FARCE/FILM Episode 38: Greenberg

--> Episode 38: 03/28/10 <--

Hosts: Colin George, Sonic Kim, Brian Crawford, Kevin Mauer

Intro – 00:00
Top 5 – 08:25
Greenberg – 19:17
Discussion – 37:32
(Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World Trailer)
Movie Round-Up – 45:36

(Repo Men, Halloween, World's Greatest Dad)
Events and Outro – 50:49

"Greenberg"

Colin:
Kevin:
Crawford:
Sonic:

-- Weekly Discussion Question --

In "Greenberg", Ben Stiller plays a pretty disagreeable guy. Who is your favorite dislikable protagonist or anti-hero?

-- -- e-mail us your thoughts at farcefilm@gmail.com -- --

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Review

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is hardly what I expected from the highest grossing Swedish film of all time. Maybe it's the graphic rape, I don't know—I was expecting something more commercial. The good news is that in such moments, "Dragon Tattoo" is disquietingly powerful. The bad news is that they lie few and far between an otherwise mediocre mystery. Swedish actress Noomi Repace plays the eponymous lead, Lisbeth Salander, and brims with a badassery on par with Franka Potente of "Run Lola Run." She's terrific, but let me say this up front—The character and her performance are better than the film (or at least its second half) deserves.

The first seventy-five minutes impressively juggle gritty, squeamish scenes of Lisbeth's abuse at the hands of her slimy probate and her subsequent revenge, with a straightforward, slow-paced thriller involving Mikeal Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a journalist convicted of libel, being privately hired to shed light on a long cold family kidnapping case. The two threads are remarkably dissimilar in theme and style, and it's a peanut butter and jelly situation for the film; they complement each other ideally, preventing the other from becoming tiresome.

But as should be expected from a story with simultaneously unraveling plotlines, we soon reach their intersection, and although it's a matter of personal preference, for me "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" flounders once its characters coalesce. For starters, Lisbeth's infinitely more interesting arc (and consequently, its stylish flourish) is swallowed by Mikeal's when she becomes his investigatory partner midway through the film. The 'straightforward, slow-paced thriller' takes hold, with the odd addition of a buddy cop dynamic. Generations collide! Lisbeth understands computers and Mikeal has antiquated taste in music!

It's a weird turn, and one I don't think "Dragon Tattoo" really recovers from. The character of Lisbeth is far and away its highlight, and if anything, as the film progresses, her role becomes increasingly marginalized. She loses the snap and snarl that she has independently as she and Mikeal inevitably get intimate, and maybe for some, watching the two change each other as the case comes into focus will be the emotional apex, but I found it a disappointing detour. Lisbeth's act of unflinching vengeance early in the film is neither topped nor matched—She becomes more boring in Mikeal's presence.

Maybe it's that a relationship in general doesn't feel convincing for so scarred a character. Certainly this is the implication of Lisbeth's interest in sex above intimacy, but it feels like a requiste development dictated by genre expectation rather than an organic attraction between the two characters. That she uses sexuality as a vehicle for self-empowerment is an interesting angle, but then I don't buy the legitimate affection later on. Lisbeth has a photographic memory and is haunted by her past—She isn't the sort of person whom I believe has a dormant tenderness.

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is long, and by the end of the engagement, I felt exactly what the dual storylines prevented me from feeling: tired. The wrinkles in the mystery aren't especially surprising, and the plot is stretched to the point that I'm almost inclined to forget what I found initially so compelling about the characters because where it takes them is so much less so. Lisbeth is fiercely independent, and watching her emasculate her pervert probate has a gratifying brutality that seeing her play second fiddle in a PI procedural couldn't hope to.

My mixed feelings about the film make it difficult to consolidate a final score, so I'll leave it here: "Dragon Tattoo" is a film I half-liked.

2.5/5

"The Runaways" Review

"The Runaways" isn't much of a film, but it has so much damn style that it's hard not to be intermittently enthused by music video director Floria Sigismondi's music video of a movie. Her chipper cutting and blisteringly upbeat Joan Jett/Runaways soundtrack makes, on one hand, for spontaneous and thrilling tour sequences, which on the other, emphasize how hopelessly average the narrative around them is. Sigismondi has worked with the likes of Sheryl Crow and David Bowie, and understands the symbiotic relationship between sound and image—The problem is that when the film rolls sans tunage, she can't quite find the rhythm.

I suppose she didn't have the best script to work with, and as she's also credited with the adaptation of Cherie Currie's book, I'm inclined to blame conservative manipulation of fact in her writing before her direction. Knowing literally nothing about the Runaways as a band going in, I couldn't care less if "That's how it happened." In truth, I found their rise to superstardom in the first act of the film fortuitous to the point of contrivance.

