Movie Review - Hereafter

So uh...yeah, school has obviously slowed me down, which is why I haven't posted in a billion years. (It also doesn't help that I'm about five films behind on writing about the Shameless list; it's been around two months since I saw Chinatown, the film I was going to write about next.) Instead, have the closest thing I can write to a film review!


Hereafter, if you didn't know, is the new Clint Eastwood film starring Matt Damon. It's about the afterlife and Damon plays a character who's a former psychic, but has stopped practicing. Despite what the commercials might tell you, it's also an ensemble piece; the other two characters are a French reporter who has a near-death experience in the 2004 tsunami and a British boy whose twin is struck by a car and dies. Of course, they all have to meet at the end, as is par for ensemble films. Their stories don't dovetail until the end of the film though; the film spends most of the time switching between the three characters. I have to admit, I wasn't really going to see this movie. At first I thought it seemed kind of sentimental in that annoying oscar film way, but it got good reviews from both Roger Ebert (who I was a little skeptical about), and A.O. Scott (who I usually trust), and so when my friend said she wanted to see it (she's a huge fan of Matt Damon), I agreed.


I'm really glad I saw this film now, because if I had paid New York prices to see it, I would have been livid. This was simply not good, to the extent that it baffles me that both Ebert and Scott loved it. First of all, the film focuses on three characters, and only one of them is really charming. The French woman, Marie, spends half of her part of the movie daydreaming off in the distance before she figures out that her new life calling is to tell everyone about the afterlife, and her story is lackluster. The boy, Marcus, would probably be more relatable if the actor wasn't so lifeless; he's supposed to be shell-shocked by his environment at first (he's also put in a foster home because his mother has to go to rehab), but he just can't deliver the emotion needed for the heavier scenes. Even Matt Damon, who has the most likable character, George, is lackluster; he doesn't really have that much to do. His arc involves his brother trying to get him back in the business and a woman who he meets at a night class that's both incredibly annoying and completely predictable. He's also given cliches like the old "it's not a gift, it's a cuuurse" line, which, really? Really?


That's the main problem I had with this film: really? There were so many moments that were almost painfully cliche, culminating in a sudden turn of genre at the very end that leads to a stupendously ridiculous ending shot. The lighting was really off too; I'd almost think it was accidental, but a lot of the weirdness is too deliberate to be anything but choice. Is there a reason that Marie's face has a perfect line of shadow cutting her face in half in a scene where nothing sinister or interesting is going on? I know that Eastwood knows his lighting; it had to have been intentional, but why? The decisions made about this film are completely baffling, and I was honestly stunned that the two critics I mentioned above both loved in. In particular, A. O. Scott seems to love everything I hated about Hereafter! I will admit that, if he's not gone crazy, my theater might have gotten a bad print; he compliments the lighting and "saturated colors", and in the film I saw, those colors were anything but saturated, but that still doesn't change the cringe-worthy writing.


Yeah...so...don't fucking see Hereafter. Go see The Social Network, or Jackass 3D or something.

Shameful #8 - Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In (2008, Alfredson) 

First, let me say that I’ve loved the whole vampire lore since I was a kid. Not like one of those kids who is like, totally secretly a vampire, but I loved them. I even wrote my eighth grade research paper on them. Nowadays, everyone is on the hate bandwagon because of Twilight, and now everybody talks about how vampires are brooding and whiny and boring, but I still think vampires are fucking awesome.

Let the Right One In is really a great departure from the vampires everyone is sick of. Oskar, a shy boy who’s being bullied at school, meets Ely, a girl who just moved in with her father, and they begin to fall for each other. It’s a simple, cute story, except for the fact that Ely is a vampire, the man, Hakan, isn’t her father, and he’s been murdering people to drain their blood so he can feed her. The great thing about Ely is that while we feel the tenderness between her and Oskar, the film never lets us forget that she is, at heart, a monster. She still has the mind of a twelve year old, and unlike many vampires today, she’s apologetic, but not ashamed about what she has to do. She feeds on blood, and she has to do what she has to do. It’s a really great contrast to the romance in the film.

