CANON OF FILM: "STRANGERS ON A TRAIN"

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay: Raymond Chandler & Czenzi Ormonde from the adaptation by Whitfield Cook based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith

One of the most underrated of all Hitchcock villains, one that I’d even argue is equitable to Norman Bates even is Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker). There is a coldness to him, a tunnel-visioned devotion to his goal, to his plan. There is only one solution to how the scenario must play out and he will stop at nothing to make sure that they succeed. Yeah, he’s putting up a façade, a charade, but that’s only in his nature, a tactic that’s he adapted to get what he wants, and that façade doesn’t lift, even at the very end. That’s how deep into the depths he’s become, and while normally that would only make him a sociopath, here, it makes him a genius sociopath. His plan is brilliant. He sees Guy Haines (Farley Granger) a pro tennis player who’s married to Miriam (Kasey Rogers) who's having an affair behind his back, and besides, he's wants to get with his mistress Anne (Ruth Romain) a Senator's daughter. The two strike up a conversation and Bruno comes up with the brilliant plan, that Bruno will murder Guy's wife, and Guy, will in turn, kill Bruno's father, who for reasons that aren't elaborately explained, he wants to have killed. It’s truly perfect, cause both of us will have an alibi and neither one of us could claim they know the other. They’re just, “Strangers on a Train.” 

It’s one my all-time favorite Hitchcock films, but it’s also one of his most iconic. It's almost perfectly conceived for him, the wronged man, the fear that you'll find out that you've committed a crime, the fear of being accused of a crime you didn't commit. It's so slick and sly and slimy, in all the best creepiest way. The premise is probably more famous than the movie, and that's rare for Hitchcock. He's known more for his shots and those frightening moments, the shower scene is "Psycho", the crop-duster scene in "North By Northwest", the zooming and out while tracking the camera to create the sense of fear, but exactly how many people even remember without thinking about it what "Vertigo" is even about? That's not to say that the movie doesn't have some frighteningly Hitchcockian imagery, like the shots of Bruno staring down Guy during a tennis match, while everybody else follows the ball back and forth and back and forth, but he watches Guy, eyeing him like he's burning a hole into his soul. Of course, most famously, the movie has the most frightening and scary ending sequence of any Hitchcock film, as they chase each other off into a carnival and they begin fighting on a runaway merry-go-round and required a stunt man to crawl underneath the merry-go-round in order to stop it, which alone is one of the most dangerous stunts ever done in film, and Hitchcock outright refused to allow somebody to do something that dangerous again, but then the destruction of the merry-go-round itself, is just an unbelievable sight to behold. There was no special effect in that scene, and it's all-too obvious that it wasn't, making that last scene of Anthony, still refusing to admit the crime at the end, all the more, creepy. 

This film would be Robert Walker's final performance, he passed away very suddenly shortly after the film was released due to an allergic reaction to a prescription drug. Hitchcock encouraged him to have a seductive approach to his performance, to give off homosexual undertones towards Guy. It's also perfectly matches the tone of the original novel by Patricia Highsmith, her first novel. She's more famous now for creating the character of Tom Ripley, and this character, while changed from her novel, is essentially an early dry run. It's amazing Hitchcock didn't try to adapt more of her works, she was a lesbian who wrote about murderous characters who often seemed to be hiding their true personas from the rest of the world, and that included sexuality, if they had such a human trait. While it's even more tempting to look at the screenwriting credit and for film noir fans to get orgasmic at the idea of Raymond Chandler adapting a Patricia Highsmith work, from most reports, the final script mainly came from Czenze Ormandi's draft.

Seriously though, this movie could almost be hypothesized as a parody of Hitch if you didn't know that it was one of his best films. It's everything you can expect and want from a Hitchcock film, and more. Maybe it's just a tribute to him that with an author's first novel he was able to tell a great writer from the start long before she's become one of the twentieth century's most interesting and enigmatic crime authors, but still, this is one of those rare perfect matches in film. The perfect story matched with the perfect director to adapt it. Maybe that's why it's somewhat secondary to some of Hitchcock's other classic, it's almost too perfect and natural for him, and Hitchcock's at his most acclaimed when he was coming up with things that weren't obviously terrifying but he found a way to make them scary. I don't know if you can completely say that about "Strangers on a Train", but then again, how many truly great thrillers hinge on nothing more than a casual conversation between two random people?  

4-LETTER WORDS ABOUT THE ROTTEN TOMATOES PETITION!

Okay, there's quite a few posts of mine that I can just go back into the well and bring out and quote regarding this topic, to give some of our newer readers a sense of how I tend to think about situations like this, especially considering my long history of denouncing "fans", but the one that immediately comes to mind, is this little rant I had during my most recent article on trailers and how people paying any attention to them at all are paying too much attention to them:

Yeah, I know the trend is to watch the movie first and then check the reviews, hell, I do that, but I do it because I write movie reviews now and I don't want the bias, other than that, no, it's a stupid trend and it should STOP! Yeah, ignore the experts who tell you it's shit, waste the money and the time off your life, just to find out, hey, it's shit, and now because you've all seen it and made the people who made it rich, they're making a sequel to the shit.... Yeah, yeah, to paraphrase an old Billy Crystal joke, I'm a critic, I have to, but you...?

You don't even have to wait to read me, like, I'm not that self-obsessed and sadistic, at least not today, but you know, read the ones that actually know what they're doing, at least read your local critics in the newspapers and alternative magazines. I mean, it's not like there aren't hundreds of movie critics out there, professional names and otherwise, it's not that hard to find good ones, and nowadays, with the internet, with more access to critics than ever before..., and that doesn't even mean, read the reviews and if they're negative don't go see the movie, go see it if you want. The best critics will always try to write their reviews in a way that, even if you disagree with the critic, they'll reveal enough to give you an indication of whether or not you'll like the movie, without giving away too much, and it's not a bad general rule either. I always try to get the feel of the movie across while writing my review, as oppose to just describing the actual content, so as to help out the reader in determining whether you'll like it, a lot of critics do that. And, they don't come out with the reviews months before the movie's ever released, so there's not that much buildup, and again, tempering expectation, it helps, it really does, I cannot stress that enough. (And you don't even have to read the critics either anymore, [although I still recommend doing it] there's a lot of very good online critics who post in video form too, and many are just as professional as the more traditional print critics)

You can read that post in it's entirety, here:
http://davidbaruffi.blogspot.com/2016/04/trailers-again-grrrrrrrrrrrr-and-now.html

Yeah, you see, this has come up, again-, well, I'm sure most of you have heard about it, that on, Wednesday I believe, yeah, Wednesday, 'cause I was just about to post my previous blog when it broke, that apparently the reviews from the early screening of "Suicide Squad", which, is, um, eh, I don't know, a movie where the villains are called in to be the heroes or something, 'cause I don't-, anyway, I've been hearing about this movie, for quite a while, and it's a big Summer movie so many of the major film critics across the country got early screenings of the movie and it turns out that, at least according to Rottentomatoes.com, most of them are negative, about 1/4 of the overall critics, including only about 1/5 of the "Top Critics" gave the film a positive review. Okay, too bad. However, and keep in mind, the movie didn't open in theaters until, today, Friday August 5th, 2016, the day I'm writing this, (It'll be posted on Saturday) but two days earlier, after the "outrage" a Change.com petition was created,  to get rid of Rotten Tomatoes. I will not post the site of the petition, but currently it has 20,148 supporters, and the petitions reads as follows:

There's A Disconnect Between Critics And Audiences

You may enjoy a movie regardless what the critics say about it

we must get the people to know that the criticism not the measure of the quality of movies, it's just the opinions of the critics

Uh-huh. Just to go back to my trailers blogpost, I also wrote this:

But, you get why trailer analysis and fascination/obsession offends me, 'cause it's the less accurate and less qualified bias perspective of the same service that the film critic offers. And, here's the other thing, I know, that should be enough, for me to despise it, but it's more than just, ignoring critics in favor of trailers, there's one, ever really worst thing about this, and it's the fact that, well, the trailers are kinda irrelevant in terms of the goal of, "Trying to get people to go see these movies" at least in this context, because, most of the time, when people do obsess or anticipate over the trailers of a movie, it's a movie you were probably gonna see anyway, no matter what, not every movie trailer, it's just the, particular ones that.... Yes, this is fandom, once again, I'm going after, and no, as I've said many times before, I'm "Not a fan", and I don't take a fan's perspective, and this right here, the outright rejection of the critics, and the over-obsession of such unimportant menial aspects like trailers, this is everything wrong with fandom, basically in a nutshell. You get excited for the trailer, because you were going to see the movie anyway. Not, "Holy shit, that movie looks good, I should remember to go see it." That doesn't happen that often anymore. It does, but, no, no, no, not the way it's being discussed and done here; if you're just obsessing over something just to obsess over it, that's a fetish, not analysis. That's the thing, critical reviews will actually get people to see a movie, while trailers, um, they don't do that as much, they're just, I don't know, foreplay? No, they're not even the foreplay, they're the photo on the Match.com profile page of the other person, except you've already know you're dating them. This is superfans getting their instant gratification pressed in their heads and trying to pass it off as something that's actually worth analyzing or discussing.

If it doesn't even matter for it's intended purpose, then why are you supposed "fans" obsessing over it? (Frustrated sigh).... 

(Deep breath) Sssssssssss-So, now, fans, particularly DC Comics/Universe whatever "fffff-fanssssszzz" have decided, without seeing the movie, remember, one movie, only one movie, they've decided, that it is now time to revolt against, "the opinions of the critics". (Sighing breath)

I know what some of you are already thinking, You're thinking, "David, do you happen to have any thoughts on this? Any chance at all? I mean, you've constantly said, you're "Not-a-Fan'\ and in particular fans of the ever-increasing popular comic book universes of films and you'd been particularly vicious about them in the past, well now they're going after movie critics, we're just curious, you don't happen to have any thoughts, or anything to say at all about this?" I know that's what a lot of you are thinking, and-eh, well, as a matter of fact, yes-um, (slight chuckle) well, yes. It-, it's a little amazing, but, yes, I-eh just happen to have some thoughts and a-eh, a few words I would graciously like to tell these people, in particular, these, 20,000+ who have so far, signed this petition. I just-eh, want to take a second to collect my thoughts real quick.

Let's eh, (Outstretches arms and back) Ow, yeah, that-eh, that feels good. Yeah, let's (rubs shoulders back in a circular motion) Oh yeah, that feels good. (Deep calming breath) Ahh. Clear mind, clear mind.  Deep breah. (Deep breath) Ah, alright, sip some of my diet soda. (Sips soda from old 7-11 iced coffee cup) Mmm, (Wets lips) There we go. Okay, things I have to say to these fans. Alright one last deep breath, go into a zen place....

(Long deep breath)

My thoughts on this? Okay, you ready? Alright, here they come.:

(Deep breath)

FUCK YOU YOU LITTLE PIECES OF BLOOD-SOAKED DOGSHITS ON THE BOTTOM OF MY SHOE YOU ARROGANT LITTLE FUCKWADS! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES ARE THE SCUM OF THE EARTH! I'M CONSTANTLY BERATED AND CONDESCENDED TO BY GODDAMN SHITS LIKE YOU FUCKERS CLAIMING I'M THE ONE WHO'S OUT OF LINE GOING AFTER ALL OF YOU, CALLING ME, "PRETENTIOUS", THE ONE WHO GOES TO SEE EVERYTHING AND JUDGES FILMS BASED ON QUALITY, NOT WHETHER OR NOT I HAVE AN PERSONAL CONNECTION TO THE MATERIAL, BUT YOU PRETENTIOUS LITTLE ASSWIPES GET YOUR SHITSTAINED PANTIES IN A BUNCH, 'CAUSE (mocking)"Oh, my the God, the movie I've been waiting for for years is being poorly reviewed, those critics are ruining the thing I love, they must be stopped! AND I'M SUPPOSEDLY THE PRETENTIOUS ONE?!

FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I DON'T THINK I'VE SAID IT ENOUGH, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKK YOU! 

FUCK YOU! I still haven't said it enough, and oh, I ain't changing the font back by the way, you've all pissed me off now! Cause this, this shit, is what I've been talking about for years now. You little shits, all have to now, stop pretending you guys have any high ground to stand on. (mocking) "We're fans, we love arbitrarily things that we didn't have any input in creating, for reasons that most of us can't articulate 'cause it would reveal just how shallow and childlike our minds, but we go and see everything...-," You don't go see everything, I SEE EVERYTHING, you guys see the four things that ring the "Oh, I know that" part of your brains and are shocked when you discovered something new that's seven years old already. FUCK YOU! How fucking arrogant do you have to be, to actually claim that a movie you haven't seen is SOOOOOOO GOOD, that the people who have seen it and say it isn't, need to be STOPPED! 

I am so sick and tired of FANS, claiming that they're inclusive, and that they represent the general populace 'cause all of us, got together because of the "THINGS WE LIKE", and we're such good friends, such good friends 'cause we love these, and even if we don't we're cool with it, but we obsess over those things we like and we talk about all those things we all like and..." FUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKK ALL OF YOU! 

Not only, do you, completely obsess over things that frankly you shouldn't obsess over, 'cause you're not five anymore, most of you, not only are all those claims of inclusiveness actually just complete BULLSHIT, like I've been saying for years, 'cause they're not! Like any group, that's formed like that, they're objective isn't to get people together, it's about SEPARATING YOURSELVES from everybody else, but not only that, you're gonna go after FILM CRITICS, specifically because they're NOT LIKE YOU! 

That is some DONALD TRUMP-TALKING-OUT-OF-HIS-ASS BULLSHIT! You don't want to read the critics, fine, I don't really care, but no, it's not that, if it was, you wouldn't start a petition, it's that YOU THINK EVERYBODY, who's NOT LIKE YOU, is out to get you. Well, they aren't, until now, it was probably just me! 

(mocking) "They don't understand!" Really? THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE DEVOTED THEIR ENTIRE LIVES AND CAREERS TO WATCHING AND REPORTING ON THE QUALITY OF FILMS, DON'T UNDERSTAND! THEY, don't understand. By the way, most of those critics, are COMIC BOOK PEOPLE and nobody, and even if they weren't, NO-BODY, myself included, would ever do a job like being a film critic, voluntarily or for money, unless they absolutely LOVED MOVIES! Trust me, if you didn't, you wouldn't last a month and I wouldn't be doing this for as long as I have if I didn't love it. YOU ASSHOLES, don't understand that just because it's something that you have decided to focus your attention on, doesn't mean that everybody has to love it, or is going to love it, or for matter, is any fucking good at all. SORRY YOU DELUSION WAS SHATTERED by the COLD-HARD REALITY of PROFESSIONALS who might have an opinion, and knowledge, and expertise, outside of your own! 

This shit, you pimples on the bottom of my ass, You 20,000+ are the reasons that I feel completely justified right now, in every single thing I ever have said negatively about FANS. 

Rotten Tomatoes, is a REFERENCE PUBLICATIONS, DUMBASSES! You're essentially trying to BAN the DICTIONARY, from the INTERNET! 

EAT ME YOU GODDAMN...- 

FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! HAVE I TOLD YOU TO GO FUCK YOURSELVES YET!? NO! GO FUCK YOURSELVES! AND FUCK YOU! AND FUCK YOU!

Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK is wrong with you people!?!?! Trying to eliminate Rotten Tomatoes, first of all they're not the only site, Metacritic.com for one, is just as good if not better, second of all, all Rotten Tomatoes does is list the major critics in the country, and the world, and link to their reviews, if possible, of all the movies, and shows how all the movie critics, rate the films, on a simple "Good or Bad" rating system. Remember rating systems like that, "GOOD or BAD" Like one comic book-reading movie critic I can think of would put it, "THUMBS UP or THUMBS DOWN"?! And then they average it out. They don't even take into account, how much the Critics like a movie, and they tell you that! They're not hiding or deceiving anything from me or you. It's not a bias thing. How about, instead of showing all those images about how great a supermodel-actress looks when dressed as a fucked-up abuse victim who's in love with her abuser, how about, maybe taking into account the, POSSIBILITY that maybe the CRITICS, who've again, HAVE ALREADY SEEN THE MOVIE, THAT YOU HAVEN'T SEEN YET, you thumbsucking little pricks, that "Maybe it's not that good a movie?" "Maybe I should see something else?" "Maybe I shouldn't spend my money at the theater for it, ensuring that the studios will make another five or six of these, but instead, check it out some other time, or maybe, just maybe, avoid it as long as possible, and see what the critics are actually really enthralled about right now and check those films out, more." "Maybe take into account the possibility that they might've completely fucked up whatever franchise or story you were so excited to see made into this film (Or that the original product isn't actually that good to begin with, so naturally a movie based on that product remains disappointing, no matter how many times they try)" "Maybe actually read some of the reviews, before you see the movie." They link to the reviews you know, they don't just post a quote and forget to link it (Most of the time). And it ain't that hard to look them up anyway, I don't exactly need Rotten Tomatoes, it's just a convenience, the same way I don't need a remote control to change the TV channel, but it helps, and it's nice to have, and you're all trying to fuck that up, for NO REASON!!! other than to massage your own inflated-ass egos!

This isn't a rebellion of the FANS who are uprising against the proletariat overlords that are FILM CRITICS, no. This petition is the PETULANT LITTLE CHILD complaining that he didn't get the damn toy he wanted from the box of cereal he made his parents get by crying and screaming in the supermarket aisle. 

You guys don't even read the reviews anymore, let's not pretend you actually think this is having any impact other than, "I want to be noticed!" (mocking) "Yes, I want to say, I love, this thing, and everybody should love this thing as much as I do, and those who don't love this thing, need to go!"

You're all the ANJELICA PICKLES of the MOVIE WORLD. Yeah, seriously. Being all arrogant and know-it-all and complaining that everybody around you is an unknowing baby, while you're only a three-year-old who knows how to bitch to the right people to get whatever you want, and everything's fine, until suddenly it doesn't work.

I know, I know, these arrogant pieces of shit, they don't represent all fans, blah, blah, blah, yeah, but those ROTTEN APPLES that bitch about these ROTTEN TOMATOES, let me tell you, they're the ones who's voices get heard and get noticed by people, like ME and everyone else; they're the ones representing you all. They're the bad influences, emphasis on "Influences", and they're speaking for you, so be more careful of who's side you're hanging next to, 'cause this is the kind of shit they cause, and you don't see this from my side. It might be a lonely side, but let me tell you, I would NEVER think of something like this. I, or we, people like me, whoever they are, actually are inclusive, we don't focus on the few things we like, we try to see as much of everything we can, and we try to help and guide everyone we can and occasionally we come up with our own ideas and thoughts and not just follow whatever the crowd is saying, or whatever we wish the crowd was/would say. I don't look at the major critics as the be-all and end-all of what I think of a movie, but I sure as hell, don't flat-out reject the opinions of people more qualified than me and have more expertise than me, just because I may happen to disagree with them occasionally. They know more, they have experience, I listen to them. You people want to blow them up! Just because you only listen to that id part of your brain that fellates your ego, doesn't mean that's the only thing worth listening to.  

This is FANBOY TERRORISM at it's worst, and yeah, I- I was laughing too, like everyone else at first, 'cause they're not getting anywhere, Rotten Tomatoes isn't going anywhere, and people were going to see the movie anyway, so they're not even getting as many more people interested in the film as they think they are. But no, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU'RE A FAN! You become BLINDLY DEVOTED to the point of DE-LUS-ION, to the point where only you and your viewpoints are relevant in the world. ([Chuckled scoff], god, no wonder everybody else thinks "Fight Club" a good movie, you've all deluded yourself into thinking you're Tyler Durden). It isn't funny 'cause they think this is serious. I've heard it, quite often, "How often the critics got, whatever wrong", I hear it all the time, and it's not even a real analysis or criticism of critics, which by the way, they don't actually try to do either, which would've actually been an interesting approach, but instead, it's a desperate attempt to justify they're own uncontrollable emotions, by demeaning others, and those others are critics. 

And supposedly you're the ones who are bullied by people like me, and not the other way around.

Seriously GO FUCK YOURSELVES with A RUSTY DOUBLE-SIDED RAKE YOU EGOTISTICAL BASTARDS!!! And anybody who thinks they're making any point at all, other than showing just how lost in fandom they've become, you can all just SUCK MY ASS!!! 

DO WE STILL HAVE MOVIE STARS? A MODERN DAY ANALYSIS OF THE VALUE AND LACK THEREOF OF THE STAR SYSTEM IN MODERN ENTERTAINMENT CULTURE IN LIGHT OF DWAYNE JOHNSON BECOMING THE HIGHEST-PAID ACTOR IN HOLLYWOOD.

Do we still have stars? I mean, I know we do, but-, um- hmm.

Well, okay, I don't know if anybody caught this, but there was a bit of uproar over Forbes recent list of highest-paid celebrities, I generally don't look at these things, but a couple things have come up lately that have spruced my interest in this. Essentially what this, supposedly means is that, whoever the highest-paid actor is, is ergo the biggest movie star in the world, 'cause hypothetically the biggest star would require the bigger paycheck, and presumably, they're presence will insure that the movie will make money, so the fee is worth it, yada,  yada, yada. So in terms of the business of Hollywood, it's still kind of a thing, although-, well, we'll talk about that, but-eh, let's see the announcement from Forbes, who is the highest-paid actor right now?



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/dwayne-johnson-the-rock-highest-paid-actor-forbes-100-a7135411.html

Um, okay, I did not expect there to be that big of an ovation for that, or for that matter, that large an audience waiting to hear this. Still, um, small criticism, Forbes, that seemed like a bit overkill, in terms of a simple announcement, didn't it? The lights and the music and the graphics and video package and the-, Jesus Christ, it's just announcing who's at the top of a list. Jesus, it's not like your People magazine or anything, Jesus.

Okay, clearly that wasn't the actual announcement, but I couldn't help myself there, but yes, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is listed as the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. Apparently people, voluntarily went to see "San Andreas" despite my warning, but okay. I'll- I'll be honest, these lists have never made much sense to me, but then again, I really have never cared and frankly, I'm usually baffled by what actors people go see in movies. Or, to be more precise, will go out-of-their-way to see. For one thing, I don't do that, I don't watch a movie 'cause an actor I like is in it. I consider Nicholas Cage to be the best actor working today, but I haven't voluntarily sat through a movie of his in years, because, by nearly every account I hear, they're usually shit and yeah, a lot of times they are. Hell, I give him credit for making most of those movies, somewhat interesting, or at least he's trying to most of the time and dammit that's talent.

Anyway, enough about Cage, we're not actually talking about "Actors" here, we're talking about "Stars". Now don't get me wrong when I say this, but those are two very different things. That's not to say some of are biggest stars aren't some of our greatest actors, many times they actually are, but for these purposes, stars are different than actors. The idea of the Movie Star has been around as long as movies have been around, but basically, it's nothing more than a promotional tactic. At it's core, it's basically the idea of through, promotion, casting, etc. the idea of pushing an actor/actress as the major reason to go and watch a movie. This, this really hearkens back to an era when the studios basically controlled everything, It's pretty much been dead since the end of studio contracted talent, so, early-to-mid '60s, approximately, but that's only in the technical aspect, movies are still sold all the time based on the actors involved and certain actors in a movie mean, at least hypothetically that that movie will make huge money at the box office. Now, Forbes list is of interest, but if you check, Vulture.com most recent rankings, which is 2015, last year, but still, they've got Dwayne Johnson 5th. behind Bradley Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey, Jr. and number one was Jennifer Lawrence. You can see that list here:

http://www.vulture.com/2015/11/vultures-most-valuable-stars-of-2015.html

Now they use a different method, one that's based on a FiveThirtyEight.com designed method, which, take that for what you will, in my experience that sight's been very reliable over the years, so. (Shrugs) Anyway, you can go through the internet and find, dozens of these sorts of lists, and they're mostly the same people you should be thinking of at or near the top. I bring this up, because there's a couple things that have interested me lately, involving the concept of stars, but let's get to the relevance question first, "Do we still have stars?" or more importantly, "Is the star system still relevant in today's culture?"

