Burn After Reading

I’ve always been a fan of the Coen brothers — not obsessive-and-creepy-kind-of-fan, but rather I always seem to enjoy their films (particularly Fargo, which may be one of the greatest films of all time (up there with Pulp Fiction)) — so I was really looking forward to Burn After Reading. With the Coen brothers, you never really know what to expect: you’ll probably get some sort of gruesome violence, you might get some dark humor, there’s even a chance that you’ll get some romance.

Burn After Reading did not disappoint. I can honestly say that this is the first film I’ve seen where a single scene has both horrified me and made me laugh uncontrollably for about 5 minutes. Seriously. I was a messed up person after watching this movie.

In all honesty, I was a little apprehensive about the movie. I don’t usually find John Malkovich very funny, just weird and a little gross. Somehow, though, the Coen brothers managed to turn his weird grossness into ridiculous hilarity.

The plot is, of course, unspeakably absurd, and the only (but necessary) departures in the film from the absurdity are a couple of CIA officials portrayed by JK Simmons and David Rasche (“necessary” because, as all good dramatists (e.g. Shakespeare) know, drama must be broken up by comedy and comedy by drama).

As a final note, I think both Brad Pitt and George Clooney were absolutely brilliant.

Mongol

I finally saw this film. I’d been intrigued ever since I saw previews for it, but I never was able to see it in theaters. The story is about, of course, Genghis Khan, and particularly how he rose to power. It may be a story that’s excruciatingly familiar to anyone who’s ever played Age of Empires II, but director Sergei Brodov nevertheless manages to weave it into an exciting, epic tale.

Mongol is the sort of film that 10,000 BC and Apocalypto should have been; it has a similar premise — something is happening in an ancient, distant land — but Mongol somehow manages to be an enjoyable film. It’s got a little something for everyone: romance and otherwise complex character relationships, fighting, adventure, and even the occasional spark of humor.

For me, though, the battles are the reason to watch the movie. They’re shot in a manner very reminiscent of 300: lots of blood and slow-motion. And of course, the battles take place in Mongolia, and Brodov doesn’t hesitate to show gorgeous, wide-angle shots of the Mongolian landscape (though it’s sometimes actually landscape in Germany, Kazakhstan, and Russia).

A peculiar aspect of the film is that it manages to be entirely self-contained while simultaneously allowing the opportunity for a sequel. I personally would very much like a sequel; all we get to see in Mongol is the rise of Genghis Khan. At the end of the movie he hasn’t raped and pillaged his way across Asia and eastern Europe yet. I want to see that.

Speed Racer

The Wachowski brothers’ film Speed Racer has received, in general, negative reviews. It has a 36% at Rotten Tomatoes, a 37/100 at Metacritic, and a 6.5/10 at IMDb. Most critics’ beef with the film is summed-up succinctly by Carina Choco for the LA Times:

The fakeness of it all overwhelms, dampening any real excitement. It’s hard to care about characters so stiff and one-dimensional they out-cartoon the cartoon originals, and it’s hard to watch them bop around like avatars in a flat, airless, digital world.

Most critics, as demonstrated above, felt that while the endless color-orgasms were neat, they either detracted from the film, or weren’t sufficient to make up for the bizarre and frenetic plot. I, however, disagree with “most critics.”

Dude I'm like tripping so hard, dude

If we approach Speed Racer not as a hideously expensive ($120,000,000) avant-garde film or an unintelligible children’s film, but rather as a film adaptation of an anime/manga series, then it takes on a new light. If you’ve ever watched an anime show, you’ll know that a 6 year-old boy and a chimpanzee stealing candy from a futuristic private jet is perfectly normal. If you’ve never watched anime, though, you’ll probably be pretty confused.

Once I started thinking about the film in this way, I realized that it’s actually excellent. Yes, the characters are shallow and one-dimensional; yes, the overabundance of brightly-colored special effects makes you think someone slipped LSD into your soda; yes, what the fuck is that monkey even in the movie for? But, I realized, these are all elements of typical anime shows. What the Wachowski brothers have managed to do is adapt what is essentially a cartoon to live-action film, while retaining the original spirit of that cartoon.

Seriously... A monkey?

I have seen other film adaptations of anime, but they were all pretty terrible (see, or rather, don’t see Death Note). Speed Racer deserves credit for being the first live-action anime movie that doesn’t make its audience vomit.

In any case, the acting is fine, and the special effects—though monstrously expensive—are absolutely stunning. Go watch Speed Racer, keep an open mind, and enjoy it like 36% of the world did.

