Some Movies I've Seen Recenlty

I’ve seen a bunch of movies lately, and I thought I’d write a little about them.

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker is the latest in the long string of financially unsuccessful films about the Iraq war. Jeremy Renner plays the lead character, a bomb specialist whose methods are less than traditional. At the beginning of the movie, having just arrived in a new squadron to replace the old bomb specialist, Renner is seen trotting off to diffuse the bomb, hiding himself from the watchful eyes of his superiors by dropping a smoke bomb an dancing into the fog. Right away, he is set up as the wild card. He’s reckless and full of energy. Immediately, we are meant to like him, and we do. It’s Jeremy Renner. The rest of the small group is equally easily identifiable with any audience who has seen a war film in the last thirty years. There’s the uptight Captain who has no patience for Renner’s peculiarities, and there’s the green specialist, who quickly falls under Renner’s spell. 

But there’s a lot in this movie that sets it apart from other Iraqi war films. For one thing, it moves from tense suspense piece to tense suspense piece. Every sequence is another excuse to set the audience on edge. Mainly though, the movie doesn’t have some big statement to make about war. We get it. War is bad. People who don’t feel that way, will probably always feel that way. Instead, The Hurt Locker focuses on character. It goes delves much further into Renner’s character than most would. Ultimately, its ending is not about war, but about one particular soldier. Renner is great (as usual) as the soldier who keeps mementos of near death experiences under his bed. His downtime consists of mini-fight clubs with his friends. He is more daunted by which cereal he should pick than which wire he should cut. The movie is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who has gained a reputation as a great action director – a reputation I never really thought she deserved that much . . . until now.

Humpday

Humpday is typical mumblecore. Take a “controversial” subject and talk the fucking thing to death. Both actors are good as two old friends who reconnect and dare each other to make a gay porno together, but I got real sick of hearing these two play their game of gay chicken over and over. The movie is well acted – particularly by Alycia Delmore as the housewife who cannot bring herself to get behind her husband’s sudden Bohemian desire to make artsy gay porn. In the end, the movie doesn’t make any huge statements about sexuality or even porn. The characters have attacked both subjects from every angle themselves until there's nothing left to say on the subject. But it is revealing that at the time the two characters book the motel room and prepare to make the movie, they have no camera crew. This is just for them.

Adoration

The latest from Atom Egoyan. As usual, Egoyan is obsessed with media. And with media changing radically every day, one would expect him to have more stories in him. Adoration is about a kid whose phoney story spreads across the Internet like wildfire, and then gets talked to death in “chat rooms.” These particular chat rooms consists of video screens and everyone talking over each other – much how I use Twitter, only with actors rather than fonts.

I imagine this movie is a reaction to how anyone can vomit their useless, uninformed, reactionary opinions all over the Internet – inviting only more useless, uninformed, reactionary responses. The main kid goes about – checking his phone which is always at the ready with the latest diatribe from the “chat rooms” aimed squarely at himself. I hated this. The dialogue is contrived and stilted. The teacher really needs to do something about that unibrow she’s sporting. And the opinions expressed in the movie prove just as obnoxious as any on any message board. It’s official: Egoyan is not for me.

District 9

District 9 plays like a cross between Cloverfield and Starship Troopers. It begins as a faux documentary with clever satirical overtones, but regularly breaks out of its documentary convention and becomes more and more like a thriller. Eventually, it is nearly all thriller – mirroring the kind of transformation the main character takes from . . . well, I guess I won’t get spoilerish. Unlike most alien invasion movies, this one supposes that aliens land – not in America or even England – but in South Africa. The plot involves aliens becoming stranded on Earth and getting herded in slums where they are harassed and ostracized. Frankly, I think this is giving the human race too much credit. I have difficulty believing that we wouldn’t blast them all to hell and examine their parts for medical fodder, but instead their treatment is meant to mirror apartheid times.

It is shot on an extremely low budget, at least for a action blockbuster – like Coverfield – but its special effects are impressive nonetheless. The acting is too broad at times, but the but the script and direction are bold and clever. It’s not especially tense or funny, but it is fascinating and involving. The movie is strongest when it moves away from big broad statements and focuses on action and the two sympathetic aliens. There are many holes that the audience is invited to fill in. Plus an ending that leaves some rather ominous threads dangling, but as anyone familiar with my taste can tell you, I dig that shit. My expectations were high, and I was disappointed, but not by much.

