Playing With the Truth: Film in 2010

Based on a true story.

Inspired by actual events. 

I'm not sure if it was an actual trend in 2010 or just a common trait of the few movies that I saw, but phrases like those above seemed to appear on screen in quite a lot of films, including 127 Hours, Conviction, Howl, Carlos, North Face, and even more that I didn't see, such as Made in Dagenham, Casino Jack, Eat Pray Love, I Love You Philip Morris, Mesrine: Killer Instinct & Public Enemy #1, and Nowhere Boy, to name only a few (and to say nothing of the tricky-truthy documentaries like I'm Still Here, Catfish, and Exit Through the Gift Shop).

Are there this many films based on true events every year and I only noticed it in 2010, or is this a newly developing trend? Either possibility would surprise me. If this is common every year, why have I not picked up on it so acutely, particularly considering I usually see twice as many movies as I did in 2010, and that I have a running series about movies based on real life? On the other hand, if this is a newly developing trend - why?

I'm almost positive it's the former, that this is not a new thing at all, but in any case it doesn't matter. I'm always more interested in how these films depict the truth they are meant to represent and, in doing so, how they shape our understanding and perspective on past events. For example, when I ask you to imagine the sinking of the Titanic, what images come to your mind? What about Roman gladiator fighting in the Colosseum? What do you picture when you think of John Smith and Pocahontas, or the Zodiac killer who terrorized San Francisco, or the fate of United Flight 93, or the storming of Omaha Beach on D-Day?

You see where I'm going with this: for many people, films based on true events serve as the primary influence on the subconscious in remembering or imagining those events. If you've seen those movies - Titanic, Gladiator, The New World, Zodiac, United 93, Saving Private Ryan - you bring their images to mind without even realizing it, particularly when a.) the images are astonishingly rendered (Titanic), and b.) there are few other film adaptations, documentaries, or other visual aids to provide alternative images in your mind (United 93). In essence, perception becomes reality; what we see becomes what actually happened, even if it didn't actually happen.

But does it matter when those images and those memories produce a reality that didn't actually exist? Where does the truth end and the dramatization begin, and is the truth ever interesting enough to stand on its own, free of embellishment? I'm sure it's a question as old as film itself - as art itself, really - but I'd like to consider it in the context of five films I saw in the last few months of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Fair Game, The King's Speech, and All Good Things.

Getafilm Gallimaufry: Marwencol, Black Swan, True Grit, & Exit Through the Gift Shop

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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Marwencol (A) 

There's a fine line between a hobby and an obsession. Take my love of movies, for example - is this blog a healthy,  creative side project, or an unhealthy manifestation of a subconscious desire to escape reality through film? Or what about Mark Hogancamp, who, after being beaten within an inch of his life several years ago and his long-term memory, regained his personality and his imagination through a fantastical world he created with plastic figurines? I can live without movies (maybe?), but Hogancamp can't live without these dolls. They are not a hobby, and they are not even an obsession. They are like air and water, necessary for his daily life. 

Hogancamp's alternate reality, named Marwencol, is so detailed and lifelike that it appears to exists as a living, breathing place, filled with characters and backstories enough to fill a series of books. If I had the patience and artistic talent to create places like it, I might end up lost with the dolls as well. This is not to say that Hogancamp doesn't have a handle on reality, just that considering where he's coming from it makes perfect sense that Marwencol is his security blanket from the judgments of the world (he was beaten at a bar after admitting to a habit of cross-dressing). It's the place he can go to get away, and be his own person in his own mind, and in that sense Marwencol is an almost uncomfortably personal entry into his thoughts and emotions.

I'm sure it wasn't easy for Mark Hogancamp to agree to "expose" himself through this film, but his world, Marwencol, should be appreciated not only for what it means to him, but to everyone who seeks a place that offers that kind of solace.

