The Dark Knight

This movie, if you didn't hear, was fantastic. The acting is top tier from everyone involved, with special note going to the late Heath Ledger for thoroughly creeping out millions as the joker.  The camera work is gorgeous as it paints Chicago into a battlefield for the two juggernaut forces of good and evil while on the side there's the tale of one man's fall from glory.  The story is compelling as hell and sticks with you after the credits roll.  The action is fucking punch-to-the-face classic  and brutal, and it's just a fantastic masterpiece of a film.

I was somewhat conscious of it, but note that I did not once mention neither "comic book movie" nor "superhero movie" which are both applicable descriptions of the film's genre.  The fact is, this film transcends those labels.  In those confines this is one of the best ever made hands down.  Outside of it is the more impressive element.  IT STILL HOLDS UP QUITE HIGH.  The reason I'm dwelling on this is because I'm getting a little irked that people can't help but look at it from that lens.  It's too narrow.  This lens is dangerous and not merely from the standpoint of limited options for comparison.  What I'm talking about is this group of hardcore fans.  The actual comic book readers or tv show viewers.  They feel some sort of sense of entitlement to a film that will be loyal to a favorite character.  I am often seeing the phrase "holds true to the comic" or nonsense like that.  There have been so many takes on Batman by DC Comics themselves that this phrase has just about no meaning.  In some he's just a vengeful vigilante out for justice.  In others he is a torn and tortured soul who will never get full satisfaction for witnessing the murder of his parents.  It's really pretty open ended and explains the polar oppositions of Christian Bale's Batman and Adam West's.  This phrase simply does not matter, and moreover, this method of thinking only serves to keep the comic book medium in the lower echelon of art that it tends to dwell within.  

Consider the fan I'm talking about who is so strongly attached to this character that s/he'd fucking flip if Batman held a pistol and so much as beat someone to a pulp with it.  Imagine if Christopher Nolan had directed a scene wherein Batman does exactly that, and it's so brutal and visceral that it has a self-contained resonance, revealing even more about Batman than could be stated.  This fan will not be considering this at all.  All he will consider is that will be on in his head is how fucking blasphemous the scene was.  Batman does NOT HOLD GUNS.  HOW CAN THEY DO THIS TO ME?

Fans, these filmmakers owe you nothing.  DC Comics?  They owe you nothing too.  If they trust what Nolan has in mind, that's the end of it.  Welcome in a new twist on a familiar face and look how glorious it can be.  A thing about art is that it's dynamic and always changing.  This includes characters in stories.  If you don't allow for this growth, you're only wanting a novelty to sustain a comfortable status quo and entertain you.  This is not constructive.  This is not art.  You are effectively being unfair to both the character to whom you are irrationally loyal and to his source medium, forcing it due to economics to never grow and thus look silly ALL THE TIME AND FOREVERMORE.  Please get over it.  You will find a wealth of possibilities can lead to both bad and good outcomes.  Let it happen, let there be growth.  An entire industry depends on it.  If you don't like what changes, don't buy it.  But Jesus... give these options a chance!

And also, I want to take this opportunity to go ahead and say, without having read The Dark Knight comic saga, that Frank Miller is a hack.  After having read his Robocop comics and having seen Sin City and 300, I am convinced he is a man who can do nothing more than make creative settings for action, tits and violence.  Character development is nil.  Perhaps Dark Knight is an exception given that he's dealing with a firmly-established character and not one of his creation.  Sure, Mickey Rourke was great in Sin City, but I still didn't care about his story because it was more about the pretty moving pictures than anything.  That goes for everything else in the film and ditto 300 which got praise for being a bloody action movie.  That's the one constant I've experienced thus far.  And the fact that the dude behind 300 is directing The Watchmen certainly doesn't bode well for it.  Oh yeah, he also did Dawn of the Dead.  Any substance that graphic novel boasts will be squandered if this track record has any indication.  But that's not the focus of this paragraph.  What is is that Frank Miller probably sucks.

wall-e

So far, this is my favorite movie this year, and probably one of my favorite movies of all time.  Jesus Christ this movie is the first one to give me a feeling that ET gives me since fucking ET.  I loved it so much.

It's one of those movies that, like Pixar's last one, Ratatouille, gives you entertainment in its purest and greatest form, and somehow this pure and simple form of entertainment is utterly loaded with substance.  From social commentary to love, the movie is fucking packed and you're going to be utterly delighted from start to finish.

The question of what makes comedy comedy has been debated for a long long time now, but the one thing that is absolutely agreed upon is that it ALL derives from pain.  Even a poop joke is rooted in a natural human function that, if deferred long enough, can kill you.  It's utterly absurd that something so disgusting is so vital to living.  That said, a truly great work of humor does have the power to absolutely floor someone.  The folks at Pixar, incidentally, have an incredibly venomous sense of humor with just the right amount of hope, making for visuals that are indeed both funny and unnerving with how incredibly possible it all seems.  I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that Al Gore likely wishes he could draw these kinds of audiences.

Then there's a challenge to acting here where a couple of animated robots who never really speak any English at all convey emotions as competently if not moreso than most A List actors.  It's astonishing and I can't help but imagine it also being insanely time consuming.  I mean Jesus they made a couple ROBOTS make me almost cry and definitely got me a little misty eyed.  Folks, I don't cry at movies.  The ones that stick out in my mind are films I came back to viewing time and time again, and they didn't get that out of me on first viewing.  I came incredibly close in this one.  The funny thing is it likely happened in instances that weren't meant to induce that reaction.  Regardless, so it went.  Wall-E is one of my favorite protagonists ever.  Portraying an ironic sense of wonder that so insanely heartfelt it's almost baffling that it worked on me.  But that charm!  That humor!  Dude is fuckin' adorable!  Can't you see it!?  How can this kind of preciousness not get to you?

And of course his and Eva's journey is fantastic and unfolds at the pitch-perfect pace and tone for the movie.  Pixar seems to have this down so well it's stupid.  It almost makes filmmaking seem like craftwork than artwork.  The only thing keeping it a thing of art is how much feeling it evokes.  There's more here than mere technique, it's gestalt writ large.  More than that, it's madly inspiring.  The end credits roll and something inside me wishes it could be part of something like this.  Something truly great and valuable.  Something that makes people feel like a kid and look in awe.  I caught myself with my mouth wide open and looking agape and retarded at the screen in a particular scene of exposition and it was one in many signs that I knew this was a great movie.  

I also bring up Lord of the Rings now because within the first five to ten minutes of Fellowship I thought something along the lines of "This is going to be a great film."  No movie has given me that reaction until now.  If I could personally thank fucking ANYONE who worked on the film, I would.

Ok, now the brutal part.  I have to say, by the ending my throng of awe and joy and wonder and more awe and sympathy tapered a bit.  Only a bit, but endings are tough beasts.  The fact is this is an adventure, and can only end in a finite number of ways, and they chose one.  They did it well, but it was one of the many all the same.  This isn't even really so much a criticism as it is a frustration that such journeys end.  I guess that the ending wound down in such a way is the disappointment.  Relative to the joy and wonder the rest of the film brings, it's fairly standard.  Hardly enough to diminish the value in it, though.