The truth may be stranger than fiction, but watching characters I met ten minutes ago immediately succeed isn't endearing, it's alienating, especially in proximity to yet another groaningly caricatural cinematic businessman. You’ve got Giovanni Ribisi in "Avatar," Jon Bernthal in "The Ghost Writer," and now Michael Shannon in "The Runaways," all in the span of, what, four months? Hollywood, I get it. Corporate guys are weasels. Even your corporate guys. With the omission of Jeremy Piven, I just don't find it funny or compelling anymore. It's cheap, lazy character writing.

But Shannon's performance in "The Runaways" is a minor gripe compared with its overall insubstantiality. The band biopic is nothing new, and while I commend Sigismondi for not watering down the sex, drugs, and rock and roll to cater to the sort of PG-13 audience that would eat up anything Kristen Stewart is doing by peripheral association, her film is still intellectually immature and fundamentally broken.

For starters, Stewart as Joan Jett has every reason to be our protagonist except a book deal. Cherie's got a louse of a father, a strained relationship with her sister, and a burgeoning singing career complete with a trendy drug habit. Really, movie? The 'price of fame' angle? Give me a fucking break. The family stuff should carry weight, and doesn't, because the bulk of the film is bubblegum, which I'm perfectly content to chew. Just don't tell me it's a three-course meal.

"The Runaways" is overlong. Its second half, which sinks into the band's inevitable downturn of fortune, comes to a screeching halt to flesh out story bits that I didn't care about to begin with. Sing that "Cherry Bomb" song again.

The problem is there's no reason to care, and entertainment value alone doesn't cover for the obviously weak story. And if the story is weak, as I suspect it is, because it's based nearly to the T on the honest to God truth, then with all due respect, it doesn't make for great cinema as is. Aspiring biopic writers, here's a tip: lie a little.

Like I mentioned in my "Ghost Writer" review last week, it's ultimately character that begets emotional gravity, not an event itself. Pill popping, drunkard dads, and band infighting don't amount to a hill of beans unless I really care about who those people are.

Sigismondi's film is strung up on the rack and pulled from both ends until its neither frenetic rock pic nor indie coming of age story, which is a shame, because the former is executed so well. When the music stops, it's all too clear that as far as drama goes, "The Runaways" is an absentee.

2.5/5

FARCE/FILM Episode 37: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, City Island

--> Episode 37: 03/21/10 <--
Hosts: Colin George, Kevin Mauer, Maggie Ruder

Intro – 0:00
Top 5 – 4:50
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (spoilers) - 16:51
City Island - 37:22
Events and Outro - 53:52


"Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

Maggie:
Kevin:
Colin:

"City Island"

Colin:
Maggie:
Kevin:

-- Weekly Discussion Question --

What's your favorite dysfunctional movie family? Why?

-- -- e-mail us your thoughts at farcefilm@gmail.com -- --

"The Ghost Writer" Review

So Roman Polanski has been in the news lately.

Probably his new film "The Ghost Writer" benefits from that attention. After all, it's the reason that I saw it—and I haven't heard a thing about his previous film, an umpteenth adaptation of "Oliver Twist." His last major work was "The Pianist" in 2002, which has been sitting in a Netflix envelope on my desk for nearly a month (which isn't a jab at the director so much as it is a reflection on my work schedule and my disposition towards period dramas). My conception of Polanski as a filmmaker is therefore based on his seminal work of the sixties and seventies, namely "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown."

Masterworks both that, plainly, "The Ghost Writer" is not. However, for a straightforward thriller, Polanski admirably emphasizes entertainment value over self-seriousness. He shows a lighthearted honesty in his direction of the cast, with a disarming sense of humor. The trailer sort of makes the film out to be a "fate of the free world" spectacle, but the product is interestingly the antithesis. International politics are played between the lines of an intimate character piece, which is infinitely more compelling than trying to give geopolitics direct weight in the context of a two hour story. You can nuke the planet and no one will bat an eye, because it's the characters that make us feel that weight, not the event itself.

Polanski gets that, and "The Ghost Writer" has a (mostly) great cast of characters anchored by unanimously strong performances. Ewan McGregor is great as the lead, though not in the way that one typically defines a performance, "great." For one, it's not a terrific stretch for the actor, and it's neither bombastic nor powerful in its execution, and that's fine—the story doesn't call for it to be. McGregor is subtle, charming, and real as the ghostwriter hired to redraft the memoirs of fictitious former English Prime Minster Adam Lang (Pierce Bronsnan), whose manuscript McGregor describes as the "cure for insomnia."

Maybe it's that playful cynicism or my own writerly ambitions, but McGregor's character is immediately relatable, and because he isn't written as an action hero, he's that much more fun to watch in a dangerous situation. Wry and amusing when not, McGregor is the perfect fish out of water protagonist: he doesn't have a strong political affiliation, and as Lang becomes embroiled in a volatile scandal, he remains to McGregor and the audience a person before an international symbol. Lang is the guy lingering absentmindedly in the hall between sandwiches.

