Really, Netflix?

Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom is shameless, non-stop kitschy nostalgia, and it is a weird nostalgia, because it is aimed at an audience that does not remember the stuff it is nostaligic about. It is a movie for the Etsy generation. An Instagram movie. It may be the Wes Andersonest of all the Wes Anderson movies, but I would not know, because I have only seen The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic all the way through, and neither of them left much of an impression, to be perfectly honest. To be perfectly honest, I may have avoided the more beloved of his movies (Rushmore) because I fear the uncomfortable conversations in which I say horrible insincere-sounding things like, "Yeah, a lot of people like that movie" or "I really liked the shoes in that movie." (I'm terrified of hurting people's feelings, I'm terrified of being judged for my taste. Why am I writing stuff here on a blog about movies...?) 

Wes Anderson: I put a bird on it. 

So I had no plans to like Moonrise Kingdom. I thought I would damage my eye-sockets with all the eye-rolling Moonrise Kingdom would require. However. I was totally charmed by it. I thought Ed Norton's Khaki Scouts troupe leader was funny and sincere and believable. Frances McDormand was great. The sweet naive sexuality and romance were flat and unrealistic in the way a good picture book is. 

What does this mean?

Do I have to turn in my dried-up humorless cynic card? 

SW&tH

What if told you there is a movie, in theaters now, with the following actors in it? Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane. You would think, that sounds like something pretty great, probably fairly violent, maybe a Guy Ritchie crime caper, or maybe some medieval epic, with lots of historical accuracy and very cool costumes. Or maybe you wouldn't think that because you don’t know all their names, but you know these guys.

See? Those guys. Maybe they would be working class weirdos in a Mike Leigh film. Maybe they would be the supporting cast in a new Danny Boyle sci fi movie. What you would probably not think is this: all those actors are the dwarfs in the second weak retelling of Snow White to come to theaters this summer. This is Snow White and the Hunstman, starring Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron. Theron, by the way, is a phenomenon. I felt like everyone else understood that this was a silly movie--Chris Hemsworth especially seemed to maintain an ironic smirk the whole time. Maybe that's just his face, or his character. But Charlize Theron, I don't think she knows how to phone it in, and her performance is almost embarrassing because it's too good for the film she's in. Unlike Kristen Stewart. There is an amazing scene near the end of the movie, where Kristen Stewart gives a sort of St Crispin's Day speech, inspiring the troupes, but in that same face-touching, dead-eyed style of naturalistic acting that has occasionally worked really well for her, when she played a sullen teenager. "Iron melts," she growls, in a weird halfway English accent. "But it also writhes about inside itself." I have no idea what any of this means. But I would definitely like to be kidnapped by that band of dwarfs.

News about Oldboy is always interesting, but I'm fascinated by a couple of other things in this article:

1. Use of whom in the first sentence: "whom has been following this remake." It's a complex sentence, but still.
2. Martha Marcy May Marlene, Silent House, and Spike Lee's vision of Oldboy constitute a trend of "thrillers"? You have to make a pretty broad definition of genre to wedge those three movies into the same category. I guess it would be undiplomatic to say so, but I suspect what Elizabeth Olsen has an un-Olsenlike reputation for is "acting." Or more accurately, "not reminding me of Full House."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0KUUOWq3JA

The Westerfeld Effect

I had to look up this post again today, not for the last time I'm sure: http://scottwesterfeld.com/blog/2007/03/midi-nighters-on-tv/ .

Sullivan is really into My Little Pony right now. He says, "My little pony my best friend." So I was thinking, Sullivan is a brony. Only then I realized, Sullivan is two, so actually he's just a toddler watching a cartoon for toddlers.

brony tshirt

I'm always trying to express this thing, where you twist a thing too many times and end up with something very conventional, either the same thing you started with or something worse. I think Scott Westerfeld explains the phenomenon really well, and since I often want a name for it, I think we should call it The Westerfeld Effect. Right? 

Wanderlust

get it? michael sho-WALTER?

