Black Swan
Grade: No rating
Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder
Director: Darren Aronofsky
The Criterion version of the classic 1953 musical The Band Wagon includes a brilliant lost dance number by Cyd Charisse called Two-Faced Woman.
The lanky Texan with the French married name performs a delirious routine in a sleek black outfit. For all the Technicolor appeal, the outtakes reveal something you don’t expect. You get to see Charisse screw up. There are moments in the creation of all that magic when her body (and her five-inch heels) let her down.
Charisse could dance as the elegant priss, the prim damsel fantasy. But ask her to play a devilish seductress and she would cut loose, a beauty fully aware of her beauty and confident in her sexuality. Watching Charisse dance isn’t just watching someone execute steps. It’s to assume she is good in bed.
This duality is the torment of Nina, played by a resurgent Natalie Portman, in Darren Aronofsky’s erotic ballet psychodrama Black Swan. She has plenty of the steps but none of the seduction. She’s the sort of young woman still asked if she is a virgin. Even at 28, she lives in a pink room, locked inside her overbearing mother’s creepy cryogenic chamber of adolescence. Her window sill has fluffy stuffed animals serving as prison guards to prevent her escape.
As her ballet troupe casts Swan Lake, the gifted, fragile dancer is seen as a natural for the lead role of the angelic White Swan. But to get the role, she also must dance the seductive Black Swan. Can she also dance the Black Swan? The head of the dance troupe (a sharp Vincent Cassel) isn’t so sure. What he needs is for her to seduce the audience like the naturally flirtatious new dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis). He needs Nina to lose herself in the performance. But losing yourself sometimes means just that – losing your self.
From the category of fortunate accidents – I recently viewed Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. For all the clear references to The Red Shoes and All About Eve, Repulsion and Black Swan seem like companion pieces that share several elements – a frail female sinking into paranoid fantasy, a libidinous sister figure, and even a freaky-gory scene with fingernails and oozing blood (eek!). Both films have the same basic purpose – to re-cast a woman’s paranoid inner life and frosty sexuality as a horror story.
This brand of film always leads me to ask (suspiciously): are these insights recognizable (not necessarily realistic, but recognizable) to women? Or is this the received wisdom of men about women, derived from movie formula rather than insight? It’s possible that I lost the authority to answer this question nine months before my birth, when I lost the grand zygote lottery in the birth canal.
Perhaps I need to watch the film less literally and more emotionally. Dance and dance films are often about the transformative power of emotion. The power of the musical is the feeling that our emotions can transform the real world into the emotional realms of imagination.
Dancers become the physical embodiment of the emotion of the audience. They become the physical embodiment of emotional ideals. Their bodies are sacrificial, objects of beauty whose frailty is the impediment to the unachievable. A dancer strives for perfection at the expense of physical (and mental) breakdown.
Black Swan labors on the stress with ample attention to physical exertion and deterioration. It showers attention on broken nails, dislocated joints, mystery rashes, and bulging arm veins. A wound adorned in feathers resembles a bleeding vagina. Nina’s physical and mental ordeal in the pursuit of the ideal suggests – like Mickey Rourke in Aronofsky’s The Wrestler – a sense of martyrdom.
In the end, Black Swan doesn’t take its own creative advice. It never gets lost in the performance. For all the talk of a crazy descent-into-madness finale, it feels more controlled and studied (even cliché) than unstable. The movie screams for the dark anti-Fred-and-Cyd dance number to send all dance numbers to hell. It even tries. But it never shakes loose enough to get there.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Unstoppable
Unstoppable
Grade: A
Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson
Director: Tony Scott
I loved Unstoppable.
I loved every improbable, electric minute of Tony Scott’s runaway train movie. I loved its ludicrous start. I loved its “Why didn’t they do that in the first place? Because then we wouldn’t have a movie” ending. Most of all, I love the fact that it’s red meat for the Great Tony Scott debate – is he a cinematic genius or a cinematic vandal?
First and foremost, Unstoppable returns Scott to his best action instincts with appealing simplicity. A runaway train loaded with toxic chemicals cruises through rural Pennsylvania toward a certain derailment among thousands of people. Denzel Washington, all relaxed and authoritative, and Chris Pine are the veteran-rookie conductor team who chase down the “missile the size of the Chrysler building.” The chase includes relentless pace, a dead-man’s curve, and a spectacular attempt to drop a Marine onto the bullet train from a helicopter.
Yet Unstoppable isn’t really a movie about a runaway train. It’s a movie about a runaway society. Like Domino, it portrays a rapidly changing America struggling with disintegrating institutions and identities. It’s set in fossilizing towns of blue-collar Pennsylvania, focusing on a rusting railway industry that once signified American industrial power. Now it seems like a leftover of the past.
Within its high-speed antics, Mark Bombeck’s script quietly ties in almost every social anxiety ailing our country in recent years – failing elites, corporate malfeasance, cronyism, unionized incompetence, downsizing, the devaluation of age and experience, cost-benefit anti-morality, creaky crisis management systems exposed by the test of reality, and that lingering suspicion that we’re going to turn on the television any day and watch thousands die. I’m sorry, friends of The Social Network. That was the decade I just lived.
With the institutional rot and breakdown, it naturally falls to a pair of workaday palookas to save the day. The problem is that they don’t trust each other. Frank Barnes the engineer is a veteran being forced into retirement. Young conductors like Will Colson are snatching their jobs through connections and favoritism. Needless to say, it’s not a happy cabin, and Pine chose the wrong day for a first day of work. Like the passengers of United Flight 93, they are ordinary people deputized by fate to stop a disaster.
Their chase takes place underneath the pestilent eye of modern communication – the railway sensors, the two-way radios, the news choppers attracted to the possibility of death. Everyone knows a little. The audience knows some. Corporate busybodies know something else. The control room (headed by a strong Rosario Dawson) knows a little more. Evaporating the space among them is Scott’s filtered, fast-edit, multi-camera ping-pong style, a frequent target of criticism. However, the style simulates a world of multiple isolated viewpoints, built from pieces, lingering in fracture and distortion.
For all the larger social forces acting upon the train chase, Scott evinces a remarkable belief in the individual. As the corporate figures falsely present their evil calculations as certainties, Scott places an enormous amount of faith in hunches and experience. When Washington and Pine finally catch the train they even use ancient railworkers’ hand signals. They’re like ancient mariners communicating in a dead code. It is part of a story that shows faith in the regenerative powers of all things human.
Grade: A
Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson
Director: Tony Scott
I loved Unstoppable.
I loved every improbable, electric minute of Tony Scott’s runaway train movie. I loved its ludicrous start. I loved its “Why didn’t they do that in the first place? Because then we wouldn’t have a movie” ending. Most of all, I love the fact that it’s red meat for the Great Tony Scott debate – is he a cinematic genius or a cinematic vandal?
First and foremost, Unstoppable returns Scott to his best action instincts with appealing simplicity. A runaway train loaded with toxic chemicals cruises through rural Pennsylvania toward a certain derailment among thousands of people. Denzel Washington, all relaxed and authoritative, and Chris Pine are the veteran-rookie conductor team who chase down the “missile the size of the Chrysler building.” The chase includes relentless pace, a dead-man’s curve, and a spectacular attempt to drop a Marine onto the bullet train from a helicopter.
Yet Unstoppable isn’t really a movie about a runaway train. It’s a movie about a runaway society. Like Domino, it portrays a rapidly changing America struggling with disintegrating institutions and identities. It’s set in fossilizing towns of blue-collar Pennsylvania, focusing on a rusting railway industry that once signified American industrial power. Now it seems like a leftover of the past.
Within its high-speed antics, Mark Bombeck’s script quietly ties in almost every social anxiety ailing our country in recent years – failing elites, corporate malfeasance, cronyism, unionized incompetence, downsizing, the devaluation of age and experience, cost-benefit anti-morality, creaky crisis management systems exposed by the test of reality, and that lingering suspicion that we’re going to turn on the television any day and watch thousands die. I’m sorry, friends of The Social Network. That was the decade I just lived.
