first shot, from the cycle of violence as represented by the click-clacking butterfly knife, to the visual coupling of Luke's identity with his motorcycle, to the long trailer-to-tent trudge that evokes an inevitable symbolic march towards danger and destruction. It's all there, and it's beautiful.

The movie never stops being beautiful, but it never recaptures the precision and economy of storytelling that the first shot offers.

THE IMPOSSIBLE: It's Tsuna-me, Not Tsuna-you

In which Ewan McGregor kisses things for 50% of his screentime.

Director: J. A. Bayona

Writer: Sergio G. Sánchez

Cast: Naomi Watts, Tom Holland, Ewan McGregor, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast

Runtime: 114 mins.

2012

Before I start the review, I should give you a comprehensive recap of this movie. Pay attention, it's going to be complicated:

This "true story" follows a British family vacationing in Thailand during the tsunami of Christmas 2004, and their efforts to find each other in the aftermath of the disaster.

That's about it. Now onto the review!

DUMMY: Hollywood's Hand Up Ventriloquism's Butt

In which a ventriloquist's dummy is creepy for one scene and a ventriloquist is creepy for most.

Director: Greg Pritikin

Writer: Greg Pritikin

Cast: Adrien Brody, Milla Jovovich, Vera Farmiga, Illeana Douglas, Jessica Walter, Ron Liebman, Jared Harris

Runtime: 91 mins.

2002

More than anything, Dummy feels like a movie that is unstuck from reality. Temporally speaking, there is little to suggest that the movie was released in 2002. The protagonist is the sort of bumbling man-child living-with-his-parents figure to whom we've grown accustomed in the late 00s and early 10s, but Brody plays the character with a docile earnestness that feels more at home in the 50s. The broad, almost interesting yet still firmly conservative nature of the comedy feels more at home in the 90s, when that sort of thing proliferated. The punk rock sensibilities and screw-the-man attitude displayed by Milla Jovovich's character (and sometimes the movie's tone) are ripped straight from the 80s, while some of the outfits--namely those of Illeana Douglas's character--make you want to sigh, "That's the 70s for you." Cover all this over with a simultaneous love for old-fashioned 20s (or 50s) showmanship and 30s (or 60s) deconstruction of said showmanship, and you get what amounts to a weird niche 2002 comedy picture about an awkward fellow and the dummy that he uses to try to get laid, though the movie would never be so courageous as to put it in those terms.

You can call me out on my awfully vague characterizations of decades that I didn't live through, but the point stands that Dummy suffers from what you could call a confused identity.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: Hooked on a Feeling

Director: James Gunn
Writers: James Gunn, Nicole Perlman
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Dave Bautista, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, Benicio Del Toro, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Gunn
Runtime: 121 mins.
2014

First the numbers.

Guardians of the Galaxy grossed $94 million in its opening weekend. The only 2014 movies to have bigger opening weekends were Transformers: Age of Extinction at $100 million and Captain America: The Winter Soldier at $95 million. More notable is the fact that Guardians managed to accomplish these numbers in August; compared to the triad of May-June-July, August box office numbers are usually slight. In fact, Guardians shattered the previous August opening weekend record, which belonged to The Bourne Ultimatum at $69.3 million. That's a solid $25 million margin.

Perhaps most notable of all, Guardians managed to achieve these astronomical numbers despite not being a sequel or a well-known property. Ticket buyers generally flock to the familiar. Take a look at all the other movies mentioned in the previous paragraph: The Winter Soldier, Ultimatum, and Age of Extinction are the second, third, and fourth movies of their respective franchises. Not only that, but two of them feature well-known protagonists who have achieved widespread cultural penetration over the course of decades, and the third features the protagonist of a series of very popular Ludlum novels. My point is that this cume represents an unprecedented level of financial success for a movie starring characters that almost nobody (including myself) had heard of a year ago. Even The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made less opening weekend cash despite featuring one of the most recognizable characters in pop culture. Part of that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe brand, and part of it is Disney's (impressive) marketing campaign. But I have to believe that a lot of this bottled magic has to do with the movie itself. Guardians of the Galaxy has energy, and it has soul; these qualities bleed through the advertisements, critical acclaim, and word-of-mouth.

So now that we are finished parsing the soulless numbers, let's talk about soul.

SUPER: A Superhero ExtravaGunnza!

