Category: Arts & Entertainment

It’s an old cliche that Hollywood takes the hard work of creative people and squeezes all of the originality and innovation and intelligence out of it, to dumb it down for the mass market. I never really believed it, though: instead of this big, faceless, creativity-sucking entity, isn’t it easier just to assume that some people just aren’t as talented as others? If a movie like National Treasure is all Hollywood’s fault, then how do movies like The Life Aquatic and Adaptation and Miller’s Crossing get made?

But I’m starting to think that cliche might have something to it, the more movies I see from Guillermo del Toro. This weekend I watched The Devil’s Backbone. Like Pan’s Labyrinth, it was made in Spain. And unlike Mimic, Blade II, and Hellboy, it was very good. Original, innovative, intelligent, and above all, uncompromising. So either del Toro’s talent has been wasted by Hollywood, or he only knows how to make movies set around the Spanish Civil War.

The movie’s weird, not even so much for what it shows but for how it kept turning into something other than what I’d expected. Before it started, I’d thought it was going to be like The Orphanage, another Spanish movie set in a haunted orphanage. But it’s much more interesting than The Orphanage, and it’s a period piece, and it’s not really a ghost story. Except it kind of is, except for when it veers off into melodrama, or character study, or coming-of-age tale. Plus, there’s an explosion.

You can tell that del Toro’s a fan of Mike Mignola, or at least why he’s a fan if he weren’t already before making this movie, because there’s that same feeling of simple stories interwoven with the gothic and gruesome and just plain strange. If I were to describe just the plot, it wouldn’t sound all that compelling, but then you watch the movie and there’s something interesting going on in just about every scene.

The new kid at the orphanage meets the principal — who’s got a half-wooden, half-metal prosthetic leg. He finds a father figure in the kindly old science teacher — who keeps fetuses in glass jars and drinks the liquid when no one’s looking. And he runs into the orphanage’s spooky ghost — who’s called “the one who sighs” by the other kids, and who has a constantly-bleeding wound from the crack in his skull, and is always surrounded by particulate matter as if he were still underwater.

The Devil’s Backbone turned me into a bona fide fan of Guillermo del Toro, and I wish I’d seen it sooner, and now I’m really, really looking forward to Hellboy II this summer. The best I can say about the first Hellboy movie is that it was clear del Toro was a big fan, and while the movie didn’t add much to the character or even really capture the spirit of the comics, it had some good ideas and didn’t do anything awful. But the trailers for the sequel seem to have a better feel for what it is that makes Hellboy cool.

Plus, del Toro’s riding on the success of Pan’s Labyrinth, so I’m thinking he’s got enough clout that he can stand up to the nefarious Hollywood talent-suppression field, and make an American Big Summer Blockbuster that’s as cool as the ones he’s made in Spanish.

Memorial Day weekend seemed like as good a time as any to make some progress on the Netflix queue, in the form of a style-over-substance double feature.

In one of the special features for The Orphanage, executive producer Guillermo del Toro describes a couple of scenes as “pure cinema.” He’s talking about the scenes without dialogue that work just on the basis of some really creepy visuals, but he could just as well be describing the whole movie.

Because The Orphanage could only work as a movie, and it does so surprisingly well. It relies on suspense instead of cheap scares — except for one shot involving an ambulance, which works because it’s timed perfectly — but any of the suspenseful scenes, taken out of context, would just seem silly. Its plot is an almost insultingly simple and straightforward ghost story, but the movie knows exactly how much emphasis to give to the plot and how much to give to the psychological drama. And the drama would turn into overwrought or cloying melodrama without the performance of the lead actress, and the careful way scenes are staged and filmed.

You’ll frequently see it compared to The Others and Pan’s Labyrinth, but that’s not just a case of lazy movie reviewing, comparing it to the only other Spanish-made horror-like movies that Americans have heard of. It exists squarely between those two: it’s a better movie than The Others, with more depth and without the need for a twist ending, but with a very similar look, a similar premise (a mother trapped in a cavernous, haunted house), and an “old-school” ghost story mentality.