With the institutional rot and breakdown, it naturally falls to a pair of workaday palookas to save the day. The problem is that they don’t trust each other. Frank Barnes the engineer is a veteran being forced into retirement. Young conductors like Will Colson are snatching their jobs through connections and favoritism. Needless to say, it’s not a happy cabin, and Pine chose the wrong day for a first day of work. Like the passengers of United Flight 93, they are ordinary people deputized by fate to stop a disaster.
Their chase takes place underneath the pestilent eye of modern communication – the railway sensors, the two-way radios, the news choppers attracted to the possibility of death. Everyone knows a little. The audience knows some. Corporate busybodies know something else. The control room (headed by a strong Rosario Dawson) knows a little more. Evaporating the space among them is Scott’s filtered, fast-edit, multi-camera ping-pong style, a frequent target of criticism. However, the style simulates a world of multiple isolated viewpoints, built from pieces, lingering in fracture and distortion.
For all the larger social forces acting upon the train chase, Scott evinces a remarkable belief in the individual. As the corporate figures falsely present their evil calculations as certainties, Scott places an enormous amount of faith in hunches and experience. When Washington and Pine finally catch the train they even use ancient railworkers’ hand signals. They’re like ancient mariners communicating in a dead code. It is part of a story that shows faith in the regenerative powers of all things human.
Tangled
Tangled
Grade: B
Cast: Mandy Moore (voice), Zachary Levi (voice)
Director: Nathan Greno, Byron Howard
Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair ….
Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen ….
As a friend of mine noted, we are entering an age of collective amnesia. We no longer have to remember anything anymore. There are no long debates over beers about factual details. If there’s a disagreement, the conversation ends and someone pulls up Wikipedia.
For example as I get older, I no longer remember the storylines of fairy tales, and I want to know, can I trust Wikipedia? If Wiki is wrong, is it possible to tell the wrong story, impart the wrong meaning, and mis-teach a child?
Getting it right might be especially important with Rapunzel. As fairy-tale sexual metaphors go, the story of a certain hairy girl rides to the top of a very phallic tower. A witch traps a young woman with extremely long, rich hair in said phallic tower. A young prince climbs the tower using Rapunzel’s long hair, planning to marry the young woman. When the witch discovers the ruse, in some versions due to a growing belly, she confronts and blinds the prince. If children don’t get the story straight, then how will we prepare young boys for overbearing mother-in-laws? They need all the time they can get.
Disney's animated Tangled is a modern update that follows the Grimm story in many ways and departs in many others. Rapunzel goes from the daughter of paupers to a lost princess with magic hair that can replenish youth. Her selfish stage mother refuses to share her secret with the outside world. The prince is transformed into a sly rogue thief, who stumbles on the startled tower dweller, meeting the flat side of her frying pan. Rapunzel forces the thief into a date outside the tower, traveling to watch distant flying lanterns that are released each year on the lost princess’ birthday. Good morning Starshine ….
By and large, Rapunzel’s hairy adventure is not a letdown. The visually striking Tangled is vivid in both its colors and its details. The 3-D is more than a gimmick and adds depth of field.
So yes, give me a head with hair.
Grade: B
Cast: Mandy Moore (voice), Zachary Levi (voice)
Director: Nathan Greno, Byron Howard
Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair ….
Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen ….
As a friend of mine noted, we are entering an age of collective amnesia. We no longer have to remember anything anymore. There are no long debates over beers about factual details. If there’s a disagreement, the conversation ends and someone pulls up Wikipedia.
For example as I get older, I no longer remember the storylines of fairy tales, and I want to know, can I trust Wikipedia? If Wiki is wrong, is it possible to tell the wrong story, impart the wrong meaning, and mis-teach a child?
Getting it right might be especially important with Rapunzel. As fairy-tale sexual metaphors go, the story of a certain hairy girl rides to the top of a very phallic tower. A witch traps a young woman with extremely long, rich hair in said phallic tower. A young prince climbs the tower using Rapunzel’s long hair, planning to marry the young woman. When the witch discovers the ruse, in some versions due to a growing belly, she confronts and blinds the prince. If children don’t get the story straight, then how will we prepare young boys for overbearing mother-in-laws? They need all the time they can get.
Disney's animated Tangled is a modern update that follows the Grimm story in many ways and departs in many others. Rapunzel goes from the daughter of paupers to a lost princess with magic hair that can replenish youth. Her selfish stage mother refuses to share her secret with the outside world. The prince is transformed into a sly rogue thief, who stumbles on the startled tower dweller, meeting the flat side of her frying pan. Rapunzel forces the thief into a date outside the tower, traveling to watch distant flying lanterns that are released each year on the lost princess’ birthday. Good morning Starshine ….
By and large, Rapunzel’s hairy adventure is not a letdown. The visually striking Tangled is vivid in both its colors and its details. The 3-D is more than a gimmick and adds depth of field.
So yes, give me a head with hair.
Morning Glory
Morning Glory
Grade: C
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum
Director: Roger Michell
What’s wrong with being happy?
Contrary to the evidence presented in adult-focused movies, you might never know there are happy people out there. It’s true. I’ve ignored them at parties. But I never see them onscreen.
In Morning Glory, Rachel McAdams plays a lemons-to-lemonade go-getter named Becky Fuller, with all the spritely dewiness that such a wide-eyed name conjures. Addicted to work and hapless in love, she lands her dream job as a producer on a last place network morning show. Her overenthusiastic job interview leads her boss (Jeff Goldblum) to ask, “Are you going to sing?” She seems less like a news producer and more like an auditioner for Glee.
McAdams’ unicorn attitude meets her non-match in Mike Pomeroy, IBS’ former nightly news anchor and resident black cloud. Having grumbled his way out of the network’s anchor job, he acquiesces to Fuller’s request to join the morning show. Cooking demonstrations and light banter with Diane Keaton really aren’t his thing, at least not on camera. A spiritual battle of wills ensues between McAdams’ girly bangs and Ford’s gravel-bed voice for the integrity of the show.
The infinitely up-with-life McAdams will draw comparisons to Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (and Melanie Griffith in Working Girl). However Hunter’s energetic producer was trying to preserve the integrity of the newsroom. She would have regarded McAdams’ sweetie-pie infotainment whippersnapper as the face of evil. McAdams doesn’t win her battles because she’s right. She wins because she’s so darn likable. Lowering your standards isn’t just a survival strategy; it’s good for you! Good Night, and Good Luck, this is not.
Morning Glory seems like it should be better, like the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The script, by The Devil Wears Prada scribe Aline Brosh McKenna, feels smart – or perhaps just educated – but predictable. When Ford cooks up a frittata in front of McAdams at his apartment, everyone knows it’s destined to show up at an important moment later in the film. (Everyone except the producer, strangely, who’s on the lookout for any soft news contribution that he might make to the program.) The occasional comedy breakthroughs point out how much fun you’re not having the rest of the time.
McAdams is a perky natural at the one speed that the script and director Roger Michell has to offer her, but sometimes she leaves footprints of “acting.” Ford is a real treat, dispensing one-line wisdom from his cold, dead tongue. That said, I never quite settled into their relationship, as it has less to do with reality than script manipulation.
Like its irrepressible lead, Morning Glory is trying too hard to please. I like what it is trying to do more than what it has done.
Grade: C
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum
Director: Roger Michell
What’s wrong with being happy?
Contrary to the evidence presented in adult-focused movies, you might never know there are happy people out there. It’s true. I’ve ignored them at parties. But I never see them onscreen.
In Morning Glory, Rachel McAdams plays a lemons-to-lemonade go-getter named Becky Fuller, with all the spritely dewiness that such a wide-eyed name conjures. Addicted to work and hapless in love, she lands her dream job as a producer on a last place network morning show. Her overenthusiastic job interview leads her boss (Jeff Goldblum) to ask, “Are you going to sing?” She seems less like a news producer and more like an auditioner for Glee.
McAdams’ unicorn attitude meets her non-match in Mike Pomeroy, IBS’ former nightly news anchor and resident black cloud. Having grumbled his way out of the network’s anchor job, he acquiesces to Fuller’s request to join the morning show. Cooking demonstrations and light banter with Diane Keaton really aren’t his thing, at least not on camera. A spiritual battle of wills ensues between McAdams’ girly bangs and Ford’s gravel-bed voice for the integrity of the show.
The infinitely up-with-life McAdams will draw comparisons to Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (and Melanie Griffith in Working Girl). However Hunter’s energetic producer was trying to preserve the integrity of the newsroom. She would have regarded McAdams’ sweetie-pie infotainment whippersnapper as the face of evil. McAdams doesn’t win her battles because she’s right. She wins because she’s so darn likable. Lowering your standards isn’t just a survival strategy; it’s good for you! Good Night, and Good Luck, this is not.
Morning Glory seems like it should be better, like the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The script, by The Devil Wears Prada scribe Aline Brosh McKenna, feels smart – or perhaps just educated – but predictable. When Ford cooks up a frittata in front of McAdams at his apartment, everyone knows it’s destined to show up at an important moment later in the film. (Everyone except the producer, strangely, who’s on the lookout for any soft news contribution that he might make to the program.) The occasional comedy breakthroughs point out how much fun you’re not having the rest of the time.
McAdams is a perky natural at the one speed that the script and director Roger Michell has to offer her, but sometimes she leaves footprints of “acting.” Ford is a real treat, dispensing one-line wisdom from his cold, dead tongue. That said, I never quite settled into their relationship, as it has less to do with reality than script manipulation.
Like its irrepressible lead, Morning Glory is trying too hard to please. I like what it is trying to do more than what it has done.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Due Date
Due Date
Grade: B
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan, Jamie Foxx
Director: Todd Phillips
Lately in movies there has been an epidemic of obvious music choices.
For example, the Beatles’ “Baby You’re a Rich Man” ends The Social Network. In Due Date, a Motown song about getting back to my baby opens the film as expected father Robert Downey Jr. prepares for a cross-country flight home to his very pregnant wife. It doesn’t end there. Is there a more obvious choice for a drug scene than Pink Floyd? If you have a touchy scene involving a dead father, what better way to spice it up than Neil Young’s “Old Man,” one of three songs known to make grown men cry.
Yet Due Date, Todd Phillips’ follow-up to the mysteriously popular The Hangover, makes the obvious choices work consistently. It takes an obvious two mismatched-strangers-on-a-road-trip movie premise (Robert Downey plays Steve Martin. Zach Galifianakis plays John Candy) and makes it funny and occasionally moving.
Much of what works has to do with the chemistry between its leads. Downey is not just a natural as an uptight professional with a deadpan wit. He’s also a very good supporting actor who sharpens the performers around him. He sharpens Galifianakis, and the two have great fun playing off of one another (at least once, you can see Downey starting to crack up in the background). The comedian is helped by an emotional undercurrent of missing fathers, giving him a chance to do a little more emotion and a little less random chaos generation. A little less.
Due Date draws the cannonball dynamics of male friendship competently. It’s not as strong in this area as Sideways or The Big Lebowski, but it’s better than many films. Downey’s character swings between irritation and a fatherly desire to guide and comfort Galifianakis’ man-child.
Things that Due Date does right: it’s quite funny and doesn’t waste its comic premises, such as the everpresent coffee can with the surprising contents that becomes a recurring third character. The comedy style relies more on clever observation than vulgar disgust. Even the obligatory vomit projection has a touch of tenderness. (One last thing: in two films, Philllps and cinematographer Lawrence Sher have shown a real talent for shooting desert vistas.)
There are a few times that it goes too far, asks us to believe too much. A single comic car crash is one thing. Two comic car crashes is hard to take. And when was the last time you saw an entire crew of attractive stewardesses on a domestic airline flight like it was still 1975? Seriously, whatever happened to attractive stewardesses? Perhaps they should retitle this Planes, Trains and Time Machines.
Whatever mistakes Due Date makes are done with enthusiasm more than cynicism. Either that, or I’m getting old and soft. Take your choice.
Grade: B
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan, Jamie Foxx
Director: Todd Phillips
Lately in movies there has been an epidemic of obvious music choices.
For example, the Beatles’ “Baby You’re a Rich Man” ends The Social Network. In Due Date, a Motown song about getting back to my baby opens the film as expected father Robert Downey Jr. prepares for a cross-country flight home to his very pregnant wife. It doesn’t end there. Is there a more obvious choice for a drug scene than Pink Floyd? If you have a touchy scene involving a dead father, what better way to spice it up than Neil Young’s “Old Man,” one of three songs known to make grown men cry.
Yet Due Date, Todd Phillips’ follow-up to the mysteriously popular The Hangover, makes the obvious choices work consistently. It takes an obvious two mismatched-strangers-on-a-road-trip movie premise (Robert Downey plays Steve Martin. Zach Galifianakis plays John Candy) and makes it funny and occasionally moving.
Much of what works has to do with the chemistry between its leads. Downey is not just a natural as an uptight professional with a deadpan wit. He’s also a very good supporting actor who sharpens the performers around him. He sharpens Galifianakis, and the two have great fun playing off of one another (at least once, you can see Downey starting to crack up in the background). The comedian is helped by an emotional undercurrent of missing fathers, giving him a chance to do a little more emotion and a little less random chaos generation. A little less.
Due Date draws the cannonball dynamics of male friendship competently. It’s not as strong in this area as Sideways or The Big Lebowski, but it’s better than many films. Downey’s character swings between irritation and a fatherly desire to guide and comfort Galifianakis’ man-child.
Things that Due Date does right: it’s quite funny and doesn’t waste its comic premises, such as the everpresent coffee can with the surprising contents that becomes a recurring third character. The comedy style relies more on clever observation than vulgar disgust. Even the obligatory vomit projection has a touch of tenderness. (One last thing: in two films, Philllps and cinematographer Lawrence Sher have shown a real talent for shooting desert vistas.)
There are a few times that it goes too far, asks us to believe too much. A single comic car crash is one thing. Two comic car crashes is hard to take. And when was the last time you saw an entire crew of attractive stewardesses on a domestic airline flight like it was still 1975? Seriously, whatever happened to attractive stewardesses? Perhaps they should retitle this Planes, Trains and Time Machines.
Whatever mistakes Due Date makes are done with enthusiasm more than cynicism. Either that, or I’m getting old and soft. Take your choice.
Inside Job
Inside Job
Grade: B
Cast: Matt Damon (voice)
Director: Charles Ferguson
As I write this review, the Federal Reserve is embarking on a near trillion-dollar program that it hopes will stimulate the economy. Quantitative Easing amounts to Helicopter Ben Bernanke printing money in order to horse-whip capital off the sidelines and into circulation.
You might think this is the best thing to do. Or you might think it's a last-ditch backdoor stimulus and taxation without representation (by devaluing the money that you have sitting in the bank). You might even be looking at wheelbarrow investments and polishing your father’s 1975 vintage Whip Inflation Now button.
If you think this is another handout to a politically-connected banking industry, you might be interested in Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job. The much-praised documentary takes a biting, long-term look at the institutional corruption that fed the financial crisis we’re still trying to escape. The film’s big achievement is boiling down the truth without dumbing down the truth.
This damning view of the US financial system starts with the major players in their roles during the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 80s, proceeds through the 90s boom and the Internet Bust, and finally plows through detail after detail of the subprime mortgage fiasco that resulted in the Great Recession of 2008. Ferguson points to consolidation and rapid growth of the banking industry as the main culprit, fueling riskier and riskier investments. Ultimately, perverse incentives led risk-taker bankers to make billions of dollars in housing loans for which they had no good reason to expect repayment.
That’s not where it ends. Ferguson goes through painful detail of the political-financial inbreeding that enabled the housing crisis. Figures from both worlds bounce from Wall Street to Pennsylvania Ave. doing what’s best for the big banks. Neither Republican nor Democrat is spared. Those who should be blowing the whistle fail to do so. Those that do are ignored. The best moments are when participants are cornered over their roles in rubber-stamping the subprime crisis, then shown to have survived with reputations and power intact.