Director: James Gunn
Writer: James Gunn
Cast: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion
Runtime: 96 mins.
2010

Super was dead in the water.

The action-drama-comedy was released concurrently with the Mark Millar adaptation Kick-Ass, a movie with a suspiciously similar premise. Super's critical reception was decidedly mixed, with many critics dismantling its erratic tone, meandering plot, and a whopper of a weird performance by Ellen Page. The film only made a few hundred thousand, trailing in the wake of the $48 million gross of Kick-Ass. Many viewers expressed confusion, discomfort, or dismissal towards the film. Scratch that--only a few viewers expressed those things. This film didn't have many viewers in the first place.

Yet here we are four years later, and director James Gunn is about to release Guardians of the Galaxy, sure to be one of the biggest films of the year. How does a director transition from directing a flop of a superhero film that couldn't crack half a million to directing a Marvel movie that is sure to make hundreds of millions of dollars to widespread critical acclaim?

Maybe the secret is in Super. Let's find it.

OBVIOUS CHILD: Laughing Ladies

Director: Gillian Robespierre
Writer: Gillian Robespierre
Cast: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffman, Gave Liedman, David Cross, Richard Kind, Polly Draper
Runtime: 84 mins.
2014

"It was nice to be able to enjoy a comedy movie all the way through without once feeling uncomfortable about its treatment of women."

So said one of the friends with whom I saw Obvious Child. Can you imagine that? If every single comedy film you watched made you feel not only uncomfortable, but personally attacked? As if the movie is having a joke at your expense, and you're not invited to laugh? You would have to go into every comedy film with a certain amount of trepidation, or at least wariness. You would feel like you need to become expert at shrugging it off so as not to be the wet blanket of the post-movie discussion of best lines and funniest moments; you would fail at shrugging it off.

I'm not saying that's how it is for everybody, but it's the status quo for a whole lot of women who watch comedies. Luckily there are exceptions. And if I feel like Obvious Child is a breath of fresh air, I can't even conceive how fresh and funny it must feel to its female audience.

SNOWPIERCER: Crazy Train

Director: Bong Joon-ho
Writers: Bong Joon-ho, Kelly Masterson
Cast: Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Ko Ah-sung, John Hurt, Ed Harris, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer
Runtime: 126 mins.
2014 (2013 in South Korea)

In the online film community that I haunt, there has been a lot of rumbling about people going to the wrong movies. Or rather, that rumbling always exists, it has just been exacerbated recently by a few factors. Between the movie you came here to read about, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and the excellent Edge of Tomorrow (as well as the much-hyped forthcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Mockingjay: Part 1), 2014 is turning out to be a banner year for mainstream sci-fi films--and yet, everybody and their reluctant mother is going to see the predictably steaming pile that is Transformers: Age of Indistinction.

That is why my goal in writing this particular review is to mobilize you to get out and go see Snowpiercer, a film that you likely haven't heard anything about, except perhaps snippets here and there: whispers in dark alleys, notes passed under restroom stalls, covert communiqués exchanged away from the watchful eyes of the Transformers marketing campaign.

In the world of Snowpiercer, the Earth has succumbed to a new ice age, brought about by humanity futzing with the atmosphere in an effort to counteract global warming. Now everything is dead. Cue the Snowpiercer, a massive train that contains the only remaining human life. It operates as a self-contained ecosystem that circles the entire globe once per year. All is not well on the so-called Rattling Ark, however. Our protagonists live in squalor in the tail of the train, cut off from the relative comfort and prosperity of the front-dwellers by a series of gates and armed guards. The gates only open once per day, for about four seconds, to allow the delivery of the nasty looking protein blocks that sustain the lives of the tailies. Guess what, though? Our hero, Curtis (Chris Evans), is planning a revolution! If our ragtag band of misfits can unite in order to press forward, and if they can wrest control of the Eternal Engine (that which sustains all life on the train) from the industrial despot Wilford, then they will have all the bargaining chips necessary to upset the established order.

But that's just the beginning. What sounds like a familiar plot opens out and contorts in all manner of unexpected ways--without ever leaving the cramped confines of the train.

EDGE OF TOMORROW: Fresh Repetition

Director: Doug Liman
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth
Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt
Runtime: 113 mins.
2014

What if a big budget summer blockbuster could be more than ingratiating?

