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Damn Spam…

By Andrew on September 21st, 2010

Sorry, but I’m disabling comments on all posts for the time being. The amount of spam I’m getting is unbelievable… hundreds of links, ads, and gibberish at a time. The comments that have already been posted and approved will remain, but you will be unable to add anything else to them. As far as I’m aware, I’ve turned off comment privileges on all entries, so no longer will you be able to leave your thoughts. At least not for the current moment, anyway.


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Film Reviews 1 comment

Machete

By Andrew on September 3rd, 2010

Machete

For all intents and purposes, Machete shouldn’t exist. It was first conceived as a phony trailer alongside inventions like Hobo with a Shotgun and Werewolf Women of the SS to segue Planet Terror into Death Proof in 2007′s Grindhouse, a throwback to trashy exploitative B movies from the 60s and 70s. Three years later and with US immigration tensions offering a a real world cognate, Machete is born as a feature length, ironic, tongue and cheek critique of the trials of Mexican day labourers and the policies that abuse them.

What I disliked

  • The Supporting Cast. Robert Rodriguez doesn’t handle auxiliary players terribly well, which is evident by the large, sloppily handled cast. Characters like Lindsay Lohan’s addict aspiring porn star, Cheech Marin’s double shotgun wielding padre, and Steven Segal’s samurai Mexican drug lord, aren’t explored beyond their bland novelties. They just pop in and out of situations at an irrational discretion, with Lindsay Lohan in particular serving no purpose beyond spending the majority of her screen time naked (if the year was 2004 and I was talking about Mean Girls, believe me, I wouldn’t mind).
  • Open Air Action Sequences. By this, I mean scenarios in wide spaces with dozens of characters filling each other with bullets and chopping each other to pieces. A grind house flick works best when there’s a sort of intimacy between the murders, an up close “in your face (with a machete)” attitude. Machete featured this extensively during its opening chapters by having the camera no more than a few feet away from decapitations and amputations in narrow rooms and corridors. It made the ludicrous violence and gore that much more visceral. In contrast, the final climax between furious Mexican day-labourers and racist border patrol vigilantes, the massive confrontation towards which Machete is building, consists of an all out brawl bursting with knife fights and shoot outs, but no real focus or gratification. In fact, I would wager that more blood is shown in the first five minutes than in the last twenty. It’s not quite the blood soaked finale one would reasonably expect after spending the first eighty minutes picking up severed limbs and fragments of skull.
  • The Narrative. Think of Machete as Shoot ‘Em Up, with blades filling in for bullets. It’s a chaotic and gruesome bit of escapism that all too often lets a convoluted story grind everything to a halt. The narrative of the former is just as preposterous and unsatisfying as that of the latter, but slightly easier to tolerate since it’s trying to make a point: Americans in the southern states don’t treat Mexicans very nicely. I’m not averse to films that carry messages, but the best way for a movie to go about a lecture is to present its subject in a “take it or leave it” fashion. Machete demands more often than it suggests, which makes its strains on the pacing more difficult to overlook. Machete is by no means long, but it feels longer than it should because the message often gets in the way of the movie.
  • The Conclusion. So much time and effort was spent staging a war between Mexican immigrants hungry for revolution and misguided racist patriots that for Machete to end with no sense of resolution whatsoever creates a pretty vacuous film. For all the bullets, blades, blood, and guts, there isn’t even the slightest hint that anything was earned or lost for either side by the end of it all. The ending seemed to indicate that the revolution will go back to landscaping and dish washing while the vigilantes will go back to unlawful border guarding, which makes me wonder just what the point of all the conspiring, duplicity, and murder, that came before it was all about.
  • Jessica Alba. Honestly, I find it adorable how she tries to act and thinks that she contributes anything to her projects beyond a pretty face.

What I liked

  • Close Quarters Action Sequences. See above, but to reiterate: the closer the camera is to dismemberment, the stronger such scenes are. It’s easier to appreciate creative killing sprees one at a time instead of en masse. Machete seem to have forgotten this fact the further along it goes.
  • The Beginning. Despite the ill conceived lunacy that will follow, the first sections of the film, from minute one in Mexico to the soon to be infamous intestine repelling scene, truly give the sense that Machete will deliver all the grind house goods it promises. Had I known where the film would end up taking itself, I probably would’ve walked out then and there while the note was still high. The unfortunate truth is that Machete simply doesn’t get better as it goes along.