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Black Swan (B)  

As Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan reached its climactic finale, I'd made peace with my opinion of the movie: it was a lesser Fight Club, without the humor and witty cultural references. Maybe that says something about my gender or my disinterest in ballet, but in my head it was just a reaction to the familiarity of the story. I realize the plots aren't in any way similar, but, despite not having seen a trailer or learned anything about the story, I felt I'd been led to believe Black Swan was going to be some kind of transcendent thriller that would twist my mind and leave me breathless. Instead, I had a headache from the avian sound effects and predictable fright scenes, and I grew impatient to see something I hadn't seen before.

In the weeks afterward I considered the praise for Black Swan's ambiguity (i.e., was the ending real?) and acting, but as it recedes in my mind I don't have any great desire to see it again. I'm optimistic there are any number of similar films about passion and drive that aren't as cold, dark, and disturbing, like, for instance, Aronofosky's The Wrestler, which is a light and cheery family film in comparison.

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True Grit (A-)  

At least for me, movies in 2010 were severely lacking memorable characters. I mean the kind of characters that you can recognize with one line of dialogue, or dress up for Halloween as, or spoof on "Saturday Night Live". Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn is one of those characters, and although I haven't seen the original True Grit, I think I'd rather watch Bridges in the character if only because he's a lot more fun to imitate than John Wayne.

Sure, the Coen Brothers left their mark on True Grit, but I'd be lying if I didn't expect more from them. Not more in terms of quality, per se, but more in terms of Coen-ness. More scenes like the bartering scene with Mattie Ross or the courtroom scene, more bizarre characters popping in and out of nowhere, and a little more dry humor. But their intention was a straightforward adaptation, and in that they likely succeeded (I haven't read the novel). Just doesn't seem like they had much reason for taking this on if they weren't going to do something unique with it.

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Exit Through the Gift Shop (A-) 

I finally caught up to this raved-about documentary, and despite hearing much about its authenticity, the mysteries didn't appear where and when I expected. I've known of Banksy for several years, but I knew little about the rise of street art or the increasing number of public exhibitions by street artists. Essentially, I didn't realize their work had been accepted as legitimate in the eyes of collectors and auction houses. So, it didn't take much to convince me that Thierry Guetta could be a real person. As improbable as everything was, nothing really seemed outside of the realm of possibility (similar to My Kid Could Paint That), and there were fewer aspects of this film that made me think it wasn't real.

Conversely, everything about I'm Still Here seemed fake from the beginning (I saw it before it was officially announced as a hoax), so I could laugh along with Phoenix and Affleck as they punked everyone. Does its greater believability make Exit Through the Gift Shop a better documentary? Is it even a documentary, or an actual artistic statement by Banksy? Does it even matter? This is what I'm left wondering, but regardless of what I believe or discover about the truth, I now understand why this film has received so much attention. It's like one of Banksy's great works, subverting our expectations and telling us something we don't want to admit to ourselves about art, hype, and money.

Citizen's Arrest: Catch The Robber 10/27 @ the Walker

A bank, a mask, and a bag - your typical afternoon jog? 

How many great Austrian crime thrillers about brooding bank robbers who find solace in the forest and romance busty brunettes can there be? Apparently more than one. Götz Spielmann's Revanche received an Oscar nomination two years ago and Benjamin Heisenberg's Der Räuber (The Robber) is nearly as good, losing a little novelty because it's such a similar story (both films also star Andreas Lust as main characters who jog on woodsy trails). But while the films may be similar on screen, only one of them is based on a true story: the one about the competitive marathon runner who makes a living as a notorious bank robber.

300 Words About: Howl

Hmm...people had a hard time understanding my poetry...how will they understand this film?

To be perfectly honest, I went into Howl at a distinct disadvantage: I've never connected much with the Beat Generation, and I find a lot of poetry just plain bewildering. Put it to music or use imagery that I understand and I'm good, but meditate on "peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns", as Allen Ginsberg does in his infamous poem, "Howl", and I'm lost.

