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By shimes, August 31, 2010 7:39 pm

Clay Chastain's plan to revitalize downtown Kansas City.

I’m not going to try to top the already lengthy interwebs discussion on this movie, but this argument that “Inception” is flawed dream logic is dumb.  Paging Dr. Freud, not all dreams are nonsensical free associations revolving around Jungian archetypes.  If we understand dreams more simply, the processing of subconscious ideas, then Christopher Nolan is onto something very potent here.

As the movie explains it, “inception” is planting of an idea deep in the subconscious.  Eventually, that idea worms its way to surface and manifests itself in the real world.  Jung would agree.  Modern neuroscience would too.  To some, dreams manifest themselves in a kind of freeform, what we might call “dreamscapes.”  Think Michel Gondry and “The Science of Sleep,” for example.  Others are more left-brain thinkers; we manifest dreams in very organized patterns. 

“Inception” seems like Nolan’s response to the nonsensical cinema in which random stuff is thrown together with lots of color and called “dreamscape” or “dream logic” or something of the sort.  Nolan argues that dreaming also manifests itself in logical, organized patterns:  Architecture is its own organized dreamscape.  Nolan then merges science and art—the metaphorical left and right brain, if you will—in a scene where a dream of a city is turned into MC Escher’s “Relativity.”  The plot revolves around an evil corporation, which in itself is the real-world manifestation of an entrepreneurial idea—in law, a corporation is referred to as a “legal fiction” because it’s not real; it’s an invention of the courts. 

Once we make this leap, the movie becomes much more complex—perhaps even a statement about filmmaking itself.  The point is that dreams don’t have to not make sense to make sense.  Dreams can and do make sense, especially when unconscious ideas are folded out in the real world.  That Nolan creates a coherent narrative out of the five levels of “Inception” is not cinematic trickery—it’s the entire point.

The Pitch:

2 1/2 Memento

2 1/2 Memento

2 1/2 Memento

Plus

2 M.C. Escher's "Relativity"

2 M.C. Escher's "Relativity"

Equals

4 1/2 Inception 4 1/2 Inception

4 1/2 Inception

4 1/2 Inception

4 1/2 Inception

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By shimes, August 15, 2010 9:21 pm

Look, dude, you can't be Emo with your shirt off. That's not how this works.

This film understands Twilight better than Stephanie Meyer does.  In Meyer’s interminable books, Bella Swan whines so much that the reader should simply turn on her—yes, you’re tortured, we get it.  And the book clearly steers your toward Team Edward to take her away from Forks.  Jacob is such a jealous meathead that he’s not a worthy suitor, merely a plot device.  Without a real dilemma, Twilight fills its space with purple brooding.  To this end, Stephanie Meyer may understand teenage girls, but she doesn’t get small towns.

“Eclipse” does.  Which is an odd thing to say, but about halfway through the movie, you get the sneaking, creepy suspicion that the “Twilight” movie might actually be…good.  Compelling, even.    Without Bella’s woe-is-me monologues, Kristen Stewart’s Bella is much more sympathetic.  Her virginity confusion becomes a more natural part of the plot, rather than overwrought teenage drama.  And screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (writer for “Dexter”) and director David Slade (“30 Days of Night”) create a more fully realized choice for Bella.  Jacob is the small town Forks-for-lifer, a very capable provider and protector who would give Bella a comfortable, even good life at home.  One can easily imagine Jacob as the president of the Forks Booster Club (in the werewolf off-season) while Bella cooks dinners for the team.  Edward is the melancholy emo-lover who represents a way to a more exciting, more exotic urban life. 

“Eclipse” dramatizes the choice many smart small town girls face:  Not between guys, but between lifestyle choices.  Bella is too distracted by divorce to get Jessica’s grades, so she has to choose between moving away to college or “taking a few years off.”  To this end, Rosenberg and Slade have created a far more interesting world than the books.  Forks is damp, beer-soaked collection of rusty trucks and paint chipping off clapboard houses.  This is Bella’s world, and to join Team Edward, she literally has to change to become one of “them”—in other words, become “too good” for where she’s from.  Just like vampire-dom, you can never go back.  She wouldn’t have to change a thing for Jacob.

