A Year of Movies

Harmony and Me
Started & Finished: 11/1/09

Still one of my favorite movies of 2009.  Hopefully it’ll get a release on Netflix so you all can check it out.  In the meantime, DVDs available at harmonythemovie.com.  Feeling a bit lazy today with the words, so you can check out my notes on the movie here, and a good cross section of other reviews at IFC.

The French Kissers (Les beaux gosses)
Started & Finished: 10/28/09
Plays tonight at the Clay Theater, 7pm! Director in attendance.

Imagine a French Freaks & Geeks with a dash of Youth In Revolt, and plenty of writer/director Riad Sattouf’s own clever humor that makes even the crudest moments of adolescence feel genuine.  Not sure if this has a U.S. release, but it’s playing as part of French Cinema Now.  Highly recommended for anyone that has experienced puberty.

Where The Wild Things Are
Started & Finished: 10/26/09

I have many vivid memories from my childhood where, for one reason or another, I thought or said some variation of “Being a kid is so hard!!!!!!!  Adults just don’t get it.”  With a handful of years under my belt, I find myself thinking, “Kids don’t know how easy they have it.”  With my foot firmly lodged in my mouth, I’m here to announce that kids do indeed have it rough: Where The Wild Things Are reminds us grown-ups that though our childhood angst may seem trivial in retrospect, those emotions are less powerful than the frustrations we experience as adults.

My own feelings about this film have run the gamut from overexcited to utter hopelessness as I followed the production news from breakthrough puppetry technology to studios demanding reshoots to lighten up the film for kids.  My expectations rested in a sort of purgatory where I couldn’t be too hurt if it was an awful film.  Luckily, my fears of an overly saccharine nostalgia piece were put to rest quickly, and the result is a genuine story with one of the most honest depictions of childhood put to film.

Director Spike Jonze and his co-writer Dave Eggers lured me in with a tale that I thought was about a kid, for kids.  But unlike most modern children’s films, Wild Things doesn’t attempt to be one movie for children, and another for adults.  Rather, the in-jokes and figurative camera-winks are for the kids, while the movie is really for the grown-ups.  Jonze and Eggers do an outstanding job of telling a child’s story for an adult audience while still staying true to Max’s perspective throughout.

My only complaint is the soundtrack— there was just way too much of it.  About 70% of the movie had some Karen O song or another in the background, and it felt like she was trying a bit too hard to come off as innocent and child-like.  As a result, the narrative tended to drift into music video territory every so often.

I’m not sure why the film has been getting such mixed reviews.  Perhaps those reviewers failed to take note of the film’s heart: It’s okay to be angry, lonely, sad, scared or frustrated, and it can be difficult to navigate those emotions.  But if you come out of this movie without feeling even slightly warm inside, you may be due for a trip to visit the wild things yourself.

Pet Sematary
Started & Finished: 10/23/09

One lesson I was taught in screenwriting regarding choosing your protagonist:  Who is the person least likely to be caught up in your plot?  For example, if you were writing Pet Sematary, you might ask: Who is least likely to believe in an ancient Indian burial ground that brings dead animals back to life?  Your answer might be “someone who knows reanimation is impossible.”  Like a doctor.

But the trick is to draw that disbelief out— if your character becomes a believer right away, you risk letting the air out of your story.  And if your story has no air, then I’m left watching an hour’s worth of a gullible, possibly mentally disturbed M.D. whose undead cat keeps popping out of cabinets.

It is important to remember that this is Stephen King’s Pet Sematary after all.  The last third of the movie almost redeemed the bulk of his famous (read: generally slow and cliched) exposition that leads up to the finale.  But I was expecting more zombie animals, so I was a bit disappointed.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the childhood nostalgia of this film to find it very frightening.  But I can’t really knock a horror film with Fred Gwynne (The Munsters), Blaze Berdahl (Ghostwriter) and a bunch of crazy cats.

Trick ‘r Treat
Started & Finished: 10/19/09

I always forget how much I enjoy scary movie season.  Not for the (usually horrific) horror films that have frequented theaters in the last decade or so, but for the openness the rest of the world shows toward a genre that has been relegated to the bargain bin at your local Walmart.  And for good reason: The market is saturated with remakes and reboots that rely more on surprising you with loud, nondiagetic sounds than manifesting actual fear.  But while I will watch The Shining any day, October provides a once-a-year opportunity to indulge in the crap that is Halloween-themed-horror.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some quality films centered around this holiday.  And I hardly consider myself a horror aficionado.  But the recession-proof nature of the genre only spurs Hollywood’s goals of quantity over quality.  So it should be no surprise that a film like Trick ‘r Treat was released straight to video.  What is surprising is that it’s actually a quality Halloween-themed flick that might have found a following in theaters had it been marketed properly.

The concept is simple: Several Halloween myths converge over the course of one night in Sleepytown, Ohio.  Add a bit of Tales From The Crypt and a splash of Pulp Fiction-style storytelling for an added gimmick, and you’ve got Trick ‘r Treat.  There’s the requisite gore, comedy and nudity in this 82 minute feature, and even several history lessons on the origins of the holiday.  And while it fails to drum up much fear in the audience, it certainly succeeds as a fun, Halloween-themed romp that recent horror has failed to provide.

Trick ‘r Treat was supposed to be released in 2007, but because it didn’t fit the Hollywood model, it was tossed away and only released a few weeks ago.  The film is certainly no replacement for the classics, but it could have been a step in the right direction for a tired genre if it had been given the chance.  Perhaps one day, the world will produce tweens that find the Saw series boring and demand something original.  But until that day, I’m afraid we’re stuck wading through the tripe that is modern-day horror.  And that is a scary thought.  Bwa-ha-ha-h… shut up.

Up In The Air
Started & Finished: 10/14/09

When, by the end of a film, there’s nothing left to really speculate on, what are you supposed to think about?  For some reason, I’m left feeling like Up In The Air went in one ear and out the other.

It’s by no means a bad movie— I was attentive throughout, even during some textbook-cheesy moments.  The direction was fine, the script was quick and clever, and the acting was good, but it’s not very challenging.  Which is fine—I guess I was expecting something a bit deeper.  Rather, I wasn’t expecting such a morally straightforward story.  It’s really one big cautionary fable about the perils of being a manchild.

I did really enjoy the conclusion of the film, and how that was handled— but only then did writer/director Jason Reitman really bring the drama.  It’s also a good example of efficient storytelling, and the sleight of hand required to bring scenes to life (specifically, the act of showing one thing while characters are saying another, and letting the audience read the true meaning of the scene).  I’m not sure when Up In The Air will be in wide release, but it feels like it’d be a very enjoyable holiday-break type movie.  Easy, funny, relatable, and not too depressing.

Youth In Revolt
Started & Finished: 10/13/09

Bringing a book to the screen is always a daunting task— do you play to the studios and streamline the concepts, or do you kowtow to the fanboys and keep every last detail?  Adaptations seem to fail because they try to appease both sides, and do well at neither.  But Youth In Revolt manages to find that sweet middle ground that conveys the story at the heart of the novel, while taking liberties to ensure the tightest, funniest movie possible.

The film soars as an adaptation, but also as a film unto itself.  I was initially skeptical of some casting choices (I feel like I’ve been on Michael Cera overload this year), and wary of the process by which screenwriter Gustin Nash condensed a 500 page book into 89 minutes.  Having finished the book several weeks ago, I recognized 95% of the plot, and 99% of the jokes.  Yet it was told in a fresh and distinct way, focusing on the key plot elements that pushed the film along at quite a clip.

I’m happy to report that Michael Cera does an excellent job of playing roles outside of the traditional shy-guy archetype.  While it’s still a variation of the awkward teen, Cera’s Nick Twisp is more like Arrested Development’s George Michael a few years down the road, with enough sexual frustration to mow down anyone and anything in the way.  François is an entirely different beast that Cera pulls off with excellent poise and timing.

While it’s disappointing to see some of my favorite book moments and characters removed from the film (Fuzzy Defalco, jocks hitting on Carlotta, and any mention of T.E.’s), it’s clear that an overabundance of information would have ruined the story.  Instead, Nash and director Miguel Arteta make the best choices possible, excising the most extraneous and amping up the plot points that tell Nick’s dire quest to lose his virginity.  The novel contains so many more subplots and loads of cringe-inducing awkwardness, but the genius of this adaptation is that it gives the best of the bare bones—barely any narrative manipulation was necessary.  So if you see the film, but still want to read the book, don’t worry: it will still be like meeting Nick Twisp for the first time.  That is, assuming you really want to revisit that first scene.

The Wire, Season Two
Started: mid-September, 2009 | Finished: 10/11/09

Second seasons of TV shows make me nervous.  They inevitably introduce a slew of new characters, which are difficult to adjust to.  Everything that was wrapped up in the first season is long since forgotten, and the gang is off to a new adventure this year.  The Wire is keenly aware of these pitfalls of serialized drama, and avoids most of them by giving a broader view of Baltimore’s drug scene in which all of these sophomore season traits are nothing but believable.

The jargon seems easier to follow this season (whether it be my own adjustment, or network execs clamping down after a wordy first season I’m not sure), but the complex interrelationships between an assortment of drug runners becomes the new hurdle to jump over.  I’m not sure I grasp the massive amounts of connections going on just yet- and I’m not sure how many are legitimately involved with each other, and which are symptoms of a small(ish) city being run by a handful of kingpins.

In any case, it adds much tension to the season when the detail is always several steps behind the crooks.  Despite humanizing the bad guys in Season One, I felt this season was much more tragic, in that neither the cops nor criminals prevail— instead, it’s the people who get caught in the middle of it all who take the worst beating.  In doing so, The Wire has sunk its hooks deep into me, and won’t let go until I see how the saga finishes.

A minor beef: Those quotes up front are almost unbearably cheesy.  I understand what you’re trying to do, but it’s the punctuation that really gets me.  None of these lines would be under Potent Quotables in tonight’s Jeopardy match.  It would be much more effective, and much less cringe inducing, to format the quote as a line from a script, or even a play, if need be.  Consider:

versus:

It’s just a little classier my way, and a lot less pretentious.  (The quote selection still needs work, as you can tell.  I mean come on.  Does anybody even remember that line??)  But if this is your show’s biggest problem, you’re doing a lot of things right.  Onward to Season Three…

Zombieland
Started & Finished: 10/11/09

Just a bunch of wholesome zombie fun.  A funny script and solid acting kept me genuinely interested for the entire 80 minutes, despite some gimmicky tricks and a few cliched moments.  There are plenty of nods to zombie lore of the past, with enough twists to keep it feeling fresh.

That being said, World: Let’s cool it with the zom-coms for the next couple decades.  And possibly zombie movies in general.  I’m not calling for a bullet in the head, but maybe two in the kneecaps to slow it down.  The genre’s starting to get a little tiresome.