Call me culturally illiterate, but I'm afraid that while I understand the social significance of the poem in its time (both as a cathartic statement and as a legal precedent), it just has no emotional resonance for me at all. Should this have affected my viewing of Howl? Probably, but since much of the film is animated I didn't have to do much heavy lifting anyway. The metaphors and raw passion were brought to life for me, so all I had to do was try and understand, which I did with infrequent success.

In theory I love the idea of bringing poetry to cinematic life for the very reasons I've mentioned: it helps me make some sense of the underlying meaning. But "Howl", with its huge cultural and historic significance, may not have been the best poem to explore in this way. The entire film should have been animated, or the entire film should have been a legal drama about obscenity and censorship in the 1950's, or the entire film should have been a biopic of Ginsberg (heck, maybe it just should have been a documentary).

Instead, Howl is all three, and suffers because of it (even if I admire the fact that none of the dialogue was scripted). I was tossed around from the courtroom to a living room to a coffeehouse to an animated nightmare. It was disorienting and, apart from James Franco's committed performance, it made disappointingly little use of a terrific cast featuring Jeff Daniels, Jon Hamm, and David Strathairn.

The end of the film is much tidier than the rest of it, and underscores, at least to me, that directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman were more interested in telling the story of the poem than exploring the poem in the story, as if the meaning of the lines in "Howl" should be obvious to anyone who reads them (in a Q & A after the screening I attended, the directors talked almost exclusively about the technical aspects of making the film). Well, consider this viewer a little more enlightened about why "Howl" received so much attention, but still pretty much in the dark about what half of it actually means.

Bad Will Hunting

We haven't seen a Boston foursome like this since 1997

The Town is surprisingly watchable, with a confident sense of place and no illusions about what it is (tense but forgettable) and what it isn't (moving or believable). I had no clue what it was about when I walked in, but I was expecting a melodramatic thriller like Gone Baby Gone, not a tightly wound cop vs. robber flick. The action sequences and set pieces were a major highlight, and the Boston accents were thankfully kept under control (other than Pete Postlethwaite's rogue brogue). And despite some truly horrendous dramatic dialogue between Ben Affleck and Rebecca Hall, the movie kept a brisk pace, rarely allowing your attention to focus on how preposterous the relationships and characters were.

So for the most part I liked it, and I've now tolerated Ben Affleck in three straight movies (The Town after Extract and State of Play), which hasn't happened in well over a decade. And speaking of those early Affleck years, there was something altogether too familiar about The Town, wasn't there? Not just because the last minute was reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption, and not because Affleck's performance was recycled from Armageddon and Paycheck, but because, well...

Getafilm Gallimaufry: Animal Kingdom, Get Low, Let Me In or Leave Me Out, & Perfect Song #8

[This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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Animal Kingdom (A)

Aside from being among the best indie movies of the year, David Michôd's Animal Kingdom is also the Feel Bad Movie of the Year. It's not graphic, it's not lewd, and it's not even particularly violent, but you become so intimate with the cold, calculating, evil characters that you just want to shower immediately afterward. I haven't been this disgusted walking out of a film since Boy A, another excellent movie that not coincidentally deals with trust, regret, family, and crime.

Stories about criminal families are nothing new, but Animal Kingdom boasts such a crackerjack script and stellar cast that you don't even realize you've heard this story before (it helps that the actors are unfamiliar to American audiences). I was a big fan of the stylistic flourishes (understated use of slow motion, haunting music, etc.) and undercurrent of unpredictability, and well, I'll just say it: if Animal Kingdom were made by a veteran American director like Scorsese, it would be a shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination.

The Guy With the Butterfly Tattoo

"See that butterfly? You think it's Danaus plexippus, but it's not - it's Pieris rapae!" 

"A butterfly?," my wife wondered aloud as we watched George Clooney's character, Jack, perform his daily calisthenics routine in his cozy flat tucked away in a small Italian village. She was referring to the tattoo on his upper back (although it would have made just as much sense on the small of his back, and been funnier), and while I also noticed the unexplained marking, I was busy trying to determine whether Jack traveled with a pull-up bar or if they are actually standard in century-old Italian dwellings.

