Series of Tubes: Battle Royale

If a college semester were an action movie, then right now this one is entering the Third Act Shift, when things start to spiral out of control, and there are lots of car chases, explosions, and shootings, followed shortly by shots of people huddling fully-clothed in the fetal position in the shower.

Which is all by way of saying it's a brief post today. "Series of Tubes," with apologies to Ted Stevens, is movies I've found available online for some reason that need to be seen. First up is one of the craziest movies ever: Battle Royale.

The premise: to deal with rebellious national youth, the Japanese government of the near future randomly selects one class of high schoolers to be sent to an island. Once there, they all are forced to kill each other, or be killed themselves. The movie and the novel it's based on probably had some sort of high-minded idea to say something about totalitarianism and reckless authority, but mostly Battle Royale is about crazy killing. It's almost surreal in the way it handles its premise with utterly straight-faced action movie tropes- the badass, the femme fatale, the everyman hero, the damsel in distress.

I've got no idea why it's online, but here it is on Google Video. And for the curious who don't have two hours to try and read subtitles on a computer screen, just watch this trailer and make sure to add it to your Netflix queue:



If you're not put off by violence, it's actually pretty hilarious. Enjoy, and I'll see you tomorrow with a top ten list I've been working on.

Beowulf 3D Review

Hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving- I spent mine in North Carolina getting stuffed and asked what I'm planning to do after graduation.

Before the holiday, though, I drove to New Berlin, Wisconsin (which is pronounced "New BERlin," instead of "New berLIN," which would make too much sense), where the state's only 3D Digital Projection screen is housed, to see the latest in CGI technology. Robert Zemeckis's second motion-capture picture, after The Polar Express, probably still leaves a little bit to be desired in terms of Uncanny Valley-ish humanoid characters, but for the monsters and epic scale of Beowulf, it worked just fine for me.

Not to mention that it was the first 3D film I've seen, and it was awesome. Spears coming right at your eyes! Body parts flying past the screen! Hell, even the company logos at the beginning were cool. I'm not sure if 3D is "the future of motion pictures," as people seem to be heralding it, but it's definitely worth the $2 extra every now and then.

The story, adapted from the anonymous poem by Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman (!), takes plenty of liberties with the plot, but remains true to its majestic spirit. Ray Winstone voices/motion-captures the titular hero, a voyager who comes to Anthony Hopkins' monster ridden-kingdom to kick some ass and takes some names. Crispin Glover lends his screaming to the gutted-fish version of the monster Grendel, and in the least successful bit of stunt-casting for me, Angelina Jolie shows up mostly digitally nude as Grendel's mother, who has become a temptress and usurper in the film, instead of just a demon of the water.

The plot sort of expects you to find the golden-trimmed, sultry and with a tail version of her to be the most desirable thing ever, which I didn't, but if it takes a sort of naked Angelina Jolie to get people to go see a Neil Gaiman written film, then why not? The temptation her character brings does add a dynamic element to the character of Beowulf not present in the poem- he's more or less perfect and invulnerable, but in the film the choices he makes define him.

In the midst of such braggadaccio, there's a lot of cheesiness, the height of which is a minutes-long sequence of a naked Beowulf conveniently having his naughty bits covered by various items in the foreground, which I think was relatively intentional, if only to make fun of the ratings board. But much like 300, it hardly matters when battles start to go down.

When to See it: Before it Leaves Theaters

Lions for Lambs Review

Can you remember when you went to high school? Remember how there always seemed to be that one person who tried being everything to everyone? This person would go out for a whole bunch of sports, take a stab at the school musical and run for class president. Remember this person?

Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs is that person from high school.

The film strives to obtain too many things, without achieving anything. The creators want this to be a message movie. They want this movie to have a complex, interlacing plot. They want this movie to be an awards contender. They want this movie to be meaningful, but it is ultimately a hollow shell that does not know what it truly wants to be.

The film opens with a weathered Robert Redford, as a political science professor, telling his students to do something meaningful with their lives. Michael Peńa and Derek Luke, who are two students listening to Redford’s lecture, decide to take his advice to heart. The two friends join the Army which confounds Redford a bit.

The film then flashes to the interlacing plot which has Redford holding a conversation with a new student of his, Andrew Garfield, who lacks the same passion that Peńa and Luke have, but is significantly smarter. Redford tries to give his message to Garfield, who half-heartedly listens. Redford’s performance does come across as a college professor because he stands before the camera delivering long speeches and doing nothing else.

