Nordwand (North Face)

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, Thursday afternoon

This German production is one of the most brutal and intense outdoor movies I've ever seen. I saw just after coming down from a hike up to Arthur's Rock, where, if you read my FB posts, I got "swooped" by a turkey vulture. I was proud of myself after that hike, but after seeing this movie I realized that I'm the most amateur of amateurs, and always will be.

(Spoiler)

When I walked into the theater, I was under the impression this was a period piece, set in the 1930s, about the first successful attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger, "the last unsolved problem in the alps." Thus the ending ot the story caught me off guard. Like I said, very brutal.

Creation

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, about a month ago.

I knew little about this movie---a biopic on Charles Darwin during his writing of Origin of Species---until I walked in to see. When I noticed it was one of the BBC Films production financed by the UK National Lottery, I knew what kind of movie to expect, namely a fairly well-made, tight script that plays to the middle of the culture road, thoroughly exploring a certain range of sentiment without going too far in one direction.

That's pretty much what I got here. As I told Ben, the Lyric owner, as I left the theater, it was about "the trials of historical figure to complete or continue their work while facing a personal problem that threatens to derail his/her entire legacy." In a way, it's very Classical, albeit safe in tone, as all Classical movies are lately.

The story strove to give a balance between science and religion, and succeeded fairly well I thought. Jennifer Connelly gets to play her usual role as the wife-who-doesn't-really-go-along-with-her-husbands-plans, and she spends most of the movie with her skeptical pose. By the end of the movie she actually has some interesting scenes where she gets to emote, and show any sort of vulnerability.

Worth seeing for everyone, for historical reasons above all else, but also a well-told story.

Edge of Darkness

Seen at: Cinemark 16, Ft. Collins, at 12:40 pm at Feb. 28

This Mel Gibson was suprisingly among the best of the spy-oriented thrillers I've seen recently, which surprised me. For once I wasn't disgusted by a movie that appears to implicate high-level governmnt officials in malfeasance, and then brushes it off by the simple interpretation of being due to a few "bad apples." I enjoyed the CGI effects to create a secret defense installation on the Connecticut River in Massachusetts. All in all much better and more enjoyable than the trailer indicated.

Kick-Ass

Seen at: Cinemark 16 in Ft. Collins, at 11:45 am today

Good god. What a horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible movie.

Eight hours after seeing it I can't even muster the sputtering disgust at this diarrhea-on-film that I was just forced to sit through. Of all the movies where I've had to restrain myself from walking out lately, this took the most effort to stay in my seat. I got half way up, almost started moving toward the exit, but curiosity to see how far it could go kept me there.

I didn't have any clue it was going to be so bad. Last year, after Watchmen, I wondered where the superhero genre could possibly go, since Watchmen had seemed to put the capstone on it. When the trialers for Kick-Ass started showing up a couple months ago, I thought I had my answer: Kick-Ass appeared to be the logical extension from Watchmen. In a sense, it does that, but really it takes everything that is problematic with, say, The Dark Knight, and magnifies it by an order of magnitude.

But that hardly begins to describe it. Kick-Ass is nothing else than the sick, twisted elaboration of the girl-assassin-with-the-sword fascination that literally has Hollywood masturbating (see first scene of Kick-Ass, complete with a waste basket full of spermy kleenex).

Let me put it bluntly: anyone who thought making a movie about an eleven-year-old girl who turns into a remorseless psychopathic killer who gleefully jams a samurai blade into defenseless people fleeing and begging for their lives, and which endorses these actions as fun, wholesome and righteous, is, in my book fucking insane on a level that makes all other Postmodern dysfunctions seem like quaint melodrama.

To everyone who made this movie: go fuck yourself. Fuck you for getting me to sit through this.

This is what Hollywood at nadir looks like. Can it get any lower?

Here's Ebert's Twitter on this movie.

update: I'm with Roger.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Seen at: Carmike 10, 4::05 pm today

Where did this movie come from? It just showed up a few weeks ago at the Carmike. I thought it was one of those obscure Christian movies, perhaps, but it actually beat out Jennifer Aniston's new movie the weekend it released.

It's a somewhat cute story of a scrawny preteen boy, following him from the first day of middle school until the end of the first year. His quest is to be popular, and everything that he does makes him more miserable, and more of an outcast.

He's selfish---but that's ok because he's a child. Yet we can still judge his actions when he screws over his friends and acquaintences, thinking that they are less valuable than he is. His best friend, originally an outcast with him, winds up becoming popular in the way he wishes for.