Well, it's definitely less relevant than ever before. The idea of a star-vehicle film is, almost laughed at these days, mostly because most of those films are usually comedies where there's mostly audience members not laughing at them, but also because, I don't think, the majority of people, in and outside the film industry, really look at films that way. "The majority" being the key phrase there, and yes, before I go on, let me state for the record, I don't look particularly kindly on fans in general, but I gotta confess, I'm particularly baffled by this trend. Not that I think it's bad to find some people more talented than onself and try and watch and study what they do and as a technique, or even admire their work, but yeah, people who watch movies because of the actor/actress that's in the film? Yeah, that's something I think everybody should do their best to avoid, (And if you do do that, dear god don't brag about it.) First of all, there's a really small amount of actors who, actually get to pick their projects continuously, so unlike when the studios had control over actors film projects, (autonomous control over them) most actors don't get to really shape or mold their image the way they used to in the past, secondly, dirty little secret, moving pictures is a terrible art form to determine whether an actor is truly talented or not. It really is. I mean, it's still a great skill, acting in a film is a whole different level of skills but it's still mostly an edited out performance from oftentimes dozens and dozens of takes until they get it right, that one time, if they can, and if an actor, for some reason, can't get it exact, they can usually edit around an actor to construct what seems like a great performance out of them. That's not a criticism, it's just fact, and it's still difficult to act in a film, but there's a reason I always list the Director's name next to a title of a film when I review it, Film is the Directors' medium, Theater is the actors', television is the producers' medium, although I think I could argue that's becoming a writers' medium, and a writers' medium is, I don't know, books probably. Basically everything else that isn't painting or sculpture.

Thirdly, well, there's so many talented actors, you have no idea. You may notice that I rarely criticize acting or actors directly in a film, and that's because, from my experiences and knowledge I happen to know that, most actors working regularly, are really good actors. Even most of the ones you probably think aren't great actors, they're probably really good actors who just haven't been able to show off just how skillful they are. I won't name names, but I've met a few known actors in my life, even occasionally worked with one or two of them, and even still, the ones who I've worked with that aren't household names, and are frankly lucky to get work in Tampon commercials, they're pretty damn good actors. There's an overload abundance of talent in Hollywood, and unless you're actually one of the few major stars who's name means guaranteed box office, and that list is smaller and smaller everyday but we'll get to that, unless you're that, you can pretty easily be replaced on a film set. I'm serious, most of the names on that Top 100 list, they can replaced tomorrow, if, you know, it turns out they were complete and utter assholes or something. And from everything I've ever hears, complete unprofessional behavior, not showing up on set on time, or prepared, or at all, those are the big sins in Hollywood, and not being a courteous and pleasant person to be around, those are the big sins in Hollywood. Most everything else, you know, you can say, people have demons, okay. Lindsay Lohan is not blackballed right now because she's a complete drug-addicted fuck-up, she's blackballed mainly because she's unreliable. She didn't show up on sets on time, she wasn't always prepared, etc. etc., and she's not box office enough to get away with that shit. It wastes money and time for actors to not be prepared or on-set on time, and doing that consistently, that's the big sin. If you're a prick or an asshole to everybody and they can find somebody to do your job and not be like that, then, you'll be out of the job, pretty damn quickly. I know, we all have heard a few horror stories about certain people in Hollywood who still are working, and yeah, there's always a possibly of people working again, still though, there's a line, and once that line is passed, there's no real need for anyone in Hollywood to put up with too much bullshit. So anyway, generally, when somebody asks how a celebrity is like, it's pretty normal for most everyone to say that, generally, "Eh, they're a nice person," ,'cause they usually are, at least enough to work on a film set with.

Anyway, no I'm not big on idolizing anybody, especially stars. You know, I know a lot of people don't like "TMZ" and I do kinda get why, they can be grating at times, especially how much they probably over-focus on stuff about celebrities that they probably shouldn't, but I said years ago in a famous blog that they're the only entertainment news show I actually think is watchable and I still stand by that, because, at least they're more interested in humanizing celebrities and stardom. And I think, that's essentially how we should look at celebrities, not with an eye of glamour and desire but with an analytical admiration of their talents. Look at them, the same way, we'd analyze people working at, well any other job really.

Okay, now that's why I'm not in favor of a star system, or any of the fandom that's spurned through it, but do we actually have stars now? Well, if Jennifer Lawrence has her way, she'll probably get paid as much, if not more than "The Rock" and probably deserves to, but she's Katniss Everdeen, so that's why she's big. Robert Downey, Jr. is "Iron Man", so he's big. Bradley Cooper, well, he has "The Hangover", so he's also got a franchise, although granted, that one's a little-, oh wait, he's also got "Guardians of the Galaxy", so two franchises. He's also in a lot of J-Law's films. Dwayne Johnson, he was in those "Fast & Furious" movies, he didn't start in them, but they're big, for, um, reasons? (Seriously, why the hell do people watch those?) Oh, the "San Andreas" movie, is actually, getting a sequel. Wh-yyyyyy? And there's two more "Journey to the Center of the Earth" films, again a franchise he didn't start in, but has apparently taken over. Okay, Dwayne Johnson, can we all agree, has one of the absolute strangest filmographies in the history of cinema? Oh, he's also starring in a filmed version of "Baywatch" and a remake of "Jumanji". Who else, let's go further down the list, Tom Cruise, was big for years beforehand, and now he's Jack Reacher and Ethan Hunt. Eh, Hugh Jackman, oh, he's Wolverine! Channing Tatum, he's got "Magic Mike", he's also got the "Jump Street" films. he's also joining the "Kingsmen" franchise. Scarlet Johansson, she's Black Widow. Okay, I guess you're wondering where I'm going with this? Well, here's the thing, nobody goes to the movies to, see these actors. I mean, they do, but that's not the primary reason, they're going to see the characters they place, again not because they're great parts played by these great actors, although they often are, they're seeing them, because they're either already apart of a popular franchise, or, they were in a major film that then, became a major film franchise. In the top ten, only Leonardo DiCaprio is not in a movie that one could call a major franchise, unless tomorrow they announce he's starring in "Titanic 2: Waterlogged". I mean, you could argue, well he's starring in a few films that also have some established history and fanbase, "The Great Gatsby" comes to mind, that's a huge book, and had been made into a movie three or four times before DiCaprio epitomized Jay Gatsby, but yeah, no disrespect to F. Scott Fitzgerald, but it wasn't exactly as big as say, "Fifty Shades of Grey" was at the time. Even Sandra Bullock, who hasn't been in a major franchise for awhile, did do two "Miss Congeniality" films, and the more you go down the list, it becomes harder and harder to find actors who are not most famous or known, because of their involvement in these major blockbuster franchises. These tentpole films that everyone sees and is forced down our throats.

That's the thing, there really aren't that many actors who, sell the movie anymore. More and more, it's Hollywood, trying desperately to get their hands on these guaranteed money-making those projects, turning them into overblown franchises that last movies and movies, and that's what's selling. That's what I mean when I say that there really aren't "stars" anymore, and I think that's another reasons that bugs me about how much they do get promoted as stars, they're really not. They're actors, now, more than ever. Hell, that's why when I first heard Dwayne Johnson was now the biggest star in the world, my second initial thought was, "Well, that makes sense." He's one of the few actors, even though he is in several franchises, he's basically one of the few actors around who you go to see the movie, mainly because he's in it. I mean, that goes back to the last time I remember people really talked about Hollywood stars as though they were analyzed critically through the prism of their selected works, the 1980s. Seriously, go watch a bunch of old "Siskel & Ebert" reviews from the '70s and '80s, as much as you can find of them, and it's shocking how much they bring up, people like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Eddie Murphy or Sylvester Stallone or Richard Pryor even, and how much they really discuss their work almost as though they were the real artists of their fame and fortune and work. You just, don't do that now, unless, maybe you're a major action star, and only a major action star, or maybe Adam Sandler, but they talk about it quite frequently back then. Other than that, I'm almost amazed anybody ever brings up something about the skills of an actor, positive or negative, unless they're trying to praise or trash some franchise they labor needlessly over. Now, internationally, that's probably why people may gravitate towards certain "stars" like a Dwayne Johnson in that vain, especially in some places where they still have some form of the Star System, but generally, I think America has moved past the star system in all the modern contexts we associate with that system and anything that hasn't just feels like they're beyond outdated to any modern sensibilities.

And you know how I really know how outdated the star system is now? Well, because Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is now the biggest star in the world. Not because he's bad or good or a guaranteed box office or anything like that. Did you see I just said that my "second initial thought" about him being named that... well, it was my first thought that really brought that into focus to me. My initial thought was:

"Huh, that's interesting. The biggest star in the world is a TV star." And no, I wasn't thinking, WWE either.



Okay, you'll all have to forgive me, I am trying to catch up with as much television as possible for the upcoming Emmys, but I haven't actually gotten around to "Ballers", but it's in it's second season, it's reviews seem reasonable, it's on HBO, which is pretty prestigious although, no we're not talking network programming, but still, I don't think it's been talked about from this perspective just how major a shift in "Stars" that this is. There is no scenario, ever where somebody who had a currently running, regular television show, even one that's only as moderately well-known and watched as "Ballers". Seriously, this is really a major moment, a complete shift in the dynamic of what a star is. On the whole, the television stars vs. movie stars dynamic, has been shifting for years and now suddenly, it's not at all uncommon, unexpected or un-anything right now for the literal biggest movie star in the world, to be on a regular television show. Basically, just to simplify it, television has more prestige than movies do at the moment, and since not all actors strive to be movie stars and they are actual people who truly do care about occasionally doing works of quality and prestige, they're going into television, despite their successful film careers. And yes, that includes, of all people strangely, The Rock. (Shrugs) So, what is more prestigious now, film or television? Hell, how weird is it that somebody can be huge in one medium and basically an also-ran in the other? Actually that's not uncommon at all. Hell, let's go back to that list, one more time. Bradley Cooper, did "Wet Hot American Summer", last year, Chris Pratt just finished doing "Parks and Recreation" only recently, he was like the fifth or sixth lead on that series, but already a major up-and-coming Hollywood star,  Matthew McConaughey won an Oscar the same year he got an Emmy nomination for "True Detective", Melissa McCarthy became huge, not from "Mike & Molly" but from doing "Bridesmaids", and continued to do her series for years afterwards while becoming the biggest female comedy star on this list, Mark Wahlberg, at the height of his popularity and critical acclaim, had a reality show about him and his family, running a burger franchise. Shailene Woodley was on, Benedict Cumberbatch is "Sherlock", enough said there. Shailene Woodley, you can even argue, she became huge off of "The Descendants" not so much on "The Secret Life of an American Teenager". You can keep going up and down the list, but there's more examples than ever before on this list. It used to be when John Travolta got an Oscar nomination for "Saturday Night Fever" while he played Vinny Barbarino every week on "Welcome Back, Kotter", it was consider a fluke, an anomaly, especially since he only got his first Emmy nomination, a couple weeks ago, (Yeah, I was shocked too when I looked that up.) but it's happening more and more every year. Adam Driver to some is new Darth Vader, or whatever his character is in the "Star Wars" films, to others he's Hanna Horvath's messed up boyfriend on "Girls". There's also plenty of major Hollywood stars going to television, and not just, as the only cliche used to claim, because they weren't/aren't able to get regular work in movies anymore. They're getting work in films and they're big box office still, they're just choosing instead to take a more interesting, television project.

