Meandering: Bourne Legacy

I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would.  But not as good as the previous ones.  Felt more like a normal action/thriller.  My biggest complaint is that there's no way that movie should be 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Meandering: Lawless

I've seen the Proposition - also by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave and Lawless exhibited many of the same problems.  In short they are - uneven pacing - bad job building tension and then paying it off - a dismissal of basic logic that undermines our connection to the characters.

Meandering: Looper

I saw an early screening of Looper today.  I'm not supposed to talk about it - but as I'm pretty sure nobody reads this blog I'm going to talk about it a bit.

I'll start off by saying I didn't love Brick - Rian Johnson's first movie.  I liked the tone of it.  I enjoyed the feeling of swirling intrigue and the idea that dangerous violence could be right around the corner at any moment.  Really the hard part of the movie was understanding what the hell was going on.  The dialog was virtually indecipherable for me.

I could understand every word of Looper - but, like Brick, I still don't really know what the movie was about.  Or rather, I know what it was about, the movie just didn't take me anywhere.  The scenes were watchable.  The acting was good.  The visuals were engaging.  But what story is being told?  What emotional journey am i going on.  And who am I rooting for?

Time travel is innately non-sensical.  There is no way to explain away all the problems that jumping through time create in a linear story.  Looper tries to get away with by having Bruce Willis slam his hand on a table and shout at JGL "It just doesn't matter"  Well it does matter and I didn't buy it.

This movie was made with help from the guy who made Primer, Shane Carruth.  You felt it.  The movie stays away from almost any emotional content.

In the end, the movie front loads a big explanation of JGL traveling through time and then meeting the older version of himself- and none of that really seems to matter - because the movie is actually about protecting a small boy from being killed.

The movie is all over the place.  I wanted more of a central character - who's story had an emotional component for him.  What were the stakes?  They didn't seem particularly high to me.  What does he care about - nothing of particular importance.

Just too many smart people making a movie with too much going on and an abandonment of the essentials that make people like movies - emotion!

Meandering: The Night of the Hunter

Oh underlying psychological trauma - how I do love thee!

I didn't expect such an old movie to have such powerful moments for me.  In particular the moment Mitchum is captured by the police and the young John flips out and starts begging them not to take the only father figure he has left.  That's some wonderfully twisted shit.  Mitchum's father figure has done nothing but lie, steal and murder yet here is this boy, who ostensibly hates Mitchum, begging the police...and really begging Mitchum's "father figure" not to leave the family.  

This denouement is supposed to feel victorious but it instead tips the viewer's emotions on end by taking a supposedly simple triumphant moment and using it to rip the scab off of a child's already battered psyche.  Awesome!

Must see films

In light of Scorsese's list of 85 must see films - I thought it would be interesting to assemble my own list.  My viewing is not nearly as wide as...well, many, many people's but here goes.  This is a work in progress.


Lawence of Arabia
Manhattan
Cross of Iron
The Graduate
Straw Dogs
The Wild Bunch
Red River
Bull Durham

Meandering: Newshour 1-5

I've enjoyed watching Newsroom.  Jeff Daniels is incredibly watchable and I enjoy him a great deal.

However, there is one main element of the show that does not sit right with me.  Sorkin just isn't very hip.  I wish I knew another way to put this - but that's the general idea I take away from the show, especially when you compare it to the other noteable HBO / cable shows out there.

Newsroom seems content to deal mainly with the first and second layer emotions that its characters feel.       And it deals with them using relatively mundane devices.
Jim is in love with Maggie.
Will is angry at Mackenzie.
Don is nervous about Jim.

All of these playout more or less how you'd expect them to - and I expect more from Sorkin.

Jim insinuates that Maggie can do better.
Will sleeps around
Don sets up Jim with another woman.

All of these elements play out in a broad emotional spectrum.  And each of these arcs (and their accompanying) emotions playout in single episodes which conclude with Cold Play songs.

Perhaps what I'm getting at is the complete lack of subtly on the part of Newsroom.  The beauty of a multi-part tv series is that you don't have to make everything happen immediately and you don't necessarily have to wring every last ounce of emotion out of each interaction.  Sorkin is painting with broad, bold (not in a good way) strokes.  Yes, I find myself tearing up on a regular basis - but at the same time berating myself for letting such flimsy setups affect me as they do.  The Newsroom has the same emotional makeup as a tv commercial in which a son buys his father the car he's always wanted...and they hug at the end.

The Newsroom stands in stark juxtaposition to a show such as Girls which gives away far fewer emotional progress reports.

Lake Tahoe

I've bee meaning to write a bit about my trip to Lake Tahoe.  The drama of the weekend is worth noting because it's so out of the ordinary of my experience.  However, I've told the story so many times now I don't much feel like detailing it again.  So just a few notes:

People are idiots when they drink.
Some people, no matter how much they deny it, really are looking for crazy drama in their relationships.
I cannot feel much sympathy for these people - i believe they should be smarter.

Meandering: Killer Joe

For the first ten minutes of Killer Joe I thought it was a drama - and I hated the movie.  However, once the truth of its dark comedy core revealed itself i fell in love.

I could have realized its dark comedy DNA quicker, of course.  (Brilliantly) Introducing Gina Gershon via her bush should have made it obvious.  But the over-cooked dramatic acting on display in the first few scenes had me wondering if Friedkin had forgotten how to direct actors.  The explication, tension and drama of the scenes felt forced - driven by the stage play script rather than any sense of these characters as real people.

I've read some reviews since seing the movie and certainly the words lurid and gothic are apropos for the movie.  I'm trying to remember when a strong enough sense of the ridiculous entered the movie as to make me change my view of it.

I possibly enter every movie attempting to take it seriously.  And I knew nothing about Killer Joe going in.  Lurid black comedy can certainly  be misconstrued as (bad) drama for a while.  But after a while - the ridiculousness of the situations and characters reactions  starts to tip the scale and I start to appreciate the tone of the whole in a different way.

So much of enjoyment is based in what we want/expect in relation to what we get.  I wonder how much movie studios pay attention to this element of viewing pleasure.

I think the turning point for me was Marc Macaulay.  He stepped out of the car and I thought he was going to play an overly dramatic version of Phillip Seymour Hoffman from Punch Drunk Love.  However, his one scene turned out to epitomize the whole movie.  Fun, ridiculous and charming...even if violence brims just over the horizon.

I read some viewer's comment that hated the movie - it said "the movie proves just how difficult what Tarantino does actually is"  my thought was that this movie is exactly in Tarantino's wheel house and I can envision Quentin on the floor in hysterics throughout Killer Joe.