I don’t agree with all of the premises. For instance, the movie shows a graph of the proportion of recent tax cuts the very rich received. But it doesn’t show the amount that the very rich pay. And it doesn’t show the amount that that revenue might have generated through circulation in the economy. Also the film doesn’t draw much of a line between sinister intentions and honest mistakes. What appears like corruption is, I would guess, sometimes incompetence.
If you want a cynical, snappy explanation of the bank bailout, here’s one. They stole your grandchildren’s money so that bankers could still pay for their cocaine and call girls. There is a whole, whole, whole lot more to it, but it's a shocking little sentence that does a nice job summing up the risk, dissolution, corruption, and narcissism. And if this little documentary doesn’t get you fired up about macro-economics, nothing will.
Grade: B
Cast: Matt Damon (voice)
Director: Charles Ferguson
As I write this review, the Federal Reserve is embarking on a near trillion-dollar program that it hopes will stimulate the economy. Quantitative Easing amounts to Helicopter Ben Bernanke printing money in order to horse-whip capital off the sidelines and into circulation.
You might think this is the best thing to do. Or you might think it's a last-ditch backdoor stimulus and taxation without representation (by devaluing the money that you have sitting in the bank). You might even be looking at wheelbarrow investments and polishing your father’s 1975 vintage Whip Inflation Now button.
If you think this is another handout to a politically-connected banking industry, you might be interested in Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job. The much-praised documentary takes a biting, long-term look at the institutional corruption that fed the financial crisis we’re still trying to escape. The film’s big achievement is boiling down the truth without dumbing down the truth.
This damning view of the US financial system starts with the major players in their roles during the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 80s, proceeds through the 90s boom and the Internet Bust, and finally plows through detail after detail of the subprime mortgage fiasco that resulted in the Great Recession of 2008. Ferguson points to consolidation and rapid growth of the banking industry as the main culprit, fueling riskier and riskier investments. Ultimately, perverse incentives led risk-taker bankers to make billions of dollars in housing loans for which they had no good reason to expect repayment.
That’s not where it ends. Ferguson goes through painful detail of the political-financial inbreeding that enabled the housing crisis. Figures from both worlds bounce from Wall Street to Pennsylvania Ave. doing what’s best for the big banks. Neither Republican nor Democrat is spared. Those who should be blowing the whistle fail to do so. Those that do are ignored. The best moments are when participants are cornered over their roles in rubber-stamping the subprime crisis, then shown to have survived with reputations and power intact.
I don’t agree with all of the premises. For instance, the movie shows a graph of the proportion of recent tax cuts the very rich received. But it doesn’t show the amount that the very rich pay. And it doesn’t show the amount that that revenue might have generated through circulation in the economy. Also the film doesn’t draw much of a line between sinister intentions and honest mistakes. What appears like corruption is, I would guess, sometimes incompetence.
If you want a cynical, snappy explanation of the bank bailout, here’s one. They stole your grandchildren’s money so that bankers could still pay for their cocaine and call girls. There is a whole, whole, whole lot more to it, but it's a shocking little sentence that does a nice job summing up the risk, dissolution, corruption, and narcissism. And if this little documentary doesn’t get you fired up about macro-economics, nothing will.
127 Hours
127 Hours
Grade: C
Cast: James Franco, Clemence Poesy, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn
Director: Danny Boyle
In movies, nothing good ever happens on a mountain. Unless you’re Julie Andrews, and good things happen to you everywhere.
There’s Kevin MacDonald’s documentary Touching the Void, about a mountain-climbing expedition shot to hell. And what was that mountain disaster movie that at first advertised its cannibalism but later changed to a “triumph of the human spirit” angle?
I‘m not sure if 127 Hours is technically a mountain movie, but it’s close enough to invoke the rule. Danny Boyle’s follow-up to Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire trails a rugged young outdoorsman, Aron Ralston, who finds his arm pinned beneath a boulder. In a crevice. In a desert national park. Cut off from civilization. Running out of water. With only a small knife to keep him company.
No matter how you slice it, 127 Hours is a movie that builds up to and away from its one big moment. The good news is that it has one big moment to build up to and away from. The bad news is that if you know what’s coming, and most viewers will, it sometimes leaves you wanting to cut to the chase. Somewhere around the 41-hour mark, I wanted the film to be chopped down and retitled 67 Hours.
Nevertheless, most viewers will be entranced by the story’s grotesque circumstances. They will like James Franco’s performance as the hiker, whose experience leaves him both more of and less of a man.
Being an arty project, we know there has to be meaning derived from the moment. Boyle chooses to ruminate on the nature of human connection in the face of terrifying isolation. We enter the film through shuffling images of random crowds, images in search of a grand point. The images of human connection stand as a counterpoint to the isolation of nature and Ralston’s Lone Wolf personality.
Stuck in a rut, slices of Ralston’s life flash before his eyes. He imagines his loved ones, whom he keeps at arm’s length, and the only woman that ever really mattered. It’s a little like Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (except without the eye-rubbing, head-shaking, and one critic’s prayers for divine relief). There is also a tinge of Sean Penn’s Into the Wild.
For a while, Franco has been a star-in-the-making that Hollywood couldn’t quite figure out what to do with. It appears the answer is, stick him in a hole. Ralston is a role that takes an actor out on a limb, because it is a lot of doing not much, and it’s all about you. For the most part, his performance never snaps a branch.
The arthouse loves a good grotesque rural survival story. It’s a way to enjoy a good horror film free of a feeling of slumming and guilt. Why just this year, there’s Kelly Reichardt’s forthcoming Meek’s Cutoff, and we’ve already seen Winter’s Bone. Whereas Cutoff and Bone would appear to be traditional indies, 127 Hours contains an element of horror, as well. So come, enjoy the terror, and feel fine about it.
Grade: C
Cast: James Franco, Clemence Poesy, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn
Director: Danny Boyle
In movies, nothing good ever happens on a mountain. Unless you’re Julie Andrews, and good things happen to you everywhere.
There’s Kevin MacDonald’s documentary Touching the Void, about a mountain-climbing expedition shot to hell. And what was that mountain disaster movie that at first advertised its cannibalism but later changed to a “triumph of the human spirit” angle?
I‘m not sure if 127 Hours is technically a mountain movie, but it’s close enough to invoke the rule. Danny Boyle’s follow-up to Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire trails a rugged young outdoorsman, Aron Ralston, who finds his arm pinned beneath a boulder. In a crevice. In a desert national park. Cut off from civilization. Running out of water. With only a small knife to keep him company.
No matter how you slice it, 127 Hours is a movie that builds up to and away from its one big moment. The good news is that it has one big moment to build up to and away from. The bad news is that if you know what’s coming, and most viewers will, it sometimes leaves you wanting to cut to the chase. Somewhere around the 41-hour mark, I wanted the film to be chopped down and retitled 67 Hours.
Nevertheless, most viewers will be entranced by the story’s grotesque circumstances. They will like James Franco’s performance as the hiker, whose experience leaves him both more of and less of a man.
Being an arty project, we know there has to be meaning derived from the moment. Boyle chooses to ruminate on the nature of human connection in the face of terrifying isolation. We enter the film through shuffling images of random crowds, images in search of a grand point. The images of human connection stand as a counterpoint to the isolation of nature and Ralston’s Lone Wolf personality.
Stuck in a rut, slices of Ralston’s life flash before his eyes. He imagines his loved ones, whom he keeps at arm’s length, and the only woman that ever really mattered. It’s a little like Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (except without the eye-rubbing, head-shaking, and one critic’s prayers for divine relief). There is also a tinge of Sean Penn’s Into the Wild.
For a while, Franco has been a star-in-the-making that Hollywood couldn’t quite figure out what to do with. It appears the answer is, stick him in a hole. Ralston is a role that takes an actor out on a limb, because it is a lot of doing not much, and it’s all about you. For the most part, his performance never snaps a branch.
