Josh Timmermann: Hey again--
Glad to see that most of you have chimed in with your opening two cents (even if my topical stabs at conversation-starters fell mostly on deaf ears).
Chris D. and Learned: I can certainly relate to your small town blues--especially since my hometown (pop. 11,000!) makes Tucson and East Lansing look like Phoenix and Detroit, if not New York and L.A. Which is to say, Dave and Tom you're lucky bastards--with no good excuse for not having yet seen any of the films you mentioned as needing to catch up on! Though I realize that small inconveniences like "work" (of the non-watching and writing about movies variety) and "prior obligations" can muck things up a bit, you're a mere train ride away from virtually every movie released in this country! I'm 100-plus miles from the nearest decent-sized urban area (St. Louis, MO) and 300 from Chicago. While Tom's point about ticket prices in New York is valid (there's something here called the "Five Buck Club," which allows five-dollar admission to all movies that've been in general release for two or more weekends and is free to sign up for), I'd rather pay $15 to see Army of Shadows than five to endure Pirates of the Carribean 2.
My comment about blog pop breaking into the mainstream might've been a bit of a stretch, I concede. But I think Gnarls Barkley is a prime example of a group that rode online superlatives to massive airplay and tangible units moved. So far as I can tell, that's significant less because St. Elsewhere is a relative left-field success story than, well--when was the last time the print music media could fairly claim credit for such undeniable numbers? Not to shoot fish-in-a-barrell here, but when was the last time any of you purchased a copy of Rolling Stone? Spin? Aside from a friend, who has a subscription to the former due to being too lazy to cancel one of those "4 free issues" deals they push at Best Buy checklanes, I can't even recall the last time I saw anyone else I know reading one.
Tom, your point, about "Grey's Anatomy-pop" usurping real pop star pop is on the mark, and scary as fuck. It seems, more than anything, reactionary. Is the new Justin too weird for you, the Nelly F. record a tad too prurient? Well, try James Blunt! Dude's like the pop Joe Lieberman. Just what we need.
At the same time, though, I'd like to take a second to observe that there is good Starbucks pop out there. Take Feist (if not Cat Power and Joanna Newsom). If the Hold Steady are, by turns, good drinking and hangover music, Let It Die is the perfect soundtrack to a hot cup of chamomille tea. Or maybe I'm just part of the problem; after all, I (slightly) prefer to Marit Bergman's teary cover of "My Love" to Justin's original.
Daniel: While I've never considered myself a horror enthusiast per se (do we really need more than one occupying the same apartment?), I loved The Descent. I'd rank it in the same rarefied category as two other great, recent English-language horror efforts: Wolf Creek and 28 Days Later. What these three films share--that, I'd argue, most recent Hollywood horror efforts lack--is a sense of terror, mystery, and most importantly, possiblity. If that sounds hopelessly vague, I apologize, but there's real space to explore in these movies and actual ideas being tossed out there (if sometimes heavy-handedly). The fact that there's also some degree of character development doesn't hurt either.
Still, the horror movie of the year was, without a doubt, United 93. The conflicting engines of fatalism and the unknown are what drives nearly all great horror. The miraculous achievement in Greengrass's masterpiece is that it pulls off the latter in a film that theoretically should've been overwhelmed by the former. He pulls it off by focusing on the minutiae--small, ephemeral moments that give you goosebumps throughout and, finally, break your heart. It's a legitimately cathartic piece of work that I'm tempted to compare with Dreyer and Bresson, minus the overt spirituality. Chris D, I'd be interested to hear why the film landed a spot on your "avenue of the overrated."