It’s disappointing, really, how the gleeful anarchy of a fantastic exploitation throwback is bogged down by the weight of contemporary political criticism. Ethics in film work best as a “take it or leave it” component, not when they’re hogging the spotlight. Machete has a lot to say about US immigration policies, but when a lecture threatens to get in the way of bloody carnage  and idealism restrains the rampage, I feel like it starts to miss the point of its own existence.

Is it a legitimate claim to say that an exploitation flick is artless? Probably only as far as one can possibly complain about its trashy nature. I wanted to like Machete, and indeed I do like it, if only for the primal, instinctive appeal of ultra-violence and tits. The problem is that Machete confuses itself, both deliberately with an agenda and accidentally through its presentation. As it stands, Machete is only worth a look because it’ll be a miracle if ever an exploitation flick with Hollywood polish should hit theatres again.

(I also saw The American yesterday, and let me just say that I definitely recommend watching that over Machete, believe it or not. For whatever reason, I’m feeling more gracious towards the slow burn yet wholly generic Euro-style thriller as opposed to the bloody trash that’s normally right up my alley. Who would’ve thought?)

Film Reviews 2 comments

Black Dynamite

By Andrew on August 28th, 2010

Blaxploitation films have always been rather interesting to me, namely because they take some of the more abhorrent aspects of stereotyped black culture (such as h0w they’re all drug dealers and pimps) and blend it with some of the more… how should I say this? Not necessarily “admirable” aspects, but definitely some of the more amusing and curious ones. So you’ll have a film about an Africanized criminal underworld, but because it’s the 70s we’re talking about, every crook in this city sports a massive afro, a collection of colourful designer suits, and an affinity for words like “honky” and “turkey.” Sure, these characters might sell cocaine to orphans, but it’s perfectly acceptable because, unlike their modern cognates who have no idea what a belt is and don’t augment English with their own argot so much as destroy it outright, they’re devilishly charismatic and undeniably cool.

Well, in a film, at least. A gangster is a gangster, and while I myself may be more at ease in the face of a calm fellow with an afro than one who shouts while flailing a weapon, it doesn’t change the fact that, in real life, I’d probably leave the situation with a few bullet holes. Yet as romanticized characters worthy of empathy and admiration, the man who courts coolness as if it were a trivial accessory is far and away a more endearing creation than the one who courts it in seeming desperation for peer approval. It’s hard to imagine a brotha’ in a fuzzy felt hat deeming it necessary to prove his worth by jacking a few cars, yet that ugly background image is par for the course when it comes to the brotha’ with gold teeth and an aggressive swagger.

“Can you dig it?”

Having said all that, the best way to think of Black Dynamite is as a vulgar Shaft. All the classic blaxploitation trappings are here, from funk and soul vamps to a slick ebony and gold gloss, yet it presents itself  far too aggressively, as if it were trying with all its might to impress. The ostensible reason for this is that it’s not exclusively a blaxploitation throwback, but rather a blaxploitation parody, and is worse off for it. Simply put, satirizing a genre that in itself was never terribly serious and arguably all too well aware of its inherent silliness just doesn’t work.

This isn’t to say that Black Dynamite fails outright. It’s drenched in genre fidelity and visual panache, and from time to time even manages to evoke truly the sort of cool it’s trying terribly hard to execute. But throughout the entire film, I was far more interested in watching its inspirations (Shaft, Superfly, etc.) than watching what comes next. Part of this has to do with its woefully underdeveloped story – even by blaxploitation standards – but it’s mostly to do with the schizophrenic, jerky nature of parody, which more often advertises interest in the films it satirizes than interest in itself.

Black Dynamite is less than 90 minutes long, yet still overstays its welcome regardless of such brevity. The satiric novelty of a novelty genre wears thin after 20 minutes when it’s revealed that there is no narrative structure beyond thin excuses to string tired gags and brawls together, and the jokes themselves are bland and extraneous. Without a story both to keep the affair moving and to make the entire experience worthwhile, Black Dynamite merely fizzles when it should’ve been explosive.