Best 5 Shootouts in Cinema

What defines a good shooting scene? Can I point to some objective, quantifiable attribute of a shooting scene and perform a calculation to determine the best? No. So take this list with a grain of salt; the following text represents my opinion. Feel free to assault me verbally with your own, correct opinions.

Without further ado (and numerous apologies for poor cropping):

5. Black Hawk Down

I didn’t actually choose a particular scene from Black Hawk Down, for the simple reason that the entire movie is basically one big shootout. It’s raw, violent urban warfare in the middle east, directed by the wonderful Ridley Scott.

4. Smokin’ Aces

Smokin’ Aces isn’t a particularly good action movie. Actually, it’s not really a very good movie at all. But damn, the scene (pictured) where cops are being blasted away by a .50 cal rifle is just sweet.

3. The Matrix

What self-respecting shootout list could possibly exclude the lobby scene from The Matrix? The lobby scene has it all: shooting, blood, hand-to-hand combat, and an environment that takes a heavier beating than any of the people involved.

2. Saving Private Ryan

There’s something that’s simultaneously glorious and horrifying about the Omaha scene in Saving Private Ryan. Perhaps it’s the gratuitous (or just realistic?) shots of body parts flying through the air; perhaps it’s the blood that occasionally splatters onto the camera lens; perhaps it’s the sobbing American soldiers who hide behind the flimsiest barricades in the hopes of avoiding machine gun fire from the German nests on higher ground. Whatever it is, it makes this scene completely enthralling.

1. Heat

The post-bank robbery scene in Heat is, as far as I’m concerned, the closest Hollywood has ever gotten to filming the perfect shootout. The first thing I recall when I think of this scene is the sound. Michael Mann (the director) didn’t bother with any crazy techno music and half-assed gun sounds. No, the guns in this scene are loud, just like real guns.

Add to that the fact that this is basically a heist gone wrong in Los Angeles. It doesn’t take place in some foreign country or a number of decades ago. It occurs somewhere very similar to where you probably live, and it looks and sounds real. It’s like having Black Hawk Down happen in your back yard.

The Dark Knight, Metaphysics, And You

(Moderate Spoiler Warning) With so much praise, so many rave-reviews and so much hype for The Dark Knight, I thought it would be interesting to explore some of the deeper-than surface themes that make The Dark Knight Not Your Average Comic Book Action Flick.

Let’s begin with Batman himself. We see a return, in The Dark Knight, of the old, old, old Batman comic character. That is, Batman isn’t shown as a glamorous knight in shining armor. Indeed, the title “The Dark Knight” may be a reference to the fact that Batman is quite the reverse.

Batman is a brooding, conflicted character who beats people up. It just so happens that they’re bad guys, and we get the distinct impression that they don’t have to be; Batman is thus constantly playing the edge between good and evil, hero and villain. As such, it is impossible to view him in the same light as Superman or Spiderman.

Despite his dark side, Batman does represent one thing akin to good: order. While order, outside of the thermodynamic sense, may be subjective, let’s proceed under the assumption that you and I have similar concepts of what order means.

Batman’s connection with order is undeniable. Though some of his actions may be construed as wrong (viz. beating up a SWAT team, lying about his identity, etc.) he invariably strives to preserve order in Gotham City.

This is evidenced by the fact that he does beat up bad guys. He expends nearly all of his energy and resources so he can run around the city chasing criminals so that the majority of the population can enjoy comfortable and safe lifestyles, and he acts to preserve those lifestyles when the need arises.

The Joker behaves in a way that is diametrically opposite to the way Batman does. The Joker is the one who interrupts the status quo, who throws people into confusion and panic, and who revels in the resulting disorder. The Joker represents the chaos to Batman’s order.

Think of the part of the film when the Joker threatens to blow up a hospital if a certain man is not killed within 60 minutes. The Joker makes one simple phone call, and throws the entire city into a near-riot. Citizens are uncertain, scared, and disoriented. Their understanding of how the world ought to be has been turned on its head. It is this understanding, this normalcy that Batman protects and the Joker tears down.

The Joker (played exceptionally well by Heath Ledger, of course) laughs maniacally when confronted with his deeds. “Isn’t this more exciting?” he asks. What indeed, could be more exciting for someone who thrives on chaos than seeing an entire city in a panic?

The third and final major character I’d like to look at is Two-Face. Initially in the movie, he is the knight in shining armor. He’s the man Batman can never be (as said by Batman and some point or another). He fearlessly shows his face to the world as he relentlessly clears the streets of criminals. He is the Superman of Gotham City. Of course this doesn’t last.