Teresa: You discussed video games brought to the screen, and I'd like to expand that discussion by, again, mentioning Children of Men. No film that I saw this year felt more formally informed by the gaming format (granted, I didn't catch Silent Hill), and that's something I find a little disturbing, while admiring Cuaron's film. Maybe it's snobby of me, but I'm not sure I like the idea of cinema taking cues from Playstation and Nintendo. This is something of a classic argument for us--and one that I'm sure will persist long after this Year in Review--but none of the virtues I look for in movies (or in art in general) seem to exist in the video game universe so far as I can tell. If pure escapism and pristinely conducted action sequences are your bag, then sure. But humanity, thoughtfulness, as Chris nicely put it, the sublime? I remain deeply skeptical. When Mario and Zelda approach the heights of Malick and Hou, please do let me know.
Finally, I'd like to touch briefly on the best and worst (i.e., "only") 2007 release I've caught so far this young year: Night at the Museum (aka Russian Ark for Dummies, with Robin William's Teddy Roosevelt standing in for Sergei Donstov's Marquis). While, by January '08, I'll presumably have all but forgotten about this minor clunker, filed away in the bin for lame double date compromise picks. But since it's fresh, it's worth citing as an example of an inspired concept, with potential for addressing history and culture while still conforming to multiplex conventions, but instead settles for mid-level CGI hijinks and a handful of comedians getting their PG on. I'd love to see where Joe Dante might have taken this. Or Spielberg, for that matter. As is, the movie is, at best, ligfhtly, playfully surreal--which, mind you, isn't due to its fantasy conceit or Jumanji-style effects but rather the casting of Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobbs as a trio of geriatric villains. Odd stuff, to be sure.
Anyhoo.
Best,
Josh
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Dave McDougall: I knew X3 wouldn't be a popular choice, so now I get to defend it.
X3 is muddled. It's dialogue is artless, the shot selection facile. The political allegory is inconsistent. It's only the 3rd best of the X-Men series. The performances vary from capable to embarrassing. BUT... I was invested in the characters and the conflict.
The allegory fails because it switches between multiple contemporary political issues. The obvious one is homosexuality (mutants are unnatural, but hey, there's a cure!; Warren Worthington's disgust with his son and his son's attempts to stay closeted as a mutant), but the cure as an issue of public debate and controversy that calls to mind America's abortion debate (protesters outside clinics?). There are even hints of AIDS in the stigma attached to mutants as diseased, and the mutant insurgency's 'self-defense' doctrine reminds me of the al-Mahdi Militia.
There is one place that the allegory holds together. Mutant powers (like those of the cinematic Spider-Man) show up at puberty, marking you as different and excluding you from the broader society. X-Men is about adolescence. Relating to the 'outsider,' trumps whether or not the plot correlates directly to a political issue. The X-Men, even the adults, are always figuring out who they are and how they fit in. It's this identity politics that makes the X-Men films interesting in terms of character.
This (shallow) 'depth' gives the actors enough ammo to turn in quality performances. The characters have discrete personae (more a function of the characters' long history than the script they're given here. Some of the performances are good, because many of these cast members are terrifically talented - Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, and Ellen Page, among others, have deserved reputations as top-notch actors. {OK, Ellen doesn't yet have this reputation, but trust me on this, she'll be there soon enough}.
Brett Ratner might not expertly swivel between the film's subplots, but he does give his actors the opportunity to hint at the fine source material. I've never read the comic books, but I did feel that there was depth behind many of the characters, even those played without a light touch. Counterintuitively, the lack of depth also works in the movie's favor, because we can move from one story to another without the expectation of full development. Hollywood's blockbuster character-creation strategies are all about hints and shortcuts, the way art-filmmakers shortcut narrative and leave gaps to be filled in. I don't mean to apologize for blockbuster-logic in general, but barely-concealed subtext and many opportunities to relate to characters (in even a superficial way) go a long way toward establishing a connection between an audience and a film.
A few personal notes:
A certain suspension of disbelief above and beyond the normal cinematic expectation occurs when entering a movie so explicitly divorced from our world's laws of nature, and I am always ready to take as film's logic at face value. The post-credits tease - which does entirely change the 'conclusion' of the series - had me leaving the theater full of excitement and anticipation rather than in a normal end-of-movie mindset. And that's my favorite feeling at the movies - excitement at what's to come. I get giddy watching trailers. Seriously.
Though I completely believe in the merits I've proclaimed above, I'll end with one final qualifier: Sometimes just having the right person next to you can change the way you feel about a movie.
- Dave
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Teresa Nieman: Dave, your explanation for liking X3 makes sense, and I think sometimes people forget about one of the main reasons to gravitate to a film: personal resonance; even when you yourself can admit the piece is lacking in other regards. As for the homosexuality/AIDS subtexts, I had heard about those being most prominent in X2, which, again, I didn't catch--so its impact may have been lessened for me with the third installment.
As for the declining-horror-of-today debate, Daniel, I guess I have a pretty pessimistic view there. American subjects of the genre almost need a sense of humor to succeed at this point. Witty, tongue-in-cheek (but still heartily scary) efforts like Slither (which you mentioned) come off, rightly so, as bright and refreshing forays. More serious horrors, however, become seemingly heavy handed and over dramatic simply by committing themselves to their world without offering any winks or nods to the viewer. It's hard now to watch the latter breed, and take it seriously. The Descent, while I didn't like it enough to put it in my top ten, was a good example of a humorless--where its plot is concerned, at least--and imaginative flick that works. I would have liked it a slight bit more had it kept the original British ending, but that's beside the point.
You also brought up Japanese horror films, and the barrage of remakes they've unleashed upon us. Well, it's probably no secret about my feelings for ghost stories from the East--but even so, they seem to be increasingly influenced by North America, and not so much in a good way. Filmmakers by and large care about success, which in most cases means cash. Many of the horrors being produced in Japan and South Korea (and, for that matter all over China) are concerned about whether it will be crowd-pleasing, and eligible for US remake status. It's a vicious circle, it is. Especially considering a large part of the Asian horror appeal--for me, and probably most Western viewers--is the sense of exoticness. The stories are never radically different from horror you see here, but each film, intentionally or otherwise, has the added weight of foreign sensibility, tradition, and even religion. Naturally, those aspects are all but lost when converted to be set in Boston and starring Jessica Alba or whoever. Luckily there are reliable horror-helmers who seem uninterested in selling out. Few, maybe, but it's something.
Josh: don't even get me started on video games. Sure, they're made by huge teams of people--which makes your auteur theory kinda inapplicable--and 80% of their output is disposable fun, at most, but can than not be said about film as well? How many movies are pumped out a year, worldwide, and how many are worth a damn? It's a new, different art form that is still looked down upon (by people like you!), and, again, so were films when they first broke out some hundred-odd years ago. They may not be high art of the fancy-shmancy, water-cooler kind--but to write them off completely if just plain narrow minded.
Oh, and also being from Herrin, I belong to this "I don't get to see any good movies" group. I also have a solution for this: downloading. Sure, it's not legal, but if the MPAA really doesn't want us to, they can stop being tools and make non-blockbuster movies more available to us, no? I'm just sayin'.*
*I'm not actually admitting to doing this, just stating that it is a possible option...
Anyway, until next time.
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Daniel Rivera: A quick question for everyone:
Why do you suppose highly anticipated debuts like Public Warning! and Alright, Still really failed to deliver in any big way? Of course, I am not talking about sales one way or the other. I'm talking about the fact that they just were...categorically underwhelming. Was it the saturation pre release? Does hype affect the artist that much? Does it affect us that much. So much in fact that we set our expectations unreasonably high? I'm aware that this is hardly a new or original question to ask, but I had a significant amount of hope set aside for these particular releases, and I feel I'd like to at least bring them up in such a discussion.