Not that the movie will incite revolutionary practices on care for the environment or anything, or that it will all of a sudden get people to once again appreciate this beautiful planet that dwarfs even the mighty internet, but I truly think it can open some eyes.  I think Pixar has done something that might actually serve as a valuable reminder about how good things can be and that they are worth fighting for.  Maybe it will be a minority of its audience, but I'm willing to wager it's more than many films that aim for such goals would achieve.

Terrific work.  Would watch again. A++++++

First Video Games Post: GameSpot

I hope this doesn't completely turn off my avid viewer base, but I'm talking video game stuff today.  

Today it's about GameSpot.  A very well established site that gets tons of viewers and tons of content.  What they also seem to get is tons of controversy in terms of their reviewing of games.  There seems to be rather clear circumstantial evidence suggesting that they don't exactly do the unbiased part of reviews so well.  And of course that's not completely possible to do anyway, but here's the story in a sentence for everyone.

One of their most notoriously critical critics (even downsizing the fantastic Zelda: Twilight Princess) was fired a few months ago for giving a genuinely bad game a bad review because the Spot was making money off their publisher.

Adding to that sentence, there's matters to consider like a mysterious anonymous editor posting about it in the forums talking about how wrong his termination was.  Another is that the entire visual theme of the place, at the time, REVOLVED around promoting that one game.  See what I mean?  It's fishy.  Of course they denied it, but I still think at least a modicum of bullshit is in that denial.

A more recent instance has popped up, causing me to start writing in this here journal again.  It involves the infamous Grand Theft Auto IV, which as we speak is getting more perfect scores than any game preceding it.  It's absolutely impressive, and in my eyes even a bit ludicrous.  These reviewers are pointing out flaws, and yet it's boundary-pushing and all that happy horse shit.  I think timing has a lot to do with it.  This game is released when there's literally NOTHING ELSE COMING OUT and everyone's high over the last November, chock full of amazing shit like Mario Galaxy or Call of Duty 4, is worn off.  It's been a relatively wan influx since then and then all of a sudden BANG, a stellar title rolls out.  I just find it a little superlative to score this game 10's, but so it goes.  I've never played it, maybe it will be the first game to make me cry, but I doubt it.  It's fucking GTA.  You commit crimes for people or yourself in a better looking city and with multiplayer.  But I digress. (and don't get the wrong idea, I'm still excited as dick to play it)

So of course the suspense comes when we all wonder what the fuck GameSpot is going to give it.  Mind you, I was only going to hear what the score was, as I have not visited the site since the past controversy.  There's enough there to tell me it's fucked up.  Anyway, the score rolls out.  And it is... a 9.5!  a 10!  A PERFECT 10 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!  HURRAY THE TRADITION CONTINUES!  EVEN GAMESPOT LOVES IT!

Fuck that site.  They actually CHANGED their fucking rating after it was published.  Sure, it's entirely possible the reviewer had a change of heart and decided yes, this game is amazing and deserves a 10.  What's more likely is politics upped that score.  GTA4, too, has ads about the site, and I'd imagine an angry fanbase is just so hard a thing to deal with.  Jokes I tell you, nothing more.

What really bothers me most about this is that, really, it's hard to single just these guys out, and it's also hard to single out just video game sites.  The potential for this kind of shit going into reviews is sadly high.  What's even more sad is how utterly unsurprising it is.  It just backs that age-old "money talks" thing.  That or just being a bunch of pussies about dealing with disagreement.  I can understand the latter, considering that even I bite my tongue when confronted with someone who loves something I hate (Across the Universe being a choice exception).  But this is different.  This is a task laid unto you, and social pleasantries or whatever shouldn't factor in.  A review is there to inform people who have not experienced a work (of art or otherwise), or to those who have give something they can use in comparing their own opinion or even augment it.  That's not happening if money or politics are getting factored in.

What sucks is that it's tricky to find good honest ones, and this is especially true in video games, I feel, where reviews are ostensibly a bunch of rattling off of mechanical elements of the game and not so much about the feeling one gets while playing.  Adding to that is that everything about reviews is bullshitable.  Anyone can write glowing praise about something they hated.  Go back and read an old book report you wrote to see what I mean.  So imagine how easy it is to say you love or hate a bunch of mechanical elements about a game without even lying about how you feel about the goddamned thing.  So petty and easy to lie about it's ridiculous.  

So really it boils down to an issue of trust on the reader's part.  We choose to trust the thoughts and ideas of certain people and their taste in things.  We trust that they're well read/watched/played (haha)/listened/jerked off (porn) and we trust that they have a good discerning eye/ear/dick (porn)/hand (video games/porn).  On top of that, they have to have a good writing style.  You also have to WANT to read what they're saying or hear in this day and age.  But that comes after the trust, because if you don't trust the source, you could give a shit what they're saying.  The only exception is if you trust their untrustworthiness, like the Onion or SomethingAwful I suppose.  

GameSpot, unfortunately, is no exception.  They're unveiling their practices, and it's both laughable and sad.  I'm sure they're in good company, but they slipped up and made it known.  It sucks because it throws into question what earns trust.  I used to read their reviews because of their penchant for being particularly harsh, even when it went against my own thoughts on a game.  I just can't anymore, and it kind of sucks.  Maybe I'm being unfair, considering GTA4 is a high profile game that would cause that kind of tension, but I don't think so.  The previous title, Kane & Kynch, was high profile as well, but definitely not on the level where it warranted payola to get involved and get a critic fired.  I suppose it's worth noting, though, that they did keep his score up.  But to counter that, Jeff Gerstmann's firing led to the departure of at least five other GameSpot employees.  I mean shit's just gotta be all kinds of retarded, right?  I don't feel like I'm being unfair.  What makes me wonder if I am, though, is the fact that I may well trust someone who does the exact same thing, only are a little more crafty.  Perhaps the thing to do is read it/watch it and decide for ourselves the value of their opinion.  It's just hard for me to not hold a grudge to a group that takes the whole review thing so lightly and likely sees it as more of a business opportunity.  And besides that, like I said, there's plenty of sites reviewing in that mechanical style anyway.  To lose one is not a significant thing.  I may change my mind on this, but for now I just can't support a site that functions this way.

I suppose I can go ahead and say that Zero Punctuation is probably one of the better game critics out there today.  Watch his silly reviews.  That's him talking, and that's his thoughts about it, it's clear and it's funny.  If it's all bullshit, he's spectacular at it and he's worth a view on that alone.

Blah, whatever.  I'm posting it and leaving it here.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Wes Anderson is one of those people whose work I love so much it rouses concern in me that I just might be a hipster. What also rouses concern is how each time I watch it, The Life Aquatic becomes a better and better movie to me, and it's generally regarded as his weakest one yet.

But no film has had Bill Murray with as much time on screen completely topless, and this MUST count for something, shouldn't it?

