Inception and The Builder



Inception, 2010. Directed and written by Christopher Nolan. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas, and armies of gun toting men.

The Builder, 2010. Directed by R. Alverson. Written by Alverson and Colm O'Leary. Starring O'Leary.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of... --Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5, 169-170

Does Christopher Nolan dream? One must assume that the Brit sleeps, and when he does his waking life warps and darkens as it does for the rest of us. But maybe I'm being presumptuous--maybe he cannot sleep, maybe he cannot dream. Maybe Mr. Nolan has to read about dreams, and maybe he thinks that movies are dreams. There has to be something to explain the utter lack of imagination on display in his lauded Inception. For Inception is a film about dreaming... that hasn't a single dreamlike frame in its 148 minutes.
Continued...

Toy Story 3, 2010. Directed by Lee Unkrich, written by Michael Arndt. With the vocal talents of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Estelle Harris, Teddy Newton, Bud Luckey (incredible), Javier Fernandez Pena, and Timothy Dalton and Kristen Schall, both utterly wasted in miniscule roles.

Is it fair to criticize a very good movie because it fails to live up to nearly impossible standards? Case in point: Toy Story 3. Look at Pixar's last six years. The Incredibles. Cars. Ratatouille. Wall*E. Up. Excepting Cars, you've got four of the best movies a studio has put out probably since Paramount hit the jackpot with Robert Evans in the mid 70s. I would argue it exceeds anything Disney has ever done in a six year stretch of time, and would go so far as to say that those four are better than any four of Walt's films ever. So with this in mind, I ask again: is it fair to say that Toy Story 3, unquestionably the finest film this summer, and exciting and at times touching movie, pales in comparison? That I expect more from Pixar? Or is this critic spoiled?
Continued...

Bad Company, 1972. Directed by Robert Benton, written by Benton and David Newman. Starring Barry Brown, Jeff Bridges, John Savage, Jerry Houser, Damon Cofer, Joshua Hill, and the great character actors David Huddleston, Jim Davis, Ed Lauter, John Quade, Raymond Guth, and Charles Tyner.

Last summer, when The Hurt Locker was garnering all sorts of praise and little box office, some film critic, whose name I don't recall, noted that the current slate of war films was unique in history. This fellow noted that until this war, films critical of war, or deathly realistic, simply didn't come out while the war was still being fought. The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and their ilk were all released after the Vietnam War, and of course there were few, if any, movies critical of World War II or Korea. Perhaps this is attributable to the fact that we were, as a nation, very much in support of WWII and Korea, and at the start of Vietnam, while the "police action" raged and had moderate support, crap like John Wayne's The Green Berets did stellar box office. This war's films, however, have yet to find an audience. Why, I wonder? Could it be... because we don't have a draft?

Consider the past... and Robert Benton's Bad Company. Continued...

I have been having dreams about the oil spill. I never see the oil, never touch it in my dreams, but it's there. Standing on the shores of some southern beach, in Florida or Louisiana or Alabama (I'm not sure), I look out at a distant horizon, at the sea churning there past the waves, and know that there's a menace, something that seems likely to destroy everything. My experiences with the Gulf of Mexico are small--a few days spent in Naples, a good spring break but not much to talk about. But this shoreline is very real, very remote, and though I don't see any black goop, I know it's coming.

I don't need to tell you that this is the largest environmental catastrophe in United States history, nor that the oil is wrecking the livelihood of countless fishermen, the tourism industry, that every form of sea life--birds, fish, insects, and sea creatures small and essential--are dying or are going to die. Or that the currents and tides may carry this oil all around the Gulf, swirling the poison around and into the little inlets and bays, and it may even carry out into the Atlantic. It's a crime. The worst of my lifetime.

A Facebook page has sprung up, urging us to boycott British Petroleum. A hand drawn sign appeared on the pedestrian bridge over 394 calling for the same. We are starting to learn that BP avoided drilling the wells that could have plugged the leak (something Canada requires and that BP, as of only a couple of months ago tried to repeal), and if they had been in place we might have plugged the thing already. Instead it will take until August at best, December at worst. Like everyone, I'm angry. Thing is, I'd like to boycott BP. But I don't know how. Because as Walt Kelly once opined, through his alter-ego Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Continued...

Happy 102nd birthday, James Stewart. A list of his essential films:

Vivacious Lady, 1938
Destry Rides Again, 1939
The Shop Around the Corner, 1940
The Philadelphia Story, 1940
Come Live With Me, 1941
It's A Wonderful Life, 1946
Call Northside 777, 1948
Rope, 1948
Winchester '73, 1950
Harvey, 1950
Bend of the River, 1952
The Naked Spur, 1953
Rear Window, 1954
The Far Country, 1954
The Man from Laramie, 1955
Vertigo, 1958
Anatomy of a Murder, 1959
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962
The Shootist, 1976
Airport '77, 1977

Here's a little ditty I wrote in honor of Mr. Stewart, on his 100th, a couple of years ago.

James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart was born May 20, 1908 and died July 2, 1997.

The Good, the Bad, and the Weird (Joheunnom Nabbeunnom Isanghannom), 2008. Directed by Ji-Woon Kim, written by Kim and Min-suk Kim. Starring Kang-ho Song (the Weird), Byung-hun Lee (the Bad), Woo-sung Jung (the Good), Ryu Seung-su, Song Yeong-chang, Son Byeong-ho, and many, many more.

Oh, you want a blockbuster do you? Lots of noise, explosions, some crazy plot that takes you through the air and to the most remote and exciting parts of the globe? How about a decent plot, character development, a touch of humor now and then? Yes, I know, I know you don't always need that--any number of sequels, not to mention the whole Mission: Impossible franchise speaks to that. This summer's not even really begun and the probably woeful Iron Man 2 had pulled in nearly $200 million. Next there's Braveheart 2: Robin Hood, followed by yet another Shrek (I've lost count how many of those awful movies have been made), and the list goes on and on. I know, I know: you'll see most of those. Most likely I will, too. But if you want action, adventure, flying, explosions, noise, humor, violence, and incredible characters, well, there's a sort-of micro-Blockbuster opening tomorrow: Ji-Woon Kim's The Good, the Bad, and The Weird. Imagine the child of Sergio Leone and Steven Spielberg, only it was adopted and its biological dad is Mad Max. Despite that summation it's purely original. And it's my favorite movie of the summer. Continued...

Mid-August Lunch (Pranzo di Ferragosto), 2010. Directed by Gianni Di Gregorio, written by di Gregorio and Simone Riccardini. Starring a melancholy di Gregorio, Valeria De Franciscis, Marina Cacciotti, Maria Calì, Grazia Cesarini Sforza, Alfonso Santagata, Marcello Ottolenghi, and Petre Rosu with his wild, wild hair.

I once heard a critic say that the outrageous spectacle of Avatar is what movies are all about. Well, I have to say I think that's a load, and not just because I think Avatar is a load, and definitely not because I think outrageous spectacle is a load. Inglorious Basterds, Flash Gordon, and the forthcoming The Good, the Bad, and the Weird are all ridiculous spectacle, and I love them for it. But the movies are about everything. Like like poetry, like literature, like music, you can get any and every human emotion from the art. Poetry is the clash of swords and the breaking of skulls in The Iliad, just as it's Mary Oliver channeling her grief over the death of her partner in "When I am Among the Trees". One stirs your imagination and makes you grit your teeth and grimace (happily) at the violence, while the other suggests you sit quietly in the dark and offer a prayer of genuine thanks to the silver maple twisting sideways in your front yard. There's room for both. And in cinema, with the summer movies coming crashing down upon us, there's room for Iron Man 2, for Braveheart 2: Robin Hood, and there's room--plenty of room--for the small gift that is Mid-August Lunch. Continued...

How do you narrow down the mystery that is Orson Welles? Like trying to make a disc of the greatest sounds of the planet earth, really, it's fairly impossible to do, yet fun to try. We can bask in the warm glow of Citizen Kane and marvel that it was made; gnash our collective teeth at the wonton destruction of Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, or The Lady From Shanghai; or shake our heads at the brilliant lunacy of F for Fake. Oh, yes, and in between there's Shakespeare films, there's The Trial, and somewhere, floating between here and the Shah of Iran is his last movie, The Other Side of the Wind. Orson revolutionized theater. Radio. Movies. The few bits he had on TV suggest that would have been his catnip as well. F for Fake predates and out-maneuvers documentarians like Errol Morris. But try to write a biography of the man, and, well, you get conflicting stories. Like Mr. Arkadin, based on the novel Confidential Report, written by Orson Welles. Only he didn't. Write it, that is. Who did. Who knows?

That's one of the many mysteries of Orson Welles. Exaggeration. Hyperbole. Duplicity. Fraud. Aggrandizement. Trickery. Legerdemain. Magic. Yes. That's it--magic. Continued...

All That Heaven Allows, 1955. Directed by Douglas Sirk, written by Peg Fenwick. Starring Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorhead, Conrad Nagel, Gloria Talbott, William Reynolds, and Hayden Rorke.

From the files of street critic Guillaume "Guy" Fresno. All notes found scribbled on both sides of seventeen pages of RC Cola stationary, and included with a packet of photographs of the first meeting of the "New Underground Detroit Cinema Society That Tells Mike Ilitch to Go Fuck Himself and His Expensive (and Discrimanatory [sic] Against Homeless) Fox Theater". These are blurry shots of a Douglas Sirk film festival that Guy curated in the basement of the abandoned Michigan Central Railroad Station. Also included was a bill, for $52, payable for a copy of the lost Barbara Loden script about Ida Lupino. All of which came packed in a greasy Dunkin' Doughnuts box that had been wrapped, like a cocoon, in cheap packing tape.

"Pay attention, now, because it must be known about Douglas Sirk. You wouldn't think an old bike-riding and half homeless man such as myself would dig a man like Douglas Sirk. Douglas Goddam Sirk, who was one of the fucking best, the best, a director who knew what emotion was, and more, he knew how to be a zombie and how not to be a zombie. Like All That Heaven Allows. That's a zombie movie, and it's more terrifying than any of that blue-faced, vein-chomping crap that Romero shits out every few years. Continued...

Flash Gordon, 1980. Directed by Mike Hodges, written by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and Michael Allin. Starring the perfectly coiffed Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow, Topol, Ornella Muti, Timothy Dalton, and one of the great bellowers of all time, Brian Blessed.

I remember a moment back in 1980, standing in my Grandma's kitchen, when Dad and Pam came back from the movies (Grandma was watching us.) They were ecstatic, or at least he was. "Flash Gordon!" he said. "Well, that was fun!" He went on to gush about it, in a strange way, not because it was the greatest film of all time or anything--and, in fact, he made it a point to say this was far from great, far from perfect, but it was fun, fun, fun. For me, this moment was one of the earliest forms of film criticism in a way. Dad, my favorite critic then and now, was trying to convey his excitement, explaining little bits of the movie, some of the great jokes and dialogue, the sets and bizarre art deco spaceships, and how campy it was (and, somehow, what campy meant, though he didn't use that word) and why it was great despite not being great. His point was that it was fun and often times that was enough, more than enough, perfect in fact. "It's just fun, what can I say. Sometimes that's all you want. Just to have fun!"

I thought "Wow. I want to see that movie." Continued...