Very soon, the American remake, Let Me In, is coming out. I have to admit, I’ve never been a fan of the whole “foreign film does well? Let’s remake it in English!” trend, especially since the remake rights were sold for this film before it even got released outside of film festivals. I feel like it says that 1) foreign films aren’t good enough, and 2) Americans don’t like/want to read subtitles (which personally, I’ve always thought was stupid, but that’s another story later). However, from what I’ve seen of the previews, Let Me In looks like it stays true to the original and will be just as eerie. I still say watch the original, but it definitely looks good, so I guess I can’t complain about it.

Shameful #7 - North By Northwest

Warning: the review below has some spoilers.

North by Northwest (1959, Hitchcock)

Before this, I had only seen one other Hitchcock movie, Rear Window, which I really liked. I haven't seen it in probably two years, but I thought since I liked that I'd really love this. After all, Hitchcock is the king of thrillers.

Unfortunately, I wasn't really too thrilled. The story is intriguing (Roger Thornhill an ad executive gets mistaken for a spy named George Kaplan and has to elude men from the "other side" who want to get him out of the way), but the mistaken identity shtick got old a bit quickly for me, especially when he starts posing as George Kaplan and yet is still surprised when people think he's George. The biggest flaw (yes, I'm saying a critically acclaimed Hitchcock film has a flaw) is that we learn that George Kaplan doesn't exist way too early, and so the search turns from suspenseful to tedious. We know he's on a wild goose chase, so it's really just a countdown until he figures it out. 

Near the end of the first act Eva Saint Marie's character shows up to help him, and it's so obvious that she has something to do with this that it's insane that Roger doesn't suspect anything. Their flirting seems almost required by the plot, but to be fair, she has a reason for doing it. The film didn't really grab me until Roger confronts the man who thinks he's a spy, Van Damm, and cleverly manages to get in the hands of the police and away from him. At that point the Professor, one of the people who created Kaplan, comes to re-explain what we learned about an hour before, and things get really interesting as now Roger has to actively fake being Kaplan to protect another agent. That's when the tension really begins to build, especially when the other agent's cover is in danger.

The very end disappointed me a bit though; it takes you right from the climax of the suspense down to a cute Hollywood ending through a match cut, which for me really jarred with the otherwise fantastic third act.

I can't stand it when I don't like a film I know is good, but I just wish there had been more focus on the spy games going on and a bit less of the love story and Roger's floundering. I guess maybe I should just go and watch Suspicion to make up for it.

Bullitt - Steve McQueen is awesome, y/y?

Bullitt (1968, Yates)

I watched this right after The Magnificent Seven, but before that all I knew about Bullitt was that it made the cowboy cop, had a really famous car chase, and Steve McQueen was literally the coolest man ever to walk the earth.

I was not disappointed, and even a little surprised. Bullitt really does make the cowboy cop trope; Frank Bullitt ignores the pressure of a smug and slightly slimy politician, and goes out to investigate on his own to take down the mob. The film is most famous for its 100mph car chase, which hasn't aged well now that every other film has some giant exploding car chase (and it doesn't help that I'm a gigantic Top Gear fan). That said, it's still awesome.

The real surprising thing about Bullitt is that for a film that's said to have created the cowboy cop, it actually deconstructs it. I don't want to get into spoilers, but suffice to say that Bullitt doesn't entirely save the day, and at the end he's questioning every single decision he made in the film. Bullitt is more than Steve McQueen being awesome (which he completely is); the last act gives it some unexpected depth.

This isn't really a good post, so here's a picture of Steve McQueen to make up for it.