Having been utterly and emotionally crushed by the fact that I can find NEITHER my Flight of the Conchords Season 1 dvd's NOR Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I resolved to watch this film, which was oddly placed upon my bookshelf. Given the way this film seems to want to act as a sort of play on screen rather than fully explore the elements unique to film moreso than other Anderson films, I find it, while overlooking that it was probably my indolent self putting it somewhere, droll and ironic. So it's no longer there, and it was played, further justifying my purchase. Thumbs up.

My girlfriend at the end: "It was ok." Oh yeah? Well you like Kevin Barnes of Of Montreal and he LOVED it! So yeah! That proves nothing!

The truth is she's absolutely right. I feel that Wes aims far and wide with this one, and with many stylishly sparse and tight long shots hopes to not only offer us an epic overseas adventure, but a deep exploration of the emotions spanning a breadth of characters. For Wes here, it's ambitious as hell, and while it's all guessing since I have not seen it, it looks like he narrowed his focus a little more for his followup The Darjeeling Limited. I don't blame him, because Zissou and Crew just didn't hit it out of the park. What they did accomplish, though, was at least a two-base run that's totally worth watching in my mind.

Again, this is maybe my third or fourth time watching it, and it's one that grows on me. Given that the reach is so wide, you really absorb little on the first viewing but a gist of the story and a breadth of humorous characters. Watch the journey again, and you may soften up to Steve Zissou, played by Bill Murray with the dolor that got him award talks in Lost in Translation, and his desperation for finding someone still rooting for him. Actually, to tell you the truth, he's probably the only character that I've grown attached to at all, but it's become a fun thing to watch his journey. Steve would hate to hear me say it, but I seriously like the film.

That doesn't change the fact that I walked out of the theater after my first viewing feeling a little underwhelmed compared to how I felt walking out of Royal Tenenbaums, which was equally dense and increasing in value on repeat viewings. So why is that? Well, Royal and Steve are two main characters with a lot in common. Both are old men with past glories and they're looking for reasons why they went away and also finding a way to regain them. Both have reached a point of desperation when we find them. What Steve has that Royal does not, though, is 1) thinner characters. Most characters are only seen through the lens of their interactions with Steve. The only real deviations are incredibly brief and both involve Ned. It gives a little depth to some other characters, but not a lot. Royal, on the other hand, gives a good amount of focus to troubles facing Royal's children completely out of his control. It's truly a broader ensemble piece and goes far in giving everyone a purpose beyond reflecting ONE character's troubles. 2) Thinner side plots. I wanted to care more about Willem DaFoe's Klaus, but it just never came up. He's just desperate for Steve's regards and it's never really explained why since he's essentially a right hand man. I keep comparing to Royal, and I don't know if that's completely fair, but in that one you have a sort-of-incestuous love affair, a drugged out friend, and some other stuff that doesn't completely tie together but it's there and interesting on some level. At the very least, again, it gives some flesh to his characters. Zissou's side crap is interesting too, but not as much so. 3) No big adventure to worry about. This may be the biggun' because this part was actually really cool in this movie. Completely unrealistic, we have Steve flip out on Filipino pirates to the Stooges' "Search and Destroy" and a very awkward yet awesome shootout/chase on their hideout island. It's funny and fun in an Indiana Jones kind of way, but stylistically anything but. It's actually pretty entertaining and is something new for Anderson. But it does pull away from time that could be spent developing characters. Thus everything is left feeling a little half-baked.

But fuck you all, sometimes the doughy bread is the good shit. It's soft and mushy, but there's some substance there. And style, which doesn't fit the bread analogy but Anderson's style is in top form here. From those strange jump cuts that feel abrupt but totally work somehow, to a full setpiece of all the ship's (the Belafonte) decks leading to very impressive long takes that make for almost a comic book feeling. My girlfriend didn't feel comfortable at all during these, though, so your mileage may of course vary. And it still amounts to something. Again, it's not as good as it could have been, but come on now. The ending does kind of get to me. I'm happy to see the redemption and I do feel it.

The added focus on action has other perks as well. Here we have Wes throwing in visuals of the deep sea. With CG and claymation he does, to an extent, capture the sense of wonder of his audience. This is new territory for him, and again the high aim means it doesn't get all the attention it deserves, but it does offer a level of aesthetic captivation that's worth noting. But it does even more. It actually proves itself to be a neat little symbol of Steve's own vitality, first being something taken for granted to something that completely halts the film. It all comes together at the end to remind Steve that, as he puts it, "this is an adventure." This viewing is the one where I finally begin to understand what the hell he might mean.

Maybe it's forced. Maybe it's the dedication of a Wes Anderson fanboy, but if I really am one, wouldn't I have seen Darjeeling Limited by now? Wouldn't I have been excited for it rather than concerned that he's rehashing themes he's revisited several times over at this point? And again, I didn't feel this way when I first watched it. For some reason I started caring more as I re-watched. Perhaps it's one of those things where you're better able to sort through the pieces, and the pieces just aren't as well organized this time around. So what I'm here telling you is this: there's some really pretty, very worthwhile pieces here. You can sift through them and make something special of it, but it is a little broken up and not as well put together as Wes's other gems. I still give it a recommendation.

One Hour Photo

First of all, to discuss the newfound joy in watching movies on television. I would have never gotten up and watched One Hour Photo on my own, but there it was. The main motivation to watch this movie again was the fact that my girlfriend, who hates Robin Williams, had not seen it, and I wanted her to see him at his utmost creepiest. Bless her heart for putting up with my adamant pushing for watching particular movies, but I still have not dragged her into a Lord of the Rings viewing, but rest assured... IT WILL HAPPEN.

Anyway, another reason was, for the first time in a long time, I came upon the movie as it was starting, which is fantastic. It was still on FX, meaning everything is edited to hell, but fortunately this movie remains relatively clean, and ironically the one scene with any nudity at all is pretty much there entirely. What's NOT there is the word "fuck" and some pictures of someone's amateur porn that Sy, Robin Williams' character, develops. But anyway, the movie on the whole is there.

And that movie, overall, was kind of disappointing on this viewing.

So here's the deal, this is a Fox Searchlight picture, which usually means those slightly off kilter movies that aren't HEAVILY subversive or stylistically unnerving on the viewer, but they're also awkward enough to not earn a spot with the Fox label. Think Juno or Little Miss Sunshine for the humor section, this film for the suspense/horror.
That being the case, this movie gets a little more artsy than most, and it makes for interesting contrasts to the typical "follow the creep" and being that photos are the setting, most those contrasts are visual. Rather than live in the dark and be a generally murky man. Sy Parrish is a man who looks clean and pristine. His apartment is almost entirely white barring things like stove grills which I'm sure he'd make white if he could help it. To color things a little bit, he may wear a blue tie or blue messenger bag to match his bright blue eyes. It's neat because it shows man who's empty, neurotic as hell, and of course weird with a hint of well-wishing. But what primarily makes him creepy is his obsession with a specific family that frequents his One Hour Photo counter at their local SavMart. As it turns out, he makes duplicate copies of EVERY roll of film they bring in and keeps them for himself to place on a wall of his. Creepy and dorky all in one. As it turns out, this is the one colorful part of his apartment, and it doesn't even really belong to him. Everything about it screams creepy lonely longing motherfucker.

