Gone Baby Gone Directed by Ben Affleck Written by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard (based on a novel by Dennis Lehane) Released October 19, 2007
Wow. Touche, Ben Affleck, touche.
I remember first reading that he was directing a movie called Gone Baby Gone and thinking, "Christ, he's making a shitty romantic comedy with a title taken from a Violent Femmes song. What a douche."
I was wrong about every single word of that thought.
Gone Baby Gone is a top tier representation of its kind: a suspenseful, intriguing and ultimately touching crime drama/mystery. Expertly made with believable performances from the entire cast, including Casey Affleck, Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, who for the first time in a long time is playing a much different character. Throw in great music and intelligent editing (watch the extended opening scene in the DVD bonus material... it takes an editor with a special kind of attention to pacing to know when to cut that much of an introduction to your two protagonists). Just a quality piece of work, all around.
The writing is top notch as well, based on a novel by the same guy who wrote Mystic River and three episodes of HBO's masterpiece The Wire. (Wire fans note: Michael K. Williams, aka Omar Little, had a nice little role here.) Baby deals with virtually the same subject matter as Mystic River, but this movie is so much more subtle and effective (my apologies to Clint Eastwood, the guy who practically wrote the book on actors directing fantastic movies).
I highly recommend this one. But then again, I have to admit to a little bias: I've been madly in love with Michelle Monaghan ever since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Damn her husband.
Super High Me Directed by Michael Blieden Released April 20, 2008
Super High Me is comedian Doug Benson's tribute to Morgan Spurlock's indictment on McDonalds and fast food, Super Size Me. Benson's focus, however, is not fast food.
Here, I'll just let one of his stand-up monologues speak for him:
"If eating McDonalds for 30 days is a movie and people are willing to pay to see it, I've got a movie. I'm gonna smoke pot every day for 30 days, try to remember to film it, and my movie's gonna be called Super High Me. Or, Business As Usual, I haven't decided yet."
Thus begins Super High Me, which began as a joke until Benson actually decided to go through with his idea. For this part parody/part stoner comedy, Benson performed two 30 day trials: first going 30 days without smoking pot (Benson was named "High Time Magazine's #2 pot comic of the year"), then 30 days where he smoked all day every day like it could cure all disease (it can't). During these two periods, he took a series of tests -- sperm count, IQ, lung capacity, physicals, even a test of his psychic powers -- and interviewed everyone from other comedians to his physician to the owners of pot dispensaries in the Los Angeles area.
Surprisingly, the first portion of the movie where Benson must abstain from his daily weed regimen was the far more entertaining half. I guess it stands to reason that the second half isn't as funny; just like watching anyone who is too drunk or too stoned, Benson at times becomes a chore to watch. Everything in the second half suffers, from his stand-up act (which, while funny, bogs down both halves of the movie) to his interactions with the camera, the viewers and his interview subjects. Contrasted with his relative sharpness in the first half of the movie, he can be a little embarassingly high.
The film does manage to cram a bit of information between the stoner jokes, especially regarding California's legalization of pot and the Federal Government's refusal to see the legitimacy of those laws. Still, you really have to be Straightlaced Joe Public to not already have heard or read about most of the information presented here. Plus, as a sort of variation on the ideas behind Super Size Me, it fails somewhat at present a compelling argument for either side of the coin.
I guess when the credits say "Based on a joke by. . . ," I'm probably setting my expectations a little high.
(Ooh, see what I did there? That's a pun!)
I have to add: is it any coincidence that when Benson does finally kick off his 30 days of smoking, half of Jane's Addiction wind up in his dressing room to get him high? You can almost see the devil horns sticking out of Dave Navarro's forehead.
I suppose I could say watching Super High Me is kind of like what smoking marijuana is like: at first, everything seems more funny than it probably really is, and then gradually you feel tired, a little anxious and ready to either go do something else or rewind to the start, where again, everything seemed so much funnier.
For more on Super High Me: - More information at IMDB - Buy Super High Me at the movie's official site. There you'll also find deleted scenes not even available on the DVD.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Directed by John Ford Written by James Warner Bellah & Willis Goldbeck (based on a story by Dorothy M. Johnson) Released April 22, 1962
"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact. . . print the legend."
Let's get the Not Exactly A Spoiler Warning out of the way immediately: Lee Marvin plays the titular Liberty Valance, and he does in fact get shot. The real question presented in the movie, and one I won't spoil for you, is, "Who shot him?"
The film stars Marvin, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, and was directed by the legendary John Ford -- whose resume stretches into the triple digits and dates as far back as 1917, including Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, Rio Bravo, and possibly my favorite Western, The Searchers.
Valance is, in a way, a film about the death of the "wild" West. Ford deconstructs the genre he was most known for by, within the framework of his own movie, building up a legend and tearing it down before our very eyes.
The story is told in a long flashback, from the mouth of Stewart's Senator Ransom Stoddard, a grey haired windbag politician who has returned to the town where his career began for the funeral of an old friend. From the way the townspeople behave upon his arrival, you can tell Stoddard is a politician with a fair amount of legend to his name.
Seeing the casket of his old friend seemingly brings Stoddard back down to Earth, and he agrees to an interview with a local editor and reporter for the city paper. In a scene that will make any reporter laugh out loud, Stoddard waffles on whether or not he wants to talk. The reporter responds, "I have a right to have a story." Stoddard pauses, then replies, "I guess maybe you have." I'd like to suggest any reporter out there try that line on their next tight-lipped subject. I'll give my right hand to anyone who gets that kind of reply.
Stewart gives them their story, but probably not the one they wanted to hear.
The remainder of the movie, save for a few final scenes, is Stewart's tale, and it's here that we meet Marvin's ruthless, menacing Liberty Valance. Marvin pretty much steals the show, throwing through the windows and doors any scenery that he doesn't wind up chewing every time he walks onscreen. He's your classic Western baddie, but he amps the violence up by using a riding crop to whip the shit out of anyone standing in his way, including Stewart.
Valance pretty much fears only one man: Tom Doniphon (as played by John Wayne, in full cocky swagger), the town's one true above-the-law cowboy. Wayne is good here, especially in the second half of the movie as he begins to unravel. Reportedly, this film was the birth of the Wayne stereotype that he constantly called people "pilgrim" (he constantly calls Stewart by the name). In actuality, he only used the term in one other film, and spoke it only once.
Jimmy Stewart begins the film with his typical "aw shucks" good guy routine, which frankly put me off at first. He seemed totally miscast as the young lawyer (especially since he and the word "young" parted was long before this movie), but his performance gradually grows on you. The scene that turned it around for me was when Stoddard, angered by a trick played on him by Doniphon, knocks the larger than life Wayne on his ass. It's here that Stoddard learns that civility and law and order are foreign concepts in the American West.
While I was initially hesitant to like it, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance grew on me, especially once things took a darker turn. There are a few moments of comic relief that were, to me at least, somewhat unwelcome in that they seemed to disrupt the mood or interfere with the real story. I also found it odd that Valance, while made in 1962, seemed like an older film than Ford's incredible The Searchers, also starring Wayne, which came out the previous decade. Where that film felt epic in scope, this felt somewhat stagy and theatrical. Perhaps it was the black and white film stock, or the fact that this film features very little of what you typically found in Westerns: epic landscapes, chases, shootouts.
If you wind up watching it, keep your eyes peeled for my favorite scene, where Wayne delivers a hilariously timed kick to the face to one of Valance's henchmen in a restaurant. It's a very brief moment, but it's a blast to see Wayne delivering an effortless bit of Van Damme-age with a perfect mix of comic timing and machismo.
For more on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: - More information at IMDB. Or, check out the Wikipedia entry, which contains a fantastic quote from Sergio Leone about why Valance was his favorite Ford film: "It was the only film where he learned about something called pessimism." - Buy it at Amazon.
Darkon Written and Directed by Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel Produced 2006
Take the nerdiest thing you've ever seen, then multiply it by 1,000.
When I was in high school, there was a small group of students that, seemingly out of nowhere, began to meet up in city parks or even outside school grounds and stage pseudo-epic battles with homemade foam swords, axes and shields.
They were not who you'd call "the cool kids."
Darkon is a documentary about the kind of fantasy roleplaying I witnessed in high school run completely amok. The world of Darkon (located in Baltimore, MD) is a surprisingly large community of people who have created maps, languages, characters and histories in a sort of walking and breathing version Dungeons & Dragons. They meet on weekends to act out these fantasies and progress their fictional story.
There's a general sense among the interviewed subjects of Darkon that their disturbingly deep involvement in this "game" is a response to their perceived lack of control in their real lives. They describe the soul crushing nature of their jobs, or the pressures of bills and work, and create these fictional selves to sublimate those feelings and become -- at least in the fictional sense -- powerful.
If that sounds kind of sad, you don't know the half of it. It's like if Hoop Dreams crash landed on a Star Trek convention.
I believe Danny, a side character who seems to not even be able to make friends in this alternative land of nerds, says it best:
"I like Danny but sometimes Danny doesn't have the balls to do what Danny needs to," says Danny. "You can see why. I'm more or less a nerd."
