Getafilm Gallimaufry: Robin Hood, L'Enfant, Cruise's Curse, Toy Story 3, and The Two Escobars

Robin Hood (B+)

After too many months away from the movies I jumped in with both feet last week, starting with a big spring blockbuster that I didn't want to let get away from me on the big screen. In the last installment of Gallimaufry I declared my love for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, as well as the Robin Hood brand as a whole. Out of the loop as I've been from the movies scene in 2010, I completely forgot that Ridley Scott's version was meant to be an introduction to the title character.

You could understand, then, why I was growing restless as the movie went on and on with only minor teases of the charm, wit, humor, and romance that I associated with Robin and his merry men. Ridley's crew was comprised of weathered patriots fighting a ruthless (and inexplicably baldheaded?) villain for the honor of King Richard's crown. Embarrassingly, I was left scratching my head all the way until the finale, after which a title card reminded us that "now the legend begins". Ahhh, that's right! I'm thickheaded like that sometimes.

Getafilm Gallimaufry: A Prophet, Fish Tank, Robin Hood and More

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

_______________________________________________________________

A Prophet (A) 

A Prophet is the first must-see film of 2010. Maybe that's not saying much considering the caliber of movies that have been released in this first quarter. How about this instead: A Prophet is one of the best crime sagas in recent memory, and, along with last year's Lion's Den and Hunger, it has helped usher in a new era of harrowing prison dramas (the last truly memorable one being what, The Shawshank Redemption?).

Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, whose last film (The Beat My Heart Skipped) was highly acclaimed but unseen by me, A Prophet boasts impressive verisimilitude for a completely fictional story. Maybe it's not surprising considering former convicts were hired as extras and advisers, but Audiard himself has admitted that prison life is rarely depicted in French film and television. French citizens are apparently clueless about what goes on behind prison walls in their country, so it doesn't take much convincing to accept this story as reality.

Indeed, life on the inside is reflective of life on the outside: the old French/European power structure is fading as new immigrant groups - particularly Arab Muslims (that term should not sound nearly as redundant as it does) - are arriving and establishing their identities as the "new French". Symbolically speaking, this film is urgently relevant (it won nine of the record 13 César Awards for which it was nominated); cinematically speaking it is a masterful showcase of acting, cinematography, pacing (even at 150 minutes), suspense, music, action and, most importantly, global insight.

_______________________________________________________________

On-Screen Violence: Absorbed or Ignored?

Filmmaking irony - the movie about nonviolence features more disturbing violence...

A few months ago I was flipping channels when I came across Ridley Scott's suffocatingly macho Black Hawk Down. I came in right after one of the shootouts on the streets of Mogadishu, and the American soldiers were collecting their dead and wounded. One of the soldiers was severed in half, another was simply in pieces - a helmet here, a blown-off hand on the ground there. Scott took his sweet time focusing in on these bloody casualties of war, no doubt attempting to make us experience a soldier's horror as we gobbled our popcorn and slurped our soda.

It didn't work, at least for me. I hardly reacted while watching these scenes, and I certainly didn't cringe in the same way that I remembered cringing when I saw it in the theater. Why wasn't I bothered by this graphic, based-on-true-life violence in Black Hawk Down? I didn't know, and it was an odd realization.

Flash forward a couple of months, and I'm watching CNN just after the Iranian presidential election results are announced. I follow the story for a couple of days (as I'd recently seen Letters to the President) and, as the protests begin heating up, I see a brief news flash about a protester being shot and killed in the street. This fact doesn't faze me (it happens frequently in many countries), but yet I'm drawn to the significance of it happening in Iran at this time and under the heavy load of state censorship.

Fatefully curious, I go online to read more about what happened (it was still breaking news at the time), and in literally no time at all I find myself almost accidentally watching a video that will over the course of the next few weeks be played repeatedly around the world. Many of you may have now seen it - the death of Neda Agha-Soltan. (The photo used here is from the comprehensive Wikipedia page about the incident, the simple existence of which proves how bizarre of a future is in store for us with cell phone videos and YouTube.)

Because the story was not yet well known and the video not yet widely seen, I really didn't know what I was watching in the first few seconds. Eventually, and ultimately, I have to consider Neda's death the most disturbing footage I've seen since watching the live destruction of the WTC towers on 9/11. Considering the saturation of "torture porn" movies, beheading videos, "Faces of Death" and otherwise increasingly violent video games and movies in the last seven years, some of you might find my statement outrageous. But in fact I've gone to great lengths to avoid all of that stuff, so seeing this video and knowing it was real (as opposed to United 93, which was nearly as unbearable but still ultimately fake), well it shook me to the core.

I felt ill for a couple of days. I couldn't sleep for fear that I was going to have graphic nightmares. The scene replayed in my head over and over and over and over: Felled by a high-caliber shot to her heart, Neda lands on her back in a state of shock. The people around her immediately try to stop the bleeding from her upper chest, but they're clearly no match for a cardiovascular system in chaos. As her brain function diminishes, Neda's eyes go cock-eyed in every direction before rolling back into her head, just as hot, dark crimson blood uncontrollably pours from her nose, mouth, and eventually eyes. In a matter of seconds, she is gone, the screams around her lost to silence.