The setting is fairly Postmodern---we accept without reservation that a typical American public middle school is an utter cesspool hell of torment. The mission of the boy's older brother is simply to make the protagonist's life as miserable as possible. Moreover the adults, including the boy's parents, are clueless to help him navigate the shoals of this transition to his teenage years.

The story mixes both live action and animation---in the form of moving stick-figure drawings supposedly drawn by the protagonist himself. I found myself wishing for more of this animation, and less of the live action.

But I was rooting for boy, enough to make it enjoyable to sit this through without wandering around the auditorium in boredom too much (I was the only person for the matinee). The sceenplay earned my respect early on, in a scene at the kitchen table during breakfast before school. The boy is forced to sit next to his much younger brother, who is astride a child's potty while eating at the table. It was a disgusting image, the kind of visual cue that sums up how I feel about much of contemporary culture and cinema at times. The boy objects to the presence of the toilet at the table. Amen, little brother!

Date Night

Seen at: Carmike 10, 4:55 p.m. yesterday

Yesterday afternoon I showed up at the Carmike on a whim, coming home from a long walk, and hit the showtime for this on the button. As I mentioned before, it's nice to see a movie on the opening weekend so that one is not deluged by headlines of reviews on the web. Date Night was the only wide release film to come out on Friday, so I had no excuse not to tackle this one right off the bat.

Going into it, I knew it was only ninety minutes long. Watching TCM a couple years ago, I used to love the "eight reelers"---the old classics at 85 minutes or so. I give a lot more leeway to films that come under the hour-and-half mark.

This one worked well enough, and at times I found myself comparing to it romantic escapade comedies of recent eras. A film that can do this while offering fresh contemporary tweaks and twists is also one to which I can give much leeway.

The freshest (or perhaps most Classically retrograde) aspect of Date Night was Tina Fey's performance. Although I could imagine an actor other than Steve Carell as the male lead (perhaps not as good, but I could at least imagine it), I simply could not see anyone else besides Fey pulling off the character of Claire.

Fey's secret is that she completely thwarted what we have come to expect of the Postmodern marriage: adult wife, baby husband, where the story is driven around the failings and immature frailties of the male character. Fey's ability to self-deprecate, and still remain powerful female, puts her in a league by herself right how, and points the way to the Post-Post-Postmodern with a big blinking neon sign message.

Thus we have a story about a non-dysfunctional marriage that still has "problems" that need to be solved, ones that don't simply fall back on the formula of "husband needs to grow up, and wife needs to realize that husband will never really grow up all the way she wants him to."

All this was enough to keep me entertained through most of the film. The film seemed well written in the first act. I was impressed by small screenplay touches in the opening minutes, comparing the two principals at their jobs. He's a NJ tax accountant. His wild young clients reject his advice as being too staid and conservative. She's a NJ real estate agent. Her older mature clients reject her advice as being too rash, given market conditions. They both wind up in the same place, by parallel routes.

The story somewhat comes unglued in the last fifteen minutes, as so many of them do. I actually got bored in the scene in the strip club at the climax, where Fey and Carell are forced to perform ludicrous unsexy sex dances for the bad guy. I could barely look at the screen, as it kept going on and on way too long (although at least it speaks to the central issue of the sexlessness of their marriage, and what that means for them as a couple). Not a fatal flaw, just a little bit of discord.

On the other hand, we have one too many scenes involving Mark Wahlberg opening the door of his apartment without a shirt. Twice was OK, but on the third time, my mental "script error" starting flashing bright red. Oh, and the fun, friendly Mossad spy references were enough to make me gag a little (Die, Ziva, die!)

Yet there were plenty of fun things in this movie to forgive the errors. Were I putting together a New Jersey film festival of recent releases, this would certainly belong in it.

As for Fey, in a different era, she would be a blockbuster movie comedienne, and perhaps she will be, but what makes her a genius also have a somewhat of limiting quality to her story range. That's to our loss.

update: forgot to mention that this movie is full of fun supporting performances. I especially liked see Taraji P. Henson again. Hadn't seen her since her outstanding performance in Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys.

:Classical derangment

Tonight I was listening to KRFC-FM on the radio. Thor has a regular show, and I've expanded from listening to him and his collaborator into listening during the whole week. Togight Lyle Allen does the regular show in the hours before midnight. He has a quirky style. He likes it when his fans call up and chat with him. He told everyone to go to his Facebook page to see his dog, so I did.

After Allen's show, the KRFC overnight mix comes on---a randow shuffling from pre-made CDs of heterogeneous genre that the station airs in the overnight hours when they have no regular show. The mixes can get old, if you hear the same one over and over, as I did a couple years back. But tonight's mix was new to me.

As the shuffled songs played on the radio, I busied myself with pre-bedtime chores, filling up my Nalgene and arranging things in my room for a hike I'm planning tomorrow. As I was laying things out, and cleaning up, I noticde that the radio is playing "Tangled Up in Blue"---not the Dylan original but a contemporary slackerish bluegrass cover version.

Mayble it was because I hadn't hear the song in any form in a while, but the freshness of the cover compelled me to listen a bit, and to anticipate certain of my favorite lines.

The singer was about to get up the line "She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me, written by an Italian poet from the Thirteenth Century." I've always liked that particular line.

But that's not what the singer sang. Instead he sang, "...written by an Italian poet from the Fifteenth Century."

My thoughts came to a screeching halt. You could have knocked me over. I'm thinking: Fifteenth Century? Are you kidding me? That's two hundred years off! You just changed the whole meaning of the song!

Later through Internet research I determined he might have meant Ludovico Ariosto, although his most famous work did not appear until 1516. It must be a bluegrass thing.

The Spy Next Door

Seen at: AMC Promenade in Westminster, Feb. 4 at 2:10 pm

A couple weeks ago I was having dinner with Agnes and Thor. I mentioned having seen this movie a month or so back. We all agreed that not only was Jackie Chan underrated, but that he is perhaps the best living cinematic dancer in the Classical masculine tradition of Gene Kelly.

One can see this latter aspect in several scenes in this movie, in particular during a chase-fight duet sequence with the Russian bad guy (played with hilarious tongue and cheek by Icelander Magnus Scheving (imDb). From this scene alone, one can see that Scheving was cast because of his ability to follow Chan in disguising Classical studio-era Hollywood dance as Postmodern martial arts combat.

That's the secret to understand Chan's real talent. One minute he's fluidly doing Kelly's unmistakable scissor leg swing over a metal staircase to chase the villain. A few minutes later, he's sliding down a drain pipe of a suburban home like Buster Keaton.

Here Chan plays about as goofy as role in as goofy a story as Kelly did in The Pirate (1948). The portrayal of the CIA is about as absurd as it gets. But who cares? It's too much fun.

Actually the story is deliciously Classical inside a Postmodern shell. Chan is paired with a pretty thirtysomething widow (Amber Valetta) with preteen children. Chan and the widow are boyfriend-girlfriend at the beginning. His girlfriend's children hate him because he is a typical Postmodern milquetoast man, a doormat for the assertive mother. Even the use of the term "boyfriend" in the movie seems to demote Chan's character to being like an extra child in the family, rather than the prospective man of the house.

But all this is just an act! In reality, in his job, Chan's character is a cool, confident superspy with amazing ninja talents who fights supervillains to save the world from destruction. Yet he cannot reveal this to his girlfriend or her children because to do so would compromise not only his own job secrecy, but would put them in physical danger. He resists all temptation to reveal who he is, even though it would put an end to the ego bruising that he takes. That, folks, is pretty much the very paradigm of honor for Classical heroes.

The story of course will force his hand. It must, for the secrecy he is required to enforce is at odds with the Classical (and Postmodern) principle that there can be no such secrets inside conjugal relations. Before he can become the step father, he must come clean to his wife, and through the extension principle of remarriages, to the children as well.

The bad guys in the story thus function as the plot device to force him to reveal his real self to his new family.

Can you see how subtly brilliant this movie is? It didn't get much hoopla at the time, and I suspected that in part it was because the idea of the "perfect stepdad" is just too bizarre for many people to swallow these days, especially disgruntled divorced women who bring their children to places like the Westminster Promenade for matinees. Yet any kid oriented movie will live a thousand lives on Redbox and Netflix, so the producers will recoup their money many times over. No tears must be shed for this.

And why should they? This is Classical comedy!

After talking about Chan, I posed a follow-up question to Agnes and Thor, to get their opinions. Consider this: everyone knows that Astaire and Kelly, in no particular order of 1 and 2, are the two greatest male dancers Hollywood has given us over the last century of movie making. My question: among men, who is third?