Shameful #6 - Fitzcarraldo

Fitzcarraldo (1982, Herzog)

Fitzcarraldo is the story of a man in Peru with a dream. Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald aka Fitzcarraldo, is a entrepeneur who loves opera. His dream is to open an opera house in the jungle, but he's currently bankrupt from a failed attempt to build a railroad across the Andes. The other businessmen scoff at him, teasing him about how he;ll go bankrupt next, but he borrows money from his girlfriend, a brothel owner, to buy land to start a rubber business. He gets the land cheaply beause it's almost impossible to get to, but he braves the journey up the river anyway.

Klaus Kinski plays the titular Fitzcarraldo,and it's a really startling performance. I, like everyone, was used to the raving, crazy Kinski that we all hear about (allegedly natives offered to kill him on Herzog's behalf while shooting), but he's so soft and just plain likeable here. He makes it so easy to relate to this guy; he's so in love with opera, so optimistic, so driven that you really want him to succeed, even when he's forcing people to drag a steamboat up a mountain.

Oh, did I forget that part? Yeah, they drag a steamboat up and down a small mountain. And by "they" I mean "Herzog and the crew". Herzog believed that if they used special effects, it wouldn't look real, so he actually did it, and it's just as impressive as it sounds.

Anyway, this is the second in an unofficial trilogy of a sort of 'man vs. jungle' theme, the first being Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Fitz has to brave treacherous waters, and, like Aguirre, he and his crew must deal with sickness, mutiny, and threats of native attack, all of which threaten his chances of achieving his dreams. Unlike Aguirre, however, Fitz succeeds in a way at the end; he introduces opera to the natives (he plays it while going up the river) and, at the end, to the rest of the town, and so while he still isn't rich, he gets a sweet ending. It's weird for me to say that a two and a half hour movie about going up a river to start a rubber business is "cute', but there's definitely an "awww" factor by the time you get to the end.

Nicolas Cage Series #4 - Birdy / #5 - The Boy in Blue

Alright, a double on the Nicolas Cage marathon (though not really).

Birdy (1984, Parker)

Birdy is an unexpectedly emotional film about the friendship between two boys, Al (Nicolas Cage) and 'Birdy' (Matthew Mondine), told through flashbacks as Al tries to get Birdy to open up in a mental hospital. Both were drafted in the Vietnam War, and Al, still recovering from severe facial wounds, is sent to try and save Birdy, who has stopped communicating since he came back. We learn that Birdy has been obsessed with birds and flying for all of his life, and when Al first meets him, it's a strange hobby. But as they grow older he gets more and more obsessed and withdraws from society, and when he sees him after the war, it seems like he really thinks he's a bird.

It's really moving, seeing how isolated Birdy feels throughout his life; Al is his only friend. By the time they meet again, Al is almost as broken as Birdy; his face is healing, but he's not dealing well with the possibility of being disfigured and the trauma of the war in general. I was honestly surprised about how involved I got into the story; Parker really does a good job of helping you understand Birdy and why Al is so loyal to him.

However, it's almost completely ruined by the flippant, out of nowhere ending. The last act ramps up the drama as Al tries to save Birdy from being stuck in a mental hospital for the rest of his life as he worries that he'll be thrown in there also, and then it just...ends. Seriously. Abruptly, and in a way that would seem comedic if we hadn't been watching a drama for the last two hours. I mean, really? It's still worth watching, but it would be so much better if the ending wasn't so fucking flippant.

Fortunately for the next movie I watched, I didn't have such a big problem with the end.

The Boy in Blue (1986, Jarrot)

Unfortunately, that's because I didn't get there. The Boy in Blue is a typical rise from nowhere to fame sports movie about sculling set in the 1870s. Sculling is some sort of boat racing (it's similar to crew, except really kind of only for one person instead of a team), and it's pretty fucking boring. There's really no attempt to make it seem interesting in any way, so why should I care? Cage is playing the offbeat chick-fucking decent guy with something special that he's played in Valley Girl and the flashback parts of Birdy, but it's really out of place in the 1870s. I lasted maybe 45 minutes, hoping that something would differentiate this from every rags to fame sports movie movie ever, but it really didn't, so I have to admit that I gave up. Don't even bother with this one.