Just thinking about this again has me disturbed, and I had to make that photo of her deliberately small because I still can't stand to look at it.

Why did this video, which is so much less graphic than so many movies I see on a regular basis, completely wreck me? The obvious answer is that it's real footage, and not fake blood on a set with a director who's just ordered another take before breaking for lunch. No, there's one take, and that's an actual live human, and her life is literally pouring out of her body as I watch. And that deeply disturbs me.

But I don't feel like it's that simple, and in the month or so since seeing the video I've been much more curious about and aware of my reactions to violence on screen. For example, if it looks real, does it really make it harder to watch? If the director wants to make it look "really" real but it ends up looking fake (Black Hawk Down, recently Public Enemies), does it make it easier to watch? If the violence is inflicted on people I don't know or care about, does it make it easier to watch? What about women and children? Am I entertained by shootouts and explosions, or do I simply tolerate them? Surely if there was a gunfight in the hallway of my apartment, or a car bomb explosion on my street, I wouldn't consider it "awesome". Right?

I haven't really gained any clear insights from these questions over the last month, but one clue, or maybe just another confusing addition, came just the other day. Flipping through channels again, I landed on Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, and the scene in which more than 1,000 Indians are violently gunned down during, ironically, a non-violent protest against the Brits. It was horrifying to see men, women, and children massacred, but this being 1982, the death was not visually graphic, at least in the blood-spatteringly way that it would be if it were made in 2009 (indeed, Gandhi was rated PG). Yet despite the lack of gore, body parts, and blood-soaked corpses, I found myself actually more disturbed by the Gandhi shootout than by the Black Hawk Down bloodbath.

There are all kinds of possible explanations for this, and maybe I'll consider them here at another time. This post was really just a spontaneous reaction to the trifecta of the Neda video and those two movie scenes that I saw in the last couple of months. I guess it was my attempt at simply beginning to process how I may or may not have been sensitized or desensitized by violence on screen throughout the course of my life. I would hope that most people have the same thoughts from time to time; if you have any insights feel free to share them.

Hijacked Creativity: The Taking (and Remaking) of Pelham One Two Three

I challenge anyone to give me a new answer to this simple question: What is the purpose of Tony Scott's remake of Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham of One Two Three?

It's a trick question, of course, because there is no new answer, and there has never been any acceptable answer for the dozens of remakes Hollywood has churned out over the last couple of decades, including the completely ignored (also by me) 1998 version of The Taking of Pelham 123, starring Edward James Olmos and Vincent D'Onofrio.

It's not good enough that Scott's glossy blockbuster is an updated version for "a new generation". It's not good enough that it's an updated version for the fans of the original (or for that matter, a reimagining of the original - everything is the same except the ransom is up to $10 million). And it's certainly not good enough that it's a critic-proof "summer popcorn flick".

This is a movie considered by many people to be one of the great crime dramas of the 1970's. It boasts a unanimous 100% fresh RT rating, and blogging pals Chuck Bowen and Matt Gamble have recently sung its praises. Having also seen it recently, I'll add that it's an effortlessly entertaining thriller featuring great performances in the wholly unique setting of the NYC underground. The general consensus since its release 35 years ago is that, despite some dated technology (and the fact the hijackers only ask for $1 million), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is an otherwise excellent movie.

So why bother pouring millions of dollars into a remake of a movie that simply doesn't need to be improved upon? What's the rational, and in the absence of any, why not just start remaking other great films? Give The Godfather to Michael Mann; Citizen Kane to Ron Howard, and, sure, Psycho to Gus Van Sant. I'm not being sarcastic - why isn't this happening more frequently with classic movies?

I imagine it's probably just a matter of time. Honestly, at this rate we can expect a Godfather remake any year now, and soon enough remakes of instant classics like No Country for Old Men. It will be like those idiotic "(Genre) Movie" movies that spoof movies still in theaters. Don't believe me that the remake situation is this serious? Check this out, or consider the remakes proposed by Jeff Wells, who unabashedly contends that the new Pelham is better than the original.

Why? Just...why?

Maybe the most recent trend started when dozens of hit British shows - "Britain's Got Talent" (America's Got Talent),"Pop Idol" (American Idol), "The Office," "Life on Mars", "The Weakest Link", "Hell's Kitchen", "Changing Rooms" (Trading Spaces), "Strictly Come Dancing" (Dancing With the Stars), "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" - crossed the pond and became big hits here. Soon enough Hollywood figured out, hey, we can make bigger hits out of foreign shows, so we can probably make bigger hits out of foreign movies, too (hold your nose for the upcoming American remakes of Let the Right One In and Tell No One).

Or maybe it was George Lucas and The Phantom Menace that started Hollywood's decline. If he could dust off a twenty year-old franchise and make millions from it, why couldn't everyone else? In fact, why not just make any new movie (Rush Hour, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Paul Blart: Mall Cop) a franchise to begin with?