His other role, in the latter stages of the movie, is related to neither order nor chaos; rather, he represents the idea of chance. He doesn’t care if people are panicked or content. He doesn’t care if they live or die. He lets a coin decide for him.

Of course, he really is a bad guy, and falls more toward the chaos end of the spectrum, which means Batman has to take him down. But I like the concept of an unpredictable force, that both preserves order (eliminating the traitors in the police department) and causes chaos (kidnapping that nice man’s family).

Such themes aren’t really fully developed within the film, but they are certainly present. This, I think, is what makes The Dark Knight appealing to both action junkies and philosophical-types alike. I won’t speak much to the quality of the movie itself because I know that there are countless reviews out there that do that already. But I will say this: I enjoyed it.

Vantage Point

TLDR Version

• Cinematography 4.5/5
• Scripting 3/5
• Performance Within Genre (Action/Thriller): 3/5
• Acting: 3/5
• Story 2.5/5

Overall 3.2/5

“Vantage Point” begins full of promise. The premise is an interesting new take on something Tarantino’s been doing for a while. In a Tarantino movie, the audience often has to piece together the events of the story even though they’re shown out of sequence and in some bizarre order. But rather than play with time, Vantage Point plays with space. You are shown the same events multiple times but from different perspectives.

Good in theory, mediocre in execution. The first couple of times you’re shown the events, the movie is interesting and engaging. But by the third and fourth repetitions it starts to get tedious. Even though new information is presented with each repetition, it’s just not enough to make the movie exciting. The director (Pete Travis) seems to have noticed this, so after enough repetitions the whole multiple-perspectives idea is scrapped and the movie degenerates into an unimaginative and predictable action-thriller.

I really wanted Vantage Point to be the intelligent Action/Drama that Pulp Fiction is. Unfortunately, Vantage Point is held back by its flaws and doesn’t quite cut it. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for some action-packed entertainment for an evening, you could do worse than Vantage Point.

The Machinist

TLDR Version

• Cinematography 4.5/5
• Scripting 4.5/5
• Performance Within Genre (Psychological Thriller) 5/5
• Acting 5/5
• Story 4/5

Overall 4.6/5

I actually wanted to use “Psychological Thriller/OMGWTFSAVEMEJESUS” as the genre, but it had line wrapping issues. The first thing you’ll notice in “The Machinist” is that the lead character, played by Christian Bale, is disturbingly thin. I normally picture Christian Bale as, you know, Batman. Batman is big, buff and ass-kicking. Bale’s character in “The Machinist” is scrawny, sleep-deprived and can barely muster the strength to hold his body up. Of course, Christian Bale does a fantastic job in this role. Although I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t slept for a year, if I did, I bet they’d be something like Bale’s character.

“The Machinist” takes us into the warped mind of this insomniac. Everything we see is from his perspective; everything he sees, we see. And, because he hasn’t slept for a year, not everything he sees is actually there.

The story takes a twisted and winding path of discovery and miserable revelation. “Miserable” because most of the things you discover are not joyous (and are, in fact, miserable). Christian Bale does an exceptional job in this and is supported by a solid cast.

Unless you are so horrified by Christian Bale looking like an anorexic teenager that you are physically incapable of sitting on a couch for two hours, “The Machinist” is a movie that is definitely worth your time.

Numb

TLDR Version

• Cinematography 4.5/5
• Scripting 3.5/5
• Performance Within Genre (Comedy/Drama) 4/5
• Acting 3.5/5
• Story 3.5/5

Overall 3.8/5

In “Numb,” Matthew Perry takes on a new role. By new role I mean, of course, not the role he played on Friends. In “Numb” he’s a guy with a very peculiar psychological disorder that makes him feel disassociated with the world around him — as though everything is a dream. Much of the plot is a boy-meets-girl, boy-falls-in-love-with-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-chases-after-girl story. The girl he falls in love with has some interesting issues of her own, which, apparently, makes her the perfect match for Matthew Perry’s character.

My major beef with the film is that Matthew Perry often appears too normal. He sometimes seems, as I would expect, detached from the world. But sometimes he seems like a perfectly normal person. I can’t tell if this is Perry’s fault, the scripter’s fault or if maybe it’s actually intentional. In any case, I got the feeling that Perry’s psychological disorder was pretty unimportant to the film. If you take away his disorder, you’re just left with a generic romantic drama movie.

Nevertheless, when Perry’s character is behaving like he’s actually detached from the world, there are a few intensely (and amusingly) awkward moments. All in all, you won’t regret it if you don’t see “Numb,” but you won’t regret seeing it either.