Note: Black Dynamite was released in theatres in October 2009, in home release in February 2010, and is now on the Movie Network, which is how I watched it.

Film Reviews 4 comments

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

By Andrew on August 21st, 2010

I’m not going to review Scott Pilgrim vs. The World fully, mostly because I’m in no mood to spend a few hours articulating my thoughts ideally (I’m still in “minimize online time as much as possible” mode).  Instead, I’ll crib a style from one of my contemporaries, namely Josh Loomis over at www.BlueInkAlchemy.com, and jot down a few thoughts in categorized bullet points.

Behold the awesome power (and flaming katana) of Self-Respect!

Stuff I didn’t like:

  • Michael Cera. I know it’s terribly redundant and  borderline damaging to my credibility to bring up his type-casting affliction,  but it’s hard not to be ticked off at this particular actor when he’s the only reason the Arrested Development movie hasn’t happened yet, and probably never will. His idea of diversifying himself as an actor is to play subtle spins on his claim to fame. Superbad, Juno, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Youth in Revolt, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World don’t just have Michael Cera in common; they have George Michael Bluth in common. I suppose after playing the same character in every movie, you do eventually get pretty darn good at it, and to Cera’s credit, he’s got the awkward stammering teenager-twentysomething  model polished to a mirror shine. I just with that Cera would stop lying to us.
  • The music. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is under the impression that the noble spirit of counter culture will captivate us into feeling sympathetic for the gritty nerd rock trio around whom the movie revolves simply because their underdog struggle is endearing. This doesn’t work. I understand that the movie is trying to create this sort of raw and organic edge, but it just comes off as terribly brash and vulgar.  There are occasional successful glimmers of the aural appeal the filmmakers are trying to recreate, but these come from the opponents of the protagonist trio and not the trio themselves.
  • Mary Elizabeth Winstead. It’s not so much the fact that such a beautiful actress had to have washed her hair with different lurid oil paints every week and go for days without sleep for the part of Ramona Flowers, but more the fact that the character for whom she does this is utterly useless. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is trying to make comments on the dynamics of adolescent and young adult love, but by the end of the film, I wasn’t entirely sure what these comments were supposed to be. Aspire to be good enough for the moment to your partner? The integrity of one partner is more important than the integrity of the relationship? Always fear the repercussions of wronged lovers? None of these are particularly encouraging, and perhaps the ultimate goal was the examination of the futility of meaningful companionship in a world where everything is fickle and superficial (such as Toronto). Like I said, I’m not entirely sure, and the muddied morals, however much intended they may be, diminish the product.
  • The length: While Scott Pilgrim vs. The World clocks in at under two hours, the gambit to stage the ending twice (courteous of Scott Pilgrim’s extra life), brisk though it may be, bloats the entire film. In fact the initial set up is so leisurely that it becomes at odds with the double conclusion, and an overall imbalance between the acts results. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World comes to a rather resolute end, yet endeavours to drag itself to the closing credits 15 some minutes later.

“Her?”

Stuff I liked:

  • The sound design. While I never cared particularly much for the performed music, largely because it celebrates asinine pretension over anything remotely tangible, the overall sound design was rather inspired. Dozens of soundbytes and clips from iconic pillars of nerd culture are liberally sprinkled throughout the film, and this sort of trivial interaction was a nice secondary level to enjoy when certain character vulgarities dominated. The foley artistry required for the bombastic fight scenes was also nuanced and detailed.
  • The supporting cast. Kieran Culkin and his arsenal of gay boy toys have some of the best comic timing of any North American comic actor you care to name, Allison Pill sports a phenomenal deadpan, and Ellen Wong as the remarkably zealous Knives Chau has an unbelievably wide range of spontaneously energetic demeanours. And this is without mentioning the always delightful Anna Kendrick and truly surreal fight scene between George Michael Bluth and Anne Veal (Mae Whitman). The leads are largely bland and uninteresting, but everyone else is absolutely stellar.
  • The cinematography. Director Edgar Wright and company have always had a talent for squeezing the most out of every shot and setpiece, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is no exception. The deliberate assembly of sequences that enables a single brief conversation to take place between several disparate locations without compromising pace and fluency is inspiring, and the sharply vibrant colour palettes make even the utterly useless scenes (of which there are many) visual treats. I was even pleasantly surprised by the skillful action choreography, where nimble adversaries dance circles around a disoriented Scott, yet the camera is always there to capture it coherently with lingering shots and few cuts.
  • The Vegan Police.