So what happens when he learns that this family he idolizes is far from perfect? When he learns that the story in the photos is basically a lie? Watch the film to find out!

Now, had Robin Williams not played this character, it's very possible this movie would go down in flames. First of all, he does creepy extraordinarily well, walking that line of decency/inappropriate work interactions uncomfortably well. He behaves like a normal miserable person at home and lets his surroundings do all the talking. It's subtle, it's pristinely disgusting, it's great. Everyone knows him to be funny (Mork & Mindy) or incredibly useless and stupid (RV). He's not often given these roles, and I think we're about due for another one. I enjoy it, and I bet if he weren't famous, he would be this creepy to people. Actually, most actors would.

But it's an understatement to say he could've ruined the movie if he didn't perform well. Even if he did a moderate job, this movie would, in my eyes, tank. First off, the plot holes are a series of small things that after a while grew grating. Things like the mother character telling her boy she's just dropping off some photos so don't take long in the store, and then saying that she'd like to pick up the photos that very same day in an hour. It's a minor oversight, I know, but it's there. Some others seem to have more to do with keeping the movie stylish rather than logical, but whatever. That's the small nitpick. The bigger one has to do with that style. The film uses its distinct visuals EVERYWHERE and it's a huge part of the film, and it goes over the top when it starts to just film shit and let the viewer make symbolism out of it. Once in a while it's witty, like a mirror looking like a photograph, but often it's just stupid. "Let's film a lone coin-op rocking horse outside the shop running with no one on it! Yeah, that's lonely!" It gets a little much.
I bet writer/director Mark Romanek hoped this to be significant. He hoped it would be his Taxi Driver or something, and I can see how he could have succeeded. The imagery shows a static lifeless world filled with shelves of crap in stores, and Sy's home reflects it to an extent. And being a byproduct of a materialistic world, he himself is almost like a robot seeking affection with only images of it to have any understanding, and then the ideal image is shattered leading to a breakdown. I get that, but for some reason I just wasn't all too shook up at the end of this film. There was just a guy I felt sorry for because he was lonely and honestly didn't do much about it. At least Travis Bickle tried to establish relationships. One Hour Photo is more about the look of the world and Sy himself, and not enough on the world itself or the characters around him who offered decent performances but whose fairly prominent presence away from Sy just made him even more of a creepy guy than an antihero.
But I have to bear in mind that Romanek is primarily a music video man, so of course it's heavy on the visual side. A lot of this shit looks like it'd come right out of a music video or TV commercial, the photos themselves are a horrible victim of this, actually.
Again, Robin Williams turns in a great enough performance, and you do get a moral quandary at the end, but it's just a few elements short of sheer greatness. However, it's also much more stylish than a lot of great movies. If there were a scale with one end stating Style, and the other stating Substance, it would lean toward style, but closer to substance than many similar films. I'd say that's worth something. It's still a fun creepy guy thriller at its heart.

Now, I've seen many a Seagal film.  And I've seen Under Siege before, which is very likely the best movie to come out of the Steven Seagal canon.  That alone doesn't say much considering his reputation for churning out complete shit, but still as an action flick this doesn't completely blow chunks.  Now, while this did not stop me from falling asleep on the film, I am still comfortable saying this.

I should also warn everyone that I am basing this review on my "sleep through" viewing, which was aired by TNT and means that almost all the violence and cussing was shoddily edited out completely.  My dubiously high mark of Steven Seagal's best work involved me filling in the bleeps and cuts with what I remember to be the actual unadultered film.

I'm not entirely sure where to start on reviewing this.  See, I think this is my first go at the shallower waters of cinema, and that's hollywood action flicks.  Ok, I'm hitting a stride now.  These movies require no level of intelligence, defy reality at all points, and, if done right, are a lot of fun for all said reasons.  If not, they can be a complete chore to get through.  

There is a key exception to the chore rule, though, and that is the age of the audience.  When I was in my early to mid teens and even probably a little before that, these movies were pretty much the finest examples of cinema to me.  I was a child whose first viewing of a Mortal Kombat arcade machine threw me into a frenetic fascination with all violent media.  Never once, mind you, being violent myself, I did find violence to be pretty much the greatest thing the world had ever known.  Many years later, something happened to me.  I went to watch films like XXX and Collateral Damage and thought they were pretty much the worst thing to come along (research post-writing shows these were both made in 2002, the year I graduated from high school).  All of a sudden I was, more and more, seeing these films as brawny smatters of retardation masking a complete lack of story or interesting characters with big explosions and guns.  When I revisit the movies I loved as a kid, I see that, for many of them, this is the case.  So in my growing up, for better or worse, my tastes changed dramatically.  Now, I'm guessing that I'm not alone.  There are others that went through a similar progression.  But not all, for I know people that still get excited about new movies starring Stone Cold Steve Austin, and the man I have in mind was indeed older than me.  All the same, I know I'm not alone. 

I WILL say this, though: Martin Riggs, John McClane, and to a lesser extent Casey Ryback here are far more entertaining characters than the action protagonists filmmakers are coming up with today.  Why do you not see more XXX sequels?  Not a whole lot of action film franchises springing up on the whole, are there?  They're just getting dumber and less valuable.  I daresay that these movies, while they're also brawny and stupid, still had something about them.  Riggs and Murtaugh of Lethal Weapon would joke around and bicker and argue and it was charming and funny.  The camera often even took us into their personal lives, over the films getting us familiar with Murtaugh's family and Riggs' start of being a complete suicidal mess to someone coming back to his good side with his partner's help.  It's the buddy cop movie blueprint and it still hasn't been topped.  People still try because it gives the audience a little something more to care about if done right.  John McClane of Die Hard had all kinds of personal problems, but then he gets stuck in pretty much the shittiest situation a cop can get in, and he has no star-studded past so he just inexplicably wants to do the right thing.  Incidentally, the right thing involves kicking more ass than any normal man could handle, and really character development doesn't go as far, but it's there, and it's enough where you start to think McClane is pretty funny.

And finally, after all this, we get to Under Siege and its protagonist Casey Ryback.  On the surface, it can be looked at as a sort of anti-Die Hard.  It throws away the personal woes, keeps the wit as best it can with a non-actor like Steven Seagal, and keeps a keen focus on badassery.  Where McClane had you concerned because quite he had some stupid ideas on getting out of certain situations, Ryback left no concern at all.  Being an ex-SEAL with tons of medals and shit, you weren't worried about him.  The journey is more about seeing how he's going to fuck with the bad guys and cheering him on as every single scheme works.  Only one character with more than a couple spoken lines gets killed on camera making you feel bad, and even he's off to the side enough where you don't care.  This is Ryback's show, SPOILER INCOMING he severs limbs on table saws, rips out Adam's Apples with his bare hands, and even pushes in poor Tommy Lee Jones' eye and then stabs him in the head with a cooking knife.  SPOILER DONE but while it is a spoiler, it should be no surprise that the good guys win.  Still, behind all this, it's just a Die Hard ripoff.  A contained space with something of particular value is hijacked by an unusually smart and subtly wealthy team of sociopaths and thieves and one man, the overlooked detail, fights on because he's the only hope for everyone.  