Meanwhile, Republican Presidential hopeful Jasper Irving invites a leftist journalist, Janine Roth, to his office to unveil a new strategic plan in Afghanistan that will ultimately defeat the Taliban. Irving, played by Tom Cruise, is like most Tom Cruise characters: Cocky, smart and sharply dressed. However, Cruise does manage to elevate the role a little bit by embracing the character’s wicked slyness. Meryl Streep plays the pessimistic journalist and just merely goes through the motions.

The most intriguing plot line in the film is Peńa and Luke’s story. After joining the Army, they are trapped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. These are two talented young men who salvage the film’s performances, even though they are only a third of the story.

The film’s polished images, crisp editing and simplistic camerawork all get overshadowed by the performances that feel like they have been crafted by CNN and Fox News. The script does not offer any help as it tries to out Sorkin Aaron Sorkin. This results in disaster as the players are able to deliver the lines, but they is nothing substantiating them because the film wants to run in so many directions at one time it can not focus on one thing for more than two minutes at a time.

Similar to that person in high school, this film had the potential to be fantastic. There always seemed to be this feeling that if the film could have maintained its focus it would have been a diamond in the rough. Instead, it remains a piece of charcoal that may age well with time, but currently has nothing to offer.

When to See It: On TNT, when they’re not showing Top Gun or The Shawshank Redemption

Bee Movie Review

Hey Folks. It's been a long week here, but things will be back to normal soon, I promise. In the meantime, I took down the "Updating Daily" proclamation from the top of the blog, since I should really be honest with myself.

Anyway, over the weekend we made it to a matinee of Bee Movie. Sadly, at no point did the score replicate the song "Aqualero do Brasil," the bustling music at the heart of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, as it did in the trailers. But it still does all the particulars right, although Dreamworks is still lagging behind Pixar for CGI wizardry.

The plot is relatively simple- Jerry Seinfeld's anthropomorphic bee graduates from college (which took three days), and is stunned to find he'll work one job for the rest of his life. Naturally he seeks adventure in the outside world, which leads him to a friendship with human florist Renee Zellwegger, and ultimately into a lawsuit against all humans for stealing bee honey. As an upcoming college graduate myself, I sympathized with Seinfeld's apprehension at the job search all too well.

It's not hard to follow, and the parallel's between the bee world and the human world allow for humorous send-ups that make Bee Movie more than just a kid's film. The voice cast has some excellent people with plenty of range and experience in animation (like Patrick Warburton, John Goodman, and David Herman), but is also overstuffed with big names for the sake of big names: Zellwegger and Matthew Broderick don't really distinguish themselves, and there are multitudes of cameos for no good reason- Oprah Winfrey as a judge?

The lawsuit against humanity for stealing honey has unforeseen consequences for the natural world as well- ultimately I was unsure whether or not Bee Movie was praising or condemning the main character's rebellion against soulless order. But to expect a tremendously sharp worldview from a film about bees might be expecting a bit much.

In the end, it's a funny way to pass the time, and it's a lot cheaper to go to a matinee of Bee Movie than to pay to see Jerry Seinfeld live.

When to See it: If You Get Around to It

The Assassination of Jesse James Review

Do me a favor and watch this trailer for the film in question. Looks great, right? At the 1:00 mark, a jangling, fast-paced guitar song starts, and at 1:58, it hits you with a full fledged Things Spiraling Out of Control Montage. Who wouldn't be excited about that film?

Well, it takes about an hour and a half into The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Esquire A.S.C. to even approach something like the energy of that trailer, and it's hard pressed to maintain it for more than a few minutes at a time. It's simply too long, and I suppose that my pleasure in making jokes at the expense of the elongated title should have clued me in.

And it's ultimately frustrating, because the rest of the film is outstanding: Casey Affleck and Brad Pitt both excellently play two different types of crazy, my man Sam Rockwell breezes his way into paranoid madness (plus he gets "and Sam Rockwell" style credit recognition. Damn straight), and even James Carville joins a cast of character actors as various outlaws. Only Mary Louise Parker goes to waste in a bit part as Jesse James' wife- even her line in the trailer gets cut. It's astounding that this movie has any deleted scenes.

The problem is that unlike the similarly long American Gangster, this film has a simple plot: Affleck and Rockwell play young brothers recruited to run heists with Brad Pitt's psychopathic Jesse James. Affleck eventually shoots him in the back, due to circumstance, delusions of grandeur, and an intense affection that turns to something like hatred for the outlaw.

There are plenty of not terribly necessary subplots to pass the time, as well as a narrator who occasionally helps out with historical fact, but sometimes plods the film down by explaining character motivations. But it's mostly just smoky western landscapes and people staring at one another- it's very beautifully shot and composed, but it takes too long to mean anything.