Ok, not to make too much of this, but Rosenberg and Slade have sorted this whole Twilight thing out.  The werewolf and vampire metaphors make sense, Bella’s virginity confusion is given some depth, and the story now has a clear social element.  Plus, this movie doesn’t make George Lucas’ mistake with the Star Wars prequels or Ron Howard’s “The Da Vinci Code”:  “Twilight Eclipse” is not treated as sacred material.  You simply can’t get around some of this dumb dialogue, so you can either pretend it’s not stupid (“I don’t know you anymore. Anakin, you’re breaking my heart!”) or play it campy and kill the mood.  “Eclipse”’s strategy is to face the dialogue straight-on, with the characters playing the dialogue as digs at each other.  When Jacob has to warm Bella in a tent (vampire have no body heat), Jacob, looks at Edward and sneers, “Well, I am hotter with you.”  Later, Edwards wants to know if “He even owns a shirt.” 

Look, I know this is getting weird, but I’m as surprised as you are.  “Twilight Eclipse” is actually good, not ironic good.  Rosenberg has transported that creepy, between-the-lines feel of “Dexter” to this series, and I can’t wait to see what “Kinsey” and “Gods and Monsters” director Bill Condon has in store next.   Remember how much better the Harry Potter movies got after they turned the third one over to an indie Mexican director. 

The Pitch:

2 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

2 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Plus

1 Bill Compton

Equals

3 Twilight Eclipse

3 Twilight Eclipse

3 Twilight Eclipse

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By shimes, August 12, 2010 6:17 pm

No, I'm pretty sure you were the DJ at a bat mitzvah I went to back in 1992.

Listen, you’re going to have a good time at “Dinner for Schmucks.”  Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd aren’t going to let you down.  Zack Galifianankis knocks his small role out of the park, and the finale is worth waiting for.  But remember this:  The dinner is put on by a bunch of privileged rich a-holes so they can mock the unfortunate.  So by asking us to laugh at (not with, but at) the “schmucks,” then we are in the same position as the a-holes.  So, yes, “Dinner for Schmucks” asks you to be an a-hole.  If you’re cool with that, knock yourself out.  Later, I resented the fact that the movie asks its audience to identify with amoral elites. But during the movie, the pop was cold, the popcorn was warm, and Steve Carrell was as delightfully uncomfortable to watch as the American mainstream version of Ricky Gervais can be. 

Gold star to Jemaine Clement as the pretentious modern artist (that’s a redundancy, right?) that Paul Rudd’s fiancé works for.    He invites models to his apartment for sex in satyr outfits, then photographs them in an in-home studio jungle scene, complete with a smoke machine.  And that’s just the beginning: 

Kieran: Do you have any idea what it’s like Tim, to be up to your elbow in a zebra’s vagina?
Tim: No.
Kieran: You should try it Tim, it’s magical.

Barry: A goat will eat anything. A goat could probably eat a bicycle.
Kieran: A goat could eat itself; if it was driven to it…I’m just a goat who’s halfway through eating itself.
Barry: Just to be clear, what exactly are we talking about?
Kieran: Everything.

If you’ve ever been standing around at your local First Friday artwalk and thought to yourself, man, I know I’m supposed to get this, but I just don’t…Kieran will speak to you.  The truest moment of the film is the awkward fist bump of understanding between the Artist and the Schmuck.  Problem is, we’re supposed to feel bad for the schmuck while laughing at the schmuck.  It’s a paradox whose truth is probably best found in a zebra vagina.  Or something like that.

The Pitch:

1 1/2 Le diner de cons

1 1/2 Le diner de cons

Plus

1 Michael Scott

Equals

2 1/2 Dinner for Schmucks

2 1/2 Dinner for Schmucks

2 1/2 Dinner for Schmucks

Comments (0)

By shimes, June 20, 2010 6:25 pm

Jennifer! C'mon! You never got this pissed at Brad, did you?

 “The A-Team” is the variety of blockbuster that doesn’t just want your money—it wants your respect because the movie, like you, is in on the joke. The question is whether we, the self-aware summer moviegoer, is supposed to be impressed by irony. In other words, because “The A-Team” is aware of its ridiculous blockbusteriousness, should we joyfully spill our sodas and popcorn while convalescing into one big gut laugh?