The truth is, you can look a this film as the transition point to the action genre that now thrives.  A super badass that is cool to watch, but hard to care about because he does everything right.  He's essentially not human.  This is why sequels don't work.  Look at Under Siege 2 and XXX: State of the Union.  And when I'm honest with myself, those greats are better than what we get now.  There are four Lethal Weapons and four Die Hards because we liked the characters.  That's gone, and I miss it.  They're no fucking French Connection or Chinatown, but they're fun, and their characters are likable.  Now the characters are disposable and the flash is getting too much focus, completely destroying its value.  Who cares about a big explosion killing all the bad guys if we never got a chance to hate them to begin with?  A big part of that is that they want to kill heroes we don't give a shit about.

But I'd bullshit you if I said I've outgrown it.  Those flashy action sequences can still get me going if done well.  That second X-Men movie kicked all kinds of ass, and I love ALL THREE Spidey flicks.  I guess the Superheroes get all the love nowadays?  I also want to praise Die Hard 4, but it's such a throwback with modern day effects that it pretty much epitomizes what action movies ought to be.  It cheated, though.  It had John McClane.  Trump card, y'know?  Still, I loved it.  Other stuff is just shit.  Jason Statham, who I loved in Snatch, is churning out cookie-cutter style over substance action movies that no one should care about.  So is Angelina Jolie.

I'm greatly blaming the Matrix for this, even though that first movie was pretty good.  I will stop there because that trilogy is a whole other mess.

Not all hope is lost, though.  As I mentioned, superhero movies can really nail it sometimes as they're dealing with characters that have had years of fleshing out.  But there's new blood I like.  The Jason Bourne movies are flat out awesome, even with the nauseating editing and cinematography in the latter 2.  They're still compelling stories and a very unique protagonist with his nice guy demeanor and surprising depth with his confusion.  More like that, and we're in great shape.  Plus, the trend seems to be agreeing with me, as I haven't seen as much press for these movies lately.  Unless it's Michael Bay making dogshit like Transformers.  Fuck you, Michael Bay.  Go blog about blu-ray and stop making movies. 

Scorsese Pinch

I'm seeing this blog fast become a sort of film reviews thing. That's alright with me.

Tonight I'm going to talk about the Scorsese bits I've (re)watched over the last week: The Departed and GoodFellas. Both of these are superb film making for a variety of reasons. The obvious suspects are razor-sharp editing, brutal imagery and cinematography, and a cast that's at the top of their game at all times. This, of course, doesn't factor in that the stories are both compelling and really really cool. There's something else here, though. I think it's safe to say that Scorsese, for the most part, makes pretty brauny and masculine movies. Of course, if you look at his most-used editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, you really wouldn't expect this kind of stuff at all. But there it is, ripe with rapid cuts, wild camerawork, and sometimes what seems like glee-filled nutbaggery. What's more, this is art. There's a compelling statement being made in all this blood and guts and guns and gore and mobs and wiseguys and crime and uses of the word fuck. It's rare, but Marty, as he seems to be called by people in making-of docs, seems to have found the art in all this shit. He's legitimized the action and violence, and the trick, apparently, is in focusing on everything around that action.

Watch either film, or hell watch any number of his films. The action sequences are tight, but they're hardly the focus. A shootout in an old factory doesn't have half the suspense of the two main characters silently connected via cell phones waiting on each other to speak. It's everything else, and Marty sees that. That's why he's considered a great film maker.

In my Scorsese bug, I want to share a dream I had last night. It involved the John Woo film Face/Off, which is what a film like The Departed could have been in a lesser director's hands. It's interesting to note that Departed is based on a Hong Kong film and John Woo came from there. Again, Scorsese sees something that many others seem to completely miss (and it should be noted that Hong Kong cinema has a wholly different eye that's worth seeing as well). But anyway, my dream involved the plot of that film, but unfolding in a way that was more akin to a Scorsese or like-skilled director telling the tale. I will not share it here, because the idea's not terrible if it is in fact a huge knockoff.

But my main point is to show what HE would've done. Back to the two films...

Where GoodFellas focuses on this one world, it doesn't have the conflicting realities going on that, in my opinion, makes Departed the more powerful and, yes, superior film. This is a hard statement for me to make, but being completely honest, it seems the more fair statement to me. HOWEVER, GoodFellas may well be the more enjoyable film.
What it does, essentially, is give quite possibly the ultimate portrait of a foreign world right within our very streets. It humanizes a regular goon in organized crime and through his eyes glorifies and denigrates that world. On the surface, it's a classic portrait of a treehouse club of guys who have it all, but shows that the treehouse itself is pretty unstable and about to collapse, while at the same time showing that it's the members that make it that way. That's the easy stuff. From fun social stuff to gritty and unbelievably horrific violence that is apparently not at all far off the mark. The more interesting part is the protagonist who's right in the thick of it and not as some outsider we can fully identify with because of his unfamiliarity, but as a guy who we can fully identify with because of his humanity. We're painted a portrait, basically. And there's no specific wording going on, and maybe that's where I'm thrown. Through the classic Rise and Fall plot we're shown a lot of things that shows the mob like only a TV series several seasons long has managed to really compete with since. Even The Godfather series had a message in its carnage. This one leaves it to the viewer. Perhaps that's what makes it the greater artistic achievement, though? Like life, it offers pieces, and we can piece them together however we like, and what we make of it becomes a sort of reflection of our selves. A truly sinister person could look at this film as a mere cautionary tale of what happens when you work behind your boss's back. This all is delivered via charming characters and colorful scenarios of all kinds that you can't help but watch. All the violence is counterbalanced with oddly delightful social banter and shenanigans that you can't help but still kind of like them in some way. It doesn't hurt that it's stylish as all hell, either.
But does that diminish something like The Departed with its punch to your face dissertation on how fucked up and absurd the world is? It's not exactly new territory for Scorsese, but the way it's shown here is, where he basically takes a classic good vs. evil story and twists and swirls it into something where those distinctions mean almost nothing. Where bad guys do good for bad ends, good guys to bad for their good ends. Is it excusable on either side? The film raises such questions and they're almost impossible to answer. These themes are flawlessly tied in with a plot that is so gripping and intriguing, though, that by itself it's totally worth watching. The story is carried by two main characters who undergo about as much distress as you likely will watching it, and rather than throw in a stupid amount of arbitrary plot twists, it's all saved for the end when the tension hits a fucking apotheosis in madness that would indeed look stupid had it all been in someone else's hands. Here, though, we have it presented where the themes and story leave you with those questions and then tying them to any of characters in a number of ways. It's the kind of intricate jacked up shit you probably have going on in your own life but a whole lot more stylish and a whole lot more significant, possibly causing another kind of reflection. Extra props go to Jack Nicholson's performance as Frank Costello. Holy shit that's some fun glib evil! The film does, however, get a little much on the church and rat symbolism. The man can get indulgent, for sure.

Or, of course, you can accept these movies as shining examples of just really fucking cool movies. It's short sighted to stop there, but it's not unreasonable. However, if you ask what makes The Departed or GoodFellas so badass despite a lack of common crime movie elements, you may find why Scorsese's able to legitimize machismo in a whole other and wholly more constructive way.