Agnes suggested Russ Tamblyn, who is certainly on my short list. I stated that I lean towards Groucho Marx.

click here for bonus clip to this post

Chloe

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, last Tuesday afternoon

Let me wax a bit about Amanda Seyfried, who has recently become one of my favorite young actresses, and who plays the title character in this movie, the lastest issue from Atom Egoyan, about a Toronto prostitute who wreaks havoc in the life of an older married coupled (played by Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson).

I mentioned Kristin Bell in my last post---Seyfried was in a supporting role in Veronica Mars, but lately she has zoomed past Bell to emerge in a varieity of interesting roles that give evidence that she is probably the superior actress, all in all. Not that Bell is bad, but Seyfried, so far at least, has proven that she can more than cope with a challenging roles like this one, and hold her own against heavyweights like Moore (ostensibly the lead here) and Neeson.

To be sure, there were a few brief moments in monologues where the idea of Seyfried as a hooker strained credibility, but here I mostly passed them off as a relic of the fantasy nature of this story, and the way Egoyan deals with this type of subject in his screenplays and his direction.

This story is not meant to be a "realistic" one but one that swims in the lotus-scented waters fantasy. I noticed that given several framing shots of Moore's character looking out a glass window of her office, one could interpret the entire story (on one level) as being the fantasy product of the imagination of Moore's character as she watches a beautiful young woman (Seyfried) leave a luxury apartment building, creating an entire story around her that reflects her own fears about her husband, her marriage, and her lost youth.

Seyfried certainly has a preternaturally beautiful face, at least when shot from full forward. Her round full lips almost look like a sex doll when made up the right way. One of the interesting parts about Chloe is that Egoyan also gives us plenty of unflattering shots of Seyfried here as well, particularly in scenes in which Seyfried appears in profile (much less flattering to her) with stringy hair and looking less than glamorous.

The opening scene---pure Egoyan---has Seyfried in a voice-over monologue as we see her in her undergarments, dressing after visiting one of her clients. Who would not want to see Seyfried half-naked? Yet even here the interplay between the elastic of her undergarments with the shadows of the room seem to highlight bits of cellulite on her that a cleaner and less self-conscious attempt at eroticism would have avoided showing. Right the first we see the flaws in Chloe's pefection. Seyfried sails through it all like a seasoned pro.

This seemed a far more mature statement that Egoyan's Exotica (1994). Here he revisits the same realm of sexuality and voyeurism but in a way that feels updated for the 2010s, in particular in the switch to female voyeurism. Moreover one should not be surprised to encounter the use of audio narration, one character to another, as a way of driving the story (as in, say, Ararat (2002)).

It's far from a perfect movie. The twist was fairly easy to see coming (not a bad thing in this case). The ending was a bit of a letdown, not because it was wrong, but it was the simplest way of bringing the story to resolution, and letting us emerge from the envelopment of the fantasy. I wouldn't have minded the film being fifteen minutes longer, to ease the narrative abruptness.

But really who's complaining? Certainly one does not need to salivate over Seyfried's naked body to appreciate her, but if she does the rest of her career covered from head to toe, at least there is this movie to draw in, if you want to see her undressed.

It was a courageous role for her, and one in which she succeeded. Letters from Juliet, a sappy-looking romantic comedy set in Tuscany is next up for her. I'd go see even if I weren't seeing every movie.

Now if only Seyfried could star in a movie with Pierce Brosnan. That would awsome! Oh wait, it already happened. And she sings!

When in Rome

Seen at: Cinemark Greeley Mall, March 10 at 2:30 pm

As I've mentioned before, in the Postmodern Hollywood paradigm, traditional Christian religion, along with a belief in God, has been largely exiled to fringe movies like the one in my last post. But that doesn't mean Postmodernity is atheist. Instead, we get a smorgasbord of spiritual beliefs in curses, legends, and disconnected spiritual forces that affect our lives.

When in Rome is a good example of this, in the context of a romantic comedy. Kristin Bell, a decent actress of her generation who seems to be gravitating towards harsher bitchy role as she matures, is a romantically down-on-her-luck heroin who blatantly invokes such spiritual forces as a revenge against the Goddess of Love.

She does this by picking up coins out of "the fountain of love" in Rome, thinking it will save the poor lovelorn saps who have thrown in the coins. Later she finds out that according to her Italian brother-in-law, this act by her invokes magical forces that will cause the coin-throwers to fall in love with her. If you've seen the trailer, you will have gotten this premise of the story.

