Three Films Make A Post: Clean. Fast. Professional.

I, Tonya (2017): Ah, the underclass, what’s easier to make fun of, and get loads of film price nominations in the process? After all, it would be way too much effort to do something interesting and instead of pointing and laughing at the poor, the uneducated, and those who never had much of a chance, perhaps use one’s powers of mockery to point and laugh at a society that produces them exactly so that they can point and laugh at them and look down on them.

In other words, this piece of crap directed by Craig Gillespie (also responsible for the bad Fright Night remake that interestingly enough shows the same lack of empathy and understanding) really got my goat. Classism is alive and well.

Josie (2018): This thriller about a high school girl (Sophie Turner) coming to a US small town in the South and provoking obsession in a lonely, broken middle-aged man (Dylan McDermott) and a teenager Marcus (Jack Kilmer) as directed by Eric England on the other hand doesn’t really result in much emotional turmoil, good or bad, in this viewer. There are all the elements of a really good neo noir or a sleazy trash film in here – the actors are certainly game – but as England plays it, the most interesting aspects of the plot are never explored much, if at all, and all the dangerous and/or uncomfortable ideas it could have or directions it could take are underplayed at best, ignored at worst. It’s the kind of psychological thriller that balks from actually diving too deep into its characters’ psychology, and consequently, there’s little more to it than decent actors, a slick look, and the inevitable plot twist a lot of viewers (me included) will have seen coming from miles away.

I Kill Giants (2017): I’m a bit underwhelmed with Anders Walters adaptation of Joe Kelly’s and J.M. Ken Niimura’s comic (as scripted by Kelly himself) too, but at least here I’m being underwhelmed on a high level. The film looks great, is well designed, well paced, the acting – particular by kid actors Madison Wolfe and Sydney Wade though Zoe Saldana turns out to be no slouch at all when she’s cast for her acting chops more than for her looks – is spot on, and the script does clearly know what it wants and why.


My problem with the film is that where it does want to go and what it has to say about the connection between fantasy and bitter reality, and about the way people have to cope with grief and pain in real life is as banal as possible. “You’re stronger than you think!” and “You have to face reality!” is as far as the film’s meagre philosophy gets. Which is not very far given all the build for it.

In short: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

If you’re looking for a counter-argument to the idea that the big commercial movie universes suppress all individual directorial expression, the Guardians movies are your most obvious starting point, seeing as their tone and style fit exactly into the oeuvre of James Gunn. Witness the way crude and blunt humour sometimes hide the rather more clever jokes the film makes; or just watch how cynical little asides so often glide into moments of actual human emotion that are just as important for the film as the big set pieces and explosions are. And these are pretty damn important to the film, it’s just that Gunn clearly sees no qualitative difference between the loud and the quiet, the goofy and the clever. Blockbuster cinema here means a film that sets out to fulfil all kinds of different expectations, not to be all things to all people, but because being a bit messy and complicated and rich is what this sort of filmmaking should be about.

One might argue that the film’s thematic concerns about families of choice, of blood and of chance are not the most original ones but I suspect very much most members of the film’s audience will have found themselves involved in one or more of these kinds of families, and can certainly connect to some of what’s going on under the loud, beautiful and bonkers surface; which is more than I can say about these “universal”, important films beloved by mid-brow criticism that are inevitably about the sex life of rich people or academics. Plus, Gunn really doubles down when he uses well-worn tropes – one just has to look at the shape, form and dimension the standard “killing of the father” takes on in this film. It’s big in the best way.


But what really does make this such a wonderful film is how much care Gunn takes with the small things. It’s not just the nearly absurd number of throwaway gags going on in the background (and certainly not stopping with the end credits), it’s how tiny dialogue moments from the first Guardians are given greater meaning (and ambiguity) through just as tiny throw-away lines here, how there’s always a little more going on in every scene than the most direct reading of it suggests.

Three Films Make A Post: Based on the Historical Realities

Du rififi à Paname aka The Upper Hand (1966): Denys de La Patellière's crime movie is a sort of retirement home for tired looking old and middle aged actors (Jean Gabin! Gert Fröbe! Nadja Tiller! Claudio Brook! George Raft!), the kind of film that thinks just letting the actors turn their faces in the direction of the camera equals acting performances. What's actually going on is that no one in front of the camera seems even the least bit interested in the film they are involved in, which is somewhat understandable given the been there done that nature of the film's crime plot, and the script's insistence on not developing the plot's few interesting elements in any direction worth following. De La Patellière manages to make the film pretty, but doesn't provide any sense of tension or drama, and also seems to delight in the kind of "witty" dialogue only very few films can get away with. Most of those films have actors actually doing more than coasting on their mere existence, though.

