For the past few months I have lived in a contemplative trance. Holding patterns like my current one (as I wait to return home) can be quite conducive for personal growth and exploration if given the proper consideration and appropriate attitude. I’ve tried to apply that attitude wherever I can, and I highly recommend it. Next time you’re waiting for a movie to start or in line at Wal-Mart, ignore the magazines at your elbow (I don’t care whose rack Cosmo is featuring this month) and take a moment to examine your place in the universe. You never know what you may find. The intoxicating aroma of beef jerky and bubble gum may just facilitate a life-changing discovery. Little known fact: Plato conceived Allegory of a Cave in line at the DMV. Filling up many months with contemplation can be a little more treacherous than the fleeting thoughts one might get at the checkout counter, so build up some endurance before you dive headfirst into life's great mysteries.
My philosophical sensibility tends quite fickle, deconstructing one topic to a hopeless mush before moving on to do the same to something else. The history of my blog represents this wonderfully. Politics and religion got beat down in the early months before I moved on to my writing. Then the summer movie season got into full swing, so that’s been the majority of May and June. Yet none of these things really managed the synaptic stranglehold that love has recently. I was shocked to find that, aside from one very brief contemplation of knights slaying dragons, that sacred cow had not been eviscerated in my crosshairs of cynicism like just about every other convention we hold dear these days.
Why is that? I asked myself. Once I lay aside my shield of mocking bluster and repressed my relationship history, the answer came very easy.
Very simply, I don’t want to. For me to lose love in my heart (just as I lost faith) would be like snuffing out that last corner of my soul that occasionally lights the dark. I do have a history of self-destructive behavior, but I don’t thrill in pain and misery so much that I would quash my one great chance to rise out of the muck of my own self-righteous gloom. God is dead. My future is uncertain. The Cubs are below .500. If I slaughtered love, my lord, what would be left?
I have not given up on love. Coming from the family I do such action would not only be foolish, but it would also completely disregard of the evidence with which I am surrounded. And there’s nothing I hate more than an argument absent compelling evidence. So, I will not be destroying love on these pages, especially when so many other people seem to doing a perfectly good job destroying it for the rest of us.
Yes, I still believe in love, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe in my heart. Love has been attacked from all sides in my life. Normally, I’d let the bleak world have it; the world’s made a good case for love’s invalidation. It poisons love even as it bombards us with reminders of its blessings. I wish I could step aside. I wish I could just throw my hands up and discard this Hallmark bullshit.
But there was this girl.
Her name was Erika Thormahlen.
She's the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Friday, July 08, 2005
Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four is one of those frustrating Hollywood exercises designed to infuriate fans of two media instantaneously: film and graphic novels. We had plenty of them through the 80’s and 90’s. We thought we were through when Spider-Man and X-Men showed up, but then Daredevil came along. And now the Fantastic Four. That any amalgam of artists could construct such a lifeless vanilla production from a storied franchise with a half-century of history defies understanding. Fans of film will leave nonplussed; fans of the Fantastic Four fans may very well feel like crying.
Coming on the heels of three triumphant film adaptations – Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman – the failure of the Fantastic Four is so much more glaring. It has no personality, no human emotion, and not a single awe-inspiring scene. In a comic book film, the latter of that trio is unforgivable. The dialogue in this film makes George Lucas seem like Shakespeare. The characters talk and talk and talk without ever saying anything. It probably doesn’t help Four’s cause that I’m in the middle of watching the last three seasons of the Sopranos. Next to that program – where a phrase like “What you gonna do?” carries the dramatic heft of the Titanic – this film’s exchanges are so pedestrian they could have been squawked out by a Speak and Spell.
For a franchise based around a superhero family, the leads lack any sort of cohesive chemistry. Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffold) is (forgive the pun) a spineless wimp who we never get behind in either his scientific pursuits or his romantic ones. Jessica Alba, for being one of the most sensually exotic women ever creation, has yet to show me any sort of fire as an actress. With Sin City and Fantastic Four behind her, she has one more film left this summer to show me that she has anything to offer celluloid besides her curvy body and beestung lips (though Into the Blue seems to be just another excuse to get her in a bikini).
The biggest tragedy for me was Dr. Doom. My favorite villain of the Marvel canon, this maniacal, old-school dictator has been transposed with some sort of generic billionaire ala Donald Trump. He’s all snarl and moustache twirling with those compelling motivations of power and money. Yawn.