And it’s not as good as Pan’s Labyrinth, but thematically it’s extremely similar. I wish that they were more similar: there are scenes where the mother is playing with her son that are just wonderful, but they’re quickly relegated to being plot points, instead of reminders of what it’s like to think like a child. And they tacked on two completely unnecessary short scenes at the end of the movie (and flashbacks during the climax) to explain everything; I wish they’d stuck with the ambiguously happy ending of Pan’s Labyrinth.

People who get paid to review movies frequently toss around the term “dream-like,” and I’d use that here, but in a different context: it’s like the kind of dream that feels so vivid and meaningful right as you wake up, but the second you try to explain it or even remember the details, it seems trite and meaningless. I really enjoyed The Orphanage an awful lot, and everything it tried to do — from horror to drama to joyful “childlike wonder” moments — totally worked for me up until the end. But I’m wary of thinking about it too much, because I’m afraid it’ll evaporate.

Snatch, on the other hand, is just plain bullshit. I don’t even like calling it style over substance, since it’s been less than eight years and already there’s no style left. It’s an hour and a half being assaulted by a jackass who believes he’s a hell of a lot cooler and smarter than he is. I can’t remember the last time I’ve wanted so much to physically smack the smug dumb-ass expression off of a movie.

And I’m really tired of seeing movies that prove Quentin Tarantino knows what he’s doing, and how awful it is when some tone-deaf person tries to do the same thing. Hey, why don’t you spin the camera around one more time, cool guy? That is what we in the movie business call style, man, that shit never gets old.

My on-again, off-again mind-meld with Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com seems to be back on again, with her review of Indiana Jones 4. The part she describes best is the first scene where (possible spoiler?) Indy runs into Marion:

When he sees her, his face shows what can only be described as pure delight, and it’s little wonder: Allen, an actress of a certain age who isn’t afraid to look like a real person, is radiant here. Her performance is like joy let out of a box.

That’s a perfect description, and is one thing I missed mentioning earlier: Karen Allen may just be the best part of the new movie. Like any of the characters, she doesn’t really get to do much. But whenever she’s on screen, you really get the sense that she’s just happy to be back with the gang, making another Indy movie after all these years. One of the best moments, because it’s one of the only ones that feels genuine, is when Indy first sees her, and he gets a goofy grin on his face that almost feels like he’s breaking character.

Steven Spielberg’s movies tend to be full of emotional moments that always feel more staged than genuine. This one feels like it slipped through the impenetrable wall of artifice and accidentally let some genuine happiness come through. It’s a reminder that none of the people involved in this movie need to prove anything, or need to re-establish a franchise, and they definitely don’t need any more money. They made this one just to have fun with it. And that’s what renders any criticisms from over-entitled “fans” moot, because that’s the spirit that comes through overall: it feels like they had fun making this movie, and they just made it for the hell of it.

Zacharek is still totally wrong about the Coen brothers and Wes Anderson, though.

Watching the new Indiana Jones movie gave me severe diarrhea. Actually, the two events are most likely unrelated, but I wanted to take a cue from the pharmaceutical business and warn of any potential side effects: a small but not insignificant group of viewers reported spending the 15 hours following the movie being frequently and painfully reminded that man lives entirely at the mercy of his gastrointestinal tract.

As for the movie itself: I liked it a lot. I thought it was very much in the spirit of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the goofiness of Temple of Doom and the self-awareness of The Last Crusade.

I went in almost completely unspoiled, knowing nothing except the basic cast and roughly when it was set. I didn’t have high expectations, and I wasn’t going in looking for flaws, either. I’d recommend everybody do the same.

So don’t bother reading the rest of this until you’ve seen it (and you know you will).

Continue reading “Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jaded Eye”

The satellite feed for channel 7 went out this Thursday, leaving me “Lost”-less until I can summon the patience to watch the episode on ABC’s website.

Luckily, Turner Classic Movies was available to keep me from doing something productive or sleeping, and I got to catch the last 30 minutes of the 1978 classic The Boys From Brazil. This is the one about Josef Mengele (played by Gregory Peck) hiding out in South America after WWII, creating dozens of clones of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi hunter (played by Oscar-nominated Laurence Olivier) who puts a stop to his evil scheme.