Of course this being a romantic comedy, we know that somehow she will wind up with her soul mate.

How is this Postmodern? So far, it is not explictly so. This could be the set-up to a Classical comedy. The difference is that in this case, the magical forces of the fountain turn out to be absolutely real, instead of simply a legend, as they would be in a Classical story.

Another way of saying this is that there is no naturalistic cover in this story. The actions of the male coin throwers can be explained only by believing that the curse/legend of the fountain is real. As I'm watching this I'm thinking, "wait till this gets out on the Internet about this fountain of love!"

By contrast, a Classical version of the story would have somehow explained the coin-throwers' encounters with Bell's character in a way that did not explicitly endorse the reality of the magic fountain. This kind of thing was taboo in Classical cinema to a large extent, because it violated the Christian paradigm of free will.

So instead of the universality of God, in Postmodernity we have a world in which every petty old wives tale turns out to be mystically true. I've seen it over and over again in Postmodern cinema, to the point where I'm beginning to think of it as the "Postmodern Religion."

Forutnately there is a little more to the movie that this premise. The real love story of the movie turns out to independent of curse/magic of the fountain. This is the twist at the end of the story, one that very easy to see.

We may be in Postmodernity and wallow in our belief in animistic magical forces around us, but Postmodern women still want and need to believe that men fall in love with them not out of compulsion from magic, but from free will.

To Save a Life

Seen at: Cinemark 16 in Ft. Collins, late January

This one---a Christian movie that came through town early in the year---has been sitting in my pile of ticket stubs for a while, waiting to be written up. Since this was Easter, I figured it was time.

The story is about a teenage boy who struggles with his conscience when a former childhood friend, whom he blew off when they both entered high school, commits suicide. He eventually finds guidance through Christian faith.

What made the movie interesting was that the writer acknowledged that Christianity is not really very cool to a lot of young people, and moreover than many Christians, including pastors and their families, are blatant hypocrites about their values and faith. This self-consciousness of the narrative made it interesting to follow.

Of course this had the feeling of an after-school special at times, but I've come to appreciate that these movies have a place in the ecology of American cinema. To judge by the few I've seen, Christian movies are usually not about social issues in a judgmental way, but more about family and social bonds. There's very little preaching and dogma to be found. In a way, they are old Classical themes and stories recycled with a dash of Jesus.

I saw it on a school day, however. There were moms with kids in the audience. Were they ditching? Tsk, tsk. Silly me, these were homeschoolers of course.

Youth in Revolt

Seen at: AMC Promendade in Westminster, late January

I had to chase this movie down in Westminster, after I let in leave Fort Collins early in the year. I saw it on a trip to my visit my sister's family.

This was not the movie I expected it to be, but this is an earlier effort by Michael Cera, that is just now getting released after his success, so I don't bedrudge him this role.

I thought it was going to go like this: sweet young Postmodern adolescent boy discovers that sweetness only makes life very frustrating for him, when it comes to women. Somehow he gets in touch with his "bad boy" side, creating an alternate persona with a French accent and a mustache who is the manifestation of this side of himself, and shows him how to "have success" with women. At first it seems to work, and he has "success." He meets a girl who could be his true love (could be, because they are teenagers) and wins her love (through innocence amidst his new persona). But eventually he takes the "bad boy" thing too far. It causes him heartbreak and the (temporary) loss of the affection of his could-be-true-love (the heroine). Somehow he is able to tame the "bad boy" (on his own terms) by a fusion of the spirit of it, back into his "sweet" self (his true character). The mustached persona fades away into oblivion, but not really, because it was the hero all along. By his renewed humbled innocence, and no longer the pushover Postmodern boy, he wins back the heroine. All's well that end's well--for a teenage comedy.

The movie didn't go like that at all. It started off like that, but then it crossed the point of no return by having the hero go "full bad boy." He commits manifest crimes of property, threatening the lives of others. He disgraces and dishonors himself and his family in public. That is, he goes off the Postmodern cliff.

By any classical standards, the story has boxed the hero into a corner. He must go to prison at the end. There is no way around it. But because this is Postmodernity, he also wins the girl too.

One person who really liked this movie is my friend Ben, the owner of the Lyric. I told him how I had to go down to Westminster to see this, because it left the local multiplex after two weeks. That set in a motion a chain of events that has led to Ben declaring "war" on Cinemark.

I swear I didn't want it to come to this!