In the Loop

The rapid-fire political comedy that reminds me of Billy Wilder’s 1961 movie, One, Two, Three. The puns, name-calling, and gags come at a furious pace. The camaera is never still. Characters rip into each other for fear of being discovered as frauds. As an observation on politics, it is the complete opposite of The West Wing. With In the Loop, characters are barely even aware of their own political beliefs and instead focus their efforts on making headlines and not pissing off the wrong people. Everyone shouts each other down. People take trans-Atlantic flights just to be “room meet”. Memos and reports are leaked. And stances are made based on which way the wind is blowing.

The movie portrays politics in the most cynical light. It’s not about people pushing evil agendas as much as it’s about incompetents trying not to be found out. The dialogue is wicked clever. The acting is perfectly breathless. And in typical British fashion, it is all so wonderfully dry. Best of all, the stubborn refusal to deliver a happy ending. It’s not heartbreaking, or inspiring, but it is damn funny and entertaining.

 Ponyo

Tonight, I made a revelation: I am not a fan of Miyazaki when he is in kiddie mode. I absolutely love Spirited Away, and much of his adult fantasies, but when he commits to a children’s movie (like My Neighbor Torturo), he really commits to making something upbeat and hopeful and brightly colored and full of children’s music. I never winced or cringed at the material. And if I ever have children (bah!) I wouldn’t hesitate to show them this or any Miyazaki movie. They are damned charming and sweet. But I ain’t into charming and sweet. I wish he would let up on the sugar just a little bit. 

G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

There are a lot of obstacles in adapting G. I. Joe into a full-length movie. And most of them stem from the source material: a doll. Over the years, there have been many marketing materials employed in selling these dolls, and most of those took on a life of their own. The comics (especially those written by Larry Hanna) and the mid-eighties cartoon series. In both cases, the attention any character received was determined by which new toy Hasbro was pushing that season. Still, some characters managed to obtain popularity and endure: Snake Eyes, Cobra Commander, Storm Shadow, Zartan, etc. While the characters in the series were generally defined by their role and ability, the characters in the comics actually had complex histories and relationships. Logically, that’s where one would look in adapting G. I. Joe for the big screen. However, it would appear that the writers of the movie were unfamiliar with either the comic OR the series.

The writers could have utilized the comics to focus on the complicated murderous history between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow (which the movie does acknowledge, but overly simplifies) and how it ties them to Zartan. They could have explored Cobra Commander’s relationship with his estranged, revolutionary son. They could have taken advantage of the romantic triangle between Destro, the Baroness, and Major Bludd (who is entirely absent from the movie). They could have recounted the doomed relationship between Ripcord and civilian Candy. But instead, the backstory is reduced to a lame romantic fling between Duke and the Baroness in the most unsurprising development imaginable. No Springfield. No Cobra Island. No Dr. Venom. No shocking deaths. 

The writers even ignore the cartoon. The Baroness is American, while members of the Joe team are not(!). Destro does not don his mask until the very end (in a hilariously absurd scene) while the Commander never wears his at all. Ripcord is black. Breaker is Iraqi. Hawk is worthless. And while I understand that no one can replace the late great Chris Latta as the voice of Cobra Commander, the voice Joseph Gordon-Levitt uses sounds like a villain voice put on by a twelve-year old.  And Snake Eyes was always a fascinating character despite his silence. Here, he is only trotted out for action scenes. No Shipwreck. No ridiculous Cobra-shaped hideouts. No lame PSA’s.

The movie is pseudo-camp. Rather than approach the subject seriously, or with a modicum of respect, the filmmakers throw garish costumes on the actors, fill the script with recycled clichés and relentless magical exposition, and spin and sweep the camera mercilessly. The cinematography is bland. The score is a generic canned thumping monstrosity. And the actors rush through their awful dialogue breathlessly. Flashbacks are regularly dropped in so clumsily, I have to commend the filmmakers for resisting the urge to introduce them with wavy line dissolves and harp musical cues.

The movie even fumbles on the action scenes. There was a time when stunts showcased physical prowess. They were impressive to marvel at, and even suspenseful as physical harm seemed nearly impossible to avoid. But in the digital age, where cartoons are employed to do most of the stuntwork, action scenes are just an excuse to illustrate how much physical damage property can sustain. Cars crack and windows break. Shit blows up, but none of the leaps and slow motion missiles are remotely convincing. 

The only highlight is the flashback between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. As ten year olds, they meet are instantly mortal enemies. While the scene is muddled by poor camerawork and clumsy editing, watching two ten year olds fight in that heightened grown-up Hollywood kick fighting dance is the pinnacle of the movie’s camp sensibilities.