There were moments watching Four that made me sad, because they showed how much fun this movie could have been. Chris Evans oozes Movie Star with his hot rod Human Torch and his mouthy interactions with Michael Chiklis’ Thing are the highlight of the film. Both of those characters work because they’re given personality and dimension (“Am I the only one who thinks this is cool?” Human Torch asks at one point) and the actors run with what they’re given have. Sadly they only make Gruffold and Alba look blander.
It’s pretty clear the suits behind this production intended to make this a family adventure, but as The Incredibles and its ilk have proved that doesn’t require sanitizing conflict and dumbing down dialogue. It requires hiring somebody with comic book cred and vision, not the director of Barbershop. It requires sophisticated understanding of what made the comic compelling for so many years. It requires…. Shit. This is starting to piss me off.
There is one glimmer of hope here. The modern comic book franchises have gotten better the second time around. Spider-Man and X-Men’s sequels both raised the bar over their predecessor. Considering how low Fantastic Four has set their bar, improvement shouldn’t be too difficult.
Final Grade: C-
Coming on the heels of three triumphant film adaptations – Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman – the failure of the Fantastic Four is so much more glaring. It has no personality, no human emotion, and not a single awe-inspiring scene. In a comic book film, the latter of that trio is unforgivable. The dialogue in this film makes George Lucas seem like Shakespeare. The characters talk and talk and talk without ever saying anything. It probably doesn’t help Four’s cause that I’m in the middle of watching the last three seasons of the Sopranos. Next to that program – where a phrase like “What you gonna do?” carries the dramatic heft of the Titanic – this film’s exchanges are so pedestrian they could have been squawked out by a Speak and Spell.
For a franchise based around a superhero family, the leads lack any sort of cohesive chemistry. Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffold) is (forgive the pun) a spineless wimp who we never get behind in either his scientific pursuits or his romantic ones. Jessica Alba, for being one of the most sensually exotic women ever creation, has yet to show me any sort of fire as an actress. With Sin City and Fantastic Four behind her, she has one more film left this summer to show me that she has anything to offer celluloid besides her curvy body and beestung lips (though Into the Blue seems to be just another excuse to get her in a bikini).
The biggest tragedy for me was Dr. Doom. My favorite villain of the Marvel canon, this maniacal, old-school dictator has been transposed with some sort of generic billionaire ala Donald Trump. He’s all snarl and moustache twirling with those compelling motivations of power and money. Yawn.
There were moments watching Four that made me sad, because they showed how much fun this movie could have been. Chris Evans oozes Movie Star with his hot rod Human Torch and his mouthy interactions with Michael Chiklis’ Thing are the highlight of the film. Both of those characters work because they’re given personality and dimension (“Am I the only one who thinks this is cool?” Human Torch asks at one point) and the actors run with what they’re given have. Sadly they only make Gruffold and Alba look blander.
It’s pretty clear the suits behind this production intended to make this a family adventure, but as The Incredibles and its ilk have proved that doesn’t require sanitizing conflict and dumbing down dialogue. It requires hiring somebody with comic book cred and vision, not the director of Barbershop. It requires sophisticated understanding of what made the comic compelling for so many years. It requires…. Shit. This is starting to piss me off.
There is one glimmer of hope here. The modern comic book franchises have gotten better the second time around. Spider-Man and X-Men’s sequels both raised the bar over their predecessor. Considering how low Fantastic Four has set their bar, improvement shouldn’t be too difficult.
Final Grade: C-
Thursday, July 07, 2005
War of the Worlds
Walking out of War of the Worlds, I was certain that Steven Spielberg had made the film he intended to make – for better or worse. I think this film will likely catch people off-guard. With the name Spielberg on the marquee, one expects a certain thing: big action scenes, stunning special effects, and that certain bit of whimsy that has made him the most successful director of pop entertainment in the history of film. Spielberg gives us the first two in spades, but the third one – we’re left aching for it. Hopefully he rushes to get that last Indiana Jones out there.
In my early teens I developed a morbid fascination with the end of the world in all its manifestations. The early press for War of the Worlds strongly hinted that the film would fire a fastball straight into my sensibility’s wheelhouse. There has been no shortage of cinematic apocalypses, from The Terminator to Independence Day to last year’s The Day After Tomorrow, but each of them focus on the heroics of the End Times – man’s redemption in the face of the darkest of hours. This made for great summer entertainment – even I enjoyed Will Smith’s cocky swagger in Independence Day for what it was – but none of these films came close to my vision of the end of the world. War of the Worlds does. Frighteningly so.