Clearly, I'll give either movie an immediate recommendation. I was immediately quick to conclude that he was playing it safe by going back to a gangster setting with Departed, and I still do to an extent. It is his comfort zone, but he's looking at it from several points of view, and at completely different aspects, making for what is still a very fresh and worthwhile film. Plus, when I'm honest with myself, departures like The Aviator just don't come off as good, but still good y'know?



Side Shit:
I want to kind of rave about Martin Scorsese as a director too. He's not perfect. As I mentioned, I wasn't crazy about Aviator, Gangs of New York just felt lacking in a lot of ways, and while I haven't seen his entire catalog, I can see myself disliking others as well. What I love, though, is the undying passion the man shows for the medium. The dude still talks about movies as if he was in his 30s working on Taxi Driver, just full of energy and excitement about what can be done. It's ridiculously admirable and is a statement to finding that something you really truly love. For him, it's film. For the rest of us, who knows. We can only aspire to find that one thing though, huh?
While I can be completely wrong, he also just seems like a likable grandpa in his current look. Being the ex-coke head he is, that's kinda cool. Though I can be totally wrong about him. I've never spoken with the dude. It's all just guesses. He has gone through 4 divorces.

PLUS he's in New York, which, as far as my limited frame of mind is concerned, is the greatest city in the country. Call me fucked up, but I wish I saw it the way Travis Bickle did.

I Am Sam

It's not often that we get to watch regular ol' TV anymore. I have no real need for it. TV is so passe in this internet age that Discovery Channel is at last something viable. There is, however, one other perk to the diminishing value of the broadcast formula, and it's the similar one that is still found in Radio. Spontaneity. There is a certain joy to be had in hearing or seeing something you enjoy when you did not expect as much.
On a similar note, it's neat when a movie's on that you've heard all about but have never seen.

This is how I came to see I Am Sam roughly 10 minutes after its start.

Hot on the heels of a shitty Beatles-based cash cow, I watch this film which is ripe with shitty Beatles covers. Beyond that, the film isn't god awful and that in itself is noteworthy considering that they lay the schmalz on you HARD. If ever the greatest film device to rend a heart, it would be the retard.

Sean Penn plays said retard under the name Sam Something (I forgot his last name), and his daughter, Lucy, is played by Dakota Fanning pre-fame, and Michelle Pfeiffer, who also gets a Beatles name drop, Rita, is a selfish lawyer who chooses to act pro bono on his case because she gets insecure around her coworkers. "Why do they need a lawyer?" asks you who has no idea the premise. Well, basically, the world seems to think retards shouldn't be fathers, which is exactly the role Sam is in. However, he loves his daughter and the Beatles so much that he battles to win custody over her, and thanks to Pfeiffer's insecurity and initial intolerance, the plot rolls right along with lots of tensions and social faux pas.

You may also ask "How does the world single him out?" Well, he gets authorities' attention while talking to a prostitute, completely unbeknownst to him. This lands him a little custody time at the joint and then he's let go and family services not-literally follow him home.

The antagonist lawyer comes in and serves, oddly, little significance. Antagonism on the whole is interestingly an ensemble choice, which makes sense really.

Characters are all moderately fleshed out, with development there but kind of forced sometimes. Particularly, Pfeiffer and Penn's characters. She hates him, then at some point just starts to love him. It's weird and strange, and her personal life's hardships are defined by a proclivity to eat candy in stealth. That holds no bearing on her development, but it was an interesting PG13 choice to make. Normally it's pills or dick or something. Anyway, people just start loving Sam and things just all of a sudden start working out. It's a strange way for things to pan out and cuts off some moments the film builds up to. It's also a little frustrating, considering that it's a pretty long movie, but maybe it felt that way because of goddamned commercial breaks. The antagonist lawyer's a good dick too, because he seems to be a concerned dick. And who doesn't want another retard being a parent? I can think of a few I know personally.

Thematically is where the big miss is. While everyone turns in servicable performances, it doesn't change the fact that it feels a little overdone and silly. I can't really get on board when it could've really delved deep and been something interesting. As is, it's just a big moving picture meant to make you pity someone who may or may not be a good father based on his love alone. It's very romantic era-esque in that regard, but the question of intellect in parenthood isn't really challenged as much as the pity is riled out of you. Kind of like pro-life propaganda. The question wasn't really asked, but it's there all the same. It simply stops at "You don't have to be book smart to be a good parent."

The editing is also weird. It's almost a prelude to reality TV or something the way it was cutting around during court scenes.

I can't really recommend the movie as a renter. Rather, don't put effort into seeing this. TV gives you the same kind of stuff and I guess that makes it only fitting that that's how I saw it, and about the one way I'd say it's cool to stop surfing and invest some time in it. The commercials blew genitals of both genders, but that's not the film's fault. Boy do I hate commercials. Geh. The dilemma then, of course, is that you're going to put effort in if you record and watch it later, which may disappoint you.

Beatles Fanatic Notions

Sam's Beatles factoids boost its rating in my mind. It's too bad the soundtrack covers themselves sucked. And on the question of how well the songs work in the film's context. Compared to Across the Universe, give them awards. Overall, eh. They were wise and didn't have a musical on their hands, forcing them to twist the plot and stretch concepts just to cater to lyrics that are painfully irrelevant to screen events. Here, it's almost all emotions. To give us a glimmer of hope, there's a touching moment of non-contact between Sam and his daughter Lucy while "Blackbird" plays. It works on a melodic and lyrical level. Not uber-specifically, but enough. It wasn't forced, the emotion is conveyed and that's enough. Move right along and smile. Not bad.

Across the Universe: A Diatribe and a Spoiler

So hello, no one.

Here's the first blog entry to round out a glorious little collection of gems and stems and whatnots.  I do not know what that means, but it's exaggerated anyway.

Most the time this will be rambling about pop culture shit.  I have other blogs for angsty mopey shit so I'm just using this one here for practice.  Hopefully, in some capacity, it will pay off.

Across the Universe

I'm going to go ahead and tell you now that this review/scornful reaming of the film in question is going to be ripe with spoilers and yet I STRONGLY encourage my lack of readership to peruse its every word.  The reason is because it's a terrible film, and you really need to see this in words to evade the longest two hours and ten minutes of your life.

Let me put it to you this way: My girlfriend hated it.

It opens up decently enough.  In fact, it's a fairly comfortable opening.  I'm referring, of course, to the splash logos of the companies involved in exposing the world to Julie Taymor's biggest disaster and insult yet.  I have not seen any of her other works, but I can't imagine her being able to top stuff like this.  Actually, I saw the Lion King musical and that wasn't terrible.  But then how hard is it to pace a story that was already done for you?  

