Movie Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008, Directed by David Fincher)

One of the great blessings and curses of human existence is that one is aware of the predictability of one’s life cycle from an early age. You are born. You grow. Hopefully, you find some purpose in this world and some people you care about to spend it with. Your body gradually breaks down. Then, you die. David Fincher’s latest film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, features a protagonist who experiences life in precisely the opposite manner. Benjamin Button is, as he explains, “born old.” Then, he grows younger every day before dying as a newborn. My guess is that your reaction to this film as a whole can be predicted by your response to that brief plot summary. If you think this sounds like a fascinating idea and you can’t wait to see what profound insights about human existence such a story might provide, then you’ll probably like this film a lot. If you say, “wait a second … people don’t age backwards … this sounds like a stupid idea,” then you’ll probably hate this picture.

Personally, I fall somewhere between these two extremes. I admired the skill of Brad Pitt in portraying the character across the age spectrum (sort of Welles’ Charles Foster Kane in reverse). I admired Cate Blanchett as Pitt’s lover-under-strange-circumstances. I admired the creativity and skill it took to execute such an eccentric visual concept (making a 45-year-old actor “age backwards” for three hours). A few of the film’s many scenes struck an emotional chord with me in exploring the bizarre implications of a life such as Button’s. For example, Blanchett’s predicament of having to “raise” both her young daughter and the backwards-aging Button simultaneously provides a unique take on the nature of familial love. Overall, however, I didn’t feel that the film is nearly as profound as it makes itself out to be. Does viewing life backwards really help us understand what real life is like? What new insights does such a story add?

I’m also not completely enamored with the film’s central storytelling device. Button’s life is told as a “frame story.” An old and dying Blanchett has her daughter read Button’s journal in a New Orleans hospital bed. The presence of an approaching Hurricane Katrina seems to have little relevance to the central story, even though the film seems to harp on this particular plot point.

I have loved David Fincher’s work in the past, especially his dual masterpieces Fight Club and Zodiac. While Benjamin Button is not a total failure, it does not live up to the artistic successes of his previous work. The film does, however, show great range and creativity. I’m confident that Fincher still has many good films ahead of him. I’m just thankful that he doesn’t age backwards.

Movie Review: Valkyrie (2008, Directed by Bryan Singer)

It’s beginning to look a lot like Oscar season, which means it’s also beginning to look a lot like a flood of WW II films coming to a multiplex near you. Hitler and the Holocaust feature prominently in this year’s awards season, including such disparate films as The Reader, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Defiance, and Good. Then there’s director Bryan Singer’s latest effort staring a non-couch-jumping Tom Cruise, Valkyrie.

Singer’s new film tells the story of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of an effort by German officers to assassinate Hitler. While Valkyrie presents nothing particularly novel or profound, the director is able to craft a well-constructed thriller out of the familiar material. I was never bored during the film’s two hour running time. For some reason, the pre-release buzz regarding this film has been overwhelmingly negative. While I don’t think Valkyrie is anywhere near one of the best movies of the year, it’s much more credible and entertaining than I expected.

Tom Cruise is actually not bad in the lead role here. The script doesn’t require him to do too much, and that’s probably just as well. He doesn’t overact or over-react to the perilous situations at hand. While he is not electrifying to watch, he succeeds in not taking the audience out of the story with over-exaggerated gestures and mannerisms.

The film does serve as an important reminder that not all people living in Hitler’s Germany worshiped the Fuhrer unquestionably. I wish the film had spent more time exploring the German officers’ motivations for forming a resistance movement. Nevertheless, Valkyrie gives an effective picture of several individuals’ willingness to stand in the minority. There are times, the film seems to say, when one’s loyalty to all of humanity is even greater than one’s loyalty to the policies of one’s own country.

FaveFilm Review: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966, Directed by Sergio Leone)

On occasion I plan on posting a review of one of my favorite movies of all time. My criteria for choosing films to review will be based entirely upon my own personal taste. I plan on picking films which I simply cannot imagine living without. Some will be critically-acclaimed “masterpieces,” whereas others will be underground films that very few people have heard of. Some will be acknowledged classics, whereas others will be generally derided films which I nevertheless have a soft spot in my heart for (I’m talking to you “Elizabethtown”). My comments on these films will hopefully provide some insight into my taste as a cinemaphile (for what it’s worth).