Perhaps back in the early 90’s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hollywood had a duty to mock the Cold War jingoism it helped propagate.  But just as Planet Hollywood struck people as a cynical attempt to have its twelve dollar burgers and eat them too, the movies of the Ah-nold, Stallone, and Willis triumvirate couldn’t be both ridiculous and earnest for very long. Die Hard, sure, but Schwarzeneggar quickly degenerated into the mismatched muscleman, Stallone started going straight-to-video, and Willis played his harmonica for a decade until his resurrection by Quentin Tarantino.

So, yeah, there was a span of summers where the self-aware, ironic action movie was hip. But we’re way past that now. The great comic book movies of this decade have demonstrated that a big budget blockbuster can be thoughtful, complex, and deliver the popcorn goods without winking. Brian Singer’s “X-Men” movies weren’t just showcases for Hugh Jackman’s triceps, but interesting stories about civil rights (Professor Xavier the MLK figure; Magneto the Malcolm X). Sam Raimi’s first two “Spider-Man” movies touching portraits of tortured adolescence. Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” movies explore the dark line between vigilantism and heroism. The apotheosis of the style is Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s not enough to roll out the blockbuster template and amp up the stunts.

“The A-Team” has some interesting ideas, but is too busy being smugly ironic to pull them together into a cohesive story. The plot revolves around The A-Team’s quest to clear their names after being set up by some vigilante private contractors. “Black Forest” (um, yes, they’re supposed to be who you think they are) operators aren’t controlled by military law, and thus don’t uphold the ethics of “real” soldiers. Or, as Hannibal says, they’re “a bunch of frat boys with trigger fingers.” Understand, the A-Team isn’t some off-the-books special-ops squad; they simply specialize in “the crazy.” Thus, the movie venerates military law and support the troops (the boys reverently show each other their Ranger tatts), but also allows Hannibal and Face to drive a tank in midair that’s been dropped from a plane. Don’t forget the CIA, who are a bunch of cocky suits who just don’t get it. Most interestingly, the team’s final mission is something out of a Rand Paul nightmare: Apparently, the Iraqis had the only plates outside of the U.S. Mint that can print our money (My God, Saddam ran the Fed?!?!).

You get the point:  “The A-Team” wants to “say something” like that string of failed mid-aughts Iraq War movies (“Rendition,” “Lions for Lambs,” etc.), but also be A Big Ass Blockbuster. Again, “The A Team” lack the cohesion and artistry of the great comic book films to pull it off. First, “The A-Team” relies too heavily on the Blockbuster template. The first twenty minutes are the Audacious Character Introductions (Face is going to be set on fire because he nailed some Mexican drug lord’s wife; Murdock is in an insane asylum, etc.). As Murdock captains a helicopter across the border so that the Air Force can legally blow away some Mexican drug copters in pursuit (I think that’s what was happening), Hannibal announces that he loves it when a plan comes together.

This leads us to the second problem: Qui-Gon Jinn had better dialogue than Hannibal Smith. In fact, The Plan is like The Force, except that The Plan often requires Hannibal to take a half dozen punches to the face before Face cons his way past guards, B.A. beats some people up, and Murdock flies the chopper in for the rescue. The rest of the team isn’t much better. Here’s a sample of dialogue that occurs in fifteen to twenty various forms:

Murdock:  Whoa man, that’s crazy!

B.A.:  I’m sick of this crazy shit, man!

The third problem is that, while Neeson—whose career has become a shorthand for grizzled mentoring—is solid, the rest of the cast is inconsistent at best. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson highlights the clarity and precision of Mr. T’s line delivery. Bradley Cooper delivers a very professional performance, letting his pecs, hair gel, and bleached front teeth do his acting for him. Sharlto Copley as Murdock is a more interesting case: If Keith Richards inspired Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, then Copley’s Murdock is an action movie Chris “Mad Dog” Russo.

In short, “The A-Team” is “Ocean’s Eleven” if directed by Tony Scott. More precisely, this is exactly the movie “Macgruber”  targeted a month ago. “Macgruber”’s brilliance is that it’s only a beat beyond the movies it parodies; “The A-Team”’s problem is that it wants “Macgruber”’s irony along with “Rendition”’s seriousness. You can’t have both at the same time, so “The A-Team” opts to be so loud that you won’t know the difference.  Considering the DVD potential, Twentieth Century Fox has to love it when a plan comes together.