Yeah, maybe this is a one-year anomaly, who's sure if "Ballers" will even last that long, it certainly doesn't seem as viable as some of HBO's other more popular shows at the moment but I have a suspicion this is the beginning of, not a trend, a seismic shift over the next few years. As movies because increasingly the domain of the Marvel, DCs and whatever else catches the focus of the American public, or at least the ones that get books from the young adult section, assuming there's still libraries in a few years, and there better damn well be, and as television expands to the internet and becomes more and more the domains of the creative writers and producers who are getting more and more freedom to create whatever they want, don't be surprised if more and more high-profile actors, suddenly start taking parts on television, instead of doing that fifth or sixth superhero film. Just saying, the Star System as we know it, might be dead. Or at least, continued to change, from what we used to think of.

Maybe TVQ ratings should now be included as factors in those biggest stars lists....

CANON OF FILM: "THE DECALOGUE"

THE DECALOGUE (1989)

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Screenplays: Krzysztof Piesiewicz and Krzysztof Kieslowski

(Note: I couldn't find a decent trailer for the film, so I'm posting Roger Ebert's introduction to the films that you can find on the Criterion release of the movie.)

When I listed my 100 Greatest Films List awhile back, I had "The Decalogue" listed at number three and full disclosure I will and have used any excuse imaginable to watch any film by Kieslowski, pretty much any time. For instance, whenever I happen to come across Kieslowski’s hard-to-find “The Decalogue,” one of the most ambitious film projects ever undertaken. 

Technically considered the longest single film I've inducted into the Canon so far, at least in the U.S. where it briefly originally screened in a theater, it consists of ten films, each a little less than one hour in length, with each film supposedly representing one of the Ten Commandments, although I warn you ahead of time, don’t even bother trying to match them up. They were written by Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, a lawyer Kieslowski had befriended, who had a ton of ideas, but no ability to write whatsoever, and they eventually collaborated for screenplays for over a decade of great film work. 

Originally airing on Polish television, “The Decalogue,” found it’s way to numerous worldwide film festivals, where it’s status as a masterpiece was confirmed, but the film had very few theater screenings after that, and almost none in the U.S., which is understandable, how do you screen these films, let the audience sit for 10 hours, or have 2-hour sessions or…? Despite that, the films are now available in the U.S. on DVD, and I recommend only watching one or two a day at most, so you can have the proper time to consider, analyze, and most importantly digest them thoughtfully, they're two good to simply watch them all in one shot and besides that, each film is distinctive and really needs to be absorbed and not simply dismissed as a 1/10 of a complete film. Hell, two of these shorts were actually extended slightly and released as their own feature films, entitled "A Short Film About Love" extended from "Decalogue 5" and "A Short Film About Killing" an extension of "Decalogue 6". (Or, "Dekalog", the Polish spelling and how it's often listed as)

As I said, it’s a useless process to try and match the commandments, cause first of all, not all of these films really feel completely clear-cut on which commandment they are, some seem like many, some seem like the Commandments as a whole, and besides, the commandments are ordered differently in different Judeo-Christian denominations anyway. The Commandments are never discussed in the films by the characters, all of whom, happen to live on a corresponding floor of a Warsaw apparent complex. ‘cause all of them are living out moral dilemmas and problems that are part of their day-to-day lives, that they’re trying to deal with. Some characters turn up in numerous stories, only in the background though, unaware of the events the other people in the apartment building are living their lives, sometimes before we meet them, sometimes after. They aren’t connecting threads, just there to illustrate how the worlds of these people are inhabited. Except one person who shows up in eight of the movies, a solemn young man who never speaks, just looks on at the characters disapprovingly. There’s a lot of theories on exactly who that guy is and what he’s supposed to represent.  

Like all Kieslowski’s films, we can’t anticipate what’s going to happen in them, nor can we tell what a character is going to do, how other characters will react, and often we might not even know why.  Take “Decalogue 2,” for instance, where a wife or a very ill husband is pregnant with another man’s baby,  and wants the doctor to tell her whether or not her husband will live or die, ‘cause if he lives, she’ll get an abortion, but if he dies, she’ll keep it. The doctor however, refuses to play God like that, and keeps her at length. This story, like all the stories, won’t end in any way we think it will, or for the reasons we think. This story is actually repeated in “Decalogue 8” during an ethics class taught by a professor who during WWII, protected and took in escaped Jews, but only if they made a certain promise, and she runs into one such girl who didn’t accept the terms, who she had hoped for years she was still alive. 

Decalogue 7 has a young woman who kidnaps her little sister, who’s actually her daughter, but her mother, ashamed of her daughter giving birth at such a young age, treated her like her own, and now, her daughter feels she stole her baby from her, so she’s stealing her right back. So who stole from who? “Decalogue 10,” is a comedy about two brothers who try and fight off people from stealing their late father’s stamp collection, and than start conniving against each other, when they find out just how much it’s worth.  “Decalogue 1” is the biggest tragedy, involving a professor and his genius son, who are true to the principle of measurements, believing in the power of their computer. Each film was directed by Kieslowski, although he used nine different cinematographers across the films in order to have each one look a little different. to keep from the look of them from being repetitive. 

Those were just some of my favorites, you’ll have your own, but this is a collective work as a whole that will simply fascinate and amaze all who decide to view it. It may be a struggle, but it’s such a fulfilling journey, you won’t mind. It's truly one of cinema's all-time greatest accomplishments. 

MOVIE REVIEWS # 121: "STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON", "A WAR", "YOUTH", "THE VISIT", "BLACKHAT", "QUEEN OF EARTH", "ACCIDENTAL LOVE", "A WOLF AT THE DOOR", "A BRAVE HEART: THE LIZZIE VELASQUEZ STORY", "TWINSTERS", "THE RAILWAY MAN", and MORE!

For those of you who pay attention to my Facebook pages and Twitter feed, you might've noticed that I've become slightly more political in some of the things I post. Well, A. I'm trying to post more things there anyway, especially on the blog's FB page, which is here:

https://www.facebook.com/David-Baruffis-Entertainment-Views-and-Reviews-602692689824035/?ref=bookmarks

but also, I'm starting to notice the Polls have suddenly gotten much closer than they should, and I'm not happy with that. Listen, I'm a liberal, progressive, radicalist, more importantly, I'm a Democrat, and yes, I voted for Sanders, or would've had I gone to my state's caucus this year, but does that mean I'm anti-Hillary? Hell, no! Abso-fucking-lutely not. I love Hillary Clinton, in fact I would've voted for her eight years ago, except I thought she was slightly more polarizing than Obama and that he could potentially win a state or two Hillary couldn't, turns out, Obama turned New Hampshire twice, Virginia twice, Nevada twice, Colorado twice, New Mexico twice, and North Carolina and Indiana once, so, I was right there. Other than that, I honestly didn't see much difference between them. I couldn't say that about her and Sanders; he was closer to my ideology, and he had a statistical shot, and even though he loss, fine, the election was skewered against him in more ways than one, but I remember nobody complaining about that when Obama was skewering Hillary votes and delegates eight years ago, so (Blows raspberries) you know what, it's not even a concern. So, she deleted top secret e-mails, (Which ironically, sounds exactly like the kind of e-mails that should be deleted now that I'm thinking about it. Yeah, sensitive information blah, blah, blah, if that's her worst problem and worst lie, I think we're okay people) yeah, yeah, Trump is egomanical asshole who's a lousy businessman and is obsessed with nothing but his own image, which by the way, isn't worth nearly as much as he says it is. He's a two-bit hack reality TV star, and those are the nice things I can say about him. He should never have been a Party's nominee, even the Republican Party, who let's face it, after two Bush's, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Dennis Hastert and about thirty or forty other embarrassments to the human race they've sprouted on the American people in recent years, they've lost all ability to be anything more than a menace to progress. Obama is the greatest President in my lifetime, Hillary is more-than-capable of topping him, but anybody who thinks, "Oh yeah, Trump can't win, the people will correct this eventually", well, I hope you're right, but fuck that, it's time to get angry and really prove and show how worthless he is, and time to make sure everybody knows it. I'm currently thinking about trying to think of a way to provoke him, so if you see any strange and uncharacteristic tweets from me, that are sent directly to @DonaldJTrump that's me, trying to prove just hope egomanical he is, by actually seeing if he, will respond to somebody as unimportant and meaningless as me. He probably won't, but I can't put it past him. Look, I'm keeping track of FiveThirtyEight.com's polls, so, please, please, don't vote third party or any crap like that, (And btw, third parties, if you actually want to be relevant, start trying to run for offices other than President, seriously, and actually start having a real influence, even Sanders, who was a Senator as a Socialist until he ran for President knows this) and vote for Hillary. Trust me, what you'll get is, basically as good, if not better than Obama, 'cause Hillary doesn't put up with bullshit as well as Obama does/has, so she might push through more stuff we need, like perhaps a Supreme Court Justice, maybe. So anyway, call out Trump's lies, all of them, and all the GOP's untruths, in fact beat them over the head with facts the same way they beat their constituents over their head with "Feelings" and whatever other Fox News bullshit the toss, and just remember to vote for Hillary. Vote early and vote often, and keep and eye on the polls, you'll start getting angry too if you see how unnervingly close it's become. And yeah, to answer your question, I'm angry.

And one more thing before I go onto more interesting and fun stuff, yeah, I'm not gonna pretend Hillary isn't a bit shady, she's a Clinton, they know all the angles and how to play them, and that's what I love about all of them, and yeah, I'm not crazy about Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's behavior as DNC chair, and these e-mails are damning and yes, I'm glad she resigned and was kicked out of the DNC, she should've been, but here's the thing, Hillary won fair-and-square. She did. I mean you want to complain about the rules, fine, but they were the rules, and she played it well. And in theory at least, I agree with the system. I love the idea of superdelegates, people with experience, within the party, with respect and knowledge to have a vote that matters separate of just the popularity vote. With the popularity only vote, you get Donald Trump folks. I'm not gonna pretend they're always perfect, but remember they were the ones who put Obama over-the-top in 2008, and nobody complained then that he was stealing the election from Hillary, you shouldn't be complaining now. And even if we did change the system, there's no guarantee Sanders would've won, in fact, he probably would've only lost in a closer race, so what are we talking about here? Seriously, Hillary's amazing, and she wants the job, 'cause she damn well knows she can do it and do it well, and she's right about that. So let's cut this out Democrats, I'm tired of fighting within ourselves, that's not us, that's them and if we keep acting like this, then we get Trump in the White House, so time to shape up, and stop pretending that the few minor lies Hillary told, that most anybody would've told are in comparable to the 75,000 lies Trump says every fucking day, and do what Al Franken said, get to work and get her elected.