The arthouse loves a good grotesque rural survival story. It’s a way to enjoy a good horror film free of a feeling of slumming and guilt. Why just this year, there’s Kelly Reichardt’s forthcoming Meek’s Cutoff, and we’ve already seen Winter’s Bone. Whereas Cutoff and Bone would appear to be traditional indies, 127 Hours contains an element of horror, as well. So come, enjoy the terror, and feel fine about it.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Red
Red
Grade: D
Cast: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Karl Urban, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss
Director: Robert Schwentke
“Roger that.”
They were trying to sneak that one past me. The first Bowen Rule of the Cinema: There has never been a good movie that contains the phrase “Copy that.” But what if they say, “Roger that,” instead? What then? Does the rule apply?
Let’s face it – from the first spunkless assault-team cliche amid Bruce Willis’ suburban Christmas decorations, Red had “copy that” written all over it. But it took awhile for the inevitable to happen. After an hour of wondering if I would need a Synonym Corollary, the movie finally coughed up the “copy that” that we could all see coming. You’ve heard that the criminal wants to confess? So it goes.
It’s not that “copy that” is a cause of a bad movie, nor some linguistic leprechaun that plants a bad film at the end of the rainbow. Rather “copy that” strikes me as a leftover of lazy screenwriting, a symptom of less than 100 percent effort. It means that in all the time from script to screen, no one bothered to imagine a better thing for the character to say.
Laziness is something that I want to talk about in relation to Red, a languishing DC Comics adaptation about retired CIA assassins fighting against people who want them in permanent retirement. I want to talk about it in terms of this proposition: Irony in action movies is dead.
It used to be, particularly in nineties indie cinema, that you could take a stock movie situation, remove the serious character, introduce a quirky character in that place, and voila, you have satire. As a famous example, there’s Harvey Keitel’s “cleaner” character in Pulp Fiction, a play on the dead-serious cleaner in Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita.
Once upon a time, that sort of flip ironic detachment counted as hip and satirical. But after so many times, irony has come to hide lazy screenwriting and characters we don’t care about. When a film sells itself with the calculated oddness of 65-year-old Helen Mirren firing a machine gun, the familiarity of the irony reflex means it has lost the satirical charge. It’s just lazy and flat and dead. To misquote Bruce Willis … Red’s dead, baby. Red’s dead.
Take a look at the successful action movies this year, stuff like Inception and The Town. There are romantic strands in both films. Some would label these strands cliche or melodramatic. To say that is to miss the point: these romantic strands are intensely sincere. The successful action films of late share that sincerity. The unsuccessful ones (like Red or Knight and Day) are void of sincerity. They float in the comic-geek netherworld of unreality. Even the explosions don’t really mean it.
Grade: D
Cast: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Karl Urban, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss
Director: Robert Schwentke
“Roger that.”
They were trying to sneak that one past me. The first Bowen Rule of the Cinema: There has never been a good movie that contains the phrase “Copy that.” But what if they say, “Roger that,” instead? What then? Does the rule apply?
Let’s face it – from the first spunkless assault-team cliche amid Bruce Willis’ suburban Christmas decorations, Red had “copy that” written all over it. But it took awhile for the inevitable to happen. After an hour of wondering if I would need a Synonym Corollary, the movie finally coughed up the “copy that” that we could all see coming. You’ve heard that the criminal wants to confess? So it goes.
It’s not that “copy that” is a cause of a bad movie, nor some linguistic leprechaun that plants a bad film at the end of the rainbow. Rather “copy that” strikes me as a leftover of lazy screenwriting, a symptom of less than 100 percent effort. It means that in all the time from script to screen, no one bothered to imagine a better thing for the character to say.
Laziness is something that I want to talk about in relation to Red, a languishing DC Comics adaptation about retired CIA assassins fighting against people who want them in permanent retirement. I want to talk about it in terms of this proposition: Irony in action movies is dead.
It used to be, particularly in nineties indie cinema, that you could take a stock movie situation, remove the serious character, introduce a quirky character in that place, and voila, you have satire. As a famous example, there’s Harvey Keitel’s “cleaner” character in Pulp Fiction, a play on the dead-serious cleaner in Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita.
Once upon a time, that sort of flip ironic detachment counted as hip and satirical. But after so many times, irony has come to hide lazy screenwriting and characters we don’t care about. When a film sells itself with the calculated oddness of 65-year-old Helen Mirren firing a machine gun, the familiarity of the irony reflex means it has lost the satirical charge. It’s just lazy and flat and dead. To misquote Bruce Willis … Red’s dead, baby. Red’s dead.
Take a look at the successful action movies this year, stuff like Inception and The Town. There are romantic strands in both films. Some would label these strands cliche or melodramatic. To say that is to miss the point: these romantic strands are intensely sincere. The successful action films of late share that sincerity. The unsuccessful ones (like Red or Knight and Day) are void of sincerity. They float in the comic-geek netherworld of unreality. Even the explosions don’t really mean it.
Conviction
Conviction
Grade: B
Cast: Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Minnie Driver, Melissa Leo, Peter Gallagher
Director: Tony Goldwyn
Why are so few people talking about Conviction?
Is it boring to talk about Hilary Swank being very strong in a quintessentially awards-style role? Over-awarded or not, it shouldn’t stop talk of how real and involving she is as Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts waitress who saves her imprisoned brother by becoming a lawyer and absolving him of murder.
Swank is sturdy as the accidental lawyers and Sam Rockwell lights it up as the convicted murderer, Kenny Waters. Swank’s great advantage is that she fits so easily as a normal person, with perfectly measured emotional range. Rockwell plays a barfight scene in a totally new way, teetering between violence and comedy. Swank may be the backbone of Conviction, but Rockwell is the heart.
Conviction is a type of film rarely made about women – movies about obsession. Usually female film obsessions are about age, looks, and men in that All About Eve sort of way. Far fewer are films, particularly obsession films, about women at work, as with Conviction. The movie plays like a female counterpart to David Fincher’s Zodiac, a film about male obsession surrounding a real-life unsolved murder mystery.
For all the talk about Conviction being conventional (traditional might be a better word), it rarely goes for the expected payoff to a scene. Even a courtroom scene that offers plenty of chance for riotous jubilation gets an admirably underplayed treatment by director Tony Goldwyn. (The director of Diane Lane’s A Walk on the Moon gets two great female performances from Swank and Minnie Driver.) This crowd-rousing film always goes for something more quiet and more fulfilling. This is a movie that gives traditional a good name.
Grade: B
Cast: Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Minnie Driver, Melissa Leo, Peter Gallagher
Director: Tony Goldwyn
Why are so few people talking about Conviction?
Is it boring to talk about Hilary Swank being very strong in a quintessentially awards-style role? Over-awarded or not, it shouldn’t stop talk of how real and involving she is as Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts waitress who saves her imprisoned brother by becoming a lawyer and absolving him of murder.
Swank is sturdy as the accidental lawyers and Sam Rockwell lights it up as the convicted murderer, Kenny Waters. Swank’s great advantage is that she fits so easily as a normal person, with perfectly measured emotional range. Rockwell plays a barfight scene in a totally new way, teetering between violence and comedy. Swank may be the backbone of Conviction, but Rockwell is the heart.
Conviction is a type of film rarely made about women – movies about obsession. Usually female film obsessions are about age, looks, and men in that All About Eve sort of way. Far fewer are films, particularly obsession films, about women at work, as with Conviction. The movie plays like a female counterpart to David Fincher’s Zodiac, a film about male obsession surrounding a real-life unsolved murder mystery.
For all the talk about Conviction being conventional (traditional might be a better word), it rarely goes for the expected payoff to a scene. Even a courtroom scene that offers plenty of chance for riotous jubilation gets an admirably underplayed treatment by director Tony Goldwyn. (The director of Diane Lane’s A Walk on the Moon gets two great female performances from Swank and Minnie Driver.) This crowd-rousing film always goes for something more quiet and more fulfilling. This is a movie that gives traditional a good name.