Almost everyone in the movie, when discussing their real self and their fictional "character," refers to themself in the third person. Dylan thinks this is creepy.
While managing to maintain objectivity throughout the film, directors Meyer and Neel seem to almost become too immersed in the fictional world of Darkon, focusing a large part of their story on a fictional power struggle. What is truly fascinating, and somewhat unsettling, are the moments where the subjects are outside of their game and yet seemingly still entrenched in the thing they claim is an escape. I'm thinking most of a particular scene in a Denny's where two friends argue loyalty while blurring the line between game and life. "I don't think there is an 'out of character' when it comes to this," says one of the men as you witness the crumbling of their friendship.
Obviously, making fun of nerds is like shooting fish in a barrel. I like nerds. I consider myself a nerd. Darkon comes from a whole other place. It exists on the level of the people playing the game, not judging them or mocking them (which, as I just said, would be too easy). The battle scenes are shot like actual Hollywood combat productions. The tension is presented in a dramatic way.
Don't get me wrong: I found myself shaking my head so much that I had to take Advil to stop the pain afterwards. It's just a credit to the directors that they let the action speak for itself. As lame this role playing sillyness might seem to me, I couldn't help but feel that a lot of the time, their hearts were in the right place. "Everything that was once noble and good in this world is gone," says "protagonist" Skip Lipman. "And it's been replaced with Wal-Mart."
Overall, I was impressed with the craft put into Darkon, and was generally amused. It made me think of one of my favorite movies, American Movie the story of independent filmmaker -- in the loosest sense of the term -- Mark Borchardt and the friends and family who help him make his dreams as a writer/director come true. The twist of American Movie is that while you might laugh at Borchardt and the insanely silly things he says and does, he still, in the end, has made a movie, essentially saying, "Laugh at me all you want. I made a movie. What have you done?"
Darkon does not inspire that same sense of missed opportunity.
For more on Darkon: - More information at IMDB and Wikipedia - The official site, which includes the official trailer and a link to buy the DVD.
A segment on both the movie and the game of Darkon from a Baltimore news station:
Escape from New York Directed by John Carpenter Written by John Carpenter and Nick Castle Released July 10, 1981
"The name's Plissken."
I had to reward myself for getting through Southland Tales. It's July 4th, and I decided to get as American as I could get: plopping down in front of my television after watching my redneck neighbors (and pretty much every single household in Omaha) blow shit up, saddling up to a pile of Freedom Fries and a 1 lb. double cheeseburger, and watching Kurt Russell in his prime in John Carpenter's classic Escape from New York.
Now this is an apocalyptic b-movie that I can get behind. It's 1997 (look, it was the future at one point), and Manhattan has been turned into the sole prison for the United States. Criminals are sent there to live or die, in a world of their own creation, surrounded by a massive wall, armed guards and surveillance. Air Force One is hijacked by a group of terrorist revolutionaries, intent on kidnapping the President (Halloween's Donald Pleasence).
Enter Russell's John Wayne-ian badass Snake Plissken (what a great fucking name!), an ex-war hero about to be incarcerated to the island. He's given the opportunity to be exonerated of his crimes in exchange for the President -- and more specifically, the briefcase attached to his wrist.
Like Southland Tales, the cast here is just nutty: everyone from Isaac Hayes to Harry Dean Stanton to Ernest Borgnine pop up in even nuttier roles. Unlike Southland Tales, this wacky cast actually works (and, thankfully, there are no extraneous musial numbers). Once Russell makes his way into the crumbling city of Manhattan, Russell's cowboy character is thrust into a ghettofied Land of Oz on a mythological journey full of underground dwelling "crazies," a fire-throwing cabbie, grisly gladiatorial battle. . . hell, even Plissken, with his iconic eyepatch, is essentially a nod -- intentional or not -- to the Cyclops.
Aside from a few creaky special effects, Escape remains a solid action film even today. It's a testament to the old days of flimmaking that the matte paintings and models used in the making of the movie seem far more realistic and believable than computer generated sets and backdrops.
If I had planned a little better, I probably could have turned tonight into a hell of a Kurt Russell film festival. The guy has a ton of great performances, but the trifecta he created with John Carpenter, which includes this film, The Thing and the bizarre Big Trouble in Little China would make for a pretty fun and sometimes uproarious night of movie watching.
If you're into ruining that night, feel free to add on the weak Escape from L.A..
For more on Escape From New York: - More information at IMDB - A link to the movie at the MGM website, which includes a link to buy the DVD.