The Pitch:

1 Ocean's Eleven

Plus

1 Tony Scott

Equals

2 The A Team

2 The A Team

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By shimes, June 2, 2010 10:47 am

The recession forces MacGruber to craigslist the Miata

Roger Ebert once wrote that any movie idea can work, the execution is what’s important.  If true (and why not believe Ebert), the necessary corollary is that all SNL skits-turned-movies aren’t necessarily going to be failures.  “But how do you turn a one-joke, four-minute sketch into a whole movie!” the critics ask.  Though we’ve rarely seen it done properly (Wayne’s World being the obvious outlier), it can be done.  You can’t simply repeat the one joke over and over; the joke must be the seed from which grows a full satire.  This is exactly what MacGruber does.

The joke of the MacGruber sketch is that the hero gets distracted from disarming bombs with dental floss to deal with the personal issues of the people he’s trying to save (like when MacGruber has to deal with his grandma’s nagging because he doesn’t say thank you enough).  The satire isn’t really of “MacGyver,” but an Austin Powers-type parody of the ridiculousness of action movie climaxes.  From this seed springs MacGruber the movie, which is a vicious take-down of the Cold War action movie mentality that Hollywood has turned back to, after a few years of trying to grapple with the complexity of terrorism. 

Few Iraq War movies have made any money, so that’s off limits.  As for movies featuring Arab terrorists, Hollywood faced backlash from groups who found the depiction of brown-skinned baddies as stereotypical and offensive.  Also, as more and more of Hollywood’s profits come from overseas, why risk being misunderstood, especially by cultures who, despite the Obama Effect, tend to see Americans as the enemy.  The solution is to speak a language we all know:  Russian bad guys.  Really, is it likely that Putin and Medvedev are offended by visions of Russian strong men threatening the world order?  They have to welcome that, right?  I mean, isn’t that their M.O.?

For Hollywood, the brave new world of grappling with the complexities of terrorism are brushed aside for the Manichean world of the Cold War.  And that means we’re headed back to the 80’s!  Hot Tub Time Machine made the same point earlier this year, and MacGruber further plays with the idea.  MacGruber, vest-clad and sporting a Kurt Russell haircut, and his feather-banged love interest Vicki are characters straight out of the 80’s.  Yet they’re anachronisms in a movie set in the present.  If this isn’t a vision of the mentality of today’s Hollywood action film, what is it?

In short, MacGruber is a parody of Nicolas Cage’s career with Jerry Bruckheimer.  Not enough credit is given to Jorma Taccone’s  mastery of the Bruckheimer style:  Val Kilmer’s close-ups, the overwrought score, the dialogue so predictable it’s in your head the moment before it comes out the speakers (“Fuck the Brass!”).  The genius of MacGruber is the same as Tina Fey’s Palin impersonation:  The mockery hits harder the closer it is to reality.  During the Vice Presidential debate sketch, Fey quotes Palin word-for-word with just a touch of exaggeration.  MacGruber is an exaggerated shot-for-shot Bruckheimer film—and yes, there is a lot of gross-out humor here, but much of it is only beat beyond the stupidity of, say, Terminator Salvation. 

Taccone’s most telling detail is the blood splattering.  He captures the minute droplets of blood not unlike Wanted, for instance.  Taccone does it one better by actually splattering blood on the camera, as if mocking the fetishism of Tarantino-knock offs and the 3-D movement at the same time.  MacGruber’s trademark “throat rip” could come right out of the hands of Christian Bale. 

Taccone also has a Weird Al-like grasp of the employ of pretentious pop music to give “importance” to the action movie that captures the pompous superficiality of the music, but the entire Cold War worldview.  Really, can there ever be a more effective use of “Touch and Go” by Emerson, Lake, and Powell—the very embodiment of 70’s and 80’s synthesizer “progressive rock”?  Or “Broken Wings” to underscore the soul-saving aspect of MacGruber getting it on with the best friend of his dead fiancé?  By so thoroughly marinating his movie in 80’s-ishness, yet setting it in the present day, Taccone seems to be satirizing Cold War nostalgia, when white people (Americans and Russians) ruled the world, Mr. Mister ruled the charts, and the complexity of our post-9/11 world is just a momentary Stephen Gaghan-penned hallucination.  Syriana is out; the progeny of Red Dawn is in.  Of course, this is probably giving the braintrust behind MacGruber too much credit, but the detail is too precise to not give it the benefit of the doubt.  The bloodsplattered angel redeemed by vigilante justice against international terrrorists is pretty much what the Hollywood action movie is all about, and it’s exactly what MacGruber makes love to in the final disturbing frames.    I was hoping for an all-out satire on the ticking time bomb mentality of “24” and it’s nostalgia for the Cold War, but to make MacGruber into Jack Bauer wouldn’t really fit the character.  Still, you can see MacGruber defusing a Soviet missiles and yelling “Wolverines!”