Shameful #5 - Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

 What can I say about Taxi Driver?

Seriously, what can I say about it besides that it's great. Scorsese perfectly sets the dingy world of 1970s New York at night; even now where the streets are cleaned up and Times Square has (almost) no sex shops, there's still that feeling you have when you're in the back of a cab late at night, lights passing you by coming out of the darkness and momentarily flitting into your window. The soundtrack is simply a perfect addition to the visuals.

But what really stands out about Taxi Driver is, of course, Travis Bickle. He starts out as an outsider, weightlessly floating through time; he doesn't sleep, and so his existence is like that feeling of a long car ride when you're tired. He's there, but he seems to float past society without entirely understanding it; he's physically there when he's at the diner with his coworkers, but something's just sliding by him that he can't understand. His detachment causes him to look down on the majority of society, and when he tries to connect with Betsy, he doesn't get the subtlety behind human interaction. He knows on a date you're supposed to take a girl to a movie, but he really can't understand why she's upset when he takes her to a porn theater. Every negative experience he has pushes him closer and closer to the edge, until he feels that since he's the only one outside of the societal system, he has to be the one to save it. Unfortunately, because he's outside of it, he doesn't understand the consequences of assassinating a politician or killing the only protection Iris has; in particular, he can't see how complicated Iris' situation might be. We don't know why she ran away from home, but Travis can't even imagine that she might have a good reason.

Roger Ebert compares this film to John Ford's The Searchers, but I just can't agree. In The Searchers, the main character is an outsider because he's out of the times; he's a former Confederate soldier who lost his purpose once the Civil War ended. While he is on a quest to save a girl who we later find out doesn't want to be saved, and he does take her back to her parents, I feel like The Searchers doesn't have quite the same purpose as Taxi Driver. The Searchers is about a quest gone wrong and how racism and societal values have changed after the war; the main character's main issue is that he is no longer relevant. Travis' main issue is that he's always been an outsider, and that constant isolation causes him to lash out against the world. Both characters see things in terms of black and white, but for very different reasons.

Shameful #4 - Annie Hall

I was given Annie Hall after the admission that I had never seen a Woody Allen film, and with it being a multiple award winner, one of his most popular films, and a New York classic, I thought it'd be just perfect for me.

Annie Hall (1977, Allen)

And it really almost was. Woody Allen paints a really charming and relatable picture of both Manhattan and Brooklyn, and of some daily life pet peeves (the scene where he's in front of the pretentious idiot at the movies is one great example). It's just brilliantly structured and written; I loved Alvy Singer's asides to the camera, the scene where Annie's distant in bed, and my favorite was the two of them on Annie's balcony, showing both of them frantically worrying about sounding good to the other. I have to admit, as a New Yorker, I also enjoyed some of the jokes about LA, mainly the driving everywhere and the fact that Alvy's terrible at it.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn't stand Alvy. I was really surprised, since I am a neurotic Brooklynite (I'm actually just about half an hour away from Coney Island!), but he's just too neurotic. I just couldn't feel too sorry for him; while Annie's also definitely a flawed character, Alvy's anxiety triggers were just so over the top that I couldn't understand why she, or any of his other girlfriends, would be with him at all. For example, I mentioned Alvy not being able to drive in LA. Immediately after crashing into three different things, he's pulled over by a cop. Hilarious. But he just fumbles so damn much that I just got tired of it. He is charming sometimes, but not enough to offset how annoying he is. It's really kind of a shame, because I loved pretty much everything else about Annie Hall.

Nicolas Cage Series - Valley Girl / Shameful - Star Wars

Valley Girl (1983, Coolidge)

Not counting Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Valley Girl,  is Nicolas Cage's first appearance in film, and the first where he's billed as Nicolas Cage. It's a loose retelling of Romeo and Juliet, where the Juliet character, Julie, is the leader in a trio of valley girls, and Cage's character, Randy, is the punk Romeo from Hollywood who vies for her affection.

