A Year of Movies is over. Now: morewertzler.com

Vernon, Florida
Started & Finished: 12/25/09

Sometimes watching an Errol Morris movie is like getting roped into a conversation with one of the guys who stands outside the Powell Street underground.  You’re not sure if he’s actually asking you something or if he just wants some change.  And you can’t really make out the words he’s saying until you’ve been listening for about 3 minutes, and you regret asking “What?” in the first place because you thought you were just hard of hearing.  But for some reason you see the situation out to its dire end, even if you stop paying attention halfway through.

Yup.  That’s what this one was all about.

Metro
Started & Finished: 12/5/09

I have a soft spot for movies that take place, or are shot on location, in my city.  I also have a soft spot for mulled wine in the wintertime, which may have led me to turn this on in the first place last night.  But let me tell you, Metro does not disappoint!

Just kidding.  It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a late-90s action-comedy starring Eddie Murphy penned by the writer of Tango & Cash.  (One of my favorite lines, from Murphy’s girlfriend: “Scott, do you remember when you lost that hostage on Union Square?  You came here that night and you made love to me… and it was so intense and so passionate, but… I didn’t even know what happened until I saw it on the news the next morning.”)

But I’m not interested in the complete lack of unoriginality in the movie— that was clear from the moment I added it to my queue.  I am interested in how San Francisco is portrayed on screen, which isn’t very often compared to other major cities.  The geography of Metro’s San Francisco is pretty true to the real thing, at least where the cable car chase is concerned.  They don’t drive all the way through Chinatown only to come out in the Sunset.  But there are really only two districts in Metro— Union Square, where everyone goes to work, and North Beach, where everyone lives.  (Also, all bad guys live under the Bay Bridge.)

What was most amusing was how the regular problems us San Franciscans deal with day-to-day pose problems for even the criminals in the movie— for example, disgruntled Muni workers, narrow parking garages, and clogged intersections make for sloppy getaways.  Clearly, Hollywood’s San Francisco is not a good place to be a crook.

I was pleased to see Spiros from The Wire, Season 2 starting his ascent up the criminal ladder.  He’s really gotten confident since his days doing his cousin’s bidding.  In fact, this movie kept me more entertained than Rudo y Cursi.  Is that so wrong?  My biggest disappointment was really my own fault— when I queued this up, I thought Eddie Murphy was going to be playing a Muni cop.  I suppose there’s always the inevitable sequel that could be right around the corner!

Barton Fink
Started & Finished: 11/26/09

You know what?  I didn’t get it.  Okay?  I said it.  Great acting, great dialogue, beautiful sets, love the Coen Brothers, but… they lost me with this one.  I wrote the following as an attempt to cover up that I really had no idea what to make of the movie, and don’t have the urge to consider it further.  If you care to read my cowardly review in which I hide behind big words, you can do so with a line through it all.  Ugh.  This is so unintentionally (yet fittingly) meta it makes me sick.

You know you’re doing something right as a filmmaker when you can break the rules and still have the audience in the palm of your hand.  While a movie with minimal character interactions and such lengthy scenes might be doomed with any other writer and director, the Coens and co. pull off an incredible feat in Barton Fink: they make the excruciating dullness of writer’s block fascinating.

But quite some time after the mood is established, the plot takes a hard right turn and veers into more ambiguous territory, where heavy symbolism crashes the party.  Because I was so invested in the writerly aspects of the film, the (now expected) Coen Brothers thriller twist felt abrupt.  Once murder came into play, the story flew off the rails and into a murky grey area in which the audience is expecting a noir mystery and instead, gets a questionable allegory.

I realize that my frustration with this ambiguity is contrary to my own philosophies— namely that the best films have a fair amount of uncertainty so as to involve the audience.  But my issue with Barton Fink stems from neither the straightforward story nor the metaphor were able to stand alone by the end- nothing made sense in either established worlds.

I really do want to love this movie, and I’m much happier having finally seen it from beginning to end.  But I’m just not invested enough in parts of the plot to make me want to ponder the true meaning of the film for much longer than it takes me to write this.  That John Turturro though, wow.  And I thought I had trouble typing these 3-paragraph write-ups.