Summer flick round-up

This past month has been a busy one for yours truly as I worked on a few projects that required a lot of HD work. Good stuff, good money. Makes me happy to earn.

Anyway, here's a list of flicks I saw this summer with a brief impression of each:

Knocked Up: I know it was a big hit, but I'm tired of clichéd gender war humor. Women don't get guys. Guys don't get women. Jeez. The lead guy is a lazy stoner and the the lead girl is an ambitious careerist? What a shock! At least it had plenty of funny moments.

Sunshine: Wow. Boyle and Garland should team up forever. The ending confused me a bit, but the film was amazing. This shows that not every sci-fi flick needs to be about quasi-goths shooting each other.

Simpsons Movie: Why did these past writers ever leave? Way funnier than the current show, the movie made me actually like the Simpsons again.

Ratatouille: While I thought that the "no stealing" moral was clumsily tacked on, this was just an amazing and fun film to watch. Brad Bird knows how to make an animated feature, that's for sure. Damn, I really loved this movie. I'll probably buy it when it comes out on DVD.

Bourne Ultimatum: Gives you what you expect to receive. Lots of chase sequences and a few good fights. Plot was kind of lame, but this is all about the action, not the story. That beaing said, there's nothing wrong with taking in the spectacle. D.W. Griffith did say film was all about the chase sequence.

Sicko: Wow. Reviewed in another post.

Transformers: Shit sandwich. Reviewed in another post.

Ingmar, where are you now that we need you?

Ingmar Bergman died. He was 89.

It was Bergman's work that really showed me the true power that cinema has. No matter which film of his I saw, whether it was Wild Strawberries, Winter Light, or Fanny & Alexander, they always stuck with me. The man was a total genius and a true auteur in every sense of the word.

The BBC article about it can be seen here.

Review: SiCKO

As anyone who's looked at the mainstream cable news or read a political blog lately knows, Michael Moore's new documentary, SiCKO , just recently came out. Before the film even made it’s debut, people on both sides of the political fence were lobbing attacks at each other over the issue that SiCKO raises: The American Healthcare system is fundamentally fucked.

As far as this documentary goes, it's pretty standard Michael Moore fare. Moore takes a huge issue, puts a human face on it to show how Corporate America is failing the common man, and then pulls a few pranks to show how totally screwed up the whole situation really is.

Moore starts out showing a man without health insurance literally stitch his own knee wound shut because he can't afford the medical cost of an ER visit. The sad thing is that this isn't as grim as the film gets. Moore spends about five minutes on two people without insurance and then informs us that SiCKO isn't about them. In fact, SiCKO is about those who do have insurance and how the insurance companies have failed them.

After Moore presents some of the tragedies that a corrupt system has caused, he then proceeds to show us the medical systems of Canada, England, and France. In each case, the country provides universal healthcare coverage paid for by taxes. Moore then tackles the myths that our government has propagated about “socialized medicine” for years such as people being turned away, operation quotas, lack of doctors, etc. In each case, he shows that the myth is only a myth.

Finally, Moore ends the film with his set-piece: taking ill 9/11 rescue workers to Guatanamo Bay and demanding that they be provided “with the same healthcare that Al-Quaeda gets. No more, no less.” Of course, no help comes, so Moore gets them treated at no out-of-pocket expense in that most hated country, Cuba.

What strikes me most about the film isn't the film itself (although I was movedto tears of rage at how horrible our own system is when we could have a system that provides for all) but the polemic that has erupted over it. This is not a political issue, or at least, it shouldn't be. This is a humanity issue.

We're all very dependent on each other, despite what our rugged-individualist culture may want to preach. As such, we have to take care of each other if we want to continue as a species. People shouldn't have to choose which severed fingers to save based on their savings. People shouldn't be forced into poverty because of a cancer that developed. People shouldn't let a disease go untreated because they have to pay their mortgages. Even more so, the trust and money that people put into the healthcare providers should pay off when the unfortunate happens and they desperately need that care. Maybe, I'm just a goddamned pinko, but I think that the health of people is more important than the second homes of these millionaire HMO CEOs who profit off of denying treatment to those ailing.