A big misstep is assuming that the audience will like Pitt in the film as much as they do in real life, and in something that coasts on charisma like the Ocean's Eleven series you can get away with that. But despite playing nice with his family, he's nothing but a killer and a madman, and the story and the camera linger on him longer than they should.

Ironically, the story moves quickly and becomes much more compelling after the titular assassination happens, as it examines the way America makes legends of bad, bad people, and the fleeting nature of Robert Ford's fame for shooting that legend. It's the opposite problem that Nicole and I had with Lust, Caution- that movie was dramatic enough in the early going, but all built up to nothing. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford is too plodding before it reaches a dramatic finale.

It's all the more frustrating that this movie was just okay, because with a half decent editing job it could be transcendent.

When to See It: On DVD

Obscurity Hall of Fame: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Often I find myself asked whom I would like to play me in a movie. This is not because I likely to become the subject of a biopic, but because these are the sorts of things my friends and I talk about- in any case my answer is always the same: Sam Rockwell.

We don't look that much alike, other than both being white guys with brown hair and a tendency to smirk. And yes, I am aware that I am not yet twenty four, while Sam just turned thirty nine (on Guy Fawkes' Day). I don't care, he's that awesome. When the time comes we'll use CGI to do it: he's my man.

He can certainly embody my spirit, if he can successfully turn himself into the man that ruined modern television and claims to have assassinated 33 people for the CIA in the mid seventies. Which brings me to my next inductee into the Obscurity Hall of Fame: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

Based on the "unauthorized autobiography" that Barris wrote in 1984, it was George Clooney's directorial debut, and one of my favorite films. I didn't realize until after I bought the DVD that it was also written by Charlie Kaufman (!)- there were reports of Clooney irking my favorite screenwriter by shutting him out of the film making process. If I had known that beforehand, it may have tempered my love for Confessions based on my admiration for Kaufman's style, but it turned out great, either way.

Barris, for us dang young whippersnappers, is the creator of countless early exploitative game shows like "The Dating Game" and "The Newlywed Game," low-culture icons that arugably led to modern day things like Jerry Springer and "A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila." But he's most famous for two seasons as the host of "The Gong Show," the grandfather of the first couple weeks on "American Idol" where they boot off rejects and losers.

In Confessions, he's a man constantly concerned with his degrading legacy, afraid of commitment to girlfriend Drew Barrymore, and drawn into the CIA by something dark within him (as well as Clooney's mustachioed CIA recruiter). The cast is rounded out by a brief Maggie Gyllenhaal appearance, and a grossly miscast Julia Roberts as a "sultry" fellow assassin, obviously doing Clooney a favor.

But it's Rockwell who steals the show by nailing Barris's manic energy as a rung-climber at NBC and as a TV host, and somehow manages to play both crass game shows and botched killings for some bitingly dark humor. The film is interspersed with documentary-style interviews of real life colleagues like Dick Clark and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, and leaves you to decide whether or not Barris made up the whole CIA bit. (Barris consulted and visited the set, but Clooney and company made it a point to never ask him about it.)

The style of the film is a mixed bag of seventies throwback fun, with hippie music, all in-camera special effects, and a dark color palette that makes it feel like something much older. The disparate plot elements don't really sound like they would fit together, and I suppose they're rather extreme, but Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is primarily a rumination on the disparate tastes of pop culture anyway, so the more I watch it the more it all makes sense.

I know it has a lot of big names for the "Obscurity" label, but I only know a handful of people that have seen it. You should join them.

Trailer Report: The Assassination of Jesse James, Charlie Wilson's War

We went to one of Milwaukee's more unique theaters, The Rosebud, to see American Gangster, and saw only two trailers. But they were good ones.

The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford Who Totally Shot Him In The Back Because He Was Jealous Of Him, Kind of Like the President of Latina Singer Selena's Fan Club



Hey, I'm seeing this tonight! We have these passes for $4 at Marcus Theaters that we got a few weeks ago for free when we bought tickets. At first I was like "hey, cool!" but then I realized they were only good from November 5th through the 8th, and that all new releases are "no pass." (So no Bee Movie just yet). But there's a huge, 24 screen behemoth all the way on the south edge of the area, and it gets the occasional prestige picture to fill up the space. So it all worked out.

Anyway, this looks awesome, especially the Roger Deakins camera-work. And it marks the third movie in a row, after Gangster and Lust, Caution, that's over two and a half hours long. Sitting power!

Charlie Wilson's War



This also looks pretty good, and I've always been a fan of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin... I even fooled myself into thinking "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" was awesome for weeks longer than anyone else.