Whatever we were focused on while watching Anton Corbijn's The American, it wasn't the plot - such as there is one. The potential for a simmering thriller exists (the film is based on Martin Booth's well-received 1990 novel, "A Very Private Gentleman"), but the on-screen translation is a cliché-ridden and ultimately inconsequential film. Much as it tries to transcend the genre, it still ends up a vanilla "One Last Job" movie where the bank robber/assassin/detective/soldier/criminal plods along as a tortured soul, haunted by a lost love, chased by inept enemies, unable to trust anyone and forced to accept his likely fate - to die either as a martyr or as a ghost. Generally these characters do a good deal of brooding and philosophizing to supporting characters about their life's path.

Problem is, Rowan Joffe's screenplay for The American calls for very little in the way of characters talking and very much in the way of George Clooney just looking depressed. He is the picture of melancholy, sipping espresso alone in cafes, nervously walking and driving with an eye over his shoulder and a hand on his gun, tossing and turning in bed, making safe, emotionless conversation with locals, rubbing his eyes in anguish, and so on. At some point I just had to wonder, "Was this the right guy for the job?".

The Social Network: Ahead of Its Time...Literally

After watching (most of) the trailer for The Social Network in the theater the other day, I was reminded of a recent discussion about it at Living in Cinema in which I wondered aloud why this movie is being made in 2010.

It's not as if there was a recent New York Times-bestseller about the founding of Facebook and David Fincher and Sony Pictures are cashing in on the hype. (Update: I'm an idiot. Apparently there was such a book, "The Accidental Billionaires", written just last year. Has anyone read it?) It's not as if Facebook has changed or significantly evolved in recent years, aside from a growing user base and some negligible dust-ups about privacy. It's not as if Mark Zuckerberg is some megalomaniacal, misunderstood genius that the walls of Harvard just couldn't contain, or that his behavior could be considered anything other than extraordinarily normal for a 26 year-old with $4 billion in his pocket. And it's not as if the story behind Facebook, such as it's publicly known, is any more special than the story behind, say, AOL or Google.

300 Words About: Green Zone

"Look, man, we had to know this would flop after DiCaprio couldn't even carry Body of Lies. At least we got paid up front, right?"

Green Zone is like Glenn Beck, or Keith Olbermann, or even Jon Stewart. It's incredibly loud, incredibly loose-tongued, and incredibly lacking in moderation or nuance of any kind. Incredibly, Universal Pictures wagered $100+ million that cash-strapped audiences would want to see cable news-styled hysterics within the context of one of the most unpopular film genres of our time: the Iraq War movie (remember that The Hurt Locker is the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner in history).

Granted, Universal did have the "Bourne in Baghdad" angle to lure audiences (how has no one made a mash-up trailer yet?), and Paul Greengrass previously directed United 93, one of the best films of the last decade. But as much as Green Zone had on its side in terms of star power, nothing can make up for an extremely dated and painfully retread screenplay by Brian Helgeland - one that overflows with Big Grand Statements, both said and unsaid by its caricatures.

I figured something was wrong when Universal kept pushing the release date for Green Zone later and later (eventually past the 12/31/09 Oscar eligibility deadline), but wow, I haven't been this disappointed since about 10 minutes ago, when I saw that Brian Helgeland also wrote the upcoming Robin Hood reboot starring Russell Crowe.

300 Words About: Shutter Island

"Listen, I'm tired of everyone staring at the bandage on my forehead - I don't know why it's there, either!"

Anal retentive that I am, it's the Little Things that always bother me in movies. An annoying minor character here, a slightly-off foreign accent there, maybe a meaningless misrepresentation of local geography (e.g., the inaccurate depiction of Red Rock Casino on or near Las Vegas Boulevard in the otherwise forgettable 21).

