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Gran Torino (2008)
A Masterpiece of Embarrassment
The film Gran Torino culminates a feeling that has been growing within me for roughly the past decade or so. A last straw of sorts. Although this view goes against the prevailing tide, I believe Clint Eastwood has officially become the most over-rated director working in Hollywood today. Every one of the films he's made since Unforgiven, except perhaps Mystic River, has played with the melodramatic 'umph' of a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Hold the salt. If Mystic River stands out of the crowd, it is in large part due to the stellar performances of the three protagonists. I wonder if Eastwood has become Hollywood's darling simply on the basis of his being such a true Mr. Nice Guy. Or is it that the themes he chooses to deal with are generally so noble. Yet, film after film we are treated to the same directorial auto-pilot mode, unimaginative camera angles, rhythm-less editing and dialogue worthy of a Spiderman episode. Every now and then he is saved by his director of photography (Iwo Jima, Changeling), but in general we remain forever in the Land of the Bland. Nothing particularly bad about his work, but nothing really remarkable either. Until Gran Torino.
Eastwood had come off the uneven Changeling. A fantastic true story of multiple plots and complex angles that was given a botched by-the-numbers treatment. With Angelina Jolie's over-the-top portrayal and her one-note Jack Torrance line of dialogue, "I want my son...", instead of a viewer's heart going out to a mother's loss, one wished they had kept her locked up in a soundproof cell and tossed the key. But I'm getting sidetracked.
Gran Torino is one terribly bad movie. From the opening church scene, we hear an invisible growl. Is it a dog, or a ghost? Linda Blair about to emerge from under the pews? No, Clint the ventriloquist wants us to know that Dirty Harry is back, and has hardly mellowed with age. Some more growling and then we are treated to a non-stop parade of racist invectives for the remaining 110 minutes. The fixed furrowed brow, and the curled lips that never unfurl. Cute, if you're a fan of Little Red Riding Hood. But as drama...we feel nothing for Eastwood's character. Anger mode can only dig down so deep. Ultimately, we find it impossible to get under the skin of his demons. Kowalski is no Frank Fitt, the ex-marine from American Beauty. In that film Chris Cooper was credible, here Clint is INcredibly...unbelievable.
Who are these people? A family of light-hearted indifference at a funeral service, stereo-cast against the bitterly respectful old man. Macho gangs of neighboring hoods who stir up serious trouble but melt when a half-limping septuagenarian with a 'finger' pistol shows up on the scene. And there's the jovial barber who pulls a shotgun on a kid over an off-color joke. Every time Clint spits (which is often) it seems the entire Asian community shows up on his front porch with a catered banquet decked out in ethnic ceremonial garb. And even then, so to speak, Clint spits in the soup. A turning point is forced upon us in which a persecuted Hmong boy helps Clint raise a freezer up the basement stairs. As the hard-boiled Kowalski softens to the kid on the sidewalk, we learn that now he wants to sell the appliance. Hmm, maybe he could have put an ad in e-bay and saved himself the gymnastics. As coincidence would have it, he finds an unlikely buyer there on the spot. Later, his teenage neighbor tells him he's (suddenly) become their role model. He answers by rudely dispatching this 'dragon lady' to fetch him another beer. When she innocently utters the F-word, he reprimands her. The irony is self-conscious, and we wince rather than smile. Contrivances and trite predictability follow all the way to, and especially at, the end.
It's hard to say what clicks the least in this film. Eastwood establishes his shots alright, but rarely do we feel a sense of place. There is some attention to detail. A chewing out in the Hmong tongue, a token roast pig, the native costumes. But these elements seem plugged in and do not breathe much life into the overall scene. Perhaps the comparison is unfair, but unlike the ethnic zest that springs from Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, Gran Torino's Thai/Vietnamese context seems dead, sterile. Characters are clumped together in claustrophobic compositions. All trees and no forest, as the sets jump abruptly from one scene to the next. This is no seamless movie. The tiny hanging threads individually seem trivial, but in the end build to a source of irritation.
Gran Torino is drama that will, at best, jerk tears from a crocodile. Some have seen it as comedy. I can only snicker. If GT wants to be taken for a satirical spoof, it certainly hits all the wrong buttons. With a cast pulled straight from the streets Clint's trademark hands-off stewardship is ever in evidence. Rushes to rough cut. This is one film that will never see a director's cut.
Clint Eastwood. A West Coast Woody Allen-Lite? Or an American Eric Rohmer past his prime. Will the decline finally unmask the naked Emperor?
Masters of Horror: Pro-Life (2006)
Pure Rubbish
SLIGHT SPOILERS (but it doesn't matter anyway).
An exercise in gobblygook of catastrophic proportions not even worthy of the l0 lines I need to put these remarks on the netwaves. This is the single worst episode of the Masters series to date and the first that qualifies for the defunct Mystery Science Theatre treatment. Even if it took me a full half hour to realize the intended ironic angle, it was still a very lame mess. Its sole value lies in the perspective that forces one to realize that in addition to gore and ugly masks the genre only succeeds when the classic cinematic notions of photography and lighting, dialogue and acting, editing and timing are put to use. Here they are absent and John Carpenter is no master. Period. And no trite analysis of the easy social comment herein will change that. Oddly, Carpenter never has been anything more than a B director, but at least such films as 'Fog' and 'The Thing' had terrific atmosphere (the latter is one of my cult favorites).
Abominable acting. Camera angles stuck in cement. Tensionless rhythm. Yet perhaps the single most obnoxious element of the episode is the storyline which of course JC cannot really be blamed for (unless the writers were buddies of Cody.) The initial two minute slo-mo of a girl running through a forest only to be nearly run over by a would be Scully-Mulder duo is the first and last thing that works in the film. But come on, a girl hurtling through a deserted woods to nowhere in particular in desperate need of an abortion fortuitously rendez-vous with the fender of a pair of 'women's rights' MDs whose clinic just happens to be at the end of the road around the corner. Oh, and I won't even nitpick about how the doc whips the accidentee into the car and speeds away at 0 to 60 in six seconds. Does wonders for possible broken ribs or concussion.
Then things fall apart real quick. The vacuous dialogue "I just want to help you", the interminably sluggish back and forth at the gate, grandiose battle tactics like cutting the telephone line (in the age of cell phones?) followed by the the shoot-out: a born-again Ramboesque clinic director vs Ron Perlman and the high school bullpen out for a few kicks at Easter break. Another lovely line: "So what are we going to do?" from the kid who had just been sitting on a pile of assault rifles in the back of the van. Er, no it isn't yet pheasant season. So who needs those teen boys anyway. What about the good old tried and true method of the lone lunatic who bashes his way through the gate with his all-American SUV?
As for the exchange of bullets scenes themselves, the cuts here were as stiff as the staccato of a DC comics strip. All that was lacking were the Wham, Bam, and Whiz of the balloon titles. And all to the tune of a soundtrack worthy of an old Mannix episode.
At one point we learn that Daddy isn't really the daddy, but at this point we haven't been led to care much any more either. This story's single source of drama is the conflict between the pro-life father and his pregnant daughter who is only thankful she's not having twins. Yet there is not a single scene, flashback or not, where they are actually ever found together. They remain mere abstractions to each other throughout.
With the exception of the gatekeeper every single one of the characters is absolutely dislikeable. Bland, hysterical, dull-headed, macho. As perfectly flat as human wallpaper can be. None of the doctors seem to have anything medical about them. And there's that bickering Dad who rails at his pregnant daughter as though he himself were the stressed out boyfriend. He fortunately got his. There are two great MST-worthy comic moments: the gusher when Angelica's plumbing goes out and later the new-born lobster with a glued on baby's head. Also cute was Angelica's rugby ball belly before she finally popped the right-to-life little monster from Hell. As for that audacious male abortion scene...well, they should have retained Miike's episode and banned this one instead.