And Phillip Seymour Hoffman can really pull of that mustache.

How Many?

This is just a quick post on something I find cuh-razy. According to the MPAA, the average american saw 5.5 films in theaters in 2006.

I thought, wow that seems low- but of course I probably go to way too many movies. So I counted. In small print, here are all the films I saw last year:

Good Night and Good Luck, V For Vendetta, Thank You For Smoking, Inside Man, Brick, The Da Vinci Code, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Break Up, Superman Returns, Pirates 2, A Scanner Darkly, Monster House, Clerks 2, The Illusionist, The Black Dahlia, The Science of Sleep, The Departed, The Prestige, Babel, Volver, Casino Royale, The Fountain, Letters From Iwo Jima, Curse of the Golden Flower, The Painted Veil, Children of Men, and Pan’s Labyrinth.

That's a grand total of 27! My girlfriend actually saw 28, as she went with to all of those except The Break Up, but saw Failure to Launch and Open Season when I was otherwise busy. So she and I saw 27.5 movies apiece, which means there would need to be eight Amish people out there that saw no movies at all to average it back out to 5.5 between the ten of us. Astounding.

I was curious, and it turns out I've seen even more films this year. The list:

The Lives of Others, Bridge to Terabithia, Music and Lyrics, Zodiac, The Host, 300, The Namesake, Reign Over Me, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, Spider-man 3, Waitress, Away From Her, Shrek the Third, Once, Pirates 3, Knocked Up, Day Watch, Ocean’s Thirteen, 1408, Ratatouille, Transformers, Rescue Dawn, Harry Potter 5, Sunshine, The Simpsons Movie, Moliere, The Bourne Ultimatum, Stardust, Superbad, Becoming Jane, Death at a Funeral, 3:10 to Yuma, Shoot ‘Em Up, Eastern Promises, Across the Universe, The Darjeeling Limited, Lust Caution, Michael Clayton, Gone Baby Gone, and American Gangster.

41! I even topped '06 before I had the excuse of this blog to go see films. With the bulk of awards season coming up, I may even double up last year's total. Judge me at your leisure, but I'm oddly proud of this.

American Ganster Review

Hey look, I missed two days again! I'm gonna blame the WGA Strike for that one.

Anyway, why haven't you seen American Gangster yet? Are you really that busy? Are you dead inside?

You should really leave work right now and go catch a matinee. It's definitely an awards contender and one of the best movies of the year. Real quick, if you've been living under a rock: Denzel Washington plays a badass Harlem druglord that loves his momma, Russell Crowe is a womanizing cop and a bad father, but doesn't take bribe money so he's assigned to bring Washington down.

The whole thing's directed by Ridley Scott, who knows his soul music surprisingly well for a septuagenarian white-guy. The cast is rounded out by plenty of great bit players: Chiwetel Ejiafor, Josh Brolin, Cuba Gooding Jr., and a couple of rappers, apparently. There's really not a wrong note in the bunch, either- even Cuba Gooding Jr.'s recent scenery-chewing ethos is put to good use as a rival, flamboyantly flashy drug lord that Washington has to put in his place.

American Gangster takes a meticulous first hour to build up, and the two leads don't really cross paths for a long time- in fact, Crowe's team of agents doesn't even suspect that a black man is in charge of the new drug ring until over halfway through. But Washington's journey from driver to overlord and Crowe's Serpico-like quiet righteousness within the police force could fill up separate movies by themselves, so it's only sweeter when they become unlikely allies near the films end.

As many other, professional reviewers have noted, American Gangster takes great strides to avoid glamorizing Washington's character, both by showing his ridiculous temper, and the effect that heroin has on the people that use it. And the "paradoxical" morals of the two main characters makes it more than a simple crime movie about good v. evil. It helps, of course, that it's all based on real life, and makes me want to read various crime-lord biographies right after the credits roll.

The public has spoken as well, and it looks like we might have the only blockbuster to be recognized come awards season. Don't miss it.

Seriously, why are you still sitting there?

When to See It: Yesterday

Gone Baby Gone Review

Figured I should post my thoughts on Gone Baby Gone before it got too late in the month for them to be relevant, so- happy Saturday everyone.

Ben Affleck returns successfully to the gritty Boston world that made him famous to begin with, after years of tabloid shenanigans and questionable script choices, with a powerful directorial debut.

It's tempting to give more credit to Dennis Lehane, the author of the novel Gone Baby Gone as well as the bestselling Mystic River, but the atmosphere and authentic tone of this film is more than a translation: Casey Affleck, the director's younger brother, delivers a thoughtful voice over as the film opens, over shots of the Boston projects rich with tender detail. It's a movie with a believable background.