(Deep breath) Okay, let's get back to actual entertainment. Um, well, I'm focusing a lot more on television right now than movies, since the Emmys are coming up fast, I'll probably be posting more on that when I can. I did see a couple movies that I didn't get to review. One of them was an old film from 1992, called "Out on a Limb", it's directed by Francis Veber, he's the man who wrote "La Cage aux Folles" originally, and I'm generally not a fan of his work, like "The Dinner Game", which recently got remade as "Dinner for Schmucks", neither version is good, although in that case, I think I barely prefer the original, he also is responsible for "Father's Day", yeah that terrible one with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams, he made "The Toy", the one where the little kid owned Richard Pryor, yeah,-, I don't see the point of him to be honest. I guess, "The Closet", was kinda funny on concept at least. "Out on a Limb" thankfully, is probably his most forgettable and pointless film. It's a mildly-interesting screwball comedy that's mostly remember now as the only film that reunited Matthew Broderick and Jeffrey Jones, he the guy that played the principal in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", among other amazing roles. The Emperor in "Amadeus" for instance, great actor. Also, he's a giant pedophile. No, not kidding, look it up. (Shrugs) Yeah, the more you know... Alright, maybe "giant pedophile", but he's on California sex offender registry and he's has a few incidents with underage boys, I don't know maybe it's a Brian Kinney with Justin kind of thing, so who knows. (Oh, yeah, I've finally gotten around to watching "Queer as Folk", and it's really damn good so far. Wish I had gotten to it sooner)

There's one other movie I want to talk about, it's a movie I was actually gonna write a review for, but it didn't get a theatrical release for some reason, it's called "Chinese Coffee". It was shot in 2000, but didn't get even a DVD release 'til 2007. It was directed by Al Pacino, one of his few directing attempts and was based on the Ira Lewis play, and it's a two-hander with Pacino and Jerry Orbach playing old-time Greenwich Village bohemians who are now in their older age, who's friendship comes apart one late night over a novel that one of them has written about their friendship. Um, it expands the play a bit from, uses a lot of flashbacks for instance, and shows a lot of the scenes that were originally just mentioned in the play, but overall, this was a wonderful film and I definitely hope people seek it out. I'm not exactly sure why it never got a theatrical release, I definitely, especially in 2000, I could see myself considering it to be one of the better films of that year; I enjoyed it immensely, and Pacino and Orbach gave some wonderful performances between them. It's a play, Pacino's done on stage numerous times over the years, and it's a passion project of his, and I can see why. One of those rare films that just fell through the cracks.

Anwyay, this has gone on long enough, let's get to this week's MOVIE REVIEWS! Starting with the Oscar-nominated films, "Straight Outta Compton", "A War" and "Youth"!


STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (2015) Director: F. Gary Gray

✰✰✰✰

You know what actually kinda gets me about the N.W.A. story, why Easy E? (Jason Mitchell) I mean, why was he the one that Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) singled out? I never got that, Like, Dr. Dre, (Corey Hawkins) he's the producer, that would've made sense for him to be singled out by Jerry, so would Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson, Jr., Ice Cube's son [Yeah, his real name is O'Shea Jackson. That seems like a good enough stage name, although I can see changing it.]) or perhaps MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) because they were both main writers/lyricists in the group, but he singled out Easy E for some reason, as the-eh, I guess, focus of the group. The star? The major voice of the group? Eh, I don't know, with all due respect, I just never saw Easy E that way, and kinda was confused by Heller's actions. I mean, yeah, him being both incredibly supportive and protective of the group he signed, to the point of fighting police when they're about to be arrested, and actually caring about the success and well-being or the group, and yet still, screwing them over on royalties, yeah, that I buy, but, why center the focus on Easy E? I guess, one could argue that the former drug dealer was perhaps the most logical person to have some shady business arrangements with but maybe it's also because he was only a small-time drug dealer and only barely an artist who at first only bankrolled the groups' recording sessions but then became a lead rapper/vocalist practically on the fly. Although oddly, the movie offers another strange possibility that Heller just saw Easy E on their first single, "Boyx N the Hood" which was their first single, and presumed he was the main part of the group and for some reason, nobody corrected or even insinuated differently, even after their were posters that had Easy E's name above N.W.A.. I guess it's just an observation I've always had and "Straight Outta Compton" the biopic about the group, doesn't really answer this question, although we don't get Heller's perspective. The movie was produced by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, and MC Ren and DJ Yella (Neil Brown, Jr.) were producers so there's definitely some bias to the film, although that said, I think they did a pretty good job in trying to tell the story as accurate as possible, and that's probably why there's no clear explanation for Heller's, not just actions, but preferences and we have to speculate. I focus on him, because him and Easy E's relationship is the most interesting aspect of the film. The rest, while good is basically a rehash of the fairly well-known history of the group. For those unfamiliar, Niggerz With Attitude, shortened to N.W.A. for obvious reasons were the major underground hip hop act that basically invented gangsta rap as we know it, by simply telling about life as young African-American men in Compton, California, circa, late '80s and early '90s, and yes, this caused a lot of controversy at the time, in particular for their angst against the police force, with songs like "Fuck Tha Police" which they attacked for over-abusing their authority, particular with their racist treatment they receive from them, up to and including graphic and violent abuses of their powers. (Write your own "Black Lives Matter" reference to how shockingly topical this subject is at the moment.) Now, I've never been too appreciative of rap music, in the past; I've often joked about how I'm the last person who's still waiting for this rap trend to die, and a lot of that is a callback to my original feelings on the genre, particularly around this era, and they often started and in many times incited some of the more, just absurdly moronic parts of the genre, not to mention Death Row records and that beyond idiotic West Coast/East Coast war that started in the hip hop magazines and ended with at minimum, two talented young men getting killed. Suge Knight's (R. Marcos Taylor) also shown in the movie and we get a sense of his presence, and some of his more notorious behavior as Dr. Dre tries to strike out on his own by creating the infamous record company. That said, looking back, N.W.A.'s music is definitely one of the shining lights of that era and when you really listen back, the music isn't nearly as, militaristic and anti-authority that people claimed at the time, and then claimed as prophetic after the whole Rodney King/L.A. Riots incidents afterwards. The movie does a really good job in setting, the movie reflects and looks quite similar to era, not only in costumes and dress, but it gets that sense of the uneasy L.A. and the world that N.W.A. came onto the scene with as well as the scene that evolved out of N.W.A. one that seemed destined to confront the world, but not-so-shockingly in hindsight, led to everyone involved becoming far more calmed down and richer than they ever imagined. It seems strange that a crazy mutherfucker like Ice Cube, would one day have a family in a nice place while writing a stoner comedy about, people doing nothing all day. That said, "Straight Outta Compton" feels oddly formulaic and even, dare I say, average.  I mean, it's a good movie, and I guess technically a good music biopic, but I-, I have some concerns over whether it's a great one. Reading Wesley Morris's negative review of the film, I realized he picked up on something I hadn't which was just thrown together some of the exposition in the film was, like a mention of a MTV Wet n' Wild Party that, honestly, if they didn't actually mention that it was that specific party, I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between that party and any other party the group seemed to have/be involved with. We're told a lot more about N.W.A. than maybe we're shown, and I mean that in a very, by the numbers point of view. The story pretty much just goes in the order of, "This happened first and this came next, this was here, the Detroit concert was here, than Easy E and Jerry eating lobster was here in Miami, it's-, maybe it's because N.W.A.'s run is so short that their isn't as much to actually focus on; it's like trying to make a movie about the history of the Sex Pistols, only Sid & Nancy didn't die. Okay, Easy E, of course did pass away, but, yeah, it was years after and he passed away of AIDS, not because of the culture of their personalities within the world of the music they transformed the way Biggie and Tupac did. I'm not begrudging Easy E for not getting killed, don't get me wrong, but yeah, comparatively, their impact musically is probably more relevant and profound then the story of their creation, existence and ultimate end. Still though, there's plenty to recommend with "Straight Outta Compton",  the great performances, the music, and of course, the history does need to be documented whether it's as compelling as they would probably wish it were or not. I wish the movie was actually a bit more aggressive itself to match the aggression that the group come out with.  


A WAR (2015) Director: Tobias Lindholm

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Danish director Tobias Lindholm in a few short years and films has carved out a nice niche for him making some memorable slice-of-life dramas, that feel utterly realistic. He's more known as a writer at the moment for "The Hunt" and "Submarino", but his 2012 breakthrough as a director, "A Hijacking", about a cargo ship that was boarded by Somali pirates was fascinating, in how it was basically a movie about a hostage negotiation, and spend as much, if not more time in the business and government buildings of Denmark as it did on the actual ship. Now, a similarly-titled film "A War", also seems to be taking the bare bones approach to it's subject. And "A War" is about as bare bones as a film can with a subject as simple as "A War". Hell, until they actually bring up Afghanistan, I wasn't actually sure this was any war in particular. The movie takes place, again like "A Hijacking" the movie takes place half on the battlefield, and half in Denmark, this time, mostly based at the home of the Company Commander Claus M. Pederson (Pilou Asbaek) who by all accounts seems like a reasonable and sensible commanding officer and quite a good soldier at that. At home, his wife Maria (Tuva Novotny) watches over his kids, and not much else. Then, something happens out on one of the patrols, and Claus orders an attack that might maybe he shouldn't have and the results, purportedly is that innocent civilians, including children, were killed. The rest of the movie, is that he goes home, and that's one good thing, but he's got a trial looming, and the possibility of a prolonged prison sentence is looming. The best part of the movie is the actual trial, and I won't give anything away, but it's a really well-done trial and that's the main reason I'm recommending it. It's actually so well-done, and I won't give away the result, but if I had been a judge or jury on the court, I might not have voted the way they did at the end, but that's not a bad thing, it just shows how dire and difficult the numerous different aspects and timings were at play as the dogs of war are all around. The movie earned a foreign language Oscar nomination and I can see why. It's subtle and at times unnervingly slow, but I get the method and the pacing. It's taking the extreme and placing it in the everyday and treating it realistically, brutally so at that. "A War", might be about a specific war, but it hypothetically could've been about any war, and I think that's a benefit of the film. It's not a complex film in it's story, but a complex film emotionally and it's nearly flawlessly executed and the fact that there's not much else to say about the movie is a feature, not a flaw.


YOUTH (2015) Director: Paolo Sorrentino

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Paolo Sorrentino's "Youth" is a beautiful lyrical movie about two aging artistic geniuses who are both struggling to find desire both in their work and in their lives. Director Paolo Sorrentino has done these very meditative pieces before, there's definitely some Fellini in him, especially here in "Youth", which is, maybe not his but somebody's ideal version of "8 1/2" I presume. I've been more hit-and-miss on him, for instance, I really didn't care for his international breakthrough "Il Divo", that much, but I deeply admired the Oscar-winning, "The Great Beauty" and even moreso, the stranger, wilder and more surreal "This Must be the Place" which is also focused on an aging musician struggling to deal with the past. That one had Sean Penn as a washed-up rock star but here, we get Michael Caine, as a beloved classical conductor, who's long retired, figuratively and literally. In fact, the movie takes place, in one of those vacation resorts that basically exists only for the uber-wealthy and in particular, the uber-famous to get away from the world for awhile, this one's in Switzerland, and Fred Ballinger (Caine) is partially vacationing, partially living at this resort, along with his film director best friend, Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel). Mick is working on a new screenplay with a group of young film school grads, a movie he's calling his "Testament". Meanwhile, Fred is in line to be knighted by the Queen of England, but he continues to refuse the request to come out of retirement to perform his famous "Simple Songs", even though she's basically offering the best in the world for him to come back, he continues to refuse. Also at the resort is Fred daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz) who is her father's business manager, however she just got dumped by Mick's son Julian (Ed Stoppard) who out-of-nowhere announced that he's divorcing her to marry a pop star, Paloma F-, wait really, Paloma Faith (Paloma Faith, playing herself essentially) Oh, wow, I love her music, that's a nice surprise, and she's now lounging around, along with numerous other side characters all around the screen, probably most notably an actor, Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) who's out hiding and researching a role by, mostly observing life around him, mainly with Mick and Fred, although he meets a couple other people. I've describing plot and story, but the movie doesn't really have one, or it doesn't rely on it anyway. It's a meditative on life and death, and the simple random thoughts these characters have, or actually, it's a movie about what they talk about and to who they talk about it. There's one couple, who actually doesn't talk in fact. Helmut Fornbacher and Heidi Maria Glossner are credited simply as "Silent Husband" and "Silent Wife" and each day, Mick and Fred make a bet at dinner, over whether or not one of the two will ever talk to the other. I'm not sure what they represent, although I've always liked the idea of a couple who love each other and have been together for long enough that they're capable of simply enjoying the silence between them, as they ultimately have said everything they needed to say to each other. That's probably my youthful dreaming however. That's another parallel, the constant conflicting of the young and the old at this resort. It's supposedly a resort paradise that attracts the young and famous but much of the clientele is way past their prime and the ones that aren't are really just hiding from everybody else 'cause nobody young goes there. (Thing of it like Palm Springs is now) The only person who seems to be there who's young and for the joy and the glamour of it all, is the latest Miss Universe winner (Madelina Diana Ghenea, and no, for those wondering, she's just an actress, despite their being more a couple people in the movie playing themselves here) who won the trip as apart of her prize package. I should also point out there's five minute scene or so, where Jane Fonda plays a famous actress who's worked with Mick for most of his career, it's a stunning part for, what is essentially a prolonged cameo. I saw her name show up on more than a few Supporting Actress awards, 'cause she was that good, although I think Caine and Keitel's performances in particular are some of their very best in years. The movie earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, for "Simple Song #3" which is an aria that gets played at the end of the movie during a concert performance that's sung by legendary soprano Sumi Jo, playing herself also, and it's quite beautiful, although I myself, not that I'm that overly a lover of classical music, but I was a little surprised and stunned by that song's nomination. It is an important song in the movie and it does it's job, but there's quite a bit I would've nominated about the movie before I got to the Song. It's maybe a bit long, but there's a lot to like here, and many different layers and subplots and sub-stories; this is one of those movies that's not afraid to drift away from the main characters for a bit and showcase someone else, or something different, or even show us the characters' dreams, but then it can dive into some great tragi-monologues, Rachel Weisz in particular has a great monologue early in the film, she's playing kind of an interesting role here for her, one that plays to a lot of her strengths now that I think about it. There is a lot going on, there's always something interesting on the screen, and it's one of those movies you can just sit back and relax and sorta drift away into your thoughts and this majestic little temporary vacation of a world, which is kinda what a movie is to begin with. I greatly admire "Youth", I'd definitely say it's Sorrentino's best film yet.


