Movie Links!

By Rob

Two cool links coming from Heath McKnight at ScreenRant.com

DreamWorks Dumps Universal For Disney

It’s official: DreamWorks has entered into an exclusive distribution deal with Disney, while leaving its deal with Universal in the dust. All of this was tied to the $250 million DreamWorks needed to keep their deal with an Indian entertainment company alive.

How Is The Economy Affecting Movie Studios?

With things looking bad worldwide economically, why are movie studios hurting even though box office, TV ratings and DVD rentals are all up? Why is the big DreamWorks/Bollywood deal about to go south? With ratings up, why are networks still hurting for money? And finally, why are DVD sales being affected (aside from Netflix cannibalizing them)?

I like what they're doing with their site.

10 Best Movies of 2008

By Luke

My top ten list...with stupid quips intended to convey my main impression after each title.

1. A Christmas Tale

Too good to write about.

2. The Wrestler
The best American movie of the year. Premise is a man in suburban Jersey caught between two "families" and The Sopranos comparisons only start there.

3. Reprise A cinematic novel

4. Vicky Cristina Barcelona I don't get what people who say this is B-grade Woody see in some of his other movies that they can't find here. It's funny and fresh from beginning to end, with some very good performances.

5. Mister Lonely Lyrical is not a word I would use in real life, but it might be the best way to describe this movie. It's funny too.

6. Be Kind, RewindSort of a guilty pleasure, but Mos Def, Danny Glover, and Jack Black are all so charming and the movie has good vibes to spare.

7. Chop Shop A true "indie" movie that lives up to the "slice of life" label so many Sundance pretenders flaunt. There isn't a false note in the whole movie and it extracts some fascinating performances from local nonactors.

8. Milk

Gus Van Sant's opera.

[See Luke's review of Milk here.]

9. Flight of the Red Balloon The Indiewire critics poll is the best place to figure out what the "best movies of the year" were because of the number of high caliber critics it includes. I've lost the link to this year's list, but I know Flight of the Red Balloon was #1, which is reason enough to check it out.

10. Speed RacerClever, creative, exciting. A kids' movie I actually liked because it was too busy being insane to hit all the predictable kiddy story beats.

The next 10 (in order of appearance vis a vis the alphabet): Blindness, Burn After Reading, Che, Cloverfield, The Dark Knight, Encounters at the End of the World, The Fall, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Gran Torino, In Bruges, Step Brothers.

Some of the significant movies I didn't see and might have liked: Waltz with Bashir, The Class, Gomorrah, Silent Light, In the City of Sylvia, The Last Mistress.

Obsession in "Che"

By Luke

For better or worse, Che isn't interested in either glorifying or demonizing Che Guevara (which some might classify as giving him a pass). It makes no effort to get inside Che's thoughts or motivations. For the most part, he doesn't even seem human. Even though we see his first several interactions with his future wife, there is no hint of romance or even the consideration that Che sees her as anything other than a "comrade." Che is an object of singular focus and, coincidentally, so is Che.

Benecio Del Toro at a premiere of Che: Part 1 (aka The Argentine; Che: El Argentino)

There isn't much narrative arc to Che, some critics have called it "boring" or "monotonous." There isn't much variation either, just a lot of training sequences and ambushes in the jungle (with one B&W sequence of Che in New York City mercifully showing up from time to time in Part One). There are emotions, but only a few: frightened locals, angry government regimes, and, mostly, the soldiers who are either heroic or cowards. At one point while being interviewed in New York, Che tells the interviewer that the most important quality for a revolutionary to have is "love," and the word hits you hard because you realize that's exactly what this movie has been missing.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Che's personal trait that fascinates director Steven Soderbergh (below) is the same trait which guides the movie: unwavering, detail-oriented obsession, and if you wanted something else...well, too bad. Soderbergh (who serves as his own cinematographer) has shot a beautiful movie which revels in the monotonous, slowly ticking off the days even when new developments are few and far between. All of this gives Benecio del Toro plenty of time to scowl, pace, bark orders, and train, always train, in preparation for revolution. Part One focuses on the Cuban revolution, and more than two hours later, just as the first signs of victory appear, it ends. Part Two doesn't resume until eight years later when Che has arrived in Bolivia, and then that part concentrates on the (very similar) attempt to bring about revolution there. Like Che himself, the movie lives for the revolution, and isn't interested in the extraneous...or the consequences (the splendors or ills of victory). This movie is about the journey, a journey in which one has to, in Che's words, "live like you've already died." The film's MO in one sentence might be, "Rome wasn't built in a day."

Che is not for all tastes, and it makes little effort to convert the skeptics. If you criticize movies for "being too slow" or "not being about anything," this is not for you. But, if you are going to see this movie, see it in the theaters. See both parts at once (and see it during the roadshow, so you only have to pay one admission). This movie demands nothing less than your full attention, and the spell will be broken on DVD.

Personally, I found the experience worth it, it's a great showcase for Soderbergh and del Toro's respective talents and the roadshow environment (the two parts played together, with an intermission in between) is rare and exciting. But it's likely to elicit different reactions from every audience member, depending on who you are, you'll consider that a weakness or a strength.

Drama Done Right: Doubt and Milk

By Luke

NO SPOILERS

Part of a continuing series of previously neglected thoughts on movies that are out or about to come out... America, it's your birthday.

Late December can be a time when theaters drown in prestigious, starry-eyed bloat. The running times lengthen and the stories get more serious (Holocaust! Terminally ill! Neglected genius!) but nothing is really gained as far as we, the viewers, are concerned. Movies are manufactured with getting Oscars in mind and the results on screen are pretty, but empty (like Rob's dream girl). Based on the reviews it's been getting, "The Reader" seems to be an early 2008 example of this phenomenon. Color me uninterested.

But really, this has been a long way of saying Doubt and Milk are both immensely satisfying Hollywood dramas, driven by ideas and images, not just big name stars or "safe" story formulas. This is Oscarbait at it's finest, which is to say it's not really Oscarbait at all.

In Milk, Sean Penn (seen right) gives the performance of the year (a premature statement considering there are probably thousands of movies I haven't seen this year, but award-hyperbole is as common this time of year as eggnog). I was very skeptical going into Milk because nothing raises my suspicions like "biopics," and only when the New York Film Critics named Milk Best Picture did I decide it was worth my time. One of the most tiring elements of biopics is the syndrome of "stars-getting-serious," which involves a movie star dressing down, doing drugs, singing songs, and getting lots of close-ups. It's an immense relief that Penn doesn't act in this movie so much as live in it, just like Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, he is surrounded by a huge world of a movie, and he manages to stand out through sheer character-wattage (and therefore there are no super close-up reaction shots or break-down-crying-alone scenes or anything else of that ilk).

This is not a biopic. We don't start at Milk's birth and follow him through his misunderstood childhood and early life, etc. etc. etc. We don't cut back and forth all over his life or waste time introducing characters to perform psychiatric analysis (so, unlike biopics, no one ever says "You're not like everybody else, you're special," or "Gosh, you could be great some day!"). This is MILK, the man, the symbol, the movement, this is a Greek tragedy. Early on Harvey Milk explains his love of opera to a skeptic, saying "Listen, can't you hear all the emotion?" and opera becomes a bit of a motif throughout the movie (most notably at the end).

Gus van Sant (left) and Sean Penn (right) on the set of Milk

After exercises in minimalism (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days, Paranoid Park), Milk is Gus van Sant's opera: full of splendid color, smart performances, and most importantly, brilliant scenes that keep the story speeding at a perfect pace. Like the man himself, Milk gets a lot accomplished in a reasonably short period of time (128 minutes is nothing for most biopics) and the credit lies with both screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who, improbably, has earned his full-screen credit in the trailer) and van Sant who has left the Hollywood formula days of Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting (sure, it's a decent movie, but unspectacular) behind and planted his name firmly on the A-List (or my A-List anyway). I went in expecting to be underwhelmed, expecting to be led along all the predictable plot points, to be told explicitly why I should should care. I came out enthralled and thirsting for more.

Doubt isn't the epic that Milk is, but it's not trying to be. Its source material isn't a man's life, but a Broadway play which unfolds entirely on the campus of a Catholic school and church. I can't remember the last Hollywood movie to be at once this contained and this satisfying, the best comparison I can think of is Chop Shop, which also utilizes only one location and crafts an engaging narrative without much really "happening." Like the title suggests, Doubt is a movie about human uncertainty, and the fact that the main characters are nuns in a faith steeped in rules and tradition makes their inertia even greater.

It is left to the cast to bring the drama to life, and Merryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Philip Seymour Hoffman (seen below) do just that. I was pretty much alone last year when I thought Hoffman gave one of the year's best performances in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, my guess is his comparably brilliant work here in another small, adult drama will also go ignored.

Let's hope he doesn't trade these roles in entirely for showier stuff like Charlie Wilson's War. I'd read disparaging reviews of Streep, mainly comparing her with the play's original actress on Broadway. I can't speak to that, but her role is certainly the hardest to pull off--it must be broad, but not parody. In my opinion, she just about nails it, and considering the Actress races are always less crowded than Actor, she's probably deserving of yet another Oscar nomination. Finally, Adams is solid as the innocent caught between the two titans, even if she sticks around just long enough to introduce the audience to the conflict before becoming useless and practically disappearing.

Most of the rest of the cast is kids, and if the youths can't keep up with their thespian elders...well, picking at weak spots seems needless with a movie this satisfying. It's even more time efficient than Milk (just about 100 minutes) and if it lacks the overt MESSAGE we can typically count on finding in "Oscar dramas," well, that's because with "doubt" and in Doubt, nothing is that simple.

Horror Movies

By Rob

What inspired this post was The Blair Witch Project, which I watched today in it's entirety for the first time ever. This post was going to be about old movies I've watched for the first time just recently... but I ended up writing a lot about the state of horror movies in general.

A quick word on The Blair Witch...
The movie is a a phenomenon and is unlike any other movie I've seen or heard of. It was a product of gross advertising; basically the first movie to utilize the Internet as a way to create buzz. I wasn't sure if the movie would hold up as being scary because a lot of the mystery behind the movie has since been uncovered (ie. how real it actually is). It remained pretty scary for me. The story of the film's production is really fascinating, but I'll get to that another time.

Anyway, while watching The Blair Watch I started thinking, "what is a horror movie and what is the current state of the genre?" I don't want to squabble over semantics, but I'm always partial to horror movies that rely heavily on suspense. I know that is really the foundation of what are more commonly categorized as thrillers, and not horror, but let's keep it all under the same umbrella.

It seems that movies like Saw and Hostel are what constitute as horror movies nowadays, and they rely almost entirely on torture and hyper-violent images to scare you. I guess there is some merit to that, but at best that's to be a crutch and not the foundation of a horror movie. I don't like it when audiences has grown so desensitized that there's no longer an actual market for the suspense films I love. I truly believe others would love these movies too, if they gave them a chance.

Are there movies out there that rely on suspense? Sort of. Are they of high quality? No longer. But I'll get to what's available for a guy with my tastes soon.

Saw is designed to appease to an impatient audience, and with each film the ante is being raised in the Hollywood-wide gross-out contest; hence the desensitization. It's sort of ingenious. I used to think that if a viewer wants to be scared; truly wishes to enjoy all that the genre has to offer... then they must be patient.

What movies like Saw ask is, "why be patient when our brand of horror movies pay off early? Patience is for suckers." Why wait an hour to hear a gun fired when Saw shows you torture 10 minutes in? Nothing can be worse than being systematically killed in a dank room, right?

We obviously all have our own fears, but the most commonly shared is the fear of death; the ace that horror movies keep up their sleeves. With Saw you get death. That's for sure. What I'm questioning, from a cinematic standpoint, is whether Saw approaches the prospect of death the most effective way; if they use their ace prematurely. It's a question of pacing, really.

To me, the scariest thing is to be killed despite barely being touched. That's what a movie like The Blair Witch Project -- or most recently The Strangers -- does. It sure seems systematic, but the primary major difference is the unraveling of humanity. In Saw, I get to see someone's ribcage explode. I literally see blood, sweat, and tears running from some person in two minutes tops. But just because I see a someone's flesh pierced doesn't make them human to me. The most convincing way of proving the present of humanity on screen -- something I consider essential in a movie if I am to be made truly terrified -- is to approach the story in a slower and more eloquent fashion. If the characters aren't human, they don't prove themselves to be vulnerable.

Saw has it's merits, and I think a lot of it's overwhelming gore; the quick payoffs and all, is intended to be somewhat comedic. I can't rationalize it any other way. Still, it's box office success has (and will) influence horror movies for some years. That's a big part of the problem.

The Ring could be seen as a compromise between the gross-out brand of new Hollywood horror movies (once exclusive to exploitation films, I might add) and the endangered brand of horror movies that are heavily reliant on suspense. However, movies like The Ring (The Hills Have Eyes, The Mirror, etc.) are seriously flawed in that they try to do too much -- likely a result of being heavily manufactured -- and in trying to obtain balance, bite off more than they can chew. These movies attempt to share both a gross-out component and a suspense component, and in doing so fail to find any identity.

So, yes, like I said there are suspense films being made, but so many seem compromised or, in the case of M. Night Shymalan, based on a poor and/or thin premise. (They suck for a number of reasons.)

It sucks that so many of the horror movies made today are either remakes of foreign films for a U.S. audience and remakes of old horror movies, 30-years removed. Where's the originality? One of the few things that's available for a guy who craves suspense in horror films is a pick at any one of the handful of remakes being made. Unfortunately few of these try to reinvent the film they are based upon, and instead do a poor job of making a shot-for-shot remake. Original works seem far and few between.

The closest I've seen anyone come to maintaining that balance between excessive gore and suspense (a balance which may be unachievable) is in the work of Rob Zombie. I appreciate Rob Zombie so much. You can see his influences throughout his films, and he has developed a style that is far reaching, ambitious and unique. Original work in horror is rare, and it'd be rarer without Zombie.

For now, I'll settle for movies like The Strangers and Cloverfield when I need my monthly dose of terror, because they show craftsmanship.