Southland Tales Directed by Richard Kelly Written by Richard Kelly Released November 14, 2007
This is one of the worst movies ever made. No question about it.
For his sophomore effort, Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly overstuffs his story and his cast with everything but the kitchen sink in a "comedy"/social satire about the end of the world. I put the word comedy in quotes because I'm quoting Richard Kelly from a documentary in the DVD bonus features. Had he not called this a comedy, I wouldn't have known what the fuck it was trying to be.
As the movie opens, we see from the point of view of a couple of kids playing with a video camera. For the rest of the movie, I wondered if those kids were still at the wheel. Kelly's script feels like it came from the mind of a teenage boy, with ironic casting (Bai Ling, Cheri Oteri, Christopher Lambert, that little creepy lady from Poltergeist and so on), chapters with names taken from alt.rock song titles, and lame dialogue like, "The fourth dimension will collapse upon itself, you stupid bitch."
Christ. It's the kind of movie where Mandy Moore out-acts the entire cast.
I'm not even going to bother going into the story. If you need to know details: World War 3 happens, The Rock plays a Republican action star with amnesia, Justin Timberlake is a soldier suffering from some Post Traumatic Overacting Syndrome, and Sarah Michelle Gellar is a porn star who comes nowhere near anything resembling nudity. It so wants to be Blade Runner meets Brazil, but it's more like Pluto Nash meets Caddyshack 2.
While director Kelly does not appear to be hopped up on coke in the documentary about the movie, you clearly need a pile of nose candy to make sense of this mess. Is it any coincidence that Dwayne Johnson's alter ego is named Jericho Kane? Say that name out loud and yell out when you can tell me what drug name you hear hidden in there.
I'm not even going to include any links with this post. No IMDB or Wikipedia information. No links to buy the DVD. I'm saving you the trouble. I'm giving you the gift of 2 hours of life that I no longer have. Go play with a puppy. Call your grandmother. Grind your genitals up in a blender. You can't do any worse.
Don't believe me when I say this thing stinks of poo? Check out the official movie trailer:
The Bridge Directed by Eric Steel Released February 16, 2007
In the four seconds it takes for a person to fall from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge railing to the water, their body reaches a speed of approximately 90 miles an hour. Because of this speed, most people die upon impact. Survivors might typically die from exposure in the cold water, internal injuries like ruptured organs, or drowning in the rough current.
Eric Steel's documentary The Bridge is essentially a year (2004, to be exact) in the life of the monument, which is disturbingly the most "popular" suicide site in the world. In that year, Steel and his crew reportedly captured, simply by monitoring the bridge with a number of cameras, 23 of the 24 known suicides from the bridge.
The Golden Gate Bridge is no stranger to suicide. While there are no exact figures, even conservative estimates predict that the death toll reaches into the thousands since the bridge was opened in 1937.
What would inspire me to seek out a movie like The Bridge? Reading this incredibly sad but highly recommended 2003 New Yorker article about the bridge and its status as not only a magnet to tourists, but to those who long to see nothing more of this world. The stories of mental illness told in The Bridge are handled objectively, while the movie itself is a series of beautiful and poetic images (some of them just happen to be people leaping to their demise).
The movie collects footage of jumpers along with revealing interviews with family members, survivors and bystanders affected by what they've witnessed. Your reaction to these scenes, along with your opinion of the morality of suicide, may vary. While I felt The Bridge delicately avoided crossing the line into exploitation, other viewers may be appalled that in most cases, no one steps in to help these people as they figuratively and literally teeter on the edge of existence on this bridge. Amazingly, the scene in the movie that affected me the most was not one of the suicides, but a moment when a hobbyist photographer visiting the bridge physically pulls a jumper off of the ledge as if she were a tiger cub, saving her life.
The strangest thing about watching The Bridge is how you catch yourself scanning over the footage of crowds trying to figure out who might be the next to jump. When presented with gorgeous long shots of the bridge, the surrounding trees and a glowing sunset, you might find your eyes constantly darting to the bottom of your screen, waiting to catch an ominous splash in the water beneath.
It's a strange thing to be moved by a film... and yet not be able to feel like I can recommend it to people. What would they think? "You guys should rent this movie about people leaping to their deaths." "It will make your heart ache almost the entire time. You'll love it." "Jim, you're a big fan of actual suicide, right? Do I have a movie for you!"
But, if you're open to it and can see something like this with a sympathetic ear, it really is a haunting and well made documentary about the despair of mental illness and suicide.
For more on The Bridge: - More information at IMDB - A wide range of opinion between reviews at Metacritic - Buy The Bridge at Amazon. If you're into that sort of thing.