THE VISIT (2015) Director: M. Night Shyamalan

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Well, I did hear that this was the first decent Shyamalan film in years, and yeah, I guess technically it is. I thought it was a pain to sit through, but yeah, sure, I'll give it a pass anyway. M. Night Shyamalan has become notorious in most film circles, it's not necessarily all his own fault, but I-eh, I definitely suspect that he may have convinced himself that his own skills and abilities were slightly greater than they probably were, and that has led to some, um, let's call it questionable films and film choices in recent years. It's interesting that he's rebuilt himself with a straight-up horror movie, I mean, this is, without a doubt a horror film; it even uses the conceit of foun-, well, I about to say found footage, but without giving anything, the footage is not lost in the movie, it's just a first person film though, shot from the perspective of two teenage siblings, Becca and Tyler (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould), but here's the weird thing though, he became famous for the horror/thriller genre, with his breakthrough film "The Sixth Sense" and then his two best films, "Unbreakable" and "Signs" (Yeah, "The Sixth Sense" is overrated, and "Signs" is his masterpiece, Yeah, go ahead with your comments on this one, but you're all wrong, "Signs" is easily his best, arguably the best version of "War of the Worlds" ever put on film!) and he's since stayed on that track and mostly has made, not only flop after flop, but really bad film after really bad film. But here's the thing, is he a horror filmmaker? I'm not sure, and I wonder if him being pigeonholed into that genre has hurt him. In fact, one thing I kinda remember liking about Shymalan was how distinctly different his films were, genre-wise. "The Sixth Sense" wasn't horror, it was a psychological thriller, ghost story. "Unbreakable", basically a comic book origin story, and again a psychological thriller. "Signs", like I said, his take on an alien invasion story, it certainly wasn't a usual horror. But, somewhere along the line. He wasn't even beholden to his notorious twist endings, "Signs" didn't have one, many of his other films didn't. Maybe they should've but,...- and here's the thing, he didn't start in horror. In fact, his first two feature films, "Praying with Anger" and "Wide Awake", they're not horror films at all. In fact, they're films about, character finding themselves, they're both about pilgrimages basically, and they had obvious religious undertones to them as well, they were character pieces. That's probably why his best films hold up as well as they do, 'cause they are at some level about characters discovering/finding their old/true selves. Finding out you're a ghost, finding out you're Superman, finding your faith again after following painful grief, that's not in the movies where the characters and running from, Wind, and um, well, I guess "After Earth", was supposed to be about that, but um, yeah, let's just forget that exists. Even "The Village" wasn't about the people finding out they're living out of modern time, it's about us finding out they're living in modern time, which is precisely why that movie is a piece of crap; he lost the character in favor of the narratives or worst, he lost the character angle for the plot twists. So, he's famous for a genre that he only fell into, and then, when he tried to replicate the genre, instead of sticking to his own original themes, he became the laughing stock that he's been ever since, and part of that is the publicity he got, and it wasn't entirely undeserved, but yeah, we jumped the gun on him.

So, what about "The Visit"? Well, like I said, the movie is shot from the perspective of teenagers, the girl, Becca, in particular is one of those young girls who apparently knew right away that she was going to be a film director all her life, and already seems to have learn from a few books what took me, six-digits in student loans to learn,- (Again, I am tired of this trope of teenagers making movies in movies) Anyway, she's out to document a week-long visit her and her brother have to their grandparents' house. Now, they haven't seen/met their Grandparents yet. They're mother, (Kathryn Hahn, who is sadly underused) left them years earlier on bad terms and hasn't had contact with them since. and while their Mother is spending the week on a cruise with her latest boyfriend, Becca hopes this video will help her mother who's time was supposed to heal her, but she hasn't done much healing. (Oh, there's a running bad joke about how Tyler decides to curse using female singers name, Shaymalan, for making half my CD collection curse words, Adele You!) Anyway, they finally meet Nana and Pop Pop (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) who, seem like mostly normal old people, but they do exhibit some surprisingly strange behaviors, especially at night. They do work as consulers at a nearby hospital, but they do seem to be suffering from severe symptoms of old age. Incontinence, sundowner's syndrome, etc., and this worries the kids, but soon they wonder if there's more going on with them, and naturally with this being a horror, of course there fucking is. I won't go into what, but let's just say, that for a straight horror-film, I think it works. I wouldn't call it a thriller, I wouldn't call it psychological, but yeah, there's enough character-growth mixed with some of the motifs of the horror genre that I think it combined together well enough to recommend. As to major directors diving into the first-person horror subgenre, I probably personally prefer Barry Levinson's "The Bay", which wasn't a good movie, but was probably a more interesting failure to be entertained by, but I can't say this is a bad film. We've seen Shaymalan at his best and we've seen him at his worst. This is a compromise of somewhere in-between that I can live with.


BLACKHAT (2015) Director: Michael Mann

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Oh yeah, I watched this didn't I? Well, "Blackhat" is an interesting name, at least film-wise, and much of the movie takes place in the Far East, so that kinda makes sense. For some film theory 101, the terms "White Hat" and "Black Hat" of course, come from American Westerns where typically the good guys wore white hats, and the bad guys wore black hats, because most of the Western worlds associate those colors with good and evil, respectively, but in the Far East, particularly China, the symbolism of those colors are actually reversed typically and the joke was always that Chinese would watch American Westerns and constantly wondered why the bad guys always won. Anyway, old joke, and not really, but still, nice symbolic name, does that have anything to do with the movie?

NO.

Okay, so that went nowhere. Instead, let's talk about Michael Mann. Mann, despite a really inconsistent filmography, I'd say ten years ago, you would hear his name at least come up when discussing the best filmmakers working today, but I rarely hear his name brought up anymore. Which is actually quite unfair, he's done more than enough good projects. "Thief", "Manhunter", his masterpiece "Heat", "The Insider", he also created the TV show "Vega$" and was a major force behind "Miami Vice" the TV series, and eventually he directed the movie adaptation of that film. "Blackhat" is actually fairly similar to a lot of his films, most of which are mysteries and stories about cops and criminals, this one in particular deals with hackers and cyberterrorism that turns into real terrorism. Hackers are, basically blowing up the world, starting with Hong Kong, and seemingly mostly focused in the Far East, but he's also gone after Chicago, for, um, reasons. The government's of the U.S. and China, represented the majority of the time by Carol and Chen Dawai (Viola Davis and Leehom Wang), unable to combat him, gets the world's best hacker, Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth) out of prison, in order to defeat them. Also along, is Chen's sister Chen Lien (Wei Tang) who spends most of the time either sleeping with Nick or being on the run with Nick after shit hits the fans and they're running around Jakarta searching for Blackhat, which is the name of the terrorist hacker they're after. There are parts of this movie that are quite amazing to look at, like there's some really well-composed scenes, shots and sequences, especially near the end, but the movie is just instantly forgettable even as you're watching it. It's shockingly boring and by the numbers, there's just barely any emotional interest in any of the characters, or for that matter catching whoever's behind the acts. Maybe it's because they're fighting a computer essentially for most of the film, but it's not compelling when humans are onscreen either. It's actually not that different from Mann's "Miami Vice" film, also a movie that was also about a white guy who's moral behavior was questionable, and ended with him threatening to leave with his Asian girlfriend to live off-the-grid somewhere. I liked "Miami Vice" actually, but only so much in that it actually felt like a modern-day take on the series, "Blackhat" doesn't even have familiarity going for it, and yet it feels like every other movie I've ever seen. I'm sure Michael Mann will come back to his best form someday, but this definitely wasn't it.


QUEEN OF EARTH (2015) Director: Alex Ross Perry

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(Confused breathy sigh) Alex Ross Perry. Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what to make of him yet. I first became aware of him last year with his feature "Listen Up Philip" which I barely recommended, in fact until I looked it up, I thought I had actually panned the film outright in my mind. That movie, felt more like a Post-Mumblecore Woody Allen-esque story that, really didn't work that well, mainly 'cause the main character was too whiny, needy, pretentious, and-, I don't know it just, kinda worked, 'cause it felt believable. Well, "Queen of Earth", is, well, I was probably right about the Woody Allen thing, but this film is definitely more reminiscent of Allen's biggest influence, Ingmar Bergman. Very obviously Bergman. In fact, very obviously "Persona"-era Bergman, which is definitely my favorite Bergman. In particular, he seems to have taken one very particular lesson from Bergman, and that is, that the closeup of the human face is the one fascination object the video camera can lay eyes on. Which is true enough, as two films in, I guess the biggest and most common motif of Alex Ross Perry that I can find is that nothing fascinates him more than Elisabeth Moss's face. I can't say that he's wrong to fascinate so much on her, but I can't say that it isn't somewhat jarring that he's almost always in such closeups, there's rarely room for his characters to breathe. Anyway, also similar to "Listen Up Philip" the movie plays fast and loose with time, and in fact, it often flashes back to the year before when Catherine (Moss) was visiting her friend Virginia (Katherine Waterston) at this beach house her family outside of New York, and the movie cuts between, her current visit, after her father passed away and after she found out that her longtime boyfriend James (Kentucker Audley) had been cheating on her. Her father was a famous New York artist and she's also an artist, but after some scandal that's not particularly, overtly expressed, but it involves money, and the screwing people out of it and it led to his suicide. Or, maybe that's the friend's family problems, 'cause it's often insinuate that Virginia's parents weren't on the up-and-up and that some of the neighbors aren't exactly keen on them living near them. Either way, the one thing that's abundantly clear is that Catherine is quickly losing her sense of perspective, and/or her mind. She's particularly worried about a neighbor, Rich (Patrick Fugit) who comes along and that Ginny, which is something Virginia only lets good friends call her, is hanging around and appears to be in a relationship with her friend, which she reads as competing for attention. I think the biggest issue I have with Perry is that, I rarely understand or know why and where his stories lead to, or why they lead where they lead. I guess they don't have to go anywhere and this film is just a profile of somebody going crazy and losing her barrings but if that's the case, then-eh, why all time jumping and why the mess of everything. For instance, a movie that I would compare this film to might be Lars Von Trier's "Melancholia" which also focused on two events at the same location with the same cast of characters, and how they were dealing with certain events and psychoses that they were fighting with, but not only did that movie make it more clear what everybody's issues were, that movie also split the two periods of time, so that we saw one after the other, and I think that would've made this film more effective. Seeing, more of who they were might make us more interested in how they got here, and instead it kinda just seems like he's just confusing the audience by periodically jumping back out of nowhere. It's almost like, he wrote that the character does this and acts like this, and then when he wrote why, he wrote the whole scenes out to explain it and kinda clumsily shoved them in there hoping there's some connection. There is some connection, but much of that is just Perry's style of shooting a movie. He is talented, and I think there's a great movie somewhere in here, I just can't figure out where exactly. Maybe he's kinda like how I panned all of Xavier Dolan's movies until he made "Mommy", 'cause I knew he still had a great movie in him, but, for now, I'm cautiously interesting in Perry's work. I will, he does get some amazing performances out of his actors.