Things go south right after the splash.  We get a wide shot of a beach and we get introduced to Jim Sturgess' retarded-as-piss character Jude.  Do you get it?  His name is JUDE!  Like the SONG!  You know I bet they're going to USE THE SONG IN THIS MOVIE!  How about that!?  Anyway, he doesn't sing that to himself, but he does give a really abhorrent and schmaltzy a cappella go at "Girl."  The refrain to this song, in the original, has a slow-tempo strumming guitar and light drum and bass while John sighs the title a couple times.  When you take out that laid back music and just leave ANYONE sighing the world "girl" melodically, it sounds ridiculous.  All the same, his mopey "Don't I look like Paul McCartney!?" face suggests that we're about to experience a tale of intense love lost.  The the camera pays a lot of attention to the waves and uses them as a screen on which to show a collage of everything that made the TORRENTIAL 60's so TORRENTIAL LIKE WAVES CAN BE.  Backing this is a wailing rock out version of "Helter Skelter" that is competently executed, but still stupid.  The imagery it supports only makes it dumber.

From here we get to see a bright white 50s-styled prom of sorts and an introduction to Evan Rachael Wood's character, Lucy.  DID YOU HEAR THAT SONG TOO?  I don't remember the song they did, but like most on here, it's just a bland cover that isn't noteworthy in any capacity.  It's abundantly clear this early in that these covers were, by and large, made as close to the source material as possible.  This renders them pretty much innocuous and completely forgettable, as is apparent in the fact that I don't even remember what song they used at this point.  It heavily reaks of some lame logic like "Modern recordings for the youth who haven't heard the Beatles" (don't exist yet) or the more likely "We couldn't get the source material."  

Anyway, contrasting with this bright white world of Lucy's is Jude's black Liverpool night club.  They're both on opposite sides of the Atlantic and dancing their respective nights away.  I say respective because, really, due to the time difference of 6 hours (I am deducing that they live in Jersey somewhere from parts later in the film), I highly doubt their nights overlap that much.  Movies should suspend my disbelief on crap like this, but I came into this one with a chip on my shoulder so it's not slipping by.

I kind of started to space out with the movie around this point, but then we get a clip of Jude saying goodbye to his British gal with a surprisingly fitting "All My Loving."  Still innocuous, but it moderately ties into the events on screen.  I should take this moment to mention that the writers went through painstaking efforts to make these songs tie to the story as best as they possibly could.  What happened in doing this is a few things.  First off the good: They recontextualized the songs' lyrics and in some instances DID have them serve a story.  The bad: These reinterpretations are more often than not flat out stupid.  "Strawberry Fields" is used to juxtapose scenes of angsty youth angst with scenes of way.  "Dear Prudence" is used to coax wittily-named Prudence out of the closet.  It all reads as this: They tried WAAAAY too hard.  Past use of Beatles music in film is either amusingly irrelevant (Almost any use of a song on their own Hard Day's Night), or it's meant to reflect the emotions of events on screen (I Am Sam).  When you use the lyrics to explain events or tie things together, it usually ends in disaster.  Yes, this is not the first attempt.  Previously, we had the Bee Gees' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film that was, as costar Alice Cooper put it on VH1's I Love the 70s, the biggest act of musical blasphemy of all time.  Of course, he said that before this film existed.

ALL THAT SAID, "All my Lovin'" was used well enough.  He was leaving for America, and he promised to write home every day.  Nice work.  That alone might save it from beating Pepper.  

Fast forward a while and he winds up in Princeton to meet his biological father, who he talks to for a minute and then meets Max (a more less obvious reference: "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"), a troublemaker wayward student who sings "A Little Help From My Friends" while partying to solidify the new friendship friendship instantaneously and unconvincingly, like most relationships in the film.  

Then we see Lucy again, and she sings "It Won't Be Long" after getting a letter stating that her military boyfriend will be coming back soon.  GET IT?  The musical cue here is abrupt and her friends just start singing along with her for no apparent reason.  I guess they thought him a swell guy.  The number comes off like a portion of Hairspray that takes itself too seriously.  But again, the efforts of tying lyrics and plot together come off better here.

THEN we have Max pick her up from school for a Thanksgiving dinner and she greets him with a more-than-brotherly hug that confused me.  She then meets Jude in the back seat who is joining them.  

After a tense Turkey dinner where dialogue exchanged is trite, makes Max look like a complete retard and waste of life (probably why he was chosen to be drafted) that shames his father, Jude and Lucy get a moment where they talk about their home lives which I guess is romantic.  Then they go bowling and he sings "I've Just Seen a Face," which feels a little more forced with lines like "And she keeps calling me back again," which is impossible given that they just met that day.  the whole bowling choreography is perky and dips its toes into obnoxious, but "It Won't Be Long" is still the winner there.  Anyway, they're bowling and then decide the best thing to do is move to New York.  

Then we cut to Detroit for some reason, and see a lone black kid singing "Let it Be" in a fairly soulful way.  Wait, did this happen or did we randomly go to the Asian cheerleader Prudence who mournfully and American Idol-like sings "I Want to Hold Your Hand" first?  I don't know, whatever.  The Detroit thing leads to a gospel lady singing the rest of "Let it Be" because then we see the kid in a coffin.  I was honestly expecting him to bust out to sing the rest of the number.  It doesn't really matter, though.  Oh yeah, Lucy's boyfriend died too, IN WAR! and she's at his funeral, so there's a lot of death of characters we don't know and we see mourning of one character who so far seems shallow and of another we are JUST being introduced to so we can't identify with his mourning AT ALL!  Meet JoJo, the token black man of this roaring 60s piece.  Despite the stupid Beatles reference name, he mimics Jimi Hendrix as best he can.  The trouble is he really sings.  Oh and I guess the death of the soul kid, regardless of the ambiguous relationship, prompts him to move to New York.  Oh and that Prudence chick hitch hikes to... guess where (I guess her high school crush was so intense that she didn't pursue it at all?)!  

Do we see disparate elements COMING TOGETHER?  I think it's time for a song cue!  Except they missed on this one, thank God.  Instead they decide to use the song while JoJo is walking through New York City in bewilderment.  I would be bewildered too if the people walking down the sidewalk had some stupid choreography going on.  But I guess they used this song because of its appropriateness to the "black man swagger" because the lyrics are pretty ridiculous on the whole.  Unless JoJo here does, in fact, got toejam football and I just missed that part completely.

Oh and Lucy comes to New York to be with Max for some reason.  She arrives and then quickly falls in love with Jude despite the fact that we've seen do only one vapid conversation.  ADD ONE MORE TO THAT LIST, and then she starts singing "If I Fell" in a way that is a little off bother execution and content-wise.  That's another thing.  Most these songs work, but they may be just a little off, making it seem like they are way off.  Kind of like how you'll notice a minor blemish on your favorite shirt, and while it's not a big deal you know it just won't be a favorite anymore because you're shallow like this movie.  Anyway, Jude doodles for the first time her face on a wall and they manage to evade a police officer.  This establishes love.

So everyone's together under Sadie's roof (Jude and Max make a point to express how SEXY she is, btw).  Sadie sings, JoJo plays guitar for her, Max gets drafted for lack of any other purpose in the film, Jude all of a sudden paints, Lucy goes activist, Prudence meets the brand new lesbian day ("She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" to meet everyone, btw), and everyone's high on them ROARIN' 60s!  Oh yeah and there's some hippie characters there who never even get names.