The Pitch:

2 Jack Bauer

2 Jack Bauer

Plus

1 1/2 Dewey Cox

1 1/2 Dewey Cox

Equals

3 1/2 MacGruber

3 1/2 MacGruber

3 1/2 MacGruber

3 1/2 MacGruber

Comments (0)

By shimes, June 1, 2010 10:53 am

“Iron Man 2” falls prey to the mythologification of summer blockbusters: The tendency to overstuff the movie with plot points and characters to create faux-complexity, rather than focusing on making the central characters and plot nuanced and interesting.  The new model of blockbuster franchises is to create “worlds,” like The Lord of the Rings, that are sustainable for trilogies, quadrilogies, and beyond.  The worst of these oversimplify the original premise to accommodate familiar archetypes (The Matrix sequels) or lard up the sequels with complicated plots and minor characters because it doesn’t really have any ideas (The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise). 

Iron Man 2 does a little of both.  First, the movie strips politics from the Iron Man franchise; the first movie at least had some interesting things to say about the relationship between national security and the government’s relationship with military contractors.  Second, there’s no reason for Samuel L. Jackson, except that Samuel L. Jackson gets people excited for about five seconds.  And there’s no reason for Scarlett Johansson, except to tease teenage boys into thinking they might see something.  

So, in order to not instantly forget that you even saw this movie, you’ve got to make up some b.s.  Let’s try this:  The most interesting part of this movie is the establishment of Tony Stark as the logical end of the uniquely Bush-ian Free Market Neoconservatism.  In other words, Tony Stark is Dick Cheney’s foreign policy driven by Grover Norquist’s fiscal policy, sold to the public by Ari Gold.

Cheney-ite neocons believe that the only way to keep the world safe is through American hegemony.  Thus, America can only achieve world peace—or, more exactly, preventing another 9/11, which is what we really care about—by scaring other nations into forsaking nuclear weapons or establishing terrorist training camps.  Eventually, countries will be left with two options:  adopt our values (turn yourself into a Western-style democracy) or face our wrath.  

Norquistians believe that in nearly all instances, private industry is better able to not only produce and distribute goods.  The rise of the military-industrial complex extends this idea to the deployment of the weapons of war.  To Tony Stark, the military is the enemy—it’s just another example of stifling government bureaucracy.  Thus, in the world of Iron Man, Tony Stark gets his moral authority because he can create American hegemony much more efficiently and cost-effectively with his Iron Man suit. 

The problem with this vision is that it misunderstands the nature of the military industrial complex.  Somebody has to buy Stark Industry products, else Stark Industries doesn’t make any money.  That’s why the government, ultimately, “owns” national security.  The military-industrial complex has creatively gotten around this in several ways, mostly by reclassifying traditional employee (uniformed soldiers) roles into independent contractors (Halliburton, Blackwater now XE).  Stark Industries represents the end of this logic:  Not only is the military outsourcing goods and services, but decision-making as well.  Eventually, private industry will be the military, leaving the government—and, ultimately, the people–powerless.   This is what’s happening right now in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The Pitch:

1 X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Plus

1 Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince

Equals

2 Iron Man 2

2 Iron Man 2

Comments (0)

By shimes,

Carrie and the girls crash an Obama state dinner with a lot more style than those Salahi losers

It’s too easy to call this a “terrorist recruitment video.”  “SaTC2” sends the hypersexualized Manhattanites into the “New Middle East” of Abu Dhabi on an orientalized journey of wish-fulfillment of an audience craving fashion porn.  You can easily gather this from the trailer; the, ahem, climax of the film is exactly what you expect:  Underneath their burqas, girls just want to have fun with Patricia Field-approved designs.  And Samantha screams at a bunch of offended Arabs in a market when a handful of condoms drop out of her Birkin hand bag.   No doubt, “SaTC” represent everything “They” hate about “Us.” 