Going camp rather than serious and dark is probably a smart decision. Unfortunately, the filmmakers don’t go far enough in that direction. Generic dialogue from ordinary action scenes are recycled – rather than the tried and pathetic humor from the series. The filmmakers could have had a field day trotting out the Crimson Twins or creating Serpentor or employing Zartan’s propensity for turning blue in sunlight. All ridiculous conceits from the series that are ripe to be mocked. Imagine anyone trying to take Village Peopled Shipwreck seriously. If turning the movie into a comedy, why not take advantage of Cobra Commander’s baffoonish incompetence from the series? As a result, everything feels half-assed and on auto-pilot. The characters are even more paper-thin than the original case files that accompanied each action figure. But in all fairness, that original cartoon really, really sucked. Still, the comic excelled at times. This was a chance for someone to do G.I. Joe right, and they fucked it up royally.

 

*For the sake of full disclosure, I am a bit bitter because I actually adapted the first fifty issues of the G.I Joe comics into a trilogy of scripts that I think are pretty decent. And they went with THIS instead? Bah!

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

I have never been a fan of bedtime. I always stayed up later than I was supposed to. But in the era before cable or VCRs, there wasn’t a whole lot for a five-year-old to do after hours. There were no networks completely dedicated to animation or old television shows. There was nothing I could tape to watch over and over at my leisure. Instead, I relied on local programming. Those five stations that generally defaulted to talking heads after ten o’clock.

But my favorite channel was the local nothing channel – later to be absorbed into FOX. On Saturday nights, at 10:30, this channel played a different Abbott and Costello movie every week. This is where I became a fan. Later, this same channel would play Abbott and Costello movies every Friday night from 12:30 until 5 in the morning. I would spend the entire week in anticipation of staying up all night watching black & white movies. I still do that regularly.

Abbott and Costello made 36 movies together during their career. And most of them are crap. They relied too much on the same ole routines. Their dynamic rarely changed. Costello mugged for the camera too much and never strayed from his whiny man-child persona. And most of the plots were paper thin and strained any and all logic. Despite this, I watched many of their films over and over, and even came to love a few. It was on one of those Saturday nights when I stumbled upon the movie that inspired me to delve into film history for the first time. Most of these movies were completely forgotten by Sunday morning, but not this one. One Saturday night, I was lucky enough to witness Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

The plot is surprisingly clever. Dracula plans to revive the Frankenstein monster. In order to do this, he has employed a female mad scientist to find him a docile brain for transplant. The brain in question: Lou Costello’s. But Larry Talbott (aka the Wolf Man)  has found out about Dracula’s plot, and employs Abbott and Costello to help stop him. Hence, the holy trinity of Universal Monsters were all engaged in a single plot along with one of Universal’s most bankable comedy teams. And what is most impressive about it: the monsters play it straight – making it work both as a horror film and a comedy film. That last point is debatable, but if one were to exorcise Abbott and Costello from the film, it would play as a straight up horror movie.

From the morbid opening animation to the chaotically choreographed chase through the castle, this movie is great fun. Bela Lugosi plays Dracula (one of only two times he ever played his signature role). Lon Chaney, Jr. plays Larry Talbott. Sadly, Boris Karloff did not reprise his role as the Frankenstein Monster – having retired from the role nine years earlier. Both Lugosi and Chaney are excellent in their most famous roles. They never once back down from the seriousness the story requires. They aren’t suddenly more clumsy or incompetent than they are in other horror films. They don’t crack jokes There are some pathetic moments played for laughs – the Wolf Man’s stalking of Costello in the hotel room is a particularly drawn out and ridiculous (although Costello’s paranoia that Talbott may have counted the apples in his fruit bowl is a comic highlight). But the climactic chase through the castle is a near perfect culmination of plot and character.

Costello is strapped to a rolling gurney. The Frankenstein Monster is strapped down on a gurney nearby. The mad scientist is preparing for the operation when Abbott and Talbott break into the lab. As horror movie timing would have it, Talbott then notices the full moon. He transforms, right there with his hands (now paws) untying Costello’s binds. Just then Dracula returns. The old enemies regard each other and take opposing stances on each side of the gurney. Dracula pushes the gurney aside as he retreats out the door - the Wolf Man hot on his heels - leaving the rolling gurney to spin out of control. The score reaching a fevered pitch of shrieking strings. It is just then that the Frankenstein Monster regains consciousness and breaks his own straps. Abbott unties Costello and they race through the castle – trying to escape the Monster and avoid the warring vampire and werewolf crashing through the halls at the same time. If only every movie ended with such a wild monster mash-up.