Max takes his physical for his draft and puts no effort into dodging it beyond saying he's gay.  During the montage of his getting a physical, we get to hear a stupid weird version of an already weird "I Want You (She's So Heavy)."  I Want You is uncle same, whose soldiers all inexplicably have Jay Leno chins and make draftees kneel at their crotches while they dance.  When the song gets to the "She's so heavy" part, the lyrics-plot thing loses all wit and goes for something utterly stupid.  They have draftees singing it while CARRYING LADY LIBERTY THROUGH A FIELD.  OVER THE TOP SYMBOLISM?  NAH!  The film makers must have felt so confident in this that they NEVER BEFORE NOR AFTER THIS touch on the cost of freedom EVER AGAIN.  From here on it's back to SOLDIERS ARE SCREWED/BAD AND WE LOVE PEACE!  I can't believe this shit is done with a straight face.

Since Max can't escape his fate, they decide to go to a party thrown by a record label that wants to sign Sady.  Here we meet Dr. Robert, who is played by the only man in showbiz who could POSSIBLY play Dr. Robert: Peter Fonda Dennis Hopper Bono!  He rambles some drug-crazed shit and sings a decidedly-dumb version of "I Am the Walrus" which for some reason coaxes everyone onto a bus that leaves them "3000 miles" from home.  Since home is not California for them, Bono leaves them.  Makes sense, choosy philanthropist dickwad.  Oh wait, he's Dr. Robert... I guess he's a dick too.  

So they are in the thick of some forest where they find Mr. Kite, played by Eddie Izzard.  He of course sings the song that his character is attached to.  He mainly shouts rather than sings, and he throws in all these other silly quips as well.  It's not exactly funny, but it might just be the one moment where someone takes the music and puts a little of themself into it.  Props for that, but it also might be because he knows as well as I do how amazingly pointless this scene is, leading him to do all he could to sabotage Taymor's complete lack of identification with the Beatles catalog.

Then they all are lying around and singing "Because" in the wind, which then leads to what I'm guessing is a drug trip but is really just a stupid where people are naked underwater, namely Jude n' Lucy, and they're kissing.  The plot, if there was one, is completely thrown out the window the the entirety of the characters' stay in this place.

Somehow they get back home, and Max is now gone to war.  Lucy is a protester and is getting wooed by some protester guy and Jude isn't into her being wooed (see what I did there?).  Before the tension rises, we see Lucy's tit and then Jude starts singing "Something."  Timing, people... timing.  And again with the slightly-offs.  "Don't want to leave her now."  NO FUCKING SHIT THERE HAS BEEN NO REASON FOR YOU TO LEAVE HER NOW AND YOU JUST PAINTED HER TITS.  But once the song ends, it's all tension and angsty shit.  

Speaking of tits, I have to say the movie DOES have very striking visuals.  The colors are very vibrant and there's some neat looking moments throughout.  However, nothing's consistent and it all just comes off as indulgent trip scenes that you've experienced in other movies.  The Big Lebowski comes to mind with the whole bowling thing.

Remember that party where we met Bono?  Well record industry man is overheard convincing Sady to lose her guitarist.  This leads to THEM fighting.  I mean they serve no other purpose in the film, so sure give them some tension.  I think they're supposed to be lovers too.  But whatever who gives a shit.  I barely give a shit about the main couple at this point.

Jude gets mopey and sings "Strawberry Fields" while smashing the eponymous fruit.  At the same time, we see Max suffer through war.

Then alpha protester male gives Lucy a TV and Jude bitches and then Lucy bitches and says Revolution and then Jude goes to their protest laboratory and starts singing "Revolution" to people who share identical ideals as those expressed in the song.  Until later, of course, when it turns out somehow Jude knew these guys would eventually start making bombs?

Some riot goes down, Jude gets bail from biological dad after he's arrested but he's still not a citizen and lacks a visa so he's deported to Liverpool.  Lucy is arrested and then disappears from the movie for a while.  JoJo is missed by Sady as she does her superstar career, and then Max comes back traumatized by war but not really.  Oh yeah, and before he's deported Jude sings "Across the Universe" on a subway or something and Max sings something from a hospital bed.  Whatever.  Oh yeah it was "Happiness is a Warm Gun" because he needed a fix of morphine because that makes sense.  Jude sings the first half when he's back in London and his ex leaves him?  If stupid were a pie, and this film could eat pie, then not only would Stupid be its favorite flavor of pie, but it would take MASSIVE FUCKING SLICES.

Then Jude reads a newspaper about protesters getting killed in America and goes back legally because he wants to see Lucy, who left protester mans after they were seen building bombs as mentioned earlier (had to make the song work!).  He comes back while everyone sings "Hey Jude" and Max picks him and when he sees him we're at the "JUDE JUDE EH JUDE A JUDE A JUDE A YOOOW WAZAOW!" part so he seems excited.  Slices of pie, people... slices of pie.

Then they see JoJo and Sady playing a ROOFTOP CONCERT and Prudence is in the band because she hasn't been seen in the film for a long long time now.  The police break it up, Jude sees no Lucy, and somehow cops to file him off the rooftop, and he starts to sing "All You Need is Love" to find her out, which of course does reunite them because THAT'S ALL YOU NEED IN THIS CRAZY WORLD/DECADE!  The sad thing is I'm willing to admit that singing out so a city street in Manhattan can hear you could be a moving moment, but with not nearly enough building up to this moment, it means nothing.  The imagery pulled a little bit at me, but not nearly enough.  Pretty pictures don't mask the fact that no one died, and no one suffered huge tragedy except JoJo and Lucy with their deaths, but they don't seem motivated by those AT ALL.  The immediate characters endured nothing significant and not even Max seems all that tarnished by war.  We've experienced entirely too little to wrap things up and expect to be moved by this.  This is the 60s as spoiled kids in Orange County would see it.

Cue end credits with "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and the world is a little easier to handle.

The efforts for the lyrics to tie in could have easily been avoided if they opened the film to more than just Beatles music.  I'm sticking to the statement I made when I watched the trailer:  This movie is made not with a mantra of "All You Need is Love," but "All You Need is Beatles Songs" and the profits will roll in.  On top of that, everyone will be duped into thinking of some of the best rock songs ever despite the awful film unfolding before their eyes.  I don't doubt Taymor's sincerity, but she was not up to this task, and I don't imagine many people would be.  She nailed Lion King because it was ostensibly written for her.  Her directing the broadway rendition only required her to reimagine it for the stage, and her flair for visuals is undeniable and went great lengths toward making Lion King the craze that it is.  It also helps that the songs were written FOR THE STORY and not the other way around.  

I won't say the task is impossible, but it's delicate.  And while they did put in effort, it wasn't enough and I'm sure they know it.  It took four writers to do THIS?  They stopped when it remotely worked and knew that the word Beatles would take care of the rest.

Piss off all you yay-sayers.  I'll even give you that I'm a Beatle nut and seeing this superfluously angers me.  It's not MY music, but how could you?  That diminishes my credibility, sure, but I also very strongly believe I have valid points and if you look past them simply because I'd rather a movie like this was never made, then you're going the easy defense route.

Good morning.