So here we are at the peak of this trend, and desks and inboxes at production companies and studios in Hollywood are inundated with another 5-10 years worth of remakes, "reboots" (see, we even had to create a new term!), and sequels. And the worst part is, it's really difficult not to be tempted into seeing these new versions (as was the case most recently with Terminator Salvation). When somebody remakes The Godfather, are you telling me you won't end up seeing it? You'll have to see someone's attempt at an impossible feat, if only to see how miserably they fail. And while we're standing in line to watch the latest disaster, filmmakers with fresh, original stories (e.g., Ballast) are basically forced into self-financing and self-distributing their projects. Is this OK?

What's really being hijacked in the remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is not the subway car but the plot of the original film. There's a ransom demanded for the safe return of creativity to Hollywood. Anyone want to chip in? We should start by pooling the money we'll spend at the box office this weekend.

UPDATE: So I ended up seeing it (opening weekend), and can confirm it's one of the worst movies I've seen so far this year. What a waste.

REVIEW: Role Models (B-)

I share your disappointment, guys - while funny, this movie wasn't as good as it could have been...

Find my review from the Star Tribune here. The 20-30 words I lost on the editing room floor are unfortunate, but I found it a pretty funny movie that's still reliant on too many stale, immature jokes to set it apart from so many similar movies.

Stay for an extra scene early in the end credits. Then, while watching it, step back and think about what you and everyone around you is laughing at. I mean, come on, are our standards really that low for hilarious comedy these days?

Grade:
Writing - 7
Acting - 8
Production - 9
Emotional Impact - 8
Music - 5
Social Significance - 4

Total: 41/50= 82% = B-

REVIEW: Body of Lies (C+)

"Trust no one. Deceive everyone.," declares the official tagline for Ridley Scott's Body of Lies. The phrasing is an appropriate metaphor for the movie in two ways: 1.) the wording is as unoriginal and bland as the story itself, and 2.) it describes the internal marketing strategy for this movie at Warner Bros., since they're clearly trying to deceive us into thinking we're getting something richer than the action-packed trailer suggests.

It was only last April that Washington Post columnist David Ignatius's bestselling novel of the same name was released. Filming on Body of Lies began in September. How did they do that, and what was the rush anyway? We're guaranteed years more of these movies about Iraq and the "War on Terror" (a veritable genre is developing), so what was accomplished by fast-tracking this one for an October surprise?

As it happens, the biggest surprise in Body of Lies is the fact that it's not a better movie. Sir Ridley Scott's track record has been shaky in the last few years (though I don't think either American Gangster nor A Good Year were as outright terrible as some people think), but this is still a director who helmed a Best Picture winner within the last decade (not to mention Blade Runner decades ago), so the name automatically carries a fairly high level of expectation. Body of Lies marks the third time in as many years Scott has directed Russell Crowe, and the first time he's worked with the reliably great Leonardo DiCaprio (Blood Diamond, The Departed).

Unfortunately, this truly A-list trio has produced a truly C-grade movie. Body of Lies is admittedly better than several of its cousins (The Kingdom, Rendition), but despite an experienced director and committed cast, it still ends up achieving only mediocrity. It's almost as if Ridley Scott knew that substance was lacking but just decided to produce his way out of it and hope nobody noticed. Significantly slicker and more visually realistic than its predecessors, Body of Lies commands your attention only to tell you something annoyingly trivial. What was the point of this again?

Oh yeah, to celebrate jingoism and reinforce toxic stereotypes about the Middle East. Look, I'm not saying terrorism isn't a real threat and that these movies don't have some educational potential, but at this point the "rogue American hero infiltrating terror cells and romancing the beautiful local woman" is a pretty stale set-up, and we never learn any lesson at the end anyway, do we? The number of clichés on display here is almost breathtaking; it's disconcerting and frankly insulting, for example, to see CIA agents continue to disguise themselves in foreign countries by wearing track jackets, sunglasses, and floppy hats, successfully establishing themselves as the only people in the country ever dressed like that.

But I'm asking for too much if I'm asking for a new story. It's just that I would enjoy something fresh, a crazy conspiracy theory or a shocking twist at the end - anything new. If I'm not going to get anything meaningful out of these movies, at least entertain me. Russell Crowe knows this, otherwise why would he ham up his performance as a hilarious hybrid of Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush? Leonardo DiCaprio (whose "costume" here is almost comical: brown contact lenses and a lumberjack goatee?) knows this, otherwise why would he leave me near tears laughing at the scene with the children at lunch, one of the funniest I've seen all year? In fact if it wasn't for Crowe, Russell, and what should finally be a star-making turn for Mark Strong (Sunshine; Stardust), the movie would be almost unbearable to sit through, even if it is kind of pretty to look at.

Hollywood surrenders to contrivances and clichés yet again...

If any of this sounded familiar as you were reading it, imagine how I felt writing it. I already reviewed this movie here, here, here, here, here, and, most importantly, here. Turn a synopsis from any of those reviews into a Mad Lib and you'll likely end up summarizing Body of Lies in the process.

Grade:
Writing - 7
Acting - 10
Production - 8
Emotional Impact - 7
Music - 4
Social Significance - 5

Total: 39/50= 78% = C+