Secretariat
Secretariat
Grade: C
Cast: Diane Lane, John Malkovich, Dylan Baker, Dylan Walsh, AJ Michalka
Director: Robert Schwentke
Poor Sham.
In 1973, the magnificent chocolate stallion ran the second fastest time in the history of the Kentucky Derby. His mark remains to this day. He probably had the talent to win horse racing’s Triple Crown. Instead, he has gone down as the forgotten rival to a horse whose only real competition was the limits of reality.
There is a very good movie to be made about Sham, an artsy, angsty Sisyphean drama about the horse that never quite could. Needless to say, that film won’t be made by Walt Disney Studios. Instead, the Mouse House has made an inspirational sports film about Sham’s great rival, Secretariat.
The 1973 winner of horse racing’s Triple Crown, the first horse to achieve that cherished feat in 25 years, became a national sensation. Like a great performer, he saved his best for last. He won the final leg, the Belmont Stakes, by an unbelievable 31 lengths. It’s widely regarded as one of the greatest performances in the history of modern sports.
That’s a heck of a story, and we get why Disney wants to bring it to a new generation. However, the tale doesn’t follow the established Disney sports film formula, which wears its heart for the underdogs above all else. So it looks past the horse to find an underdog in Penny Chenery (rendered by the very able Diane Lane), the Denver housewife who inherited the superhorse from her father. It’s fair to say Secretariat is the story of a woman cheating on her family with a horse.
Like a good lover, the horse brings her joy in good times and support during bad times. Secretariat allows the sheltered housewife to become the cutthroat businesswoman that she always wanted to be, as she tries to keep the family horse farm afloat. Her life away from washing clothes becomes a source of empowerment in an era of rising feminism. With a female lead operating in a male world, Secretariat carries a politely feminist tact.
That isn’t a theme you would expect Disney to do well. At times, it doesn’t. Secretariat runs wild with cartoon chauvinism. Take Sham’s owner, who comes across as the Don King of the Battle of the Sexes. The real-life social tension caused by a housewife abandoning her traditional place in the family led to a real life divorce. Here it is only an obstacle to overcome for a moment of uplift. That said, the film pays attention to the balance between family and business that women face, giving the audience a heroine who is easy to cheer for.
Disney sports films are known for never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Secretariat’s corny script (from Miracle scribe Mike Rich) is no exception. It should be hard to ignore the fact that the Meadow Stable won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont the year before Secretariat (with Riva Ridge), but somehow it happens. It’s also left unsaid that this particular Denver housewife went to an Ivy League business school and wasn’t quite the pony circuit beginner that the film portrays. Also, real life 1973 would beckon Ang Lee to turn Secretariat into The Ice Storm 2, but such unpleasantness doesn’t dare intrude (arguably for the better). The Tweedy children are only faux hippies long enough to clean up for a grand ball like the guests at a Very Special Von Trapp Christmas.
If the facts are wrong, the story isn’t. Director Randall Wallace and cinematographer Dean Semler deliver a mostly rousing entertainer due to its charismatic horse, fun race scenes, and Diane Lane’s refusal to let the film sink to the hokey level always tempting an inspirational sports movie. She plays Chenery as a woman whose bite is worse that her maternal bark. She dominates John Malkovich’s eccentric trainer, a rough-and-ready jockey, and two corporate men played by faceless actors named Dylan (Walsh and Baker). She flavors the role with a degree of seriousness that pays off against the odds. This easy backstretch of a movie doesn’t wring out all the drama in the story, but it works for what it is.
Grade: C
Cast: Diane Lane, John Malkovich, Dylan Baker, Dylan Walsh, AJ Michalka
Director: Robert Schwentke
Poor Sham.
In 1973, the magnificent chocolate stallion ran the second fastest time in the history of the Kentucky Derby. His mark remains to this day. He probably had the talent to win horse racing’s Triple Crown. Instead, he has gone down as the forgotten rival to a horse whose only real competition was the limits of reality.
There is a very good movie to be made about Sham, an artsy, angsty Sisyphean drama about the horse that never quite could. Needless to say, that film won’t be made by Walt Disney Studios. Instead, the Mouse House has made an inspirational sports film about Sham’s great rival, Secretariat.
The 1973 winner of horse racing’s Triple Crown, the first horse to achieve that cherished feat in 25 years, became a national sensation. Like a great performer, he saved his best for last. He won the final leg, the Belmont Stakes, by an unbelievable 31 lengths. It’s widely regarded as one of the greatest performances in the history of modern sports.
That’s a heck of a story, and we get why Disney wants to bring it to a new generation. However, the tale doesn’t follow the established Disney sports film formula, which wears its heart for the underdogs above all else. So it looks past the horse to find an underdog in Penny Chenery (rendered by the very able Diane Lane), the Denver housewife who inherited the superhorse from her father. It’s fair to say Secretariat is the story of a woman cheating on her family with a horse.
Like a good lover, the horse brings her joy in good times and support during bad times. Secretariat allows the sheltered housewife to become the cutthroat businesswoman that she always wanted to be, as she tries to keep the family horse farm afloat. Her life away from washing clothes becomes a source of empowerment in an era of rising feminism. With a female lead operating in a male world, Secretariat carries a politely feminist tact.
That isn’t a theme you would expect Disney to do well. At times, it doesn’t. Secretariat runs wild with cartoon chauvinism. Take Sham’s owner, who comes across as the Don King of the Battle of the Sexes. The real-life social tension caused by a housewife abandoning her traditional place in the family led to a real life divorce. Here it is only an obstacle to overcome for a moment of uplift. That said, the film pays attention to the balance between family and business that women face, giving the audience a heroine who is easy to cheer for.
Disney sports films are known for never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Secretariat’s corny script (from Miracle scribe Mike Rich) is no exception. It should be hard to ignore the fact that the Meadow Stable won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont the year before Secretariat (with Riva Ridge), but somehow it happens. It’s also left unsaid that this particular Denver housewife went to an Ivy League business school and wasn’t quite the pony circuit beginner that the film portrays. Also, real life 1973 would beckon Ang Lee to turn Secretariat into The Ice Storm 2, but such unpleasantness doesn’t dare intrude (arguably for the better). The Tweedy children are only faux hippies long enough to clean up for a grand ball like the guests at a Very Special Von Trapp Christmas.
If the facts are wrong, the story isn’t. Director Randall Wallace and cinematographer Dean Semler deliver a mostly rousing entertainer due to its charismatic horse, fun race scenes, and Diane Lane’s refusal to let the film sink to the hokey level always tempting an inspirational sports movie. She plays Chenery as a woman whose bite is worse that her maternal bark. She dominates John Malkovich’s eccentric trainer, a rough-and-ready jockey, and two corporate men played by faceless actors named Dylan (Walsh and Baker). She flavors the role with a degree of seriousness that pays off against the odds. This easy backstretch of a movie doesn’t wring out all the drama in the story, but it works for what it is.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Waiting for Superman
Waiting for Superman
Grade: A
Cast: Documentary
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Free admission granted
I don’t like to pull out the phrases “important movie” and “This is the one movie you should see.” But if I had to describe a movie as important, and had to say there is one movie you should see, it’s Waiting for Superman.
That’s not to say it’s my number one film for the year. And that doesn’t mean it’s a future classic. In 30 years, this film isn’t going to matter. Our education system then will teach our children for the world of that time. Whether that’s producing graduates prepared to compete in the global economy, or imparting the nuances of prairie dog hunting to survive winter on the freezing plains, we will get the education we deserve.
If there is one thing that left and right have agreed on all my life, it is the public education system stinks. In a democracy, in theory, such a consensus ought to mean that the public demands and receives successful reform. Yet in 30 plus years we’ve barely seen a squirt of it, as the world gets more competitive and our test scores flatline. Davis Guggenheim, the director of the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth, explains why.