But let’s put antecedent to these pronouns:  Are “they” only fundamentalist Muslims of the Eastern Hemisphere, or are “they” closer to home?  And, are “they” really wrong? 

In early 2007, conservative author Dinesh D’Souza went on “The Colbert Report” to hawk The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11, where he argued that the “Liberal America” that’s depicted mostly on television is responsible for inflaming Muslim hatred of America.  In fact, he argues that there’s little difference between the beliefs of some traditional Muslims and traditional American Christians and Jews.  According to D’Souza, the only image that Muslim countries get of America is that of “gay marriage” and “people eating maggots” (which Colbert says must be on the buffet at gay weddings).  Colbert’s conservative persona agrees with D’Souza’s premise that “we should take cultural editing notes from the terrorists” and that “liberal values” are destroying America.  Toward the end of the interview, D’Souza sensed that he was pulling back the curtain too far, but because these books sell tons of copy, we know that there’s a large segment of Real America onboard with him. 

Whatever he means by eating maggots, it’s fair to say that D’Souza is talking about “Sex and the City” and its ilk (D’Souza must also assume that Muslim cable providers streamed HBO before Lost-mania gripped Iran).  If D’Souza’s formulation is correct, the reason the traditionalist Muslims offended by “SatC” (the government of Dubai wouldn’t let the movie be filmed there) is the same reason Real America is offended by SatC:  It’s culturally depraved.  “They” aren’t just the traditional Muslims or the terrorists or whoever; it’s Palin-worshipping “Real Americans” too.

It’s hard to sit through this movie and not think they’ve got a point.  Samantha basically gives a wealthy Danish businessman a hand job in full view of people trying to eat.  You know the drill.  She does everything but draw a picture of the prophet Muhammed on a pair of crotchless panties.  Still, even if you understand that “SatC” is a fantasy of Manhattan in which a mid-firm lawyer like Miranda wears de la Renta dresses out for appletinis, the show was always isolated to Manhattan.  The “SatC” caricature was always contained in the bubble where it could do little harm.

“SatC2” crashes this offensive fantasy world into an offensive real world to try to score political points.  It wants desperately to make hard-hitting political statements about the oppression of women.  When the girls navigate Abu Dhabi airport security, Samantha—in a low cut top, of course—shoots a look of disdain at women in burqas, which causes them to look away in shame.  In fact, the ladies of “SatC2” are an unstoppable sandstorm of American decadence that, when combined with the unfathomable oil wealth of sheikhs and the “New Middle East”, threatens to upend the entire fundamentalist Sunni dream of a worldwide caliphate.   

If “SatC2” has anything smart to say about the Middle East, it could be this:  “SatC2” depicts the hypocrisy of an exotic Arab fantasy land existing within a fundamentalist culture, which goes to the heart of the oil sheikh’s dependence on both courting wealthy Westerners and oppressing its own people to maintain its power and wealth.  If “SatC2” had realized the similarity between its Manhattan fantasy and the oil-funded theme park of Abu Dhabi, it could have done some real damage.  But “SatC2” is so concerned with being offensive that it turns everything (except Carrie and Big’s marriage crisis and Miranda’s mommy woes) into a caricature.  You can’t destroy a caricature with another caricature, unless you start believing your own b.s.  Thus, “Sex and the City 2” is battle of strawmen that thinks it’s a righteous war of good vs. evil fought between liberated women in “Adore Dior” shirts and prudes who wrap their women in burqas.  Despite what “they” (both of them) may think about the culturally elite fantasy world of “SatC,” that’s the real offense here.

The next question is whether ”we” should be offended by “SatC2”’s blatant cultural insensitivity towards these deeply held religious beliefs.  If by “we,” you mean liberals who believe, say, that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees gay couples the right to marry—then yes.  In fact, “SatC2” tries to throw another political haymaker against those who would deny the right of marriage to homosexuals, but it doesn’t land because the first twenty minutes of the movie is a gay minstrel show.  Big says “gay wedding” with a big grin on his face about ten times, and boy, is he right:  this isn’t just a gay wedding—it’s the gayest wedding.  It’s so gay that it’s officiated by Liza Minnelli.  It’s got a dancing chorus of hot men.  It’s got all the gayest gay things gays could ever gay up a gay wedding with.  There’s an interesting but awkward sideplot about one gay guy being able to cheat “only in states where our marriage isn’t recognized,” but the point gets lost in all the gleam of Liza’s Liza-look-alike back up dancers. 