I think in a lesser filmmaker's hands, "The Ghost Writer" would likely have been disposable cinema, especially because the priority for directors now seems to be set pieces and special effects, and by comparison, Polanski's film has few memorable hard action sequences. In that way, its lack of gravitas can be a detriment, underdelivering what some might expect from a suspense/espionage film, but its unconventionality is precisely what I find so endearing about it.

"The Ghost Writer" doesn't have the world's greatest screenplay. It doesn't stand up to a clockwork detective drama like "Chinatown," but so what? How can it, really? It has what counts, which is a great sense of humor and an earnest conviction in itself as halfway intelligent entertainment—And it absolutely succeeds. Roman Polanski is an uncommonly talented storyteller, and his new film, at worst, is a testament to his ability to shape something durable from even second-tier source material. At best, it's timelessly entertaining moviemaking at its finest.

One of these days, I ought to watch "The Pianist."

4/5

"The Crazies" Review

"The Crazies" is not scary.

"Horror" has come to mean something very specific to Hollywood, and perhaps more than any other genre, is withering from a lack of creativity. The horror film should unnerve, disorient, and startle—qualities that evaporate when imitated. The formulaic scare tactics of "The Crazies" and its contemporaries are so well established that their effect on audiences now is negligible. It's compounded by the remake phenomenon, and though you can put a fresh coat of paint on a forty-year-old film, can you really expect it to frighten anybody?

I suspect fans of the genre aren't even showing up to be scared anymore. How can they be? They know the rules. What passes for great horror today is really 'horrortainment:' competent atmosphere and innovative gore slapped on an obvious template. And such has been the reaction to "The Crazies," which has a relatively high 72% Rotten Tomatoes metascore, based on 130 reviews. The consensus is that the film is "uncommonly intelligent," without reference to the embarrassingly low mean intellect of 21st century horror.

And "The Crazies" does have competent atmosphere, though it's merely that. Following a promising start, the film still suffers from the stilted predictability that plagues the genre at its worst, and it shouldn't be praised for performing above a very low average, especially when nothing interesting happens after the first twenty minutes.

There's a gravity to act one, before the meddlesome government steps in and fucks up the film, with attention paid to the fact that the Crazies are our (suddenly creatively homicidal) friends and neighbors. There's your movie: what does it mean to be brutally attacked by the people you love? Why don't we leave it at that and do away with this trite big brother/quarantine shtick? All it nets us is regurgitated social commentary, a half-hearted compound escape sequence, and a film that's approximately 30% walking.

And the walking dissolves into more walking, which is intermittently punctuated with exactly the sort of scenes you would expect in a post-apocalyptic zombie flick. Where do we go? Is one of our party members infected? Why don't you wait in this dimly-lit diner alone while I go do something important?

An occasional effective jump scare, menacing visual, and suspenseful moment aren't enough to make up for a wholly second-rate script. It all goes back to that first sentence. "The Crazies" is not scary. And it's not scary just because it doesn't surprise us, but also because it exists in a world without consequence. Early in the film, a son and his mother stow away in a coat closet to hide from her infected husband. When dad finds them, he doesn't yank them out—He locks them in and sets the house on fire.

Okay, you got me—Now what? We cut out of the scene and never see any of the characters again. What? If you really want to horrify me, stick me in that closet with the burning family. Let me feel the smoke inhalation and smell the singed flesh.

Like comedy and laughter, if a horror film finds a way to frighten this jaded moviegoer, I'm more than willing to overlook its flaws elsewhere. But the last thing I should ever feel is comfortable—No, scratch that. The last thing I should ever feel is bored, and "The Crazies" is a boring film. It's objectively a step above "Legion" or "The Wolfman," but I suppose that's what passes for praise in the current horror climate.

2.5/5

FARCE/FILM Episode 36: The Ghost Writer, The Runaways

--> Episode 36: 03/15/10 <--

Hosts: Colin George, Brian Crawford, Kevin Mauer, and Micah Haun

Intro – 00:00

Top 5 – 01:26

The Ghost Writer – 12:27

The Runaways – 32:43

Weekend Movie Round-up – 51:45

(17 Again, Saw 4, Michael Moore Hates America, Cannibal: the Musical, Dare, The Pacific)

Events and Outro - 1:03:55

"The Ghost Writer"

Colin:
Crawford:
Kevin:

"The Runaways"

Colin:
Crawford:
Micah:
Kevin:

-- Weekly Discussion Question --

What's your favorite rock and roll biopic?

-- -- e-mail us your thoughts at farcefilm@gmail.com -- --