What if that blockbuster didn't focus on visual effects at the expense of all else?  What if it treated every aspect of the film with respect and attention?  What if it tended to script, performance, pace, and tone in equal parts?

What if that script had a more pristine structure than some Oscar contenders?

What if this film came from a director whose filmography has been radically hit or miss?  What if it came from a team of writers who have arguably one excellent film between them--a film that came out in 1995?

What if the star was a former Grade-A man's man of a movie star, who has recently been perceived as "going off the deep end" and "box office poison"?

What if, despite the presence of said man's man movie star, the real badass of the film was the female protagonist?  What if the male protagonist was cowardly and hopelessly out of his league, and he had to learn the ropes from her?  What if the film didn't relegate her to the position of trophy girlfriend?  What if the movie didn't focus on their romance and instead allowed them to be real characters with a real, mature, and evolving relationship?

What if, in addition to all of this, the movie delivered on everything that is expected of a blockbuster action flick?  What if that delivery was a heavy dose of sci-fi and some of the haul-assed best mech action and convincing special effects this side of Avatar?

Actually I liked these effects better than Avatar's.

This is Edge of Tomorrow.

GODZILLA: Big Bad Ballet

Director: Gareth Edwards
Writers: Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham
Cast: Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins
Runtime: 123 mins.
2014

I am not especially familiar with the Godzilla mythos.  Before this film, the only Godzilla movie I'd had the misfortune to see was the 1998 Roland Emmerich version, starring a big CGI iguana and featuring the deft tagline: "Size Does Matter".  The bar was set low.

For many others, however, the bar was rather high.  Godzilla is a titanic figure in Japanese pop culture, and at this point has to be considered a piece of Americana as well.  People have been craving a quality Hollywood treatment of the creature for years, one that isn't hampered by a special effects capacity that doesn't surpass "man in a rubber suit," and one that does not resemble 1998's Godzilla in any way, shape, or form.

This is what they've been waiting for.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER - The Man, the Movie, the Mythos

Directors: Joe and Anthony Russo
Writers: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely
Cast: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie
Runtime: 136 mins.
2014

Part 1: THE MAN

Captain America is a wiener.  This character trait is an established fact, as undeniable as the claim that Spider-Man is a smart-ass, or that Superman is a wiener.

Think of it this way.  Of all the people you know, how many of them would say that Captain America is their favorite superhero?  I have an inkling that the number is zero, but if not... how many of those people would have said Captain America was their favorite hero before, say, the release of The Avengers?  I feel like we've narrowed the sample size to one dude living in Colorado.

How is it, then, that Captain America: The Winter Soldier has achieved such popular and critical success, to the point that some are heralding it as the best Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to date?  And, despite this near-universal acclaim, why do people still feel the need to preface their thoughts on the movie with some variation of the phrase, "I was never a big Captain America fan, but..."?

It has to do with the history of what Captain America means.

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL: Tainted Laugh

Director: Wes Anderson
Writer: Wes Anderson
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Mathieu Amalric, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, Lea Seydoux, Bob Balaban
Runtime: 100 mins.
2014

Some of my best movie-watching experiences have been in movie theaters: the uproarious midnight showing of The Avengers; the palpable tension of Looper; the oppressive atmosphere of Sinister.  Sitting on the floor in the aisle of an empty movie theater during Gravity and getting lost in space.  Experiencing The Dark Knight in IMAX.  Hating every moment of Knowing.

"Movie theaters are fun" is certainly no groundbreaking statement, but I think it's one we have to think about and reaffirm every so often now that the way we consume entertainment is shifting drastically.  At any rate, I was more than pleased at having the opportunity to see Wes Anderson's new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, this past Saturday with a few friends.  We had the movie theater experience, and we had it hard.

GRAVITY: In Space No One Can Hear You Win Seven Oscars

Real women don't let go.  Take that, Frozen.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Writer: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney
Runtime: 91 mins.
2013

Here's the breakdown:

12 Years a Slave: 3.  Dallas Buyer's Club: 3.  Frozen: 2.  The Great Gatsby: 2.  Her: 1.  Philomena: 0.  Nebraska: 0.  Captain Phillips: 0.  The Wolf of Wall Street: 0.  American Hustle: 0.

Gravity: 7.