There were a lot of Little Things in Shutter Island that annoyed me (not the least of which was Leonardo DiCaprio's matchlit exploration of Ward C - what brand of long-burning matches illuminate a room like a Maglite?), but the prevailing problem I had with it was that Martin Scorsese didn't rectify them with substantial, even memorable scenes. In fact, it seemed he was content to surrender to formula and let all of the Little Things slide so long as he could get to that Big Bad Ending, which, I have to admit, nearly salvaged the movie.

Scorsese isn't necessarily known to be a sloppy director, but most people would probably call him a distinctive, even daring one, at least during the peak of his career. Isn't it bizarre, then, to see him submit to genre clichés in Shutter Island - and even then mix them awkwardly. One minute we're in the middle of a psychological suspense thriller (Cape Fear held its tone much better), the next we're in a jump-fright horror flick. Oh, and there's a couple of jokes and some romantic melodrama and political histrionics thrown in the pot as well. The result is a squirm-inducing stew of genres that leaves you feeling like you just had a bowl of bad New England Clam Chowder.

Sacked from The Blind Side, Forcing a Fumble

Hmm, it's not my eyes playing tricks on me - that is a Best Picture nomination... 

I've made the joke before that the best part of some bad movies is when the end credits begin scrolling, representing the end of the torturous affair. While this was certainly true for The Blind Side, what made matters much worse was the fact that the end credits went on to suggest what the movie should have been in the first place: a documentary. I actually became emotional viewing the photos of Michael Oher's real-life family because I finally experienced the true weight of the story. It was not the heavy-handed afterschool special it resembled during the whole running time, but actually someone's life - and it deserved a much better treatment.

Getafilm Gallimaufry: Best Picture Nonsense, Clouzot, Crazy Heart, Muriel, & More

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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The Best Picture Nominees

I scoffed at the decision to expand the Best Picture field six months ago, and I'm scoffing at it again now. To summarize: because The Dark Knight was not nominated for Best Picture last year and the Oscar telecast was again watched by a fraction of the population, the decision was made by AMPAS and the show's producers to nominate ten films instead of five, making the ceremony more appealing to Joe and Jane Public, who see 3-5 movies year, at least one of which is directed by Michael Bay and at least 2-4 of which star Brendan Fraser, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Lopez, or Sandra Bullock.

And so in a year where so much went wrong at the movie theater (in my opinion, of course, and for the first time I didn't even bother with predicting the nominations), we have five stereotypical Best Picture nominees (Avatar, The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, Up in the Air, and Inglourious Basterds), three passable Best Picture nominees (Up, An Education, Precious), and two tacked-on popular hits (District 9, The Blind Side; that The Hangover was somehow not nominated for Best Picture surprised me more than anything else in the nomination announcements). I'm not saying the wrong films were nominated - that's a given every year. I'm just saying that the expanded field only made room for more wrongly chosen films.

Of course the irony is that the inclusion of Avatar alone would have been enough to get people to watch the telecast, so the expanded field turned out to be completely unnecessary. Worse, the first-ever Pixar film to be nominated for Best Picture is arguably not even one of the best Pixar films. There was a case to be made for WALL-E last year, but not so with Up this year. Besides, it will win Best Animated Feature without any problem - wouldn't that have been "enough" without what is now a somewhat meaningless Best Picture nomination?

REVIEW: The Lovely Bones (C)

Exactly what is it about rape, kidnapping and murder that appeals so much to Americans - or at least to the Americans who tune in each week to watch "CSI" (all three versions), "Criminal Minds", "Without a Trace", "Cold Case", "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit", and "Bones"? That there are so many of these shows should tell you how popular this genre is; that I've never seen an episode of any of them should tell you how disturbed I am by that trend.

Anyway, I don't want to make generalizations about the viewers of these shows any more than I do about the millions of enthusiastic readers of Alice Sebold's celebrated novel, "The Lovely Bones", but suffice to say I don't belong to either group. If you do, you'll likely appreciate Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones much more than me, and you may even glean some meaningful insights from the melodramatic depths of what I considered a whole lot of sentimental muck.