Spielberg has said that he never would have made this film if not for 9/11. Suddenly H.G. Wells’ tale of an alien invasion seemed much more poignant. The influence is quite clear in Spielberg’s imagery; the dust-covered survivors, the dazed terror, and the fleeing masses all recall that horrible day. The images work because we vaguely recall seeing something very similar on September 11, but they never take us out of the film. Spielberg is not heavy-handed with his references.
I hope Spielberg gets credit for the balls it took to take some of the dramatic chances he does in this film. In Tom Cruise’s Ray Ferrier, we have an utterly despicable protagonist. In fact, Cruise’s recently acquired bizarro public persona actually added an appropriate dimension to his portrayal of this deadbeat dad. A manboy in perpetual midlife crisis, he drives a fast, loud car, keeps an engine block on his kitchen table, and turns a game of catch with his teenage son into a pissing contest (that ends with one of the few funny moments in the film). “That’s only half of what I got,” he says after whipping a fastball at his boy’s skull. This guy is 100 percent prick, and putting this character front and center of a major Hollywood blockbuster (even with Cruise as his avatar) takes guts and I actually found Cruise rather compelling in the role.
But outshining everyone in the cast is young Dakota Fanning as Rachel Ferrier, a (my God) 11 year-old who I would put in the top 5 of actresses working today. I pray that she gets through her awkward stages without the usual child actor difficulties, because her talent should make her one of the greatest actresses to grace the screen. I’m hoping we’re seeing the creation of another Jodie Foster rather than Tatum O’Neal. There is not a dishonest moment from her in this entire film, and what is most remarkable is that a girl who is so exceptionally intelligent and mature for her age never betrays the fact that she is still a child and in need of protection from her father. It’s through this earthly sprite – with her expressive eyes and delicate features – that we feel the real horror of this film. This is – no shit – Academy award caliber work from this girl. Through the whole movie we just want this poor soul to be safe, and we’re infuriated with her father when he can’t even give her the illusion of comfort. We want to steal her away from this callous, thoughtless man.
“Are we going to be okay?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he answers.
There is an absolutely heartbreaking scene in the middle of the film where Rachel begs for a lullaby and her father, having none in his repertoire, must resort to a cheap pop song about a car.
** SPOILER ALERT**
The final moments of the film have Rachel running into her mother’s arms and we aren’t thinking “Thank goodness she’s escaped those aliens.” We’re thinking “Thank God she’s escaped her father.”
** END OF SPOILER**
It takes guts for Spielberg to end the film with that kind of sentiment, but unfortunately I can’t say that guts equals dramatically satisfying filmmaking.
I’m very conflicted about recommending this film. There is so much great stuff to be had here. Spielberg throws down the gauntlet immediately with a terrifying lightning storm that ends with Ray and his daughter hiding under the kitchen table. From there the film ratchets up the terror for a good hour and a half with amazing set pieces of the immergence of the tripods, an absolutely exhilarating long take on the highway, and an alien attack on a ferry. This is all amazing stuff with Spielberg at the top of his game.
One particularly poignant scene involves Ray and his children managing a mass of refugees in a mini-van that managed to survive the EMP of the lightning storm. This scene hit me the hardest of any in the film. So much of our religious culture sees the apocalypse as a glorious time for man’s redemption. I have never bought that line. The end of the world will be mankind’s biggest fuck-up, proof positive of the appetite for self-destruction disturbingly inherent in our wiring. What this mass of humanity does to Ray and his family during this sequence strikes harder than anything we see from the aliens in the film. The final punctuation mark in this scene will put a cold spike through your heart. That is Spielberg’s aim in this film – ultra-realism. It is ugly, unforgiving, and relentless. This is closer to Schindler’s List than E.T. Much closer.
Despite how this all may sound, the one thing I can say about this section of the film is it is absolutely riveting. During my screening I was surrounded by quite a few chatty viewers, but when the lightning began to strike I did not hear a chirp out of them for the rest of the film. I did not move for most of the film, my eyes and mouth wide in astonishment. Spielberg keeps the tension building and building until…
Well, two scenes spoil the film. Not completely. I still think the first two chapters of the film are worth seeing, but the first scene deflates the tension built up over the previous hour and the ending leaves the audience cold. Spielberg is one of the smartest filmmakers out there, and I’d love to chat with him about this film. For a man with such a sharp dramatic acuity, these scenes are somewhat inexcusable (despite their roots in the original novel).