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Josh Timmermann: Daniel, to address your question re: Public Warning and Alright, Still, I think oversaturation and contrarian backlash are partly to blame, but only partly. In the case of Lady Sov (and the same probably applies, more or less, to Arular), it's kind of hard to get excited about a debut LP when much of the music is a year or more old. It's still good stuff, but how much more is there really to say about "Random"? This point holds, too, for Lily to a lesser extent (since the material didn't drop quite so long ago), but for me anyway, Alright, Still just kind of feels like an afterthought in light of the pair of stellar mixtapes that preceded it (not to mention that lame throwaways like "Take What You Take" and "Friday Night" made the cut at the expense of the infinitely preferable "Sunday Morning" and "Cheryl Tweedy"). The mixes felt inspired, spontaneous, and winningly offhanded--"here's some CCR, some ODB, and, oh, here's one of mine, enjoy!"--while the proper record registered as, well, sort of beside the point.
Teresa, I don't disagree about the percentage of worthwhile movies amidst the trash. Rather, I'm talking about the great ones, and more specifically, why they're great. You're a video game fan, fine. But when was the last time you were moved by a video game? Or that you learned something you didn't already know--about yourself or the world around you--or considered a fresh line of thought? Learned wrote that The Death of Mr. Lazarescu made him "want to be a better person for all those I meet, but never know." I'd be very curious to find a video game capable of provoking such a poignant sentiment.
Best,
Josh
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Chris Dashiell: I've changed my mind about calling United 93 "overrated." I realized that I put in that category because I didn't know where to put it. In fact, this is one of those rare cases where I don't yet know what to think about a film.
I was completely gripped with tension through the whole thing, and I felt sick to my stomach afterwards, and actually rather depressed for a few hours.
When I was able to look back and analyze, I saw that a lot of my reaction was due to my feelings about the events of 9/11/01, and seeing the horror of that day depicted from the inside of one of the planes. Knowing what would happen also affected my response, because of course we see these people going about their business and we know they're all going to die.
So I made an attempt to look at the film as if I were not an American deeply affected by the events, as if it were some event that happened many more years ago, perhaps in another country. And when I did that, the film didn't impress me as much. It has the immediacy and the good use of nonprofessional actors that Greengrass showed in Bloody Sunday, but without the keen political
awareness of that film. I suppose that was the nature of the material--too much personal backstory or political subtext wouldn't have worked for United 93, but it still seems to me that the charged emotions around the events provide most of the film's effect, and that taken on its own terms it's a good, somewhat minimalist exercise.
The events on the ground are confusing, and I get the nagging feeling that the story from FAA and NORAD that's been reconstructed here is incomplete and inconsistent. The story on the plane is obviously a "this is how it could have happened," and this also made me a little uncomfortable, because the speculative nature of the reenactment is inevitably overshadowed by its vividness, giving it a feel of documentary-type truth which may be deceiving.
In the final analysis, the fact is that I couldn't separate my personal feelings about the event from my evaluation of the film on its own terms, and every time I try, the personal feelings are so much stronger than any aesthetic impression or judgment that I can't trust my own evaluation. I don't think this is as good a film as Bloody Sunday, but of course it's gotten more attention. I suspect that there's a tendency to overrate United 93 because it didn't make the mistakes that a Hollywood treatment would have made, but on the other hand I can't deny that I was spellbound through the film.
The issue of whether this is "too soon" to make such a film seems so cliche that one is tempted to dismiss it, but in this case it actually seems a legitimate issue to me in terms of evaluating the picture. So I don't know. I can't honestly put it in the overrated category. It's a good film. I just can't get clear in my mind whether I'd put in my top ten or even twenty. And I suppose that's a first for me.
Dash
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Dave McDougall: Chris,
Your clarified response to United 93 confirms what Teresa said about
my response to X3: that so much of a movie experience is about how it
resonates with you emotionally. One thing that's often expected from
us as critics is that we detach from this emotion and examine films
(or music, art, etc) as formalist constructions distinct from our
emotional responses. I reject this attitude, because what's most
important about art are our connections with a work and how they
impact our lives.