Taking It Home: Invictus

("Taking It Home" is an alternative review style in which I share my thoughts on a movie's themes and how they may relate to my life, while focusing less on the acting, writing, technical aspects, or even plot of the film. It's a collection of the ideas I took home, "because the movie experience shouldn't end in the theater".)

More influential than any stump speech a politician could make... 

While watching Clint Eastwood's Invictus I was reminded of a little-seen documentary a few years ago about the space race. The astronauts interviewed in In the Shadow of the Moon gave fascinating and inspiring accounts of their experience with the outer limits, but the most lasting impression I have is their description of what was happening back here on Earth. As we Americans are reminded every summer, after years of competing with the Soviets to get a man on the Moon, the United States reached the finish line first, on July 20, 1969. We would go on to dominate space exploration for the next generation and ultimately to the present day.

But what wasn't clear to me until In the Shadow of the Moon, and what was reinforced by Invictus, is just how much collective pride a population can gain from what is, on the surface, a meaningless competition. Despite the social and political turmoil of 1969, for example, the United States experienced a brief period of pure, unadulterated joy because we beat the Soviets at a massive global game (more interestingly, according to the film, this American achievement was celebrated around the globe, and goodwill toward the United States peaked at a level not reached again until 9/12/01). The triumph of the South African National Rugby Team might pale in comparison on a global scale, but Invictus still portrays the Springboks' 1995 World Cup victory as an event almost as important as the moon landing - and ultimately more important than the U.S. Men's Hockey Team's 1980 "Miracle on Ice" (most recently revisited in 2004's Miracle).

You may be thinking, "Come on, sports are unimportant in the grand scheme of things and a distracting waste of time and money that could spend on much more important issues!". Tell that to Nelson Mandela (in fact many of his advisors did, as we see in the film). To take nothing away from Mandela's achievement as a black man being elected president in a racially segregated country after half a lifetime in prison, the Boks' World Cup victory was just as important to his political success - even more so, if I may be so bold.

Getafilm Gallimaufry: Amreeka, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Road, and Anticipating Avatar

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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Amreeka (B)  

Amreeka doesn't show you anything you haven't seen before in the immigrant/cross-cultural dramedy genre (and it is a genre, or at least a developing one). But few immigrants' stories are identical, and dismissing Amreeka as "just another one of those immigrant movies" is about as short-sighted as, for example, assuming all Spanish-speaking immigrants are Mexicans. The fact is that Amreeka, while not entirely unique, still offers memorable insights into post-9/11 immigration in America, particularly for those families coming from the Middle East (in this case, Palestinians to Illinois).

The film was written and directed by Cherien Dabis, a young Palestinian-American filmaker recently named by Variety as one of "Ten Directors to Watch". Dabis certainly presents the film with the authority of someone who has experienced the story, and her screenplay is balanced with equal amounts of tragedy and comedy. While the narrative is somewhat inconsistent in terms of character development, you find yourself genuinely rooting for Munah and Fadi Farah from the first few minutes - a sign of thoughtful writing. I have to admit I'm a little tired of seeing Hiam Abbass worked to death as apparently the only woman of her age Hollywood ever thinks to cast as "Strong-willed Middle Eastern/Persian Woman #1", but she nonetheless delivers in her role every time. 

Taking It Home: Up in the Air

("Taking It Home" is an alternative review style in which I share my thoughts on a movie's themes and how they may relate to my life, while focusing less on the acting, writing, technical aspects, or even plot of the film. It's a collection of the ideas I took home, "because the movie experience shouldn't end in the theater".)

 

 My expression if asked, "What did you learn from Up in the Air?"...