In short, a 3rd rate Rosemary's Baby meets Alien set on the turf of a M.A.S.H. episode. This stinker alone, appreciable only to today's permissive under-16 generation, will assure as someone else said here, that this series will not be renewed for a third season. A real shame, since there have been a number of brilliant productions, including such really decent spoofs as Dante's 'Homecoming' or McKee's deliciously quirky 'Sick Girl'. Not to mention the superb imagery of Malone's 'Fairhaired Child'.
Sorry John Carpenter, I believe your directing days are over. It's time to run for President.
Munich (2005)
Curtain Falls on Spielberg
****Spoilers Included****
It's hard to hit the nail on the head about what doesn't make Spielberg tick. Although the man seems to master all the tricks of his trade, lately they just do not gel to make a coherent moving whole. His dramatic films lack soul. He resounds with the obvious, underlining every line of dialog. The sly innuendo of former years has become stiff with overstatement. His films seem exclusively shot in a vast obvious foreground where no detail is left to the intelligence of the viewer. And perhaps the courtesans of the royal court are afraid to tell the king the bad news for fear of banishment.
Munich proceeds awkwardly as if a first draft story-board had been tacked on the wall during a brainstorming session. A poorly edited hastily pasted pastiche that neither rhymes nor runs with its subject matter. Rome, Athens, nor Munich barely feel like the cities they're supposed to represent (probably because they were filmed inand sponsored by--Hungary and Malta). And the Middle East context reflects such a level of Orange County Jewish Club claustrophobia that one wonders if Spielberg and his harem ever even set foot in Israel to research the film.
The actors for the most part are deployed with the standard two-dimensionality we've been accustomed to in a Spielberg film. Shallow in character, high on histrionics. The Mossad team and its top banana Bana act with about as much authority as the San Fernando Valley Chicano-cum-Indians of Costner's Dances with Wolves. Even the prime minister in Golda Meir has become an off-the-shelf Jewish grandmother. The only credible performance was Michael Lonsdale's even if he was cast in the oft stereotyped role of the sly but slimy Frenchman sitting on the fence profiteering from both sides of a conflict (aka The Deer Hunter). And am I mistaken or does Avner's accent shift constantly between a Yiddish lilt and one you'd find in a Nebraskan suburb? Intentional? If so the effect is so 'subtle' as to appear sloppy and is virtually indistinguishable from the speech of another character, Louisand he's French.
One of the reasons many people find this film boring is the redundant nature and treatment of the assassinated Palestinians. The killings serve neither to raise the tension level nor drive the narrative forward. Rather they seem like tics on a hit-man's shopping list. A little bomb here, a bigger bomb there. And weren't those Black September veterans such regular lovable types: one old man who does his own groceries, another's daughter takes piano lessons while yet a third is available with aspirin or sleeping pills after the pharmacy closes. Sounds just like my bourgeois neighbors at home. If that is the point, then it gushes with over-simplicity. Adolf Hitler, too, was probably just as cute when he blew out the candles on his eighth birthday cake.
Then there's the issue of the camera work, where unimaginative framing and sequencing only serve the movie's discontinuity. Witness the messy hit at the Athens hotel. There were also far too many of those slow head and shoulder zooms that added nothing except draw attention to the zoom. The contrived outdoor banquet exchanges at the French country estate comes to mind. Table prayers in France? I've seen it once in twenty years here. And they don't pick apples in June either, even sour ones. All about as believable as Mathieu Amalric's flaunting a wad of $100,000 in the broad daylight of a Paris café. These are undercover agents??