David Wain is like that weird cousin I used to see at family gatherings. Most of the time, I kind of try to avoid him. Most of the time, I don't get his jokes, and he makes me cringe a lot more often than he makes me laugh. But also, I feel a certain undeniable affection, like we have known each other for a long time. That's actually true, in a way--I used to stay up late watching The State after my parents went to sleep when I was in high school. And even then, I didn't get it, but I was fond of it. All of these shows--Wet Hot American Summer, The State, Stella, Wainy Days, Role Models--I like them even though I don't exactly think they are funny. At least, not most of the time. The occasional laughs are big laughs, but they are few and far between. Maybe it's a thing I have to be in the right mood for. If so, I was in the seriously right mood for Wanderlust, because I embarrassed myself laughing at it.

overreaction, pre-review, written in a big hurry, rushing to judgment

This is one of those movies I should just decide right now that I will never see because I already know what's going to happen, which is that I will sit there alternating between bemusement and rage, hating everything about the movie, and then later everyone will have thought it was cute or charming or sweet. I did not rewatch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I hated, for years, but it kept coming up on respectable smart film critics' best-of-the-decade lists, so I thought maybe I had been in a reactionary mood when I saw it. After all, it came out in 2004, and maybe I was still figuring out that it's not exactly fair that all the stories seem to be told by men for men about men and their desires. A discovery like that can make a person overreact for a while. So I finally went back and gave it another chance, just a few months ago. And I hated it, I hated it. It's so gross the way we watch this whole story that is not just theoretically told from his perspective, but literally constructed solely from his memories, she has no existence in this movie. There is no Clementine. And we're supposed to have feelings about their relationship, to care what happens to them, and never mind the fact that they are both so terribly unpleasant and unimaginative and ugly, they are also just one person not two. Just this one man, and his internal fantasy about a life. Note: I also find the movie impossible to follow from a plot standpoint, and not very pretty to look at, but I'm getting into the weeds now. I'm not here to talk about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, except in that it is sort of the quintessential movie in which there is a relationship between an ordinary man and an impossible imaginary fantasy girl.

But this movie. Ruby Sparks. Jeez. In case you don't have time to watch the preview, the premise is that Paul Dano's character is a writer, and he creates a flesh-and-blood woman out of nothing. He's the inventor of her. Sort of like Pygmalion, but less progressive. It's a cute idea, I get that. Except that it's deeply troubling--and also a massive cliche. Consider the idea that a woman's very existence depends on being the object of love. It's troubling and it's also so very very boring.

It's like Zoe Kazan (who wrote the screenplay, and also stars in the movie) read about manic pixie dream girls, and she thought: the trouble with every Zooey Deschanel character is that it's theoretically possible for her to express an opinion. What we really need is a story about a woman who is literally controlled, internally and externally, by the man at the center of the story. What we need is a movie about how fun and awesome it is to be the girl in that story, or in that relationship.

Watching the trailer, I felt sort of sick and gross, this dizzy feeling I get when I am forced to realize that people don't see things the way I see things. It's not unlike the feeling when I can't find my keys, even though I know exactly where I left them. Like the reality I live in is just not quite the same reality where anyone else lives. It's unsettling to know that people I can most of the time communicate with are loving the wit and/or charm and/or humor of a thing I find mostly baffling and sometimes outrageous.

From the trailer: "You can make her do anything you want. For men everywhere, tell me you're not going to let that go to waste." Ha ha. Get it? Men want women to do stuff that they don't necessarily want to do. It is rough for men everywhere.

I know, maybe the movie will redeem itself. I admit there is a possibility that the movie is not what I think it is, that in the end somehow it's a movie about female agency not a movie at the expense of female agency. I recognize that I am rushing to judgment.

I am trying to think of examples of stories in which a woman defines the fantasy, they must exist. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Stranger Than Fiction, and the thing is, that movie is still all about the dude. It's all about the experience of being fictional. So I don't think it works as a counterexample. Certainly there are movies by and about women, great movies that reflect experiences of women or tell good stories about women. But it's hard to think of any where she has all the power and his desires are just a reflection of her needs.

For Thaddeus

You win.

An Attempt to Explain Why I Didn't Quite Love The Muppets as Much as I Thought I Would

The Muppets is very muppety in a lot of ways. It captures the tone of the Muppets, and it made me laugh a whole bunch of times. It was fun to see these familiar characters acting like themselves, and Jason Segal also acting like a Muppet--possibly the only more adorable person on earth is Amy Adams. It was especially great to watch this movie, which is largely about restoring a beautiful but shabby old theater, at the Byrd. But I have some problems with The Muppets. 

The premise of the movie is that the Muppets, formerly huge television stars, have fallen out of popularity. I found this very confusing. I understand that this story takes place in an alternate universe, but I'm not at all clear on its relationship to 1) the real world or 2) the world of The Muppet Movie(s). In the real world, the Muppets have never stopped being popular, and they certainly did not disappear from public view during the three decades since The Muppet Show went off the air. I believe that The Great Muppet Caper came out after the show ended, and The Muppets Take Manhattan came out in 1984. In the 90s, after Jim Henson's death, three Muppet movies came out in theaters, and while they're not all stunningly successful as films, I would argue that The Muppets Christmas Carol is among the best of the many, many versions of that story. I asked my resident five-year-old pop culture expert about the Muppets, to see whether they have fallen into obscurity, and she readily identified the main characters and named her favorite (Piggy, of course). The Muppets may not be as popular as they were in, say, 1981, but they have never disappeared. I do not for a second believe that the real Selena Gomez in the real world doesn't know who the Muppets are. That said, I do not think the movie wants me to believe that the Muppets are very unpopular now exactly, so much as it wants me to believe that (in the world of the movie) they were once much more wildly popular than they ever were in real life.

The film is preoccupied with celebrity. That's okay--after all, The Muppet Movie ended with Orson Welles giving the Kermit & friends the Standard Rich and Famous contract. Being famous was always part of the Muppet dream. But I feel sure that Kermit's desire to be famous, way back when he met Dom Deluise in that swamp, was all about bringing people joy, and none about having people like him. Being famous is a necessary side-effect of making people happy, not an end in itself. So in this new movie when the rousing happy ending is this obscene celebrity orgy, when Wally is validated by hordes of fetishy screaming fans, that moment rings very false to me, not just because it contradicts or undermines everything that comes before it in the plot of the movie, but also because it has always seemed to me that the public aspect of being an entertainer, the part where people are staring at you, was the part that made Kermit a little uncomfortable.

Speaking of things that make Kermit a little uncomfortable...what happened to the relationship between Kermit and Piggy? Piggy's aggressiveness, both sexual and otherwise, is a big part of what makes her a feminist hero. Kermit's romantic relationship with Piggy has always been complicated by the fact that she is very intimidating. Kermit's mushy monologue to her just made me squirmy and uncomfortable.

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The Muppets

Cool as Ice

With his face, Vanilla Ice expresses my feelings about Cool as Ice.

I only watched for about ten minutes.

Wyatt Cenac on The Sound of Young America

Wyatt Cenac looks good in hats

listen to this
The first segment is Wyatt Cenac's story about a neighbor who doesn't own a television. I think you'll like it.

M.I.A.

"I don't think anything that I do is wrong or shocking. I'm way more shocked by a film like Rob Marshall's Nine, for example - bad taste like that rapes my eyes." Romain Gavras


 

Spyglasses

There isn't much about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy that I can say which hasn't already been said. Although I loved the movie to pieces, there is one thing that I think I love the most about it.

Traditionally, or at least often, spy characters in film are given dark glasses to wear, to make them as inscrutable as possible. Gary Oldman wore glasses while portraying spymaster George Smiley which greatly increased the size of his eyes - and yet due to his fantastic performance he managed to appear even more inscrutable than the Men in Black and their ilk. That's what I find so tremendously impressive about Gary Oldman's performance; well, that along with everything else.

Also, anyone who leaves the theater without Julio Iglesias' version of "La Mer" stuck in their head has not a soul. That song Tinker Tailor Soldier Lingered.

Without Love (Cecily's review)

I thought it was kind of funny. Because two parts:
One was this lady put on this thing, and it had glass all around it. Or was it plastic? It was glass. Okay so. And then when the man went out of the room, she sneezed, and then she tried to wipe her nose, but she was like, "uhh...." And then she remembered that she had on that thing. Okay. Then, she got inside this space ship thing once the man came back. Um. Oh my gosh. Are you writing all this down? They will not know what I'm talking about. So when she got in, she was like, "Oh, I feel so upside-outside-inside!" I think that's it. You are actually writing down everything that I say. Oh my gosh. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

So the man sleep walked, right into the girl's room, when she was getting some water. Then when she came back she like got in bed, and when she saw the man, she fell RIGHT OFF THE BED!

I like it.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

As evidenced below, I was overjoyed to finally see the cinematic version of TTSS. Most of my love for this film was initially placed in loving Gary Oldman and roughly anything he does, but in order to show my fealty, I decided to read the book and get a sense of this new chapter in my relationship with Gary Oldman.* Now, it should be mentioned that I still love Gary Oldman, but there was something iconoclastic for me in the book that I just had not anticipated and my love was reshaped.

My new love is for the uncanny narrative tension that can only be created by the sheer, unadulterated boredom of the life of great spies. Before I go on, I fear I may give some minor details of the film/book away so I say unto you: here there may be spoiler alerts. The success of the book is its almost epistolary nature. Smiley gathers all of his intelligence through the most mundane and boring means, and what we learn about Smiley and espionage in general is that you just have to listen and connect plot points of people's stories. I've given some serious thought to telling people that this book has no plot beyond George Smiley listening to people and arresting some guy at the end. All of the action happens in exposition, and after six or seven of Smiley's chit chats, you just stop caring about the Cold War and the battle for ideological dominance. What really matters is that Smiley is a sad and sort of pathetic man, but a brilliant spy.

When I finished the book, I started storyboarding the movie in my mind, and I was glad that the film listened to my imagination. The colors are almost completely washed out, Smiley rarely ever talks, and most of the film is just a study of people's faces as they tell stories that are seemingly unrelated. I was bored to sheer joy.

Actually, I don't think the film is remotely boring, but the slow pace of the film and the completely anticlimactic and brilliantly executed end will make people scratch their heads in wonder. After all, aren't spies more like James Bond or Ethan Hunt? Aren't they the peak of physical performance and aren't they the world's greatest lovers? Can't they overcome the most difficult odds through sheer will power and brute force? According to LeCarre, no, spies pay attention when people talk and talk and talk, drink and get drunk, and have trouble swimming anything more than a few laps. To borrow from another movie, these are spies like me.


*The first chapter was Oldman's portrayal of the crooked Stansfield. Then I watched True Romance, Dracula, Sid and Nancy, Immortal Beloved, The Fifth Element (about 100 times just to hear him pronounce, "Jean-Baptiste Immanuel Zorg."), and Romeo Is Bleeding. I like to think of the Harry Potter films and the Christopher Nolan Batmans as the relationship of people who argue over the price of sandwiches.

tinker tailor soldier success!

Young Adult (Lydia's review)

There is not a lot to like in Young Adult. Especially unlikeable is the main character, which is a difficult (but not impossible) problem to overcome.  I liked some details--the loving, almost fetishistic attention to the inner workings of a memorex mix tape in the opening credits went too far and then kept going until it circled back around to greatness. The many close shots of manicures and pedicures; an expanse of a pale and freckled back in the foreground; the frank, underexplained images of hair pulling. These were the things I liked.

There is a standard thing that happens to characters like Mavis,* the ghostwriter in Young Adult. People as shallow and self-destructive as Mavis almost never get through a whole movie without undergoing some major transformation. Maybe it’s refreshing that instead of sticking to formula, Mavis experiences no epiphany, no change, and no catharsis. She simply decides in the end that her raging prom-queen shallowness is her best option--no, not just her best option, but actually correct.

To be fair to Young Adult, I am tired of the movies it is not. The movies that tell me how great and wholesome it is to be fulfilled by ordinary lives which are not actually ordinary at all. The it’s-a-wonderful-life syndrome, where a small-town guy thinks his life is meaningless, then discovers that actually he has a lot to live for, in the form of a beautiful and devoted wife, many adoring and/or adorable children, millions of friends, and quite meaningful work. But most of us aren’t George Bailey. If Frank Capra has convinced me of anything, it is that I probably should throw myself off a bridge, because I don’t have a lovely wife and four children, and I have never saved my hometown from the evil machinations of Lionel Barrymore. I’m bored with hollywood falsely endorsing ordinary lives.

So I should be pleased with Young Adult, which bravely refuses to embrace the lie of Capra’s small town America, an America that not only doesn’t exist now in the era of strip malls, but also never existed in the first place. Young Adult thumbs its nose (is there a more juvenile expression of disdain? flips the bird?) at the idea of values that are not utterly shallow. In the end, Mavis is faced with what might be understood as one single moment of authenticity, in the form of bad, ugly sex. Not mean sex, just bland and sad and based on a deeply felt, totally mutual pity.

I came away from this movie feeling like I’m supposed to believe you have the following choice in life: be “stupid and fat” like everyone in Mercury, or be slightly less stupid and have trichotillomania instead  of  fat, and live in a slightly less hick town, and sneer out loud at anyone who is centimers less than you as measured on the cultural cache tape measure.***

It’s surely true that anyone, at any level of success, can feel like a failure compared to one person and like a success compared to someone else. Being a superhot divorced lady and a ghost writer for a terminated series of young adult novels, for instance, might be someone’s idea of success and someone else’s idea of abject failure. That this movie accepts and illustrates that is fine. But the movie ends with music rising and cheerful, blatantly false voice-over as Mavis embraces her obviously destructive and terrible choices and the miserable life they have brought her. This makes it at best very dismal, with a message of supreme hopelessness. I guess you could call that brave.

* Is her name really Mavis? I feel like I must be getting that wrong.

** I really wish i could construct a pun here about a cultural mix tape measure, but for once I am not up to the challenge...