Being familiar with the work of Edgar Wright, this scene was probably intended to remind me of Kung Fu Hustle

Conclusion: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is certainly the most faithful comic book adaptation, if only because it goes to such great lengths to transplant the comic stylings to film. Unfortunately, unparalleled fidelity doesn’t automatically make a great movie. What works as a comic does not always work well as a film, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World exemplifies this to the same extent that it exemplifies how it’s possible to take every conceivable comic flourish and paste it to celluloid. So while it’s kinetic and imaginative, it’s also brash and vulgar. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is indeed refined where it matters most, with the flaws likely exposed so that its imperfect nature might endear itself further. A risky picture sure to earn adulation from the crowd to which it’s catering, but almost certainly unintelligible to everyone else.

Aside: If anyone should like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, it should probably be me. I live in Toronto, enjoy video games, music, and movies, and could easily be classified as a nerd, despite my preference for being uncategorized. Curious…

Film Reviews 7 comments

Countdown to Inception, Part VII: Inception

By Andrew on July 16th, 2010

Inception

Having watched and reviewed all of Christopher Nolan’s feature length work prior to Inception (his seventh film), I must confess that I feel far more qualified to offer my thoughts on this movie than I would have a mere week ago. This whole project has given me a fair amount of both insight into the man’s work and perspective as to how it should be valued and weighed against its contemporaries. And while I can’t honestly say that I care very much for his take on Batman or the gambit at the end of The Prestige, Nolan’s entire body of work has been impressive. He is almost certainly one of the most gifted filmmakers at this level in the industry today, and I’m pleased to report that Inception continues his sterling career with what I would consider to be his best work since Memento, a film which brought him to our attention ten years ago.

For all of the mystery in which Nolan’s most recent project has been shrouded, between vague action packed trailers and disorienting posters, it may come as a bit of a surprise to learn that Inception is a rather straightforward and simple affair (at least when it comes to Nolan). Anyone familiar with his non-Batman films shouldn’t need to be told that the opening sequence is not to be disregarded, and Inception is no different. Such films begin where they will soon come to end, which I mean less as a spoiler and more of a piece of advice. In fact the entire film, for all its uncharacteristic simplicity, still requires the sort of investment from an audience that renders them unable to take their eyes of the screen. It’s not exactly dense, but there’s a certain quickness and assumed level of comprehension to it, which means that a person taking a quick washroom break and expecting to be in the loop when they return is not an option.

Inception is straightforward yet elaborate, and complicated without being confusing. It may sound like a bit of a paradox, but really, I assure you it’s nothing by which to be intimidated. The plot is simple enough, dealing with a group of people as they prepare for and execute a daring cerebral heist. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a character likely so named and characterised to evoke shades of the man from Nolan’s feature debut) assembles a team of thieves of the subconscious to plant an insidious thought in the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the heir to a powerful energy company. Cobb’s employer, a man named Saito (Ken Watanabe), is a rival to the Fischer energy empire, and is aiming to capitalize on the situation by subconsciously convincing the young Fischer to abandon his trade, leaving himself with a monopoly. In return, Cobb will be able to return home.

Really, it’s in the presentation where things begin to get interesting. In lieu of any twists and turns, such as the betrayals or double crossings one might reasonably expect from the man behind Following and The Prestige, Inception spends far more time establishing the film’s context and infrastructure than fleshing out its players. Any surprises are ones of revelation or sequential trickery, not necessarily of character motivation hitherto unbeknownst. Unfortunately, this leaves the dialogue rather dry and the players somewhat plain and uninteresting. Characters speak mostly in exposition, with far more effort being put into explaining the rules of the dream as opposed to giving us a reason to care for the dreamers. Only Cobb gets a well rounded treatment involving a suicidally depressed wife (Marion Cotillard), now deceased, haunting his dreams as a shade.