If Mossad is a model of espionage and covert operations on the planet earth, the Spielberg version portrays them as latter day Keystone Cops. On the Amsterdam houseboat, the pocket silencers allow the victim, shot twice in the chest, to gingerly skirt her assassins, saunter over to the kitchen, pet and kiss the cat, walk a little further and ease herself into a rocking chair before realizing her barfly days were over. She could have pulled that gun from the drawer in a fraction of the time.
In another preposterous hit scene, our boys dress up as women and proceed to feign an arm-in-arm stroll along the docks of Beirut (like most Middle Eastern women naturally would do on a dark, deserted and forbidding night), yet don't 'surprise' the guards in the least. They then charge fifteen-man strong up a flight of stairs, blotch the operation by resorting to not-so-silent submachine guns, and retreat back down the stairs straight into the flying bullets of the Fedayeen before escaping into the night without a scratch. What a cartoon.
The clincher of convolution of course takes place near the finale, where Avner orgasms to the tune of the climactic Munich airport shoot-out. Begging the point that he could hardly have flashed back to the Palestinians on the tarmac since he'd been doubting their very culpability all throughout the film, the perverse suggestion that our hero or any other normal male on this planet could even have an erection much less an ejaculation thinking about murder and mayhem just boggles the mind.
Munich is a simple revenge story embarrassingly cloaked in an ever so sheer veneer of topical respectability that make it no more convincing than the Charles Bronson Death Wish series of the 1980s. I, like many, long for the old unique Spielberg touch when it was fresh with Indiana Jones swapping the whip for a gun in the bazaar or the kicking of the chair out from under the hangman's noose in Schindlers's List. When vignettes such as these were laced together back then, there were the makings of storytelling genius. Today, Spielberg is trying hard, too hard, to be Spielberg. And when he fails to find himself, he opts at turns for a bit of Kubrick here, a bit of Hitchcock there. The end result doesn't fly. If Munich is about Home, Spielberg should go there and stay put. It's over. Time to retire.
Suspiria (1977)
A Non-Thinking Man's David Lynch
30th Anniversary, so I thought I'd pop for a viewing. In my view, this film is a suck city production hardly worth the investment in celluloid and paper mache. An exercise in cinematic chaos that only an Italian director could get away with. Alright, to be fair, Suspiria does exude a certain flair through its use of color, lighting and soundtrack that keep it just this side of the to-be-burned trash bin. But in cinema, any cinematic genre, there are basic things that we commonly refer to as 'story' and 'editing' that are utterly missing from this kaleidoscopic jumble of images. It is as if they'd had a few grappas one night and someone got out the scissors, asked for the blindfolds and said, 'How about doing it in strips of five feet?' They could have run this film backwards and it really wouldn't have made much of a difference.
Amongst the numerous WTF scenes is one where Suzy rolls a dolly into the bathroom after her phone is cut. Silver platters with a late night meal (luxury room service in a ballet school?) or trays of medicine? Who knows? She proceeds to toss half the ingredients into the toilet bowl. Superfluous close-ups that show little more than a napkin (sanitary?) and then she flushes. Next, a glass of some red substance is poured into the sink. Poisoned tomato juice, blood? It looks like paint. Why didn't she just flush it down the toilet as well like you and I would? So that she could proceed to scrub away at the now red-stained sink. Close-up again. The substance doesn't rinse away and now her hands are 'soiled'. This matter-of-fact exposition should end with a moment of drama where Suzy reacts with either frustration, anger, tears or at least curiosity. Instead Suzy saunters off nonchalantly to open a window which allows her to be duly attacked by the fat pigeon bat instead. By the way, was it only my copy, or is the sound of her whacking away at the beast timed to the upbeat when the whacking chair is above her head. Talk about sound synch!
