Archive for January, 2010

Film Diary: 300 (RiffTrax Edition)

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

2006 (USA)
Director: Zack Snyder
Viewed: January 15, 2010
Format: DVD – Warner Brothers (2007) with RiffTrax audio (2006)

This was two firsts for me, my first viewing of 300, and my first RiffTrax.  I saw it with a room full of friends in San Diego, with a liberal application of booze.  Super fun!  I fully recommend seeing action movies with RiffTrax, even on the first viewing of the movie.  The RiffTrax commentary did a good job of staying out of the way of the movie’s dialog enough that I didn’t feel like I missed anything, while mitigating the problem that I normally have with action movies being basically dumb visual entertainment.

300’s visual style and over-the-top action sequences were beautiful and compelling.  I was impressed with the movie’s ability to suck me in and make me feel like I was rooting for the most epically bad-ass underdogs in history, and I loved the ending.   It was great to see an action movie that just focused on being a great action movie.  300 knew what it was, didn’t try to be something more, and did its job wonderfully.

The RiffTrax was also very funny.  Mystery Science Theater 3000 was always a bit hit-or-miss for me, but this RiffTrax was solid throughout, and made me eager to see more.

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Smoke and Mirrors

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
2009 (UK / Canada / France)
Director: Terry Gilliam
Viewed: January 17, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print (Landmark Theaters Tivoli Theater)

When it comes to Terry Gilliam films, I wouldn’t say that the only attraction is their design, but I’d be kidding myself if I denied that the essential allure of a new Gilliam feature is the look of the thing.  Those occasions when Gilliam has mated his distinctive mode of fantasy—part Victorian / Edwardian stagecraft, part comic strip zaniness—to a compelling set of characters, the result is tongue-in-cheek gold, as in Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.  (His two dystopian science-fiction films, Brazil and Twelve Monkeys, are equally great, but vibrate to an entirely different frequency.)  Gilliam’s new feature, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, is a weird bauble that fits snugly into oeuvre, yet like all of the director’s weaker efforts, it’s also a mess from a storytelling perspective.  It’s debatable how much of that can be blamed on the regrettable death of his leading man, Heath Ledger, and how much on Gilliam’s own hand, but it’s also telling that Imaginarium is disjointed tonally and narratively.  At its worst, Imaginarium plays out less like a film and more like a book of concept art that has been inelegantly cobbled together into a film.  There’s something more than a little perverse about a film-maker with such palpable thematic interest in myth-making but who nonetheless has a hard time finding a foothold in his own tale.

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Plenty of Memberships, Few Privileges

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Up in the Air
2009 (USA)
Director: Jason Reitman
Viewed: January 16, 2009
Format: Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Moolah Theater)

Back in May 2008, I observed after a second viewing of the backlash-savaged Juno that Jason Reitman’s crisp, understated direction plays a crucial role the film’s success, and that it in fact called to mind the comedic work of Sydney Pollack.  I still stand by that statement, and by the film’s place as one of the most perfectly realized ensemble comedies of the decade, which I will readily defend with knife clutched firmly in teeth.  However, Reitman’s latest film, Up in the Air, serves primarily to highlight the bottled lightning quality of Juno, solidifying its status as a fortuitous confluence of direction, writing, and performance that may never again be approached by the parties involved.  Up in the Air boasts none of the focused, superbly paced comedic storytelling that characterized Reitman’s previous effort.  In fact, the characteristics that most define his direction here are a distressing lack of understanding regarding his audience’s sympathies, and a clumsy attempt to fuse two or three stories that do not function together as well as he imagines.  To be sure, George Clooney’s unfailingly magnetic presence renders the proceedings more tolerable than they would otherwise be, and the central romantic drama of the film is compelling stuff.  Yet these caveats only highlight the ill-advised and even insulting aspects of Up in the Air.

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Late to the Game: 9

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

2009 (USA)
Director: Shane Acker
Viewed: January 10, 2010
Format: DVD - Universal (2009)

B - Shane Acker’s talent for nimble, evocative world-building is on full display in 9. It’s telling that even at a lean 79 minutes, the film still feels a bit padded and sluggish on the story front, given that all the satisfying setting crunchiness is delivered swiftly and efficiently. Acker deftly establishes the essential traits of his post-apocalyptic world and the clan of burlap-skinned homunculi that inhabit it, while leaving plenty to implication and imagination, including the precise mechanics of the setting’s steampunk-tinged alchemical magic. Perhaps unexpectedly, the nine little doll-folk are quite distinctive, both visually and as characters, but the real draw here is not the simplistic story–a hero awakens evil and then defeats evil, etc.–but the richness of the blasted landscape, the uncanny menace of the monsters that stalk it, and the thrills of numerous small-scale battles and escapes. Even the vague, unnecessarily drawn-out ending doesn’t markedly detract from 9’s guiltless visceral appeal, which is that of a novel, densely detailed world sketched with precision and enthusiasm. Acker gratifyingly demonstrates that not only aren’t the fantasy, science-fiction, and dystopian genres dead, they’re often found in the same film, and a gorgeously animated one at that.

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Late to the Game: Funny People

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

2009 (USA)
Director: Judd Apatow
Viewed: January 7, 2009
Format: DVD – Universal (2009)

Funny People represents a distillation of the best qualities from Judd Apatow’s previous film, Knocked Up.  In this dark, meandering tale of second chances and human fallibility, the director employs both his ruthless pursuit of affecting emotional detail and the self-effacing vibe of star Seth Rogan (in his plush animal mode).  Meanwhile, the film jettisons the last Apatow outing’s retrograde sexual politics and ridiculously pat conclusion, resulting in a melancholy film that reveals the director not as an intrinsically comedic film-maker, but as someone interested in the absurdity of psychological landscapes.  Thus, Funny People, while hardly a barrel of laughs, is nonetheless perceptive, audacious, and weirdly charming.  Adam Sandler indicts his own career via a thinly-veiled alter ego character, and Leslie Mann’s performance devastatingly demonstrates how bright, bighearted people can make unbelievably stupid decisions.  Apatow’s focus on his characters’ feelings rather than the narrative is both a strength and a weakness.  Absent a conventional structure or a clear antagonist, Funny People spins off the rails a bit in the final half-hour, as the director searches for a way to conclude a story that has no end.  Still, the film proves to be an invigorating slap to viewers expecting yet another storybook conclusion.

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