All in all, I hope that this film helps turn the tide toward America adopting universal healthcare coverage for all. Unfortunately, Moore has been so demonized by the right-wing media that his film will most likely be another case of preaching to the converted, but let's hope that we can one day soon walk into a hospital without fearing bankruptcy.

Review: Transformers

On the 4th of July, I saw Michael Bay's newest recruitment ad for the USMC, Transformers. After the soul-crushing experience of watching this god-awful dreck, all I really wanted was those two and half hours of my life back.

Let's just get the requisite plot summary out of the way before I try to relate why I feel like a part of me died inside. Marines in the Qatar (a monarchy that punishes dissenters) encounter a giant robot that can transform into a helicopter. In the USA, a nerdy teen, Sam (Shia LaBouf), is special and unique enough to warrant soon becoming friends with more giant robots that can transform into vehicles. Complications ensue and giant robots battle each other while Marines shoot at said robots and Sam gets enough character to overcome his nerdiness, get the girl (Megan Fox), and attain the honorary rank of soldier from Josh Duhamel. The end credits roll while you feel cheated and Hasbro's shareholders masturbate with enthusiasm.

That being said, this long cartoon just didn't do it for me. One thing that could've helped would have been if someone told Bay that he isn't funny. Then maybe I wouldn't have had to endure one crappy gag after another. Here's a classic from the movie: a little girl clutching the requisite stuffed animal watches a 30-foot tall robot step out of the family pool. She says to the towering mechanoid, "Are you the Tooth Fairy?" Are you effing kidding? Sadly, this is the best joke in a whole movie whose jokes are so old and tired that they make Vaudeville humor seem cutting-edge.

As one might expect in a summer action flick, none of the characters are even worth caring about. I didn't care about Captain Lennox (Duhamel) and the fact that his wife and baby were back in the states, nor did I care about Sam and his lame attempts to impress the shallow-teen-hottie-who-isn't-shallow-and-holy-crap!-she-can-fix-cars love interest. I also snoozed through the boring scenes with Jon Voigt as the Secretary of Defense and the computer nerds deciphering alien signals. No one in the film was a three-dimensional character.

Most disturbing in this piece of propaganda is that the Autobots speak English while the Decepticons speak their native language. After a couple of scenes of Marines admonishing their Latino team member to "speak English" it becomes apparent that only true Americans speak English. The Decepticons become almost like foreign terrorists as they infiltrate military bases and even Airforce One. (The Latino Marine dies in battle.)

I could go on about stupid plot choices, hokey sloganeering, etc. but I want to get to the heart of this: this film offers nothing to say. Call me crazy, but I want more to a movie than just spectacle. A film should teach me something.

While discussing this with a friend of mine, he told me that it was a dumb, escapist summer action flick and that I shouldn't go in expecting some arthouse-quality film. To quote, "I wanted to see giant robots fighting and that's what I got." That being said, I can only retort that the "it's a dumb flick" excuse isn't good enough. In the past, we got great films like Hostel 2, Grindhouse, Night Watch, Spider-Man, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, etc. that all were spectacle-heavy, but had something genuine to say and share with us.

The problem is that we keep buying into the tease of the specatacle that the film offers, but never hold the filmmakers accountable for the lack of substance. Unfortunately, this movie will make a ton of cash and Hollywood will keep pumping out shit like this.

I wish I had gone to see Ratatouille instead. I'm going to have to go see Herzog's The Great Escape now. I have to feed my soul with good stuff.

EW's Top action movie?

So Entertainment Weekly listed Die Hard as the number 1 action movie. I'm sure that this has absolutely nothing to do with the new Die Hard film coming out soon. Nothing whatsoever.

Ah fuck, who am I kidding? Fucking marketing. This type of marketing pisses me off. Like how the Red Eye splashes the movie of the week on their Friday paper.

The NC-17 works when used right

In the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, Mark Harris writes about the failure of the current MPAA ratings system and argues for the end of the NC-17 rating. He specifically cites the release of Eli Roth's Hostel 2 with it's over the top torture sequences and it’s R rating.

I do have to say that Harris makes a valid point about how even a 5-year old can get into an R movie with the addition of an accompanying adult. When I saw Hostel 2 a week ago, there were three teenagers in the audience (and thanks to the understaffed theater, these kids didn't even have that accompanying adult). Of course, the kids decided to irritate people in the audience with their incessant yapping and cell phone gabbing. I had dearly wished for an NC-17 rating on the film so I wouldn’t have to put up with that. (This is why I never see a movie on the opening weekend.)

I think the real issue to address here isn't that “the NC-17 rating…preserves the illusion that R-rated films like Hostel 2 are okay for kids,” but that the MPAA is a failure that either needs to be overhauled or done away with completely.

The real tragedy here is that Mark Harris touches on why a film like Hostel 2 can get the R-rating. There’s the single phrase, “The indies have it harder than the studio films.” That's it. But right there is your reason why Hostel 2 evaded the NC-17 even though it breaks a number of previous taboos for R-rated films.

Hostel 2, for all intents and purposes, is a studio film. It's being distributed by Sony. Sony and Lionsgate have the pull necessary to take a flick and push it through the MPAA with an R, while Killer Films and IFC films can't get John Water's A Dirty Shame through the MPAA without an NC-17. Aside from a pair of enormous, prosthetic breasts and a bare ass, there’s no nudity in A Dirty Shame and definitely no extreme violence.

The NC-17 rating works when it's implemented correctly and not undermined for the sake of a larger studio getting the coveted R-rating that will draw in the spendthrift teens.

Review: Hostel 2

Whenever you have a movie like Eli Roth’s Hostel 2 get released, you inevitably have the critics decrying the film as nothing more than pointless “torture-porn” and then suggest that we, the audience, should be ashamed for plunking down our $10 and chomping popcorn throughout the spectacle of dismemberment and other wholesome amusements.

While I do concede that there are a lot of really bad movies that feature such forms of body-horror and have nothing else to offer in terms of having anything to say, this has never been the case with Eli Roth. When I saw Roth’s first feature, Cabin Fever, I knew that this was going to be a director to watch over the coming years. Roth’s tale of camping friends and the fragility of that friendship in a generation that grew up never knowing a world without AIDS was complex and poignant, all within the oft-maligned splatter genre.

Then came Hostel, a film about America’s role in a larger global society. Roth depicted a scenario in which a poor European country made its bread and butter on selling wealthy European businessmen the opportunity to hack upon arrogant, American youth. At a time when Americans foster no goodwill in the larger global society, this film played on the fears arising from the disdain our country had fostered in the past few years.

Now comes Roth’s Hostel 2, his finest feature to date, where he turns his critical lens as a scathing indictment of the Upper Class.

Hostel 2 is about an American art student, Beth, who is studying in Rome with her friends Lorna and Whitney. Finishing their lesson, they decide to head off to Prague for the weekend. Unfortunately, the army of “gross guys” on the night train put them off and they get talked into visiting the wonderful town of Slovakia, home to fabulous hot springs, extravagant harvest festivals, and the best murder factory you ever saw.

Intercut with the story of Beth and her pals, is the story of Todd and Stuart, two American businessmen who win the online auction to be the ones to kill Whitney and Beth. (Lorna gets dispatched by another lucky bidder.) These two guys go into this thinking that having killed someone will give them a psychological, competitive edge in the business world. As the film progresses, Stuart and Todd make their way through the hunting club initiation and the girls get abducted one by one until both meet in a shocking and bloody climax.

By making the two soon-to-be killers American, Roth takes the focus away from the the nationality of the victims and murderers and focuses us more on the disparity between the classes. Here are the wealthy business types hacking up the lower-class backpacking kids. Their money buys them the experience to take a human life. In this case, life is literally worth less than commerce. In one scene the lives of homeless children are so undervalued that taking the life of a child is seen as almost a birthright.

While other reviewers may point and shout about how films such as this are horrible for depicting life and cheap and worthless, the real point is that Roth is showing us the mindset of the modern business model. Everything is for sale and for those who are wealthy enough, the social contract of morality doesn’t even apply. Why play by the rules when you can buy off the system?

If you can stomach the gore (which, in my opinion, wasn't that hardcore), then Hostel 2 is a great choice for a film to go see.