Because the movie so clearly establishes at the outset that its moral compass is spinning wildly out of control, we simply cannot take its burqa-baiting seriously.  This is too bad, because there is a serious debate to be had about the legality of the burqa in Western societies.  This Christopher Hitchens article sparked a long debate at Andrew Sullivan’s blog about whether the burqa is per se oppressive.  I’m not asking “SatC” to be a serious movie, but there’s certainly a grand opportunity for cultural satire here—one that could have landed several blows on behalf of those who find the burqa symbol of oppression.  Instead, “SatC2”—and its fans’ oblivion to its sheer offensiveness—exposes itself as a shallow exercise in cultural narcissism. 

This is why we liberals should also be offended by “SatC2”.  It only gives ammunition to “they,” those D’Souzians who think that Liberal America is responsible for 9/11, death panels, the commu-socialist nanny state, and all the rest.  It’s the liberal equivalent of the scene in “The Blind Side” where Sandra Bullock, in a powerskirt and designer sunglasses, walks right into a Memphis housing project to threaten drug dealers by sassin’ them that she’s “always packin’.”  “Sex and the City 2” is no more an argument against burqas than “The Blind Side” is an argument for the NRA and school vouchers.

The Pitch:

0 Philippe and David Blond

Plus

0 Dinesh D'Souza

Equals

0 Sex and the City 2

Comments (0)

By shimes, May 27, 2010 12:33 pm

Prime Minister Lang emerges from coalition talks with the Liberal Democrats; Mrs. Lang further befuddled by Cleggmania.

Roman Polanski’s revenge on Tony Blair and the American justice system.  Ewan MacGregor is the Ghost Writer, the type who helps celebrities fulfill book deals by turning lumps of pabulum into semi-readable best-sellers.  The former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) has, apparently, written the equivalent of My Life, but whose handlers had the good sense and the balls to tell him it needs a rewrite.  Lang was a phenomenon—a charismatic, hope-peddling dim bulb—until he dragged the UK into an illegal American war and authorized the torture of British citizens.  And his wife (Olivia Williams) looks like a MILFier version Cherie Blair. 

So, where to go if you’re on the lamb from the International Criminal Court?  Massachusetts!  Specifically, Martha’s Vineyard, where the PM, his wife, and his hot secretary (Kim Cattrall with a not-embarrassing accent) have holed up to avoid extradition to The Hague.  The political point is obvious:  The United States is a banana republic that openly tortures prisoners, operating outside the law.  The movie was filmed before Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland, so I’m loathe make an autobiographical connection.  Still, if The Queen captured the greatness of Blair, The Ghost Writer writes the epitaph. 

The problem is that the film devolves into a chase thriller rather than becoming a psychological thriller.  The ghost writer pieces together clues after being shuttered into the room of his predecessor, a longtime Lang assistant who was beginning to piece together his sordid past.  This leads us down dark roads into colonial shacks and backwoods mansions of Ivy league professors with giant pianos in the private library.  The best parts of the film are much more claustrophobic; the media and some angry British citizens (noticeably absent are any Americans) have boxed Team Lang in, created much untoward tension in the house.  Framed against a glass house overlooking the grey beaches of New England, we see storms brewing on the horizons, wind blown trees bending but not breaking, and furious splatters of rain pounding for hours.  The whole house becomes a confessional booth until Lang makes his escape to London, leaving his wife and the ghost writer behind.  Too bad, because Polanski had set up the house as the glass prison of a man imprisoned by his own naked ambition who didn’t quite have the courage of his liberal convictions.  

The Pitch:

2 The 39 Steps

2 The 39 Steps

Plus

1 Tony Blair

Equals

3 The Ghost Writer

3 The Ghost Writer

3 The Ghost Writer

Comments (0)

By shimes, May 15, 2010 10:29 am

When the moment was right, they were ready.

This movie is based on the real-life wall in Verona where lonesome and lovestruck women write letters to Juliet, asking for relationship advice.  This strikes me as imprudent.  After all, Miss Capulet turned down the rich handsome bachelor Paris sight unseen, let a night of flirting with the cute but overwrought Romeo become a hasty marriage, hid said marriage from her parents, gave herself over to Friar Laurence’s unlikely and complicated sleeping potion plan, and eventually killed herself when it all went wrong. 