I don’t have a favorite movie of all time. There are way too many great films out there to narrow them all down to one artificial “Holy Grail” of the screen. Nevertheless, when people ask me what my favorite film is, I typically give one of about ten stock answers, depending upon my mood. On certain days (including today), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is at the top of my list. When I consider why this film resonates with me on such a profound level, I’m reminded of the old adage in film criticism “it’s not important what a film is about, but rather how it’s about what it’s about.”

The plot of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is ridiculously simplistic for its three hour running time. Nevertheless, a simple plot summary doesn’t get at the reasons I love Leone’s spaghetti Western so much. Yes, it’s about three greedy men seeking a lost Confederate treasure following a Yankee raid. But, it’s really about Ennio Morricone’s electrifying score. It’s about Clint Eastwood’s stoic posture and subtle changes of facial expressions at key emotionally-charged moments. It’s about Eli Wallach’s Tuco, part Mexican clown, part maniacal monster. It’s about the opening shot, a simple image of a desolate ghost town energized by the sudden appearance in the frame of a blood thirsty bounty hunter. It’s about the film’s magical ending, featuring a Mexican standoff so long and elaborately-shot that even Quentin Tarantino starts to look at his watch.

One of Leone’s great accomplishments is the way he breathes new life into the hackneyed stereotypes of American Westerns. Leone reached the apotheosis of “Western deconstruction” in his other masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West. Nevertheless, I have always found the latter film too cold for my taste. Perhaps it would make a great doctoral thesis on the images and character types from the American Western, but it lacks the primal energy and emotional gestures of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. When watching a Leone film for the first time, I sense that I have seen every image in the film before, but not in the exact same configuration. Something just feels a little “off.” This simultaneous feeling of familiarity and originality is, of course, one of the great pleasures of Leone’s work.

I’ve talked a lot about the style of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but not much about the substance. I’m not sure that Leone is trying to say anything particularly profound in his Italian Western. Sure, some contemporary critics have insisted upon reading the film as a peculiar parable for the turbulent political and military happenings of the 1960s. I have a hard time buying into the notion that The Good ultimately presents an anti-violence message, especially considering the ways in which the film seems to glory in its more sadistic moments (for example, Angel Eyes’s cruel torture of Tuco, trying to get information from his regarding the location of the treasure). Leone’s film, though, is a predecessor of such later “style-over-substance” films as Kill Bill. I am fine with this approach, as long as the substance is interesting enough to hold my attention for three hours, as is the case with Leone’s film.

If Leone is trying to say anything, though, he might be hinting at the folly of Hollywood’s simplistic approach to good and evil. Leone not only titles the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but audaciously uses intertitles to unambiguously label each of the characters according to one of the above personal traits. Perhaps we can all agree that Tuco is “ugly,” but is Eastwood’s Blondie really “good”? Leone’s exaggerated reduction of complex characters to one simplistic defining characteristic calls attention to the fact that that Hollywood had participated in such dehumanizing simplification for years (“oh look, there’s the bad guy”). In fact, are we not still participating in this totalizing reduction (see “Joe, the Plumber”)?

Leone’s film, then, retains its relevance both in style and substance today. The quest for ill-gotten gold is as old as Beowulf and as new as the latest thriller in your local multiplex. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has entered our cultural lexicon to a degree that few other films have. Who can hear the opening strains of Merricone’s score (oh ah oh ah oh … wah wah wah) without the accompanying flood of spaghetti Western images inundating one’s mind?

Movie Review: Happy-Go-Lucky (2008, Directed by Mike Leigh)

I’m fairly certain that Happy-Go-Lucky is the first Mike Leigh film I have seen all the way through. I really want to check out his other work though. This film is saturated with such truth, grace, and depth that I now feel I have known the characters for years.

Happy-Go-Lucky features several characters of note. However, a young woman named Poppy, played pitch-perfectly by Sally Hawkins, is the main focus of the film. Poppy is a thirty-year-old school teacher living in London. She approaches the good, the bad, and the ugly of life with a dauntless spirit of idealistic optimism. No problems, including tumultuous relationships and a Nazi-ish driving instructor, seem to phase her Pollyanna-like personality. You might think that this uncompromising glass-half-full mentality would make her character, and thus the entire film, nearly unwatchable. However, Sally Hawkins is charming in the way she brings out the character’s many colors. Leigh’s film is a nearly-perfect exploration of the consequences, both negative and positive, of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.