The first scene involves my favorite chapter in the book, The Man on Putney Hill. In the book the narrator and this man have a compelling philosophical discussion about how to proceed against the machines. It is a fascinating exchange, the most memorable moments in the book. In the film, this mysterious man (played by Tim Robbins) is turned into a borderline psychotic (with inexplicable hints of pedophilia). There is no compelling philosophy to his ranting. He’s just a nut. A nut hiding in a basement. It is a poor replacement.
After Ray and Rachel take shelter in the nut’s basement, the film never recovers. Despite an intrusion by some sort of tentacle camera and podless aliens, the relentless tension of the previous hour evaporates with such remarkable force that my brother and myself both nearly fell asleep. After that, the film coasted to its inevitable conclusion. Even a scene that had Ray taking down one of the tripods felt anti-climactic. That scene should have had the crowd on its feet, but the time for such a reaction had come and gone.
I’m also shocked that Spielberg chose to keep Wells’ notoriously unsatisfying ending. I won’t spoil it for those who have not read the book, but the weaknesses inherent in that conclusion play even worse on film. The deux es machina employed by Wells removes the protagonists from the climax. Spielberg’s efforts to inject his hero into the final thralls of the aliens feel contrived, and the scene itself is gratuitous; the demise of the aliens is well on its way before Ray points out a revelatory flock of birds. Having the main characters excised from the climax of the invasion makes sense from a story perspective, but it is dramatically unfulfilling watching it play out on screen. I had hoped Spielberg would imagine something better for us this time around. I’m sad that he didn’t.
Final Grade: C*
* The film would get an A up to the point where Tim Robbins shows up. That might seem indecisive, but that C really hurt to type.
In my early teens I developed a morbid fascination with the end of the world in all its manifestations. The early press for War of the Worlds strongly hinted that the film would fire a fastball straight into my sensibility’s wheelhouse. There has been no shortage of cinematic apocalypses, from The Terminator to Independence Day to last year’s The Day After Tomorrow, but each of them focus on the heroics of the End Times – man’s redemption in the face of the darkest of hours. This made for great summer entertainment – even I enjoyed Will Smith’s cocky swagger in Independence Day for what it was – but none of these films came close to my vision of the end of the world. War of the Worlds does. Frighteningly so.
Spielberg has said that he never would have made this film if not for 9/11. Suddenly H.G. Wells’ tale of an alien invasion seemed much more poignant. The influence is quite clear in Spielberg’s imagery; the dust-covered survivors, the dazed terror, and the fleeing masses all recall that horrible day. The images work because we vaguely recall seeing something very similar on September 11, but they never take us out of the film. Spielberg is not heavy-handed with his references.
I hope Spielberg gets credit for the balls it took to take some of the dramatic chances he does in this film. In Tom Cruise’s Ray Ferrier, we have an utterly despicable protagonist. In fact, Cruise’s recently acquired bizarro public persona actually added an appropriate dimension to his portrayal of this deadbeat dad. A manboy in perpetual midlife crisis, he drives a fast, loud car, keeps an engine block on his kitchen table, and turns a game of catch with his teenage son into a pissing contest (that ends with one of the few funny moments in the film). “That’s only half of what I got,” he says after whipping a fastball at his boy’s skull. This guy is 100 percent prick, and putting this character front and center of a major Hollywood blockbuster (even with Cruise as his avatar) takes guts and I actually found Cruise rather compelling in the role.
But outshining everyone in the cast is young Dakota Fanning as Rachel Ferrier, a (my God) 11 year-old who I would put in the top 5 of actresses working today. I pray that she gets through her awkward stages without the usual child actor difficulties, because her talent should make her one of the greatest actresses to grace the screen. I’m hoping we’re seeing the creation of another Jodie Foster rather than Tatum O’Neal. There is not a dishonest moment from her in this entire film, and what is most remarkable is that a girl who is so exceptionally intelligent and mature for her age never betrays the fact that she is still a child and in need of protection from her father. It’s through this earthly sprite – with her expressive eyes and delicate features – that we feel the real horror of this film. This is – no shit – Academy award caliber work from this girl. Through the whole movie we just want this poor soul to be safe, and we’re infuriated with her father when he can’t even give her the illusion of comfort. We want to steal her away from this callous, thoughtless man.