As for people like the architect (Ellen Page), the forger (Tm Hardy), and the chemist (Dileep Rao), questions like who they are, where they came from, and how they stumbled into the world of subconscious espionage take a backseat to making sure that Nolan’s construction appears as compelling and legitimate as possible. This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with sacrificing fully developed characters for a fully developed world. Truth be told, some characters, such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s point man and Tom Hardy’s forger, are so gussied up in their meticulous mannerisms and outfits that they don’t need depth to be any more affecting. The fact that they’re all well portrayed certainly doesn’t hurt, either.

Unfortunately, Nolan’s construction isn’t flawless. The world of dreams, according to him, is made with half of the mind devoted to building and populating the dream manually and the other half to propagating it automatically. Cerebral extractors or inceptors move between the cracks in the two part process, infiltrating and redesigning the landscape to suit their needs at the risk of drawing the attention of the mind’s projections, which are hostile to everything for which it isn’t responsible. What this essentially means is that Nolan frees himself of accountability for everything in the dream world that seems unreasonable.

The major points, such as the stability of the dreamworld depending on the peace of the subject, work well enough, but there’s one particular nuance that will surely threaten to break some illusions. You see, a subject is never able to recall exactly how they end up at their current position in a dream, which means that all dreams are entered in medias res. While the question of where dreamworlds end and begin, even when they stack upon each other, is handled by making dreamscapes nicely varied from each other, the position, outfitting, and equipment of the thieves from one dream to the next just seemed terribly convenient. True, the architect does design the dreams with immaculate detail and precision, and part of dreaming is the ability to manipulate everything at a whim. Yet such a fact gives the impression of cheap convenience more often than not, despite the sound logic suspension of disbelief grants. Aside from this quibble, I also have to wonder about the reasoning that lets Cobb infect the subconscious of others with the hostile projection of his dead wife, since her meddling also felt a bit too contrived as well.

Perhaps you’ll forgive me for letting my queries get the better of me, but if nothing else, such musings should attest to the power of Inception to be thought provoking. Even though I found the film to be far shallower than its trailers and adverts eschewing reality led me to consider initially, it is still artful enough that there will almost surely be some merit to a second (or even third) viewing. If nothing else, it’s certainly one of those rare films that gives the impression of being as gratifying and rewarding for as far as it’ll be allowed to be. It’s intelligent enough to demand scrutiny and clever enough that it’ll probably hold up to most of it.

When it comes to the somewhat more base level of living up to its expectations as a popcorn blockbuster, there too Inception succeeds triumphantly. There is ample gunplay, brawling, some tense scenes with a knife, and even a good old-fashioned car chase. In fact there’s a particular sequence in which Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) fights two men in the hallway of a hotel as the orientation rotates and changes, which is a scene nothing short of breathtaking. Buildings crumble, gravity and time are manipulated, paradoxes are formed, and all of this happens to the beats of some truly stellar camerawork. Wally Pfister, a stalwart collaborator with Nolan since Memento, knows how to frame some stunning sequences for all their worth, and finally gives Nolan the same action director pedigree as Favreau, Spielberg, or even Cameron. Even the thundering score of Hans Zimmer, perhaps his most iconic work since The Pirates of the Caribbean, keeps driving Inception forward with an intensity that on its own would demand the IMAX experience.

Inception masquerades as a thinking man’s science fiction blockbuster, a film that demands every iota of an audience’s cognitive will to decipher. In actuality, this isn’t quite the case. Whatever cryptic nature exists is a result of Nolan’s peculiar architecture, which is rather appropriate for a movie ostensibly about building dreams. Held against Nolan’s rather sterling filmography, which includes the film school study of Memento and the neo-noir gem that is Following, Inception is certainly a more straightforward affair. Against the adaptation driven summer season where the likes of Transformers, Twilight, and the Marvel comic book flavour of the year clamour for dominance, Inception is intellectually untouchable. In the end, perhaps Inception will end up regarded as a cinematic experiment used to gauge whether or not audiences are willing to invest in more cerebral blockbuster fare. I sincerely hope they are, since I wouldn’t mind seeing similar such dreams in a post-superhero blockbuster landscape.