United 93 has a uniquely overpowering emotional response built in to
the experience of the movie. Many said it was "too soon" for a movie
about 9/11, but the people who said that to me seemed mostly
unoffended by World Trade Center, some even expressing interest for
reasons as divorced from the subject matter as "I like Nic Cage." I
will never watch World Trade Center for some of the same reasons
that I was so enraptured with United 93.
In the days - even the hours - after the attacks on 9/11/2001, what i
wanted most of all was exposure to the images from the attacks as a
way to make sense of it all. That afternoon I had a meeting with my
Senior Film thesis advisor. He's from New York, living there when he
wasn't teaching in CT; behind me he left a TV, turned to a news
channel. At one point he stopped mid-sentence to say "oh my G-d." I
turned in time to see the last few frames of blurry video of people
jumping from the towers.
For years after that, until almost today, I wanted to see that again.
I wanted to feel the full torment of rage and sadness and confusion
that human brutality can cause. I needed images to make sense of the
attacks. I missed them live that day, hearing rumours of something but
going to class instead. I saw taped news feeds at lunch and turned too
late to see the beginning of what my advisor saw. What I wanted most
was to go through those emotions again, to face them as fully as
possible in spite of all that meant. In this I was in the minority.
United 93 filled that void without pandering to me with a story of
survival or of hope. I was proud of that movie and of the people on
that plane. I stifled back tears at dramatic moments, and, sometimes,
at the moments when I was caught by some tiny clue that carried the
full weight of that day. Most of all, the film provided catharsis. I
finally had a way to approach this enormity, a way to relive the
horror in order to accept it as real. And afterward, the dull ache of
the last five years could abate and I could carry on with the business
of living.
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Josh Timmermann: Last year, I participated in a similar discussion panel, the "Oscar Symposium," hosted at Nathaniel Rogers' terrific the Film Experience. One participant posed the question of whether Brokeback Mountain would've been so highly acclaimed, and such a cause celebre, had the central romance been a heterosexual one. Of course, that's a moot point. While Ang went to some lengths to disguise an issue film as a tragic romance, the fact that its lovers are both male certainly isn't coincidental, a mere, interchangeable narrative detail.
The same goes for United 93, I'd argue, and attempting to watch it outside the context of the events its recreating seems fruitless. I'm not saying that the film's technical merits can't--or shouldn't be--considered in their own right, without the borrowed weight of the subject matter. But this isn't Turbulence or Air Force One or some other such generic action thriller. Maybe it is "too soon" for such a painfully forward screen account of 9/11, but Greengrass's aesthetic here is absolutely inextricable from the fated day--and all the messy emotions surrounding it--his film is attempting to grapple with.
Godard's contention that cinema lost its soul due the medium's inability to deal honestly with the Holocaust comes to mind. I have no idea what he thinks of United 93, or even if he's seen it, but to my mind, Greengrass very much defended the integrity and potential of film by putting such an unflinching, deeply felt statement to celluloid.
Clint Eastwood also deserves a great deal of credit for helming Letters from Iwo Jima (for my money, the strongest war movie since Malick's The Thin Red Line). After seeing the film, I was initially skeptical of the fact that the most sympathetic, humanist-minded Japanese officers in Letters were the two who'd spent time in the U.S. (Ken Watanabe's General Kuribayashi is accused by one lieutenant of being an American sympathizer). Upon reflection, though, this makes perfect sense: It's a lot harder to demonize your enemy when you know them, and know that your similarities far outnumber your differences. It isn't a new concept by any means, but at this point in time, I can't think any notion more important than empathy.
Thanks to all of you who participated in JLT/JLT's First (Hopefully) Annual Year In Review discussion. It was a lot of fun, and something of an honor for me to have such a thoughtful bunch of writers contributing to our blog.
Take care, and see you next year--same time, same place. Hopefully...
Best,
Josh