Affleck (the younger) plays a private investigator hired to bring a local aspect to the search for a missing four-year-old girl. As he deals with drug dealers, dive bar denizens, and corrupt cops that may be involved, he's constantly faced with situations where the right thing to do isn't immediately clear.

And that's the real strength of this movie: Affleck, Morgan Freeman's police chief, and Ed Harris's detective all make complex decisions for different reasons, and the film never condemns or praises anyone.

Michelle Monaghan plays Affleck's partner/girlfriend, and does okay in a weak part- her character seems to exist mostly to act like a wet blanket ("She's dead. Let it go, Patrick.") and to have an important disagreement with Affleck at the end. The two have little chemistry, but that's mostly because the role is so perfunctory.

The disagreement regards a decision Affleck has to make when he discovers, finally, what's really been going on. And while I don't want to spoil anything, what I loved was that Gone Baby Gone includes a final scene designed specifically to cast in doubt whether or not everything ended up for the best.

It's unrelenting, and unsettling, and makes a good procedural drama all the more memorable.

When to See It: Before it Leaves Theaters

Trailer Report: Atonement, No Country For Old Men, The Bucket List

Hey, it's a multiple post day, since I feel bad about being delinquent earlier this week. These are the trailers I saw last night in front of Gone Baby Gone.

Atonement



An early awards contender, and it looks good. Spot on casting of Romola Garai and Saoirse Ronan as the same character- or at least a great job on hair and makeup to get them to look exactly alike.

I'm excited, not least because I liked the Wright/Knightley combination in Pride and Prejudice. In fact, I suspect that I like that more than almost anyone, because I haven't seen the A&E version with Colin Firth.

No Country For Old Men



Dude. Yes. Sign me up. The bare-bones border lunacy of Cormac McCarthy's novel with the Coen brothers attention to detail and dark humor? How awesome can this be?

I for some reason have an impression of Javier Bardem as an amazing actor, but all I've ever seen him in are trailers (for The Sea Inside and Goya's Ghosts). But still, he looks legitimately terrifying in this.

Hopefully this will open in Milwaukee before the 21st, on which I'll be traveling for Thanksgiving.

The Bucket List



When I first read a synopsis of this, I was pretty skeptical, but it looks okay. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play themselves (a irascible coot and a wizened walking voice-over) doing all the things they want to do before dying.

Hopefully it'll be more than the episode of "Touched By an Angel" than it seems. But I did enjoy the line "Nobody cares what you think."

And for the record I was shocked, shocked, that this trailer had no Trailer Voice Guy. Kudos.

Lust, Caution Review

Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, his anticipated follow-up to Brokeback Mountain and winner of the Golden Lion in Venice, is many different things. It's an historical drama set in Japanese occupied Shanghai. It's almost three hours long (which is almost an hour too long). It's a showcase for fine performances by Tony Leung, Joan Chen, and newcomer Wei Tang.

But mostly, it's rated NC-17.

And it's a shame that it's largely defined by that, but in this country at least it's impossible for it not to be. The stigma of the "adult film" is killing it at the box office and it's the first thing mentioned about it, despite Leung and Tang's love-scenes comprising perhaps ten minutes of a hundred and sixty minute feature.

So, before I saw it, I was mostly wondering was it worth it? Are these graphic sex scenes so artistically important that it justifies the prudish MPAA's seal of doom?

The verdict? No, not really. And they certainly don't help the appeal of a film that's already plodding and sleepy.

Tang plays a young actress who embarks on a mission, first with some idealistic schoolmates and the with the official Chinese resistance movement, to assassinate Leung's treasonous government official. He's so traditionally cautious of attack (like the title, get it?) that Tang must enter into an affair with him to get him to let his guard down.

Their acrobatic lovemaking is supposed to represent both characters finding human connection in the only way they can- him after inhumanly torturing resistance members all day, and her after being treated like a pawn by both her friends and her government. But it's mostly just abusive, awkward, and out of place in a movie that is so drearily refined otherwise.

The graphicness of the scenes themselves isn't terrible, but Lust, Caution earns the rating by having them carry on way too long. And whether I agree with the NC-17 label or not (I don't), this is symptomatic of the movie as a whole: it's padded out with an unnecessary framing device, about half an hour of mahjong games, and all builds to a hasty and unsatisfying conclusion.

So in the end, the bally-hooed sex scenes are the only thing worth remarking upon in an overstuffed film. The credits of Lust, Caution informed me that it was based on a short story. I never would've guessed.

When to See It: On DVD