ACCIDENTAL LOVE (2015) Director: Stephen Greene

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Wait, wait-a-minute, I'm not reviewing this film, this movie is too old, and I don't have the time or need to devote to-. What?! 2015, no that can't possibly be right, this movie looks like it was made a decade ago! Wait, David O. Russell directed this?! I-eh-um, okay, it does sorta seem like one of his lesser works that failed comedically, but-eh, that's-, no this isn't, give me a second, I gotta look this up. This isn't adding up.

(Searching internet)

Hmm, huh, Richard Roeper's review, what's he got to...
The Story behind "Accidental Love" is weirder and definitely more interesting than the movie itself. Based on a novel by Kristin Gore (Al's daughter) titled "Sammy's Hill," the production was titled "Nailed" when director David O. Russell and the cast assembled for filming in 2008. Production was shut down more than a dozen times when the financial backers failed to make payments on time. cast member James Caan quit the film early on (Russell has a history of run-ins with actors from George Clooney to Lily Tomlin to Jude Law). Russell finally walked away and successfully lobbied to have his name removed from the credits. The patched-together "finished" product was released on VOD earlier this year, and it' s getting a one-show-only showcase at Facets Cinematheque on Friday.

Oh-kay, well, that explains it. And for the record by the way, this happens way more often than people realize, even with some established actors and directors. (Stephen Greene is Russell's "Alan Smithee" alias) Hell, Pacino's "Chinese Coffee" didn't even get a theatrical release. And, yeah that explains pretty much everything wrong with the movie as well. And yes, until I actually checked the release date I was actually just gonna skip reviewing this movie, because, well, to quote Roeper's review again:

As for the movie, it's an unmitigated disaster, not even worth a spin as a curiosity piece.

(Shrugs) Um, yeah. Yeah, there's really not much here. I mean, it's clearly supposed to be one of those old-time screwball comedies, sorta like if Preston Sturgess tried to make "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" but, that's... (Shrugs). It begins with a rollerskating-waitress, Alice (Jessica Biel) who's about to marry the man of her dreams, a local cop named Scott (James Marsdan) until a nail is accidentally shot into her head. Because of this, she's got a shortened life span and for reasons that have since become mostly irrelevant since Obamacare came along, she decides to head to Washington and try to convince her Congressman Howard Birdwell (Jake Gyllenhaal) to stand up for her and others who come along and help them get healthcare for reasonable things, like a nail stuck in your head. Needless to say, the most sensible thing in the movie is the fact that she then has sex with him, as the nail in her head triggered her, um-slut reflex. "I'm a nail slut", she utters in the movie's only memorably funny line. How this eventually involves, girl scouts and the Majority Whip's (Catherine Keener) plan for a military base on the Moon, no, not kidding, and-, eh, I don't remember, 27 other ridiculous things that might sound funny in a decent Upright Citizen's Brigade sketch or something, but yeah, this is a mindless mess of a barely-a-movie, that probably wouldn't have been funny eight years ago. I get the sense there probably was a decent satirical idea here at one point, the era of it's satire has passed, and even if it was around the time, it really isn't executed that well, and I know this is a tough genre to pull off and I admire the attempt, but obviously this was a doomed attempt to begin with.


A WOLF AT THE DOOR (2015) Director: Fernando Colmbra

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"A Wolf at the Door" begins with a mother, Sylvia (Fabiula Nascimento) picking up her daughter, only to find that, somebody's already picked her up who she doesn't know. First scene. My natural instinct would be, a long investigation going into, who took the little girl, and why and there is an investigation, but no, this movie goes somewhere else. You see, there's a couple different kinds of mysteries, most famously the "Whodunit", where the story is about the investigation into who did the crime, this is the most traditional one, the second more non-traditional one is called the "Howcatchem" where we know who did the crime right from the beginning and the mystery is about how the detective character eventually catches the person who committed it; think "Columbo" as a "howcatchem" mystery. "A Wolf at the Door" is, neither of those, although it seems like it could be both at certain points. No, what it actually is, is a "Whydidit". a mystery about, why somebody committed the crime. This is remarkably difficult to pull off. Now, it's not difficult to come up with a motive, but a "WhyDidIt' is where the main focus of the mystery, is about seeking out the reason why the culprit committed the crime. In this case, the culprit, and it doesn't take that long to find out who it is, is Rosa (Leandra Leal) a young woman who was a friend of Sylvia, but more importantly, was a mistress to her husband Bernardo (Milhelm Cortaz). Now much of the rest of the film is in flashback, although it's often seen from different points of view and which perspective is more accurate and truthful is not necessarily apparent until were well into the film. It's a bit of a "Rashomon" tale actually, although, and since I happen to be watching it at the same time, it actually felt and reminded me for most of the movie of the Showtime series "The Affair". (Which, I'm only starting to watch, but anybody have thoughts on that show, 'cause I'm only beginning and I'm not 100% sure so far on it, but anyway.) The movie is the debut feature from Fernando Colmbra and despite a very limited U.S. theatrical run, he got a DGA nomination for Best First Feature, and it's quite a unique and skilled first feature. Not perfect by any means, there's some stylistic ideas that I'm not 100% sure worked, there's a lot of closeup of focused shots, closeup mostly of characters who seem to be behind something attuned to prison bars and the movie gets pulled into, what seems like a story about the romance between Rosa and Bernardo, but that's only on the surface. I will not give away the more shocking parts of the movie that make things much clearer about why Rosa kidnapped their daughter and what happened to her, not that it justifies what happened, but they do help you understand why she did it. Leandra Leal by the way, gives a very powerful performance in this role, and so does Milhelm Cortaz, but Leal, is probably more the lead character although only slowly does the movie reveal to us that fact. "A Wolf at the Door" reminds us that, all actions have consequences, and only the arrogant think otherwise until it's too late, and also that a mystery film can still surprise you, even when you know there's only a few possible suspects and ways that this story can end and that's not just because of the execution of the storytelling, but the way the story was told. It legitimately kept me guessing, until the brutal truth was revealed. Between this and "The Second Mother", their foreign language Oscar submission, Brazil had a quite good year for films in 2015 it seems.


A BRAVE HEART: THE LIZZIE VELASQUEZ STORY (2015) Director: Sarah Bordo

✰✰✰

I'm, honestly, not really sure where to start with this one. I mean, I can take the direction of most of the critics' party line and bring up the vivacious good-hearted nature of the focus of the documentary, 'cause the movie, basically just focuses in on that, and I can't blame the movie entirely, but, this is another one of those documentary films where I wonder if it wouldn't have been better perhaps as a short. "A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story", showcases, Lizzie Velasquez. Who is she? Well, currently she's a famed motivational speaker and Youtube creator, who still keeps up her Youtube page, the link is below and it's still extremely popular, some of her biggest videos :

https://www.youtube.com/user/lizzitachickita

and she's one of the biggest anti-bullying advocates out there. She's also famously been called, on an infamous Youtube video, the Ugliest Woman in the World. Is she? (Long pause) Uh-um, I-eh, (sigh) um, I-, yeah, there's no getting away from this, she's not easy to look at. Now, of course, she's beautiful on the inside, way more, than, say I am, but-, I wouldn't call her ugly, I would however wonder, what the problem was, and yes, she has problems, and even worst for most of her life she didn't know what her problems were. She was born, essentially early, and with too much skin to her body, which they thought she might able to grow into, but here's the thing, she isn't capable of gaining weight. According to her wikipedia page, she weighs 64 pounds, at her biggest, and has all her life, and yes, that is the most disturbing thing about her appearance. I've posted a photo from the movie of her face, but yeah the scariest part about her appearance honestly is how thin and tiny she is, my most natural inclination when I see her is to shove a Baskin-Robbins store or two of ice cream down her throat. She's spent most of her life, getting tests and being in and out of hospitals trying to someone figure out a diagnosis for her condition. The most probably diagnosis, and I'm checking Wikipedia to make sure I get this right, they suspect is a form of something called Neonatal Progeroid System which, well Progeria or Progeroid System is, and I'm simplifying greatly is an aging genetic disorder that mimics physiological aging. Her condition, on top of the extra skin she had at birth, caused her to be blind in her right eye and her left eye is heavily vision-impaired as well. I'm not sure where or how the severe overbite came from, but she's also suffered numerous injuries over the years. At one point they had to break her toes, so they could be extended, and they inserted nails in to stretch them out, and then remove the nails after they healed and grown out, and I think she mentioned that her heels are also full of nails now. The amazing thing is that she's overcome so much of it, and purportedly as long as she's relatively healthy and watches her heart, yeah, her heart's got some problems also affected by the syndrome, she should be fine and live a full life, and she's also done a great job overcoming most of her deficiencies and achieved many of her career goals. She was actually popular in high school after some early tough times where she was bullied and picked up. but once the students were able to understand her condition, they took to her warmly. She was even a teenager. And then, the video surfaced of her on Youtube. She never found out exactly who posted it, and I tried to find if the original video was still on Youtube and it might be, but I didn't find it, at least not in the first few searches for "Ugliest Woman in the World Lizzie Velasquez" and mostly I found, clips of her or other Youtubers talking about her and how wonderful she is. Occasionally she shows up on a few strange oddities list, but nothing harmful, although I didn't check any of the comment sections. Thankfully nobody's said anything as harmful to me in any of my comment sections, at least none that I can remember. We do see a glimpse of her life, her going to her TED talk, her campaigning on the Hill for an Anti-Bullying Bill, that amazingly hasn't been passed yet, she's worked with, numerous celebrities and charities, including Hillary Clinton. As for the film, I wasn't as enthralled with the more inspirational aspects of the film, although I did appreciate the few insights into her that we had, including a scene late with her and her family, finally getting a diagnosis. I guess, there's no harm in the film, so I'm recommending it, I just wonder, as amazing a person as Lizzie Velasquez is, whether or not she was enough for there to be a complete documentary, that's what I wonder most. I think this would've been better as a short doc, but for what it is, it's worth watching.