Seven Oscars.  That kind of success is remarkable.  Not to mention that it is absolutely unprecedented for a sci-fi film.  The question of Can Gravity win? has been satisfactorily answered.  The question that remains is Did Gravity deserve to win?  After that is answered, an even more savory question lingers: Why, after 86 years, did the Academy open their arms to a sci-fi film?  These are the questions I'm looking to address.

FROZEN: Ice Queens Aren't So Frigid

In ice, no one can hear you scream.

Directors: Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck
Writer: Jennifer Lee
Cast: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad
Runtime: 102 mins.
2013

Disney's Frozen has a lot going for it.  The visuals are stunning.  The soundtrack has its moments.  The characters are strong and well-written.  The humor hits the mark with pleasing consistency.  The pace is usually brisk.  The cast is spot on.  It's also just damned fun to watch.

The movie has another thing going for it though.  It strives to be a contemporary feminist version of the well-established Disney Princess paradigm.  In one sense, this branding of Frozen as a feminist film leads to a lot of bickering that distracts from the movie itself (some examples in a minute).  In another sense, the movie begs to be viewed and reviewed as a subversive step forward for women's issues in Hollywood--it's written into the film's DNA.  So that's how I'm going to review it.

AMERICAN HUSTLE: Neither Profundity Nor Moribundity

Director: David O. Russell
Writers: Eric Singer, David O. Russell
Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K.
Runtime: 138 mins.
2013

American Hustle lives in the endlessly entertaining realm of smart cinema, breezing past clever and falling short of intelligent.  It never even brushes its gaudy sleeves against profound, but the good thing is it never tries.

Our heroes are Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), lovers and small-time con artists who get nabbed by F.B.I. agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper).  They make a deal to participate in a sting that, thanks to DiMaso's wild and dangerous impulses for glory, spirals into a situation too big for our savvy con artists to handle.  Irving's ditzy, manipulative wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) is a wild card who only complicates matters.  Through all of this, the characters struggle to find something real and genuine in love and friendship despite the constant subterfuge.  But the plot isn't really what's important here.

DRINKING BUDDIES: Empty Calories

Director: Joe Swanberg
Writer: Joe Swanberg
Cast: Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston, Jason Sudeikis
Runtime: 90 mins.
2013

Critics have embraced Drinking Buddies as an example of mumblecore hitting the mainstream: a mostly improvised romantic comedy that taps into the charming banality of relationships in an understated way that is rare for the often bombastic, overstated medium of film.

I suppose it is that.  Unfortunately, I also found it to be one of the duller movies I've seen in recent memory.

MANIAC: Cover Your Eyes

Director: Franck Khalfoun
Writers: Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur
Cast: Elijah Wood, Nora Arnezeder
Runtime: 89 mins.
2012

This movie. . .

Let me first say that Maniac combines my discussion of found footage in my End of Watch blog post with my discussion of slasher films in my Scream blog post.  It is a found footage slasher film, without actually being as simple as either one of those things.

Let me second say that if you are squeamish, or don't appreciate being made to feel profoundly uncomfortable, you probably shouldn't watch this movie.  Note that I said "appreciate" rather than "enjoy."  Either way, there is no enjoyment to be had here.

TIMECRIMES: Cold and Calculated Like A Ticking Clock

Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Writer: Nacho Vigalondo
Cast: Karra Elejalde, Barbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo
Runtime: 92 mins.
2007

Timecrimes, or Cronocrimenes, is a Spanish time-travelling film about a rather normal middle-aged fellow who stumbles into a rather abnormal temporal scenario.  This fellow Hector (Karra Elejalde) begins the film by relaxing with his wife in the yard of his new home.  As he is scanning the woods through binoculars for some unspecified reason, he spies a young woman in the woods who is calmly stripping for, again, no apparent reason whatsoever.  Of course our hero investigates this mystery, whereupon he discovers the woman (Barbara Goenaga) lying naked and unconscious.  He approaches her slowly, only to be stabbed in the arm by a bandage-faced individual with a pair of scissors.  This startling development leads him to seek shelter in a strange complex, and make contact with a mysterious scientist (Nacho Vigalondo) who coaxes him into a large machine filled with white, milky fluid, ostensibly as a place to hide from the bandage-faced dude.  Well, it's a time machine.  So ends the first act.

