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kottke.org posts about movies
Gigli
Boy, does hype work both ways. Gigli wasn’t nearly as bad as the critics said it was. Mostly it was just an overreaction: with all the Bennifer buzz, this should have been a better movie, it wasn’t, and it got slammed accordingly. I mean, it wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t Ed (or pretty much any movie with a monkey playing the title character). As usual, Roger Ebert explains things pretty well.
Spiderman 2
Considering how much I didn’t like the first one, I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed the sequel. Still a few cheesy bits (the laughing mask needs to go), but the action, love story, and comedy were great.
Elephant
Trolling around the Web for reviews of Gus Van Sant’s rumination on Columbine, I came across this anecdote from Roger Ebert:
Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about ‘Basketball Diaries’?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.
Some folks don’t cotton to Ebert, but I like him fine.
Fahrenheit 9/11
The film, while entertaining — very funny in parts and at times powerfully moving — was ultimately disappointing for me. Whether Moore intended it to or not (not quite sure what Moore wants these days…he’s plays his cards close to his chest in that regard), this film is not meant to change your mind or sway opinion. It’s meant to rally the troops, and it does so well. Fahrenheit 9/11 is ultimately about Michael Moore’s view of the world, which is what makes it so entertaining, pleasing to Moore fans, but also what limits its potential.
During the last half of the movie, I thought more than once about The Fog of War, Errol Morris’ excellent documentary on Robert McNamara, and how Morris would have done the film. Or how Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans) would have. You certainly can’t remove opinion from a documentary, but with Fog and Friedmans, you get a sense of what the filmmakers’ opinions are and how they affect the way the story is told. And as with anything in life, you find your own truth in the films based on what you think that bias might be. But Fahrenheit 9/11 is so much about Michael Moore’s opinion that it’s difficult to go through that process of finding the truth. The frustrating thing is that Moore has a point, but he’s unable to get himself out of the way enough to tell us the story so we can make up our own minds about it. One of the charges leveled against Bush — and probably every other politician in the US — is that he’s constantly putting spin on everything to obscure or manipulate the truth. I can’t help but think that Moore is doing exactly the same thing in the opposite direction.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
It’s only March but I feel safe in saying that this Charlie Kaufman/Michel Gondry collaboration is the most creative film of the year. What’s even more remarkable than me making such a ridiculous pronouncement is that the creativity is not just gimmickry; it, like Jim Carrey’s comedic energy, is carefully applied in full support of the film’s themes and plot. The final scene of the movie between Carrey and Winslet is, at once, one of the most truthful, heartbreaking, hopeful statements about love that I’ve ever seen in a film.
Capturing the Friedmans
One of the subjects of the film, David Friedman, is a birthday clown here in NYC and was profiled by Susan Orlean in the New Yorker a few years ago. The story didn’t touch on any of the family history, which didn’t come out until Andrew Jarecki, the director of the film, profiled David for a short film on clowns, at which point the project exploded in scope.
There’s been some criticism of the film for being misleading, and that view has some merit. The director states in this interview that two scenes near the end of the movie, one showing Jesse Friedman clowning around and one showing him crying were actually shot weeks apart, not within the same day as the film makes it seem. But so much of the film is about the difference between reality and perception anyway that the whole thing could be fiction or heavily biased and it wouldn’t matter too much (to me at least).
Glengarry Glen Ross
According to IFC, the word “fuck” and its derivatives was uttered 138 times during the course of the film.
Toy Story
After I finished the movie, I watched a couple of the DVD extras. During the making of, they mentioned that the movie was made in 1995. Nine years ago! Hard to believe that digital animation of such high caliber has been around that long. Toy Story’s a little rough around the edges compared to Boundin’, but it still looks pretty good.
The Passion of the Christ
God has been on my mind of late as I’m 1/3 of the way through God, A Biography, which has been excellent thus far. And so I was quite interested in checking out The Passion of the Christ to see if Gibson had come up with any new perspectives on the death of Jesus or even if it was an entertaining (in the broadest sense of the word) portrayal of the event. Sad to say, he has not. All the violence, which wasn’t really that bad (certainly not the most violent movie ever), numbed me to the emotion of the whole thing - much like Tarantino’s movies do for others — leaving me only the movie itself to consider. And the movie was just ok, certainly nothing special.
A note on the crowd at the film, which was, due to the nature of the film, more interesting than what was happening on the screen. Two men of the cloth sat in front of me (affiliation unclear); they whispered to each other for much of the film, discussing what they saw.
Before the movie started, the woman of the couple beside me said to her husband, “you know, I’m going to have to see this again. My mother and my sister want to see it.” He asked her, “are you going to buy the DVD too?” “Yeah,” she said. After a short silence, her husband says, “honey, you know this is just a movie, right? It’s not church.”
Many people cried during the whipping and cruxifiction scenes…and there was a baby that cried periodically throughout the film. No children in the audience as far I could tell. At the end, lots of clapping…the audience clearly enjoyed the movie.
Clockwork Orange
The trailer included on the DVD looks strikingly contemporary (pounding music, hundreds of cuts, very MTV) and must have been every bit as jarring** as the film to watch in a 1970s movie house.
** So jarring was the film to British audiences that after a short release, Kubrick withdrew the film from the theatres and it wasn’t seen again in the UK until after his death.
City by the Sea
Bad editing, weak musical score, mediocre acting from good actors, no sense of humor, obvious plot “twists”…everything about this movie was phoned in. City by the Sea is a good example of bad Hollywood filmmaking.
The Godfather Part 2
Try as I might, I can’t recognize Al Pacino in the first two Godfather films. I look at Michael Corleone and the closest I can get to a recognizable Hollywood actor is Matthew Broderick.
Titanic
When I saw this in the theatre for the first time, the theatre was crowded with teen girls. Leo was all dressed up in that borrowed tuxedo and turned toward the camera for the first time, this girl behind me sucked in her breath suddenly, literally breathless at his appearance.
Memento
.gnimit dna tolp eht tuoba desufnoc era uoy esac ni redro lacigolonorhc ni mlif eht hctaw ot noitpo na sniatnoc DVD otnemeM ehT
Minority Report
A year and a half ago, we had a big discussion as to some possible holes in Minority Report’s plot. I’m still disappointed in the “accuracy” of the future, especially since Spielberg went to the trouble of assembling a group of futurists to advise him on how to get it right. Each piece of technology made sense by itself but often did not make sense in combination with the environment or other technologies, lending an air of inauthenticity to the whole affair.
Whale Rider
Keisha Castle-Hughes gives the best performance I’ve ever seen from a child actor. Her tearful speech near the end of the film was amazing for an actor of any age.
The Fog of War
Highly recommended documentary by Errol Morris about Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Now in his 80s, McNamara shares frankly what is hinted at as the tip of his personal iceberg, a refreshing occurance rarely seen among the rich, powerful, or famous. Many hold him responsible for the mess in Vietnam, but I ended up liking him more than not in this film; he seemed genuinely interested in personal discovery and re-evaluation and fully aware of the complications of being human. If you go see this movie (which is highly relevant to the current US political situation), I recommend keeping an open mind…you might be surprised at how you react (whether you’re pro- or anti-war…or somewhere in the middle).
- The Fog of War as a design achievement
- A late review from the New Yorker
- The Village Voice on Being Robert McNamara
Groundhog Day
The legend of Groundhog Day is based on an old Scottish couplet: “If Candlemas Day is bright and clear, there’ll be two winters in the year.” (source)
The Player
This is the only film during which I’d walked out of the theatre. But that was a long time ago, and I guess I was more in the mood this time around.
The Triplets of Belleville
This is a wonderfully stylish, inventive film. If you’re unaccustomed to movies lacking a strong narrative that drags the viewer through the film, you may want to skip it (the theatre was packed, but several people walked out before the end).