TWINSTERS (2015) Directors: Samantha Futerman and Ryan Miyamoto

✰✰✰✰1/2

Okay, you see this film, this is how you take a fairly slight or possibly unsubstantial-enough-for-a-full-documentary subject, and then turn it into a full, complete and entertaining documentary. I mean, I know there are people who wonder when I give lukewarm or even straight-up negative reviews to documentaries because I argue that there's not a deep or rich enough subject matter to maintain a full documentary, even if that subject matter is, for all-intensive purposes someone or some thing that's so angelic and/or inspirational that I almost feel guilty or shameful for not recommending a movie about them, even though, for all-intensive purposes, I wasn't entertained by the film. I did it last review with my barely passing review of "A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story", and I've done it multiple times over the years, even long before I was writing blogs regularly. I mean, I get it, some people are actually that saintly, that you really basically have to cover and portray them as though they were living, breathing saints, I know there's people like that out there, but that doesn't make a film about them compelling; hell it almost automatically makes the movie uninteresting, because, well, they're so goddamn saintly there's nothing interesting or fulfilling about them. Let's face it, the sinners are much more fun and only the good die young. (Why, do I keep quoting songs lately? God, that's like three times in my last two batches of reviews,-, I really am not intending to be doing that) Meanwhile, here's "Twinsters" a movie that, based on the logline alone, I might've thought, "Yes, this might be a fun little short, but is it enough to engage me for a feature film?", but yes, this movie is strikingly rich and engaging. Also, ironically, just like "A Brave Heart..." the movie has a great deal to do with the internet and even more specifically, Youtube. The movie begins with a beautiful young actress, Samantha Futerman, who also co-directs the movie. She was born in South Korea, and was adopted by a family in America as has been performing in some way for much of her life. Checking her IMDB page, I find that I've actually been watching much of her since the beginning of her film career, when she made her feature film debut in a delightful little independent film called "The Motel", almost ten years ago, and since then, you might have seen her in several television shows, most recently "Kroll Show" or in featured roles in stuff like "Memoirs of a Geisha", "Going the Distance", "21 & Over", "Man Up"..., a few other things. She's also done some short films here and there that have been shown online, including a particularly noteworthy one where her character is shown constantly punching guys in the dick. It was pretty funny, and she started getting Facebook messages and emails from France, who claimed she looked exactly like a friend of there's. Normally, she probably intended to dismiss the claims, but then she looked up the girl, and the resemblance was startling. She also, had the same birthdate as she did, and was born in South Korea, and was adopted shortly after her birth. Her name is Anais Bordier, and she's a fashion designer from France who was currently working/going to school in London. They soon start talking and become fast friends over Skype, and each others friends and families, have trouble believing what they're seeing. Now, I have known identical twins who look quite a bit like each other, I have an Uncle for instance who's a twin, but for some reason I've always been able to tell them apart personally, but-uh, yeah, imagine you didn't grow up with a twin and suddenly somebody shows up who looks, pretty much exactly like you. That's basically what these two twinsters begin to deal with. First they have to make sure they're twins, so they send off their DNA to confirm it, which they send to the scientists who do the major studies on twins, who are naturally very interested in them and their story, and yes, they confirm their DNA, despite some inconsistencies in their birthing records, they are indeed identical twins, who were separated at birth and found themselves living on separate continents. The movie is rather unique as well, as it's actually shot, pretty much as the events are taking place. They detail online the connections, they, (Although mostly Samantha) record the Skype interviews, along with her friend, who's recording as they record on Skype and then they travel and have their first nervous meeting between two sisters who never knew they the other existed, and then they reconnect later in the States..., it's actually surprisingly heart-warming, seeing these two souls finding out about each other, and seeing how similar and how strikingly different they are. While they're both in creative fields, Samantha for instance grew up in a fairly loving neighborhood and family that including two siblings, and is more expressive, while Anais, was an only child and in France, was slightly more ostracized for being a Korean adoptee and always felt a slight shame about her heritage and is far more introverted. They both finally make their way to Korea, to look up their records and whatever else they can find about their birth mother, who they're told is not interested in meeting up with them. They're actually big news as word of this social media story had broke and the story of two daughters of South Korea returning home made headlines. They do find the foster mother they both lived with at one point, who can remember their life when they were barely toddlers. It's unclear how or why they were inevitably separated, we can probably imagine the scenarios better than the facts would help us anyway. This is a movie about two interesting people who find each other and eventually learn about each other's, and through their learning, we learn about them, and it takes a subject that could've just barely been an interesting segment on a bad talk show for fifteen minutes, and makes it a fun, human and entertaining special interest story, one of those few special interest stories that are actually special. I really had fun watching "Twinsters" and seeing these two girls; I can't wait to see what happens to them, both career-wise and personally. Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing new movies about them every couple years to see where they're at in life and how well they've connected or if they remain connected, stuff like that. Inventive filmmaking plus a subject that's actually able to grow and expand and filmmakers that are willing to put themselves out there and alone the story to evolve naturally and grow, that's the stuff of wonderful documentaries, even ones that are rather small and insignificant like this one is, at least on the surface.


THE RAILWAY MAN (2014) Director: Jonathan Teplitzsky

✰✰1/2

Okay, "The Railway Man", um, I get what they were trying to do, but...-, okay so the story begins with our main character, Eric (Colin Firth), who's a railway enthusiast, which is different from a train enthusiast, somehow, and he's pontificating about a recent meet cute he had while having to take an irregular train detour due to some cancellations. The meet cute, is Patti (Nicole Kidman) and he says that he believes he's in love with her, and decides to meet her up at the next station she knows she'll be at, and soon, they're awkward but touching little romance starts. Then at around the ten minute mark of the movie, Eric begins having severe traumatic flashbacks from thirty-plus years earlier, and suddenly this little romance turned into a war movie and I feel like I've been baited-and-switched. I mean, I know what they're trying to do, but boy does it not work. Basically, they're trying to-, well, they're trying to speed up the romance, to the point where we see their first meeting or two and then, happily ever after, so they can get right to the-, well, usually this happens in horrors or thrillers, here the horrifying part is flashback to WWII. You see, this idea can work, where you just introduce the romance and then they're in love, "Gaslight", "Spellbound" comes to mind, but those are movies where the dynamic of the film is based around the romance that's established, this seems established because...-, um, because...-, well, because they had to establish it. The movie is instead about the trials that Eric suffered while a POW at a War Camp in Burma after the fall of Singapore. As a soldier, (Jeremy Irvine) he's put through some particularly gruesome tortures, many of them by a Japanese soldier, Takeshi Nagase (Tanroh Ishida), and it's haunted him all his life. Even his fellow POW, Finlay (Stellan Skarsgard) even warns that his experiences are worst than normal. This leads Patti to do something to help her new lover get over these horrors, and she finds out that Takeshi is still alive, (Hiroyuki Sanada), and he doesn't live too far away, and this leads to, well, I think that's what the movie is really about, so I won't go into it, but it could've been an interesting story between them if they framed it that way. Instead, the movie is really this chaotic mix of flashbacks and flash forwards, and flipping back and forth between them. This is the other really probably with the way the story begins, I mean, other than the fact that Nicole Kidman is really wasted in this barely a part, is that it doesn't really establish the main character to begin with, other than, he meets the girl, has a train/railway fascination, and then, he starts having PTSD. There's no character there to care about to begin with. I mean, even if they focused, like thirty minutes developing the character, this movie might've worked, but we're supposed to care about these characters so fast that there's no way to get a connection. This is the second film from Director Jonathan Teplitzky that I've seen since his debt feature "Better than Sex" which is strange, 'cause that film was literally only about it's two main characters and us getting to know them. Of course he wrote that one, this one is based on a novel and a true story, which to me, either means the novel only also, glances over the relationship with his wife, or the screenwriters just thought to skip over it 'cause they thought it wasn't interesting, or something like that. I haven't read the book, but I'd guess it's the latter, and there's like, five chapters or something of a longer tale that's only the first ten minutes of this movie, that's what it feels like, especially with Nicole Kidman in such a prominent role that's barely there, that really makes little sense, so I bet there's a lot of this movie on the cutting room floor.


TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970) Directors: Richard Fleischer; Japanese Footage: Kinji Fukusaky and Toshio Musada

✰✰✰1/2

I gotta confess that I'm been avoiding this film to some extent over the years. I don't normally do that, but I've been sort of evading this film consciously and unconsciously over the years. I've missed TV screening, I've had copies of it, but haven't watched it, I've struggled to get copies of the film in recent years to watch it, and even as I was putting the film in, I was partially dreading it. Not only because it's a feature film that's about the attack on "Pearl Harbor', which is a subject that doesn't necessarily have a great recent track record when it comes to film. Also though, it's a long Hollywood military epic, which in of itself isn't a real problem, those sprawling David Lean-style monstrosities of epics, I don't hate those necessarily, many of the greatest movies of all-time are like that, but there's a reason you rarely hear "Tora! Tora! Tora!" listed among them. For one thing, this movie was made in 1970, there's a certain point, and I can't quite tell exactly when it is, but that classical Hollywood style of filmmaking, after a certain date when it's still being shot in that style where I think it's difficult to believe a film looking and seeming like that. "The Great Escape", is probably the last great one on the borderline, and that was '63, I believe, I guess there's something like "The Man Who Would Be King" after both these films that's technically still a real good film, but that came out the same year as "Taxi Driver", and yeah, when you look it's contemporaries, I definitely believe there are certain film that were made in different eras that look totally out of place. You don't see it that often now, 'cause everything from film to digital is available to use and the way we shoot even subgenres like war movies has evolved so much that you don't really see them shot this way anymore, and 1970 is one of those years where the transition from the old Hollwood glamour big budget intermission extravaganza were just on the borderline of becoming extinct in favor of the more gritty '70s style of film making favored by the Film School Generation of filmmakers. 1970 was also the year of "M*A*S*H" and the movie that won the Best Picture Oscar that year, "Patton". "Patton", is one of those transitional movies where it does kinda fit, although you should note that that's probably because it's writer was Francis Ford Coppola and two years later he'd make "The Godfather", but anyway, every time, I've tried to get into "Tora! Tora! Tora!" as much as there is some great skillful film-making, including some great practical and visuals effects, it's one of those movies I watch, and mostly spend half the movies looking at how it's always 100% clear that every indoor scene is shot on a soundstage somewhere. (I get the same feeling every time I try to sit through Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments", the popular one they air every Easter, that movie,- I'm really amazed people sit through that every year and I don't get why. For one thing, DeMille already made a better "The Ten Commandments" in the silent era and that one actually looks like it takes place in Egypt, [And doesn't take 40 days and nights to watch the fucking thing]) Anway, so how does, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" hold up in that mindset, a impressive film with an out-of-date style and conceit and a subject matter that's again, important historically but not actually that interesting or compelling when it comes to a story worthy of a film? Actually, it holds up okay. I'll recommend it, it's got enough to keep me interested. It's definitely second-second tier of these kind of movies, and I'd probably only recommend it if you've seen most of the others before. (Although you can skip "Doctor Zhivago", that one's overrated as all hell.) That said, it's actually quite a well-done movie. Purportedly, everything that happens in the movie is completely true to the events preceding and on December 7th, 1941, and probably the true saving grace of the film is two-fold, one, it gets into the really minute details of the attack, especially on the Washington side, who had people ignore confirmations, had telegram warnings sent that were delayed, and at one point, President Roosevelt wasn't even allowed by his Generals to hear/read reports of translated orders from Japan as they made their way up and down the South China Sea, and also, the movie shows the Japanese perspective. The movie listed three directors, Fleischer, who directed the American footage, and two Japanese directors to direct the Japanese footage, most notably Kinji Fukusaku, who's probably most known in America for "Battle Royale" (Ironically another film that strangely looked like it was made ten years before it actually was, although that was the least of the problems with that film.) I can buy that the history is accurate and for the most part, while it is a bit of a slow frustrating watch as it heads towards, well, the inevitable, for all it was trying to, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" probably succeeded way better than it should've. It's well-acted all-around, and yeah, I think I probably would've appreciated the film more if it was made, maybe even ten years earlier, but it did get made, and it goes into every aspect of the Pearl Harbor attack on both sides that you probably reasonably could've. Perhaps, I could see somebody telling this story again, with a more modern eye for cinema, maybe Terence Malick or Clint Eastwood especially, I bet he could do that, Hell, he kinda already did with his "Flags from Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima" films, and I thought quite a bit about "Letters..." while watching "Tora!...", so there's definitely ways this can work better, but overall this is pretty good for the time.