An American Ghost Story aka Revenant (2012): Derek Cole's film could be a fine, low-key ghost story, if a highly derivative one. At least, the core performances by scriptwriter and male lead Stephen Twardokus and Liesel Kopp are never less than decent, often even quite good, the camera work is atmospheric, and the film has a nice, concentrated flow to it. Unfortunately American Ghost Story suffers from a case of Advanced Jump Scare Syndrome that borders on the ridiculous. There's no quietly effective scene of the supernatural the film doesn't ruin by making inappropriate loud noises at the audience in moments that aren't at all meant to be jump scares, no scene that doesn't end up destroying its own effectiveness by shouting "boo". It's nearly like a parody of other films who like their jump scares a bit too much, and feels as if the film were afraid to just let the creepy mood it so desperately tries to build work on its audience, permanently losing faith in its own ability to function without VERY LOUD NOISES. While this technique doesn't work at all to actually make the film scarier, it ruins any mood it actually builds quite effectively, dragging the whole effort down from the at least decent to the nearly insufferable.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013): I'm more than just a little surprised that this one is the film of these three I actually like, but then surprising me is what J.J. Abrams's movie did more than once: by feeling much more like a Stark Trek movie than the first one, by not just fixing the first film's dubious politics but actually consciously having and using political themes and coherent morals, by actually doing some rather great (or at the very least fun) things with the Star Trek movie it is playing with/off, and by this time around actually having something (though still not enough by far) to do for its female cast members. If the last trend continues, the next Star Trek movie might even see Zoe Saldana's Uhura as an actual female lead instead of a relatively large supporting role for Pine's and Quinto's perfectly entertaining boy's club.

As it stands, the film is still nearly up there with the Avengers or the last Batman or Pacific Rim as a film that fulfils all blockbuster demands on spectacle, yet still has the time and space for human things of one kind of the other. Most of the time, it even remembers the spectacle is there to dramatize the humanity and not the other way around.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,french movies,horror,crime,sf,in short,j.j. abrams,denys de la patellière,derek cole,jean gabin,gert fröbe,nadja tiller,stephen twardokus,liesel kopp,chris pine,zachary quinto,zoe saldana,benedict cumberbatch

In short: The Losers (2010)

Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Roque (Idris Elba), Pooch (Columbus Short), Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) and Jensen (Chris Evans) are an effective little black ops unit for the US military, yet they also have some of those hearts of gold prostitutes in Westerns are so often outfitted with. So when doing as they are told by their CIA contact Max (Jason Patric) on a mission in Bolivia would lead to the death of a group of children, they decide to save the babies and risk their on lives instead.

They needn't have bothered, because Max betrays them for their efforts and blows an extraction helicopter the team should have been on sky high. The team didn't enter the helicopter, though, leaving to make space for the children, who are now what children in Hollywood films usually aren't - dead. Max doesn't know about the group's survival (and couldn't care less about the children, obviously), but that leaves the soldiers still stranded without papers in Bolivia.

Thoughts of revenge aren't far, yet there just doesn't seem to be a way to get back into the US, even less one to get back at the evil traitorous CIA guy. Until the mysterious Aisha (Zoe Saldana) makes contact with our heroes and offers to smuggle them back into the country, if they are willing to help her kill Max.

It will probably be better if they do, too, because Max is using his copious spare time to buy insane weapons of mass destruction with which to incite a war or two to keep himself in business.

The comic book series by Andy Diggle and Jock The Losers is based on is known to be a Big Dumb Action series made by and for people who aren't as dumb as one would expect them to be, and the film keeps itself - surprisingly enough - very much in the comic's spirit.

The Losers seems to thrive on its own self-consciousness, an only slightly detached knowledge of, and, more importantly, love for classic action movie clichés that allows it to take each and every silly idea it thinks it might just get away with (and some it shouldn't expect to) and run with it, without having to care too much about deep characterisation or too sensible a plot. Often, movies this self-conscious tend to be rather dreary affairs, seeming more interested in congratulating themselves for their own cleverness than in actually being clever or fun. Director Sylvain White manages to avoid this problem nearly completely and makes his movie only ever exactly as self-conscious and clever as needed to provide that mythical feeling of being fun most US action movies of the last few years have tried to avoid like a venereal disease. And how's that from the director of I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer?

Although there are a lot of people dying here, White imbues his film with a lightness of touch that fits its silly set-up and not exactly deep characters perfectly. Somehow, action hero poses and action movie structures make sense again when presented in this way.

Besides White's light touch, The Loser works as well as it does thanks to some very enthusiastic acting by just about everyone on screen (although Jason Patric's bad guy might be too comically broad for some). The actors seem to be at once in on the joke and serious enough to throw themselves into the moment, no matter if it is a shoot-out or a silly comedy bit.

In fact being at once in on the joke and serious about it seems to me what makes The Losers work.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,action,comedy,jeffrey dean morgan,zoe saldana,idris elba,sylvain white,in short