Inspired by the movie, I bullied my parents into buying me my first film book (which I happen to still own). This book did an excellent job of breaking down the different kinds of old school horror into different categories. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, atomic age monsters, aliens, and Frankenstein. Upon reading the book, I was surprised to find A&CMF listed in the Frankenstein chapter of the book. It turns out, it’s the eighth movie in the original Frankenstein series – absorbing the Dracula and Wolf Man movies into its story. Instantly, I became intrigued by this. I wanted to see the other movies. How did a story evolve from the original Frankenstein (or if going chronologically, the original Dracula) to A&CMF?

Once I had a VCR, it became my mission to track down all of the Frankenstein movies in order – as well as any ancillary horror films like The Invisible Man - and collect them. I also resorted to scouring the television schedule – hoping to find them. At one point I acquired a VHS-C camcorder and would point the camera at the TV screen in order to get copies of some of these movies. I still have those video tapes of The Invisible Man in which one can hear the phone ring or a door slam. The image quality was terrible, but it was the only way I had to get some of these movies. Sadly, many of the Frankenstein movies did not become available on video at all until I was nearly done with high school. At last, I could see the missing pieces between the Wolf Man and the Frankenstein monster getting entombed in ice, and how Wolf Man and Dracula became mortal enemies fighting over the Frankenstein monster. How did this happen?  It didn’t. By the end of the penultimate entry, Dracula has yet even to know that either the Wolf Man or Frankenstein monster even exists. The Wolf Man is cured. Dracula and the Frankenstein monster have been destroyed (again). The continuity had grown more and more spotty as the franchise progressed, but I didn’t expect events to downright contradict what would come later. What a let down.

Despite my disappointment, the anticipation of seeing how this story tied together remained just on the periphery of my radar for a decade. This anticipation was another factor in my budding love of the serialized story – as incongruous and contradictory as it may be. At least this story built to something. It eventually ended up with many threads crashing together. Granted, some threads were invented specifically for the final movie, and the beginning is stronger than the ending. And the ultimate fate for all monsters involved seems no more final or conclusive than any fate each of the monsters had encountered previously. But this was the order I experienced the movie in, and so everything was foreplay to that final brawl.

In the years since, it is easy to see that A&CMF is not a very good movie, although it remains deeply important to me. Despite how it incorporates three separate movie franchises rather effortlessly, it is a sad shadow of the original films that inspired each series.

Using my first film book, I taught myself a great deal about the history of Universal Horror – and I have become a life-long fan of the black and white horror movie. There are still movies mentioned in that book that I have yet to see. I also went on to purchase Abbott and Costello film books. Thanks to A&CMF and its serialized nature, I became a life long fan of film history. Over the next few years, I taught myself all about black & white horror movies, and continue to seek these gems out. I miss the gothic Teutonic sets and broadly morbid humor that these old horror movies have.

I have remained a fan of both horror and serialized story-telling ever since.

Some favorite movies discovered on the journey inspired by Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein:

• The Bride of Frankenstein. In particular, I love any scene that features Enrest Theisenger’s Dr. Pretotious. The dry, morbid humor. The surreal look. And the famous climax. The technical leaps made between the first movie in 1931, and this movie, made in 1935 are astounding. Everything here is top notch. 
  
• The Wolf Man. My fetish for all things werewolf starts here. The rules are laid out. The stakes are set. The consequences are non-negotiable. And Lon Chaney, Jr. is fantastic. 
  
• The Time of Their Lives. One of the few Abbott and Costello movies where they are not a team. The plotting is clever. The special effects are especially impressive for their time.  And I love the séance scene in which the ghosts must figure out how to communicate with the living. I have yet to see another movie tackle a séance fro this perspective.
  
  
• Hold That Ghost. An absurd Abbott and Costello movie that plays like an extended Scooby Doo episode. There’s a lot of filler and terrible plotting, but it remains one of my childhood favorites. I especially love the dance between Costello and Joan Davis. One of the best choreographed dance numbers in all of film. 
  

Netflix is being weird again

I had complained about Netflix regularly shipping me DVDs from far off cities - thus causing them to take a long time to arrive. To Netflix's credit, not only has it started happening less, but they often send me an extra disc to tide me over while I wait for the far off disc to arrive.

Then today, Netflix didn't send me a movie at all. Even though they received two dics from me today, they are only shipping one out. They will ship the other one on MONDAY. Why is this? Who knows?