As I was watching this film, I thought about how stale and lifeless much of the cinema put out by commercial Hollywood has become. I see no connection between the characters I see on screen and the people I might encounter on the street on a daily basis. Happy-Go-Lucky is similar to Jonathan Demme’s film Rachel Getting Married in that both films feel incredibly organic. The actors infuse the characters with a heavy dose of reality. Therefore, I believe them. Hence, I have a wonderful time watching the movie.

I hope that young filmmakers are watching and studying films like Happy-Go-Lucky and Rachel Getting Married. These are the movies that remind me why I love the cinema. I agree with Hamlet that “the purpose of art is … as ‘twere … to hold a mirror up to nature.” Mike Leigh accomplishes this goal in ways that mainstream Hollywood directors can only dream of.

Movie Review: Gran Torino (2008, Directed by Clint Eastwood)

I should begin by pointing out a few simple facts about Mr. Clint Eastwood: The legendary film actor and director is 78 years old. Over the past 30 years or so, he has directed an average of one film per year, a pace rivaled only by the likes of Woody Allen. Generally speaking, his best work has been created late in his career. In the past 15 years alone, he has produced at least four masterpieces, including Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and Letters from Iwo Jima, in addition to many other films of undeniable quality. Two of his films have won Oscars for Best Picture. I mention these facts about Mr. Eastwood (as if everybody didn’t already know), because I want to clearly state that the director of Gran Torino is one of the undeniable geniuses working in motion pictures today.

Of course, even geniuses make a misstep every now and then in their work. Don’t get me wrong, Gran Torino is not a complete disaster. What works in the film is Eastwood’s over-the-top, downright creepy lead performance. What doesn’t work is virtually everything else in the movie.

Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran living in Detroit who seems to be honking mad at everyone and everything, especially the Hmong people who have moved into his neighborhood. He expresses his anger through growling (literally … I’m not making this up), drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and spewing a litany of insults so politically incorrect that even Archie Bunker would cringe. However, Walt grows some respect for the Hmong people and their culture when he befriends two teenage Hmong neighbors. His attempt to protect their family from violent neighborhood gang activity forms the crux of the plot for the film’s second half.

I saw Gran Torino in a packed Chicago multiplex. I have to say that the audience’s reaction probably colored my response to the film. They laughed uncontrollably at Kowalski’s ridiculously over-the-top racial slurs. I felt quite uncomfortable, not entirely sure if I should be laughing or cringing at these remarks (or both). I will acknowledge that the discomfort I felt might be the film’s desired effect. Nevertheless, I didn’t feel that the use of all this deliberately insensitive and ignorant language paid off or served as a means to a worthy and admirable end.

Any moral quibbles I might have with the film, though, are overshadowed by the artistic problems I have with Gran Torino, including the small detail that none of the people in the film (sans Eastwood) can act. This, of course, is a problem that many competent directors have overcome in the past. Eastwood, I’m sad to say, is not to be added to this list of filmmakers who make great art out of meager resources and talents. The scenes that don’t involve Eastwood simply lay on the screen, completely lifeless.

It’s a shame too that the director who brought us the moral ambiguity of Unforigven felt it necessary to make a film in which the heroes and villains are painted in such black and white terms. This could have been a fascinating story if Eastwood would have explored the gray areas a bit more.

I understand that people will say it’s enough to simply see Mr. Eastwood, near the end of his illustrious career, reprising the tougher-than-nails Dirty Harry-type of his younger days. I will concede that the pleasure I got from this film came almost entirely from watching Eastwood tear the screen apart with his innate toughness. Audiences simply hoping for “Dirty Harry Goes to Detroit” will find it. Audiences seeking anything more may be profoundly disappointed.

First Time Out ...

Why am I starting my own blog? I'm not precisely sure yet. As of now, it's just a way for me to organize my thoughts and keep my mind actively engaged on otherwise dreary and uneventful days. I have no idea what it might morph into over time (if anything). As of now, my plan is to use the blog for posting movie reviews. I hope to comment upon new mainstream Hollywood movies, small indie films, and classic cinema. Occasionally, I may venture into other subjects as I see fit. Please feel free to post your own comments, points of disagreement, etc.