For as much time and attention is given to the bothersome details of business traveling in Up in the Air, I'm surprised that airline food is never mentioned. Maybe it's because it would serve as an unfortunately accurate metaphor for the viewer: sectioned into bite-size portions like an in-flight meal, Up in the Air is tasty but ultimately unfulfilling. As a more direct metaphor, the film bounces from theme to theme like its main character bounces from city to city, with no apparent final destination in mind. I never felt like I got inside Ryan Bingham's head. He was an enigma and, like so many George Clooney characters, pretty one-dimensional.

Nonetheless, I liked Up in the Air. It was brisk, amusing entertainment showcasing a great ensemble cast. I just don't know what I supposed to take from it, which is particularly frustrating because I felt like Jason Reitman was trying so hard to teach me some really meaningful lessons - about loneliness and independence, unemployment and hard work, marriage and infidelity. But where were the dots connecting any of these very mixed messages together?

Taking It Home: Precious

("Taking It Home" is an alternative review style in which I share my thoughts on a movie's themes and how they may relate to my life, while focusing less on the acting, writing, technical aspects, or even plot of the film. It's a collection of the ideas I took home, "because the movie experience shouldn't end in the theater".)

The most tragic "happy" ending you'll see in any movie this year...

Sitting through Precious in a movie theater is about as torturous a cinematic experience you can get these days outside of a Saw film. It is the most foul-mouthed, stomach-churning, disturbingly violent film I've seen in 2009, and despite the fact that little blood is actually shed, its characters (Precious in particular) are, along with the audience, beaten to unconscious submission during 110 minutes of unrelenting emotional violation at the hands of director Lee Daniels.

Yes, Precious delivers a knockout, battering us with so much vile depravity that we leave the theater unsure of what we're even supposed to feel, and unable to immediately understand that the abuse has been inflicted on us not to educate or evoke sympathy, but to make a tragic ending appear relatively uplifting. It's been called "unflinchingly gritty" and "brutally realistic" and all kinds of other hyperbole (most are accurate), but the most explicit truth in this film is left out: Precious Jones is dead.

Getafilm Gallimaufry: This Is It, Wild Things, Flute-Playing Goat & Tyler Perry

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]
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This Is It (A)

There's a reason why more music critics than film critics were called on to review This Is It: a good 90% of the footage in this documentary is singing and dancing, not storytelling. You should know that if you're not already a Michael Jackson fan, because if you aren't then I imagine This Is It would be about as enjoyable as a John Tesh concert film (and if you don't like MJ then one can reasonably assume your musical tastes are that...tragic).

300 Words About: The Box

So lemme get this straight, that's two disasters in a row from Richard Kelly, right?

Literally the first words I heard after a promotional screening of Richard Kelly's The Box were, "I'm so glad I didn't have to pay for that," from a relieved audience member as he left the theater. Yes you did, I thought to myself. We all did, and in more than one way.

There are a lot of options presented to the characters in The Box, only some of which (I've heard) are taken from the original short story by Richard Matheson, which apparently made for a great "Twilight Zone" episode in the 80's. The options include choosing between this or that, which will lead to one of these things happening first and second and so on. Tragically for me, never was a character presented with an option to outright end the movie and save thousands of lives in theaters around the world. "The button has been pushed," proclaimed a creepy, still-Nixonian Frank Langella, and along with everyone else I had to live with (and eventually die by) the decision I had already made to see this movie.

My disappointment may differ from yours since I'd actually been looking forward to The Box for well over a year, previewing it in my forecast for 2009 and even mentioning it back in my review of Southland Tales. I think what I failed to recognize after Kelly's defense of that disaster is how closely his words resembled M. Night Shyamalan's (who, it should be known by now, is no friend to this blog). Whether you end up seeing The Box or not, know this fact: If Shyamalan and his rising heir-apparent Kelly ever make a film together, it will be a cinematic spectacle of metaphysical frivolity and pompous bloviating like the world has never seen (at least not since Knowing).

Short Cuts: "I'm Bloody Ibiza!"

About a Boy (2002). Directed by Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz; written by Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz, and Paul Weitz, based on the novel by Nick Hornby; starring Hugh Grant, Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, and Rachel Weisz.