Part of the film deal with the Tour de France, which writer/director Sylvain Chomet talks about in this BBC interview:
I’ve always liked the movement of cycling. It’s the circular motion of the bicycle, and the shape of the cyclists themselves - especially back in the days when they’d be incredibly spindly with amazingly overdeveloped leg muscles. They’re fascinating characters: very nice, timid and shy people. But they often don’t look like they’re enjoying the race. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cyclist looking happy, even when they’ve won. I’ve also always thought it was strange that the Tour De France starts and ends at the same point. It’s like they’re suffering all this hardship, but not actually getting anywhere as a result.
For more info on the film, you can watch the trailer, read an interview with Chomet in Animation World Magazine, or read AnimWatch’s interview with the film’s art director, Evgeni Tomov.
American Beauty
Still good, but it doesn’t hold up quite as well as some of the other films released that year.
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Sorry Sofia, but seeing ROTK was the best time I’ve had at the movies in a long, long time. I can’t say if this is the year’s best film or if you should go see it, but it was certainly my favorite.
Master and Commander
Surprisingly good. I’ve been told the books on which the film is based are meticulous in adhering to historical accuracy w.r.t. what it was like serving aboard a naval ship in the early 19th century, and that’s carried through to the film version.
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Reminded me of Run Lola Run (and Amelie, says Meg) in how the filmmakers were interested in the stories tangential (and seemingly incidental) to the main narrative. The side stories have the potential to be distracting, but they actually strengthen each of the three films as a whole.
The Last Samurai
The Last Samurai reminded me a lot of Braveheart. Both starred actors that are hugely successful but who have audiences divided and sometimes puzzled over their genuine acting ability. The ending battle scenes were very similar, even down to the surprise battle tactics used against the superior forces. Both Mel and Cruise played the unlikely/unwilling hero of the underdog. And I liked both movies about the same.
Catch Me If You Can
A really fun movie, even better the second time around (I completely wasn’t paying attention the first time around…I missed most of the abandonment, sense-of-belonging, father/son, etc. stuff in the film).
Elf
Elf would have absolutely sucked without Will Ferrell. Which is to say that it was a bad movie except that Will Ferrell is so delightful and funny as a 6’4” man acting like a wide-eyed child/elf that you can’t help but laugh a lot. I’ve fully embraced the idea of Ferrell as comedic genius, convinced that he can — if he’s careful not to do anymore movies directed by Jon Favreau — avoid the fates of Adam Sandler (who only ever plays one character: the angry YELLING adolescent who grows up at the end of the film without losing any of his charming child-like qualities), Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, and many other former SNL cast members and mature into doing movies more on par with Bill Murray. Ferrell seems to me to have the potential to be more than just a comedian starring in his own vehicles (which Elf clearly was).
However, I fear that a more likely possibility will find America in theatres in winter 2005 watching Ferrell in Elf 2: They Drove a Dumptruck Full of Money Up to My House…
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
If only Peter Jackson could have found a way to make the LOTR book trilogy into four 2h45m movies instead of three. I just finished watching the Two Towers extended version and, as with the first movie, the extra 43 minutes of footage adds significantly to the plot and pacing of the film. This is how the film should have been shown in the theatre, but at 3h45m long, many wouldn’t sit through it or even buy the tickets in the first place. Perhaps a way could have been found to split the entire tale into four parts so that the valuable extended footage could have been shown. The only problem is with three books and four movies…what do you call the fourth movie?
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
I really want to like the Harry Potter movies, but the potential just can’t make up for their overall suckiness. Take Draco Malfoy. He’s evil, we get it. But he’s overwhelmingly, ridiculously, farcically evil, the kind of evil that bores but makes me want to smack the director, the sad Chris Columbus. But that would be ok by itself, but the acting is so bad that all of Malfoy’s sneering and spitting is painful to watch.
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