Past documentaries about children and “inner city life” – even very good films like Hoop Dreams or Mad Hot Ballroom – have emphasized the desire for escape. As such, they present their child subjects as exceptions with the skills or luck to escape tough realities. Underlying these stories is an assumption of fatalism about their situations, that tough lives are unavoidable and a permanent reality for children in these places. Guggenheim’s withering assessment stares right at this belief and refuses to let us buy it.
Waiting for Superman introduces two myth-busting challenges to perception. The first is that bad schools are the products of bad families and bad neighborhoods. Guggenheim points to evidence that the opposite might be true, that neighborhoods might well fail because their schools fail. The second is that we don’t know how to improve the education of these children and that perhaps there is no way to do it. Guggenheim asserts – and it makes the situation all the more damning – that 20 years of charter schooling have given us the solutions, but that entrenched powers dedicated to protecting bad teachers prevent our society from putting them in place.
And that’s the thing, right? We can do something about this. Maybe not everything. Maybe not perfectly. But something. But we won’t. Narrating his own film, Guggenheim examines the success of some charter schools, public schools that operate independently from the rules governing the rest of the system. We visit places like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the KIPP schools that use innovative techniques to routinely produce top-level students. More importantly, these schools do not seem to be the products of a single terrific staff. They reproduce their results in numerous cities across the country.
These schools have been founded by teachers and administrators who were fed up with the failing system. One is Geoffrey Canada, a Harvard-educated reformer operating a charter school in the Bronx, whose childhood fantasies inspire the title. A second is Michelle Rhee. The driven chancellor has fired underperformers and introduced charter school techniques to the horrendous Washington D.C. school system. In real life, she is about to be fired despite her successes. Some writers, particularly on the Washington Post website, suggest Rhee is better at public relations than reforming schools. Whatever her performance, what she says makes sense. When she says we’re sacrificing the lives of children to preserve harmony among the adults, we all know that’s true.
We see the impact on lives by spending time with several inner city children (and one suburban girl – that’s a third myth busted here, that suburban schools are immune). These students are hoping to escape the “dropout factories” of the public school system and attend charter schools. We watch them walk to school, play with dogs, and dream of becoming veterinarians. We listen to the parents speak their fears of their neighborhood schools and their hopes for their children. These aren’t original scenes, but they are necessary scenes. By the end, we feel a stake in the bouncing-ball lotteries that determine which of the hundreds of children will fill the 30ish spots offered by the charter schools.
At first you’re sad because most of these children will miss out on a quality education. Next, you realize the absurdity of having futures determined by the bounce of a plastic ball. Finally you’re angry, because you know that as each child loses his or her future, our society loses something by refusing to give the best available education to the most promising among us. All because a stupid plastic ball didn’t bounce right. And all because we’ve abdicated our responsibility to a stupid plastic ball to make these decisions for us.
Everyone knows who the villains are, bad teachers and those who protect them. Over the past few decades, the teachers unions – the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association – have stifled reform and created employment contracts that make it nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Unions might have been great back when factory workers were being forced to work 73-hour days in between dodging bullets from Pinkerton agents. Nowadays, we know – heck, we even joke about – what happens when unions make ridiculous demands debilitating to the success of an organization. We’ve seen General Motors. In fact, nowadays we own half of it. But unlike car companies, public education systems don’t have to come begging to Congress when they fail; they just raise your taxes. Think of this country’s education system as one slow-motion legalized bailout.
Superman has a gentle delivery, even occasionally humorous, but it is made out of a cool anger. It’s a good anger. It’s the type of anger that gets something done. You know that stiff drink that people in movies take to steel their nerves before they deliver a baby on a plane, or otherwise fight the odds? Waiting for Superman is a cinematic shot of gin for a difficult but absolutely necessary task. Because yeah, our future depends on it.
Grade: A
Cast: Documentary
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Free admission granted
I don’t like to pull out the phrases “important movie” and “This is the one movie you should see.” But if I had to describe a movie as important, and had to say there is one movie you should see, it’s Waiting for Superman.
That’s not to say it’s my number one film for the year. And that doesn’t mean it’s a future classic. In 30 years, this film isn’t going to matter. Our education system then will teach our children for the world of that time. Whether that’s producing graduates prepared to compete in the global economy, or imparting the nuances of prairie dog hunting to survive winter on the freezing plains, we will get the education we deserve.
If there is one thing that left and right have agreed on all my life, it is the public education system stinks. In a democracy, in theory, such a consensus ought to mean that the public demands and receives successful reform. Yet in 30 plus years we’ve barely seen a squirt of it, as the world gets more competitive and our test scores flatline. Davis Guggenheim, the director of the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth, explains why.
Past documentaries about children and “inner city life” – even very good films like Hoop Dreams or Mad Hot Ballroom – have emphasized the desire for escape. As such, they present their child subjects as exceptions with the skills or luck to escape tough realities. Underlying these stories is an assumption of fatalism about their situations, that tough lives are unavoidable and a permanent reality for children in these places. Guggenheim’s withering assessment stares right at this belief and refuses to let us buy it.
Waiting for Superman introduces two myth-busting challenges to perception. The first is that bad schools are the products of bad families and bad neighborhoods. Guggenheim points to evidence that the opposite might be true, that neighborhoods might well fail because their schools fail. The second is that we don’t know how to improve the education of these children and that perhaps there is no way to do it. Guggenheim asserts – and it makes the situation all the more damning – that 20 years of charter schooling have given us the solutions, but that entrenched powers dedicated to protecting bad teachers prevent our society from putting them in place.
And that’s the thing, right? We can do something about this. Maybe not everything. Maybe not perfectly. But something. But we won’t. Narrating his own film, Guggenheim examines the success of some charter schools, public schools that operate independently from the rules governing the rest of the system. We visit places like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the KIPP schools that use innovative techniques to routinely produce top-level students. More importantly, these schools do not seem to be the products of a single terrific staff. They reproduce their results in numerous cities across the country.
These schools have been founded by teachers and administrators who were fed up with the failing system. One is Geoffrey Canada, a Harvard-educated reformer operating a charter school in the Bronx, whose childhood fantasies inspire the title. A second is Michelle Rhee. The driven chancellor has fired underperformers and introduced charter school techniques to the horrendous Washington D.C. school system. In real life, she is about to be fired despite her successes. Some writers, particularly on the Washington Post website, suggest Rhee is better at public relations than reforming schools. Whatever her performance, what she says makes sense. When she says we’re sacrificing the lives of children to preserve harmony among the adults, we all know that’s true.
We see the impact on lives by spending time with several inner city children (and one suburban girl – that’s a third myth busted here, that suburban schools are immune). These students are hoping to escape the “dropout factories” of the public school system and attend charter schools. We watch them walk to school, play with dogs, and dream of becoming veterinarians. We listen to the parents speak their fears of their neighborhood schools and their hopes for their children. These aren’t original scenes, but they are necessary scenes. By the end, we feel a stake in the bouncing-ball lotteries that determine which of the hundreds of children will fill the 30ish spots offered by the charter schools.
At first you’re sad because most of these children will miss out on a quality education. Next, you realize the absurdity of having futures determined by the bounce of a plastic ball. Finally you’re angry, because you know that as each child loses his or her future, our society loses something by refusing to give the best available education to the most promising among us. All because a stupid plastic ball didn’t bounce right. And all because we’ve abdicated our responsibility to a stupid plastic ball to make these decisions for us.
Everyone knows who the villains are, bad teachers and those who protect them. Over the past few decades, the teachers unions – the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association – have stifled reform and created employment contracts that make it nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Unions might have been great back when factory workers were being forced to work 73-hour days in between dodging bullets from Pinkerton agents. Nowadays, we know – heck, we even joke about – what happens when unions make ridiculous demands debilitating to the success of an organization. We’ve seen General Motors. In fact, nowadays we own half of it. But unlike car companies, public education systems don’t have to come begging to Congress when they fail; they just raise your taxes. Think of this country’s education system as one slow-motion legalized bailout.
Superman has a gentle delivery, even occasionally humorous, but it is made out of a cool anger. It’s a good anger. It’s the type of anger that gets something done. You know that stiff drink that people in movies take to steel their nerves before they deliver a baby on a plane, or otherwise fight the odds? Waiting for Superman is a cinematic shot of gin for a difficult but absolutely necessary task. Because yeah, our future depends on it.
The Social Network
The Social Network
Grade: B
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara
Director: David Fincher
Free admission granted
I know I’m supposed to get out and help push.
The fight for great cinema is on, and I’m expected to throw it into neutral, hop out, and chug-chug-chug with my hands on the door. We all have to get behind The Social Network and push the crowds to every mall across the country to see this, The Movie of a Generation.
Can I tap the brakes just a little, just a little, without people saying that I didn’t like it? I did. Very much. However, I remember when Baby Boomers chose Reality Bites as the movie of my generation. So I always hesitate to declare one for the next generation. We like to think we are forever advancing as people, and that makes it flattering to pick a film set on the Internet cutting edge. But the rural meth-topia of Winter’s Bone or the collapse of the public education system in Waiting for Superman is every bit as current and relevant.
Still, it’s reasonable that David Fincher’s sharply made, widely praised film is a good candidate. So let’s take the time to celebrate The Social Network for what it is – a very, very good origin story about how the founders of Facebook brought us all closer to our lifetime friends while destroying their own friendships in the process.
You can’t turn around without finding a review that compares The Social Network to Citizen Kane. Critics such as IndieWire’s Todd McCarthy and Salon’s Andrew O’Heir note or dismiss the similarities in the rise of fictional Charles Foster Kane and the portrayal of real-life Facebook genius Mark Zuckerberg.
Is that an accurate comparison? I say, who cares if it’s accurate? It’s such a fertile comparison that accuracy is beyond the point.
Both pictures come from the tradition of American stories in which self-made rich men end up with everything and nothing. Both Kane and Zuckerberg are lonely figures whose drive for success has slowly erased their human relationships. We want to admire our millionaires, because they represent what we deep down desire. We want to feel we can have the American Dream without having the cost be too much to our soul. These stories reflect the deep hesitation we feel toward our sometimes conflicting values.
Kane and Zuckerberg are also privileged young men who fashion themselves as outsiders. They build their empires by imagining bonds with the common man, in alliance against idle and unfeeling privilege. For Kane, this means muckraking newspapers going after the political bosses of the day. For Zuckerberg, this means taking aim at old money Harvard classmates like the impossibly entitled Winklevoss twins (each played by Armie Hammer, who makes it seem like Brendan Fraser is part of a set of triplets). They are rebelling against the power that they know personally. However, these men might be as much a part of what they hate as they are opponents to it.
The big difference, I would say, is motivation. Kane doesn’t shackle its man with a motivation so much as insinuate his motivation. Rosebud is not just a sled or a symbol of lost innocence. It is the manifestation of the one ineffable thing that Kane chases that he can never regain. The Social Network tries to do the same in the form of a lost girlfriend (Rooney Mara). That seems like a stretch. It’s weak in comparison to the accomplishments. But maybe the flaw isn’t failing to find the motivation. Maybe the flaw is looking for it in the first place. Maybe the flaw is not recognizing that some people are just driven because they are.
Written by The West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network has a full set of lively characters and performances centered around the living-on-credit decadence of our recent past. Eisenberg comes into his own as Zuckerberg, portrayed as a lonely sadist but also admirably ambitious. Some see him as a monster, but I never reached the point of disliking him. I just thought he was willing to do what it took and it couldn’t always be nice. Some have taken his mistreatment of best friend/original partner Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) as a hideous betrayal. I thought it reached a point where Saverin was out of his depth. Having been impressed by him in Black Snake Moan, count me as unsurprised by Justin Timberlake as the party boy entrepreneur Sean Parker. Frankly, I’m a little surprised he isn’t a bigger movie star by now.
Fincher’s direction is sharp, typically meticulous and professional. It achieves the level of precision that has characterized his career. That said, The Social Network seems like a collection of good to great moments without a wowser scene. Zodiac has a number of wowser scenes. Kane has a dozen wowser scenes forever enshrined in our collective filmgoing mind. That doesn’t make The Social Network bad. It’s just makes it a little less. It’s just a happy matter of degrees of good.
Grade: B
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara
Director: David Fincher
Free admission granted
I know I’m supposed to get out and help push.
The fight for great cinema is on, and I’m expected to throw it into neutral, hop out, and chug-chug-chug with my hands on the door. We all have to get behind The Social Network and push the crowds to every mall across the country to see this, The Movie of a Generation.
Can I tap the brakes just a little, just a little, without people saying that I didn’t like it? I did. Very much. However, I remember when Baby Boomers chose Reality Bites as the movie of my generation. So I always hesitate to declare one for the next generation. We like to think we are forever advancing as people, and that makes it flattering to pick a film set on the Internet cutting edge. But the rural meth-topia of Winter’s Bone or the collapse of the public education system in Waiting for Superman is every bit as current and relevant.
Still, it’s reasonable that David Fincher’s sharply made, widely praised film is a good candidate. So let’s take the time to celebrate The Social Network for what it is – a very, very good origin story about how the founders of Facebook brought us all closer to our lifetime friends while destroying their own friendships in the process.
You can’t turn around without finding a review that compares The Social Network to Citizen Kane. Critics such as IndieWire’s Todd McCarthy and Salon’s Andrew O’Heir note or dismiss the similarities in the rise of fictional Charles Foster Kane and the portrayal of real-life Facebook genius Mark Zuckerberg.
Is that an accurate comparison? I say, who cares if it’s accurate? It’s such a fertile comparison that accuracy is beyond the point.
Both pictures come from the tradition of American stories in which self-made rich men end up with everything and nothing. Both Kane and Zuckerberg are lonely figures whose drive for success has slowly erased their human relationships. We want to admire our millionaires, because they represent what we deep down desire. We want to feel we can have the American Dream without having the cost be too much to our soul. These stories reflect the deep hesitation we feel toward our sometimes conflicting values.
Kane and Zuckerberg are also privileged young men who fashion themselves as outsiders. They build their empires by imagining bonds with the common man, in alliance against idle and unfeeling privilege. For Kane, this means muckraking newspapers going after the political bosses of the day. For Zuckerberg, this means taking aim at old money Harvard classmates like the impossibly entitled Winklevoss twins (each played by Armie Hammer, who makes it seem like Brendan Fraser is part of a set of triplets). They are rebelling against the power that they know personally. However, these men might be as much a part of what they hate as they are opponents to it.
The big difference, I would say, is motivation. Kane doesn’t shackle its man with a motivation so much as insinuate his motivation. Rosebud is not just a sled or a symbol of lost innocence. It is the manifestation of the one ineffable thing that Kane chases that he can never regain. The Social Network tries to do the same in the form of a lost girlfriend (Rooney Mara). That seems like a stretch. It’s weak in comparison to the accomplishments. But maybe the flaw isn’t failing to find the motivation. Maybe the flaw is looking for it in the first place. Maybe the flaw is not recognizing that some people are just driven because they are.
Written by The West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network has a full set of lively characters and performances centered around the living-on-credit decadence of our recent past. Eisenberg comes into his own as Zuckerberg, portrayed as a lonely sadist but also admirably ambitious. Some see him as a monster, but I never reached the point of disliking him. I just thought he was willing to do what it took and it couldn’t always be nice. Some have taken his mistreatment of best friend/original partner Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) as a hideous betrayal. I thought it reached a point where Saverin was out of his depth. Having been impressed by him in Black Snake Moan, count me as unsurprised by Justin Timberlake as the party boy entrepreneur Sean Parker. Frankly, I’m a little surprised he isn’t a bigger movie star by now.
Fincher’s direction is sharp, typically meticulous and professional. It achieves the level of precision that has characterized his career. That said, The Social Network seems like a collection of good to great moments without a wowser scene. Zodiac has a number of wowser scenes. Kane has a dozen wowser scenes forever enshrined in our collective filmgoing mind. That doesn’t make The Social Network bad. It’s just makes it a little less. It’s just a happy matter of degrees of good.
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