It’s also the one that’s finally convinced me I just don’t get the 70s. For some reason, this movie is described as a “suspense/thriller” instead of a “comedy.” Did people just not get how silly this movie is? Were laughably absurd things genuinely scary back then? This is the same era that brought us the ridiculous The Omen and the yawn-worthy Halloween. Does it have something to do with all the cocaine I keep hearing about?

Going through the list of Culturally Relevant Movies I’ve Never Seen has been like walking through a minefield. For every genuinely bad-ass movie like The Killers, or goofily surreal masterpiece like Night of the Hunter, there’s at least two more that leave me convinced I should just avoid seeing them, so I can just trust Common Knowledge and go on believing that they’re better than they really are.

At least I can check off another Mystery Science Theater reference that I finally get: during a scene in Hercules Unchained, Joel has a lion scream “You killed my dad, you freaked out maniac!” That’s from the “climax” of The Boys from Brazil.

Speed Racer is a live action movie based on a Japanese cartoon television series from the 60s called “Speed Racer.”

I would’ve thought that was obvious, but based on the reviews, I’ve got to wonder what the hell these people were expecting. They’re fanning themselves with their press kits, complaining of “nausea” at all the colors and motion (in a movie called Speed Racer) and bemoaning the incoherent script (in a movie based on a 60s Japanese cartoon). Did you guys never bother to watch the original cartoon? Or any one of the trailers, for that matter?

The movie is an almost slavishly faithful homage to its source material, right down to the chonk chonk chonk sound whenever the Mach 5 jumps, and the inclusion of both English and Japanese lyrics in both of the movie’s heavily-sampled theme songs. When the source material is “Speed Racer,” that means nonsensical wackiness, ridiculously amped-up driving, and slapstick.

When someone complains about the screenwriting in a movie with an annoying little brother named Spritle with a pet chimpanzee named Chim-Chim who dress identically, you just have to smack yourself in the forehead and ask “Why don’t they get it?”

I said “almost faithful” because the overall look of the movie is way beyond what the original animators could have ever accomplished, assuming they’d wanted to. The environments look like the cities of the Star Wars prequels with the saturation knob turned past its maximum, and the race tracks are filled with flashing corkscrews and Hot Wheels loops. It feels like the Wachowskis’ homage to the show they wanted to see, instead of the show as it actually existed. You can also see the Wachowskis’ influence in the casting — all of the side characters are straight from a Matrix-like Eurotrash freak show.

And they dropped the ball with Inspector Detector; I was actually kind of looking forward to seeing them try to do that beard in a live-action movie.

Overall, the movie’s got exactly what I was expecting from a live action Speed Racer, with a few nice surprises. A bee catapult! A weird Zoetrope tunnel with an animated zebra! Their own version of the mammoth car! Fight scenes with the anime-style speed line backgrounds! The ominous Maltese Ice Cave! Even the main bad guy sounds like a typical Speed Racer villain. I was disappointed the Alpha Team wasn’t included, but I guess you can’t have everything.

Although in a movie this long, you’d expect it to have everything — it’s over two hours long, and it should’ve been about 45 minutes shorter. The scene-to-scene pacing is all right, since the manic episodes are balanced with slower moments. The problem is that the slower moments drag on forever. It’s as if they weren’t just trying to mix up the pacing, but were actually trying to make a “real” movie, with a plot and everything, which was their downfall.

The other big problem is that everything gets repeated so often that it stops being cool. Everything in the movie is so unapologetically fake, it’s surprising that the race sequences have any feeling to them at all. But the first time you see a car flip over another one, it’s impressive. Then they do it again, about a billion times. It’s the same with the anime-background fight scenes, and the montage sequences with a character in profile panning across the foreground, and the heart-to-heart speeches Speed has with Mom, Pops, and pretty much every other character.

You get a real sense that this movie wasn’t just made about speed, but made on it as well. And that they just refused to cut anything out. Pretty much the entire thing reminded me of the second Matrix movie, in that it was just a hyperactive dump of ideas, many of them good, but without any regard for the overall story and pacing.

But still, I liked it. It’s goofy, manic, spectacle, with more than a few genuinely cool moments. And best of all, it struck me as being full of genuine affection, or at least nostalgia, for something the filmmakers grew up with. Poop jokes and all.