“Are we going to be okay?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he answers.
There is an absolutely heartbreaking scene in the middle of the film where Rachel begs for a lullaby and her father, having none in his repertoire, must resort to a cheap pop song about a car.
** SPOILER ALERT**
The final moments of the film have Rachel running into her mother’s arms and we aren’t thinking “Thank goodness she’s escaped those aliens.” We’re thinking “Thank God she’s escaped her father.”
** END OF SPOILER**
It takes guts for Spielberg to end the film with that kind of sentiment, but unfortunately I can’t say that guts equals dramatically satisfying filmmaking.
I’m very conflicted about recommending this film. There is so much great stuff to be had here. Spielberg throws down the gauntlet immediately with a terrifying lightning storm that ends with Ray and his daughter hiding under the kitchen table. From there the film ratchets up the terror for a good hour and a half with amazing set pieces of the immergence of the tripods, an absolutely exhilarating long take on the highway, and an alien attack on a ferry. This is all amazing stuff with Spielberg at the top of his game.
One particularly poignant scene involves Ray and his children managing a mass of refugees in a mini-van that managed to survive the EMP of the lightning storm. This scene hit me the hardest of any in the film. So much of our religious culture sees the apocalypse as a glorious time for man’s redemption. I have never bought that line. The end of the world will be mankind’s biggest fuck-up, proof positive of the appetite for self-destruction disturbingly inherent in our wiring. What this mass of humanity does to Ray and his family during this sequence strikes harder than anything we see from the aliens in the film. The final punctuation mark in this scene will put a cold spike through your heart. That is Spielberg’s aim in this film – ultra-realism. It is ugly, unforgiving, and relentless. This is closer to Schindler’s List than E.T. Much closer.
Despite how this all may sound, the one thing I can say about this section of the film is it is absolutely riveting. During my screening I was surrounded by quite a few chatty viewers, but when the lightning began to strike I did not hear a chirp out of them for the rest of the film. I did not move for most of the film, my eyes and mouth wide in astonishment. Spielberg keeps the tension building and building until…
Well, two scenes spoil the film. Not completely. I still think the first two chapters of the film are worth seeing, but the first scene deflates the tension built up over the previous hour and the ending leaves the audience cold. Spielberg is one of the smartest filmmakers out there, and I’d love to chat with him about this film. For a man with such a sharp dramatic acuity, these scenes are somewhat inexcusable (despite their roots in the original novel).
The first scene involves my favorite chapter in the book, The Man on Putney Hill. In the book the narrator and this man have a compelling philosophical discussion about how to proceed against the machines. It is a fascinating exchange, the most memorable moments in the book. In the film, this mysterious man (played by Tim Robbins) is turned into a borderline psychotic (with inexplicable hints of pedophilia). There is no compelling philosophy to his ranting. He’s just a nut. A nut hiding in a basement. It is a poor replacement.
After Ray and Rachel take shelter in the nut’s basement, the film never recovers. Despite an intrusion by some sort of tentacle camera and podless aliens, the relentless tension of the previous hour evaporates with such remarkable force that my brother and myself both nearly fell asleep. After that, the film coasted to its inevitable conclusion. Even a scene that had Ray taking down one of the tripods felt anti-climactic. That scene should have had the crowd on its feet, but the time for such a reaction had come and gone.
I’m also shocked that Spielberg chose to keep Wells’ notoriously unsatisfying ending. I won’t spoil it for those who have not read the book, but the weaknesses inherent in that conclusion play even worse on film. The deux es machina employed by Wells removes the protagonists from the climax. Spielberg’s efforts to inject his hero into the final thralls of the aliens feel contrived, and the scene itself is gratuitous; the demise of the aliens is well on its way before Ray points out a revelatory flock of birds. Having the main characters excised from the climax of the invasion makes sense from a story perspective, but it is dramatically unfulfilling watching it play out on screen. I had hoped Spielberg would imagine something better for us this time around. I’m sad that he didn’t.
Final Grade: C*
* The film would get an A up to the point where Tim Robbins shows up. That might seem indecisive, but that C really hurt to type.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