As for the horrific stilted dialogue, it reminded me of something between the narration of a Soviet travelogue and a Cliff notes-based high school play translated into English from...English by the Buenos Aires marching choir. Everyone in this movie speaks as if they had just graduated from a U.N. interpreter's institute. Flat, grammatically correct yet lacking emotional inflection. No soul, no umphh. In fact this film was probably dubbed into multiple languages using the same language school people. Bargain! The textbook dialogue peaks in the scene where the Rosa Klebb-ish ballet instructor throws Jose Feliciano the piano player out of the institute with a parting..."Good Riddance". Straight out of a 1930s comedy.
Family affair that this film was, Suspiria might have been tag-titled Dario vs The Argentos for the gap between a vision and its execution. It's a shame considering the money and effort that went into the Art Nouveau sets and other production values. Perhaps, this multimedia maze of a movie would better have been released as a simple slide-show with the random-sequence option permanently enabled. As it stands it's best suited for MST3K material. The Beast from Yucca Flats--now there's a movie that takes dubbing to new heights!
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
The Lucas Lite machine has cloned its final self.
In the wake of this film, the risk of George Lucas's bubble finally bursting will rise as he now gets around to doing all those 'other' film projects he's had on the back burner for nearly 30 years. It fathoms the imagination as to how a man could attain such mythical status and a billionaire's portfolio over a directing and writing mini-career that's degenerated since ever since his THX student days (yes, even American Graffiti was overrated). I won't re-walk previously tread ground. The critics of this film have adequately, even eloquently, derided the gross defects of Revenge of the Siths. Many have said it doesn't hold a candle to the original trilogy. I'll be happy to go out on a limb to say, on the contrary, it is perfectly faithful to the mediocrity of the five previous installments. As for the reasons why this film seems to enjoy 8.0+ respectability on this site I would first ask the IMDb to remind us what steps it takes to avoid 'ballot stuffing' and then go on to say that the people who appreciated this film must either a) be under the age of 13, b) were under the age of 13 when New Hope (the first prequel sequel) was released, or c) have become so intoxicated by the direction that cinema has gone since the original Star Wars that they have forgotten that special effects, regardless of how well-executed should never be considered more than frosting on a well-layered cake. They do not replace the classic essentials of story and character.
To his credit, Lucas did take a gigantic leap when he invented Industrial Light and Magic and allowed us all to plunge into fantasy worlds we'd all never dreamed possible before. However, that's all he did. The man is first and foremost a shrewd and dedicated entrepreneur whose brilliant marketing successes in combination with his admitted penchant for working in semi-seclusion have kept him glued before a mirror that only reflects his own artistic grandeur. A self-absorbed ouroboros of sorts. Unfortunately, a stubborn man with billions to spread around will rarely suffer the true backlash of a reality-check.
It is revealing about George Lucas strengths and weaknesses that he founded his three companies, LucasFilm, ILM and Skywalker Sound well before even the first Star Wars went into production. LucasFilm started up the same year as his very first film, THX-1130. Steven Spielberg, in contrast, had developed a solid film and television career well before he developed his Amblin company. With Lucas it has always been business sense before the creative drive. The irony of the 'Lucas phenomenon' is best seen in his winning of the Irving Thalberg award in 1992 for LIFETIME achievement when he was only in his forties. For what? A reworked student film, a flick about cruising for chicks 'n beer and a feature-length video game trilogy? I say the prize was all about start-ups.
All in all Revenge of the Siths was an unwitting piece of humor. My favorite scene was the race between a drunken bump-along flying salamander and the giant double-edged pizza cutter that culminated in a thousand foot plunge down a cylindrical canyon that somehow led them right back
on top again?!? As for the writing? Unlike what some have said, the dialogue is more than self-referential, it is self-spoofing. You could have a field day developing bogus foreign language subtitles.
The best service one could render George Lucas is not go to see this film, start him on the road back to poverty (granted it will take 1200 years) and then a) get him off his Lucas Valley ranch, b) re-enlist him in film school, and c) thrust him out into the real world to learn about real 3-D people before attempting any further serious drama. Enough with the sugar-coated airbags. He's got to learn how to make the cake.