I'm not one for recaps-as-reviews, but it's kind of impossible to talk about this movie without some knowledge of the plot, because that's really all there is to it.  The acting isn't anything special.  The production values aren't anything special.  What themes there are are fairly straightforward, and rooted firmly in the plot.  The real draw of this film is how flawlessly it realizes its time travel scenario, careful to iron out all wrinkles as it speeds along.

SCREAM: When is Deconstruction Not Constructive?

Director: Wes Craven
Writer: Kevin Williamson
Cast: Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Drew Barrymore
Runtime: 111 mins.
1996

For being someone who claims to be a fan of horror, I feel poorly-versed in the history of the medium.  Horror fans, even more than other subcultures, tend to display an encyclopedic knowledge of genre history and conventions.  Maybe this impulse towards comprehensive understanding was in some ways birthed by Wes Craven's Scream.

The film simultaneously parodies horror tropes and enacts them, following characters who are constantly spouting horror film trivia and debating ways their lives are or aren't like movies.  The first scene shows young, blonde, vivacious Casey (Drew Barrymore) having fun with a mysterious caller who asks about her favorite horror movies.  It turns out the caller is a killer, and Casey is slaughtered, just the sort of thing that happens in the films they were discussing!  Later on, a character is watching Halloween and imploring Jamie Lee Curtis Just look behind you! while Scream's masked murderer creeps up behind him--moreover, because of hidden camera shenanigans, a pair of other characters are watching him and shouting at their screen, Look behind you!

ELYSIUM: The Dangers of Assumed Empathy

Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writer: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga
Runtime: 109 mins.
2013

I remember enjoying District 9.  It felt fresh, character-driven, and deep despite the straightforwardness of its political allegory.  Neill Blomkamp was going to be one to watch, especially with a blockbuster budget and Hollywood grade-A talent at his disposal.

What happened?

Elysium had a mountain of hype behind it, but its reception was lukewarm.  Many people seemed to like it, and they defended it against the critiques of the malcontents.  Full disclosure, I am one of the malcontents.  Being disillusioned with the film, I've been thinking about why the film was generally well-received.  Maybe it was the excellent special effects, or the cinematography (although I felt the pacing didn't allow me to take in any single moment).  Maybe it was the detailed sci-fi worldbuilding (although I wish they would have explored that world more).  Maybe it was that a big budget summer genre blockbuster had a discernible high-minded theme underpinning it (although I found that theme's presentation simple and borderline condescending).

These are all almost-merits.  But I won't get into the aesthetics of the movie very much.  I want to talk about how I found Elysium unsatisfactory on a basic narrative/dramatic level, and I want to do that by looking at each of the nine primary characters and their impact on the story.

END OF WATCH: Foundering Footage

Crimefighting is delightful.

Director: David Ayer
Writer: David Ayer
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Peña, Anna Kendrick
Runtime: 109 mins.
2012

I want to talk about found footage.  Let's talk about this movie more generally first.

End of Watch is a boots-to-the-pavement police thriller that follows the everyday lives of two patrolmen, partners Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña).  They aren't corrupt, and they aren't saints.  They're just a couple of good dudes.  The film is rather plotless, or at least the plot operates covertly.  These characters eventually get bound up in Mexican drug ring shenanigans, which is the sort of thing that tends to turn out poorly for everybody involved.  But for most of the film, this pair is just cruising about their day, and we feel like we're along for the ride.

SLITHER: A Penetrating Commentary

Director: James Gunn
Writer: James Gunn
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker
Runtime: 92 mins.
2006

I've been watching a lot of "bad movies" recently.  These include Troll 2, Mystery Men, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, 500 MPH Storm, and now Slither.  I'm realizing more and more that there are a million different kinds of "bad movies".  Two different "bad movies" can have varying degrees of self-awareness, budget, craftsmanship, homage, scorn for the audience, fun had by all, etc. etc.  So it's damaging to reduce any movie to the distinction of "bad movie" except as some sort of vague genre marker that needs to be elaborated on.

Slither is a bad movie only in that it is a send-up of classic schlocky horror.  Despite the structural similarities and nods to genre tropes and horror standbys, Gunn's film is a hilarious, intelligent commentary on gender roles and the culture of smalltown America, complete with deft acting, pacing, camerawork, and effects.  I like it a lot.