Nevertheless, women flock to Juliet’s wall to leave notes, which are answered by the Secretaries of Juliet—local volunteers who pen advice in response to each and every letter.  So, when Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is ditched on her pre-honeymoon (?) with wunderkind New York chef Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), she walks right into the secretaries’ den and starts answering letters.  The set-up, I guess, is that this modern-day Juliet got engaged to the self-absorbed Paris, and now needs to find her Romeo.  Or something like that.  I’m not willing to give the writers credit for attempting some sort of Shakespeare criticism because this movie is pseudo-literary.  That is, it wants to have things that real movies and books have, like “symbolism” and “metaphor,” but lacks a talent for subtlety.

For instance, Sophie has one of those impossible, only-in-the-movies jobs—she’s a fact-checker for The New Yorker.  You see, there are facts, and there are feelings.  Calculated, prudent judgments about who to love never work out; only the heart knows what it wants.  Which is why Sophie needs to make the jump from lowly fact-checker to full-on Orlean.  She gets it—so much, in fact, that her response to a lost-in-the-bricks letter provokes a grandmother to seek her long lost love.  Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) shows up in Verona with her cantankerous British grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan) to meet Sophie, and they’re so smitten with each other (Sophie and Claire, that is) that they embark on an Italian road trip to find the mysterious Lorenzo Bartolini. 

If you don’t already see where this is going, then you’ve never had your hands greased by multiplex popcorn.  Rest assured, there’s no twist you don’t see coming, and the back stories are meticulously constructed for maximum heart-tugging.  But, if we’re grading on a curve, give Letters to Juliet credit for trying—if you’re needing a chick flick fix, this is eons better than any Kate Hudson/Beckinsale/et al rom-com.  Vanessa Redgrave is a portrait of aged grace, and she develops a connection to Seyfried that helps lift the young actress above the material.  Bernal is franticly charming—we don’t see him as a a-hole, but a passionate man who simply doesn’t realize that he wants to make love to his pasta colander rather than his beautiful fiancé.  Egan is a little bit too harsh to be likeable, but whatever.  It’s not supposed to be Shakespeare, not with Amanda Seyfried continuing her bid to be the younger version of Amy Adams.

The Pitch:

1 1/2 Amy Adams

1 1/2 Amy Adams

Plus

1 Susan Orlean

Equals

2 1/2 Letters to Juliet

2 1/2 Letters to Juliet

2 1/2 Letters to Juliet

Comments (0)

By shimes, May 12, 2010 5:39 pm

Nic Cage tries to pay off a mortgage by craigslisting some leftover automatic weapons from Bruckheimer movies.

The premise seems innocent enough:  A high school dork is sick of getting mugged, so he decides to order a costume, do some pushups, watch a martial arts training video online, and take to the streets to start superheroing.  He gets his butt kicked pretty good by some common streets thugs, but he holds his own against a mugger, and has the good fortune of becoming a youtube sensation.  Kick-Ass is born.

Had this been played for satire, the film might have become a darkly humorous rebuke to vigilantism.  Instead, Kick-Ass celebrates vigilantism, as if this movie were some sort of Icon Productions how-to video for young Mel Gibsons.  Nic Cage plays a dad who spent time behind bars and has dedicated his life to seeking revenge.  So, long story short, he regains custody of his daughter, who he turns into something like a combination of Dora the Ruthless Murderer—a pint sized Chow Yun Fat.  The film’s set pieces feature the little girls dispatching baddies like The Bride in Kill Bill, with Tarantino’s eye for streams of blood and lopped body parts. 

It’s one thing for Quentin Tarantino to unleash his kind of metacognitive b-movie violence, but it’s a whole other thing to involve kids.  There’s absolutely no meditation on violence and death—you kill because they stand in between you and the crime boss.  Really, the film peddles a kind of child pornography:  If we think of children as little adults, there’s nothing that separates what’s appropriate for adults and what’s appropriate for children.  The film takes pain to ensure realism—these are real people who are really shot and whose brains really splatter.  You can’t have it both ways—you can’t at once say that this is a cartoon and also be thrilled by the authenticity of carnage. 

The Pitch:

1/2 Wanted

Plus

0 Star Wars Kid

 

 

 

 

 

Equals

1/2 Kick-Ass