Really, I feel like there's not much to say about this film. I grew up in a decade where the Valley Girl was a trope already being lampooned and where the punk isn't a weirdo, but the awesome one. In general, the whole "good girl bad boy they're from different worlds but it eventually works" storyline is pretty damn boring. The only thing that makes this remarkable at all, besides the now-surprising idea of Nicolas Cage as the hot guy, is Julie's parents. Instead of the typical "I disapprove of your unconventional love!" types, Julie's parents are hippies who own a health food store, smoke pot on occasion, and really just want her to be happy.

Oh, also, for those who are interested, there are tits. I'm not, so yeah, it was a wash for me.

Fortunately for me, soon after that I saw something was much, much better.

Star Wars (1977, Lucas)

 

I was a little reluctant to see this at first. After all, everyone on earth knows that Darth is his father, Leia is his sister, and those Family Guy episodes pretty much go through the entire plot of the first two films, so I thought, why bother? I just didn't feel like it, and the exaggerated shock I got whenever I admitted I hadn't seen it as a kid got so annoying that I felt like I never wanted to.

But I did, and it was awesome. So awesome that I can't even give a half-decent review or discussion about it, because my thoughts after watching it were basically "space battles laser guns PEW PEW omg Han Solo is so awesome and cute!"

Someday I'll probably end up watching the other two of the original trilogy (I really see no reason to watch the prequels at all), but really, Star Wars works so well on its own that I don't feel like I really need them.

Which almost definitely means I'll be forced to watch them about five years from now.

Shameful #2 - The Godfather Part II

What can I say about The Godfather that hasn't already been said? The first film is an absolute masterpiece, and at first I thought, why bother watching the second part? The ending of the first is so poignant, what could come next that would beat that? Part II isnt quite as great as the first, but it gets as close as I think it possibly can.

The Godfather, Part II (Coppola, 1974)

Part II picks up a few years after the first, as Michael struggles to hold his family together while trying to turn legitimate. His story is put parallel to the life of Vito Corleone, starting with the death of his father all the way to his success in America. The strongest points of the film are Michael's struggles with his family. Throughout the film he isolates himself from everyone in order to make deals that he belives will help the family in the long run, but end up destroying all of his relationships. The first film dealt with destiny; Michael does his best to stay out of the family business, but once his father is shot, everything comes crashing down, and the question is, was it the right thing to get involved? In the end, he becomes the one thing he said he wouldn't, and we are left to wonder if, even under different circumstances, could he have really escaped?

Part II deals with the balance between power and relationships; Vito gains power to help his family and friends, whereas Michael destroys his family for power. We watch him push away his sister and his wife as Vito brings together his neighborhood and forms bonds, and we remember the Michael from Connie's wedding who loved his family and would do anything for them. While the events of the first film can be considered out of Michael's control, he is fully responsible for his family, and in the end, he fails. He neglects his wife and son, then expects her to follow him through hell and highwater and threatens her when she resists, he looks down on his sister for remarrying after he killed her first husband, he pushes Tom out of the picture, and finally, he murders his own brother. At the end, we feel horrible for Michael, but the pity and sorrow is for the Michael of the first film, who is long dead, and replaced with the Michael now who deserved the solitude he has.

I still think the first one is better; the transitions between Michael and Vito sometimes disrupt the flow of the film, but that's a minor point in an otherwise fantastic movie.

Shameful film series #1 - Raiders of the Lost Ark

I'm currently participating in a little online experiment where people post movies they're ashamed they haven't seen, and others pick what movie on their list they should watch. So far I've watched five films, and next week will be watching the sixth.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)

 Raiders is one of those films that's an instant classic. Even if you haven't seen it, its best scenes are so popular that you've seen endless parody and homages of them. Inspirted by 30s and 40s swashbuckling heroes, Indiana Jones (as pretty much everyone who has even a passing interest in movies knows) is an archaeology professor who travels to strange, perilous lands to retrieve priceless and rare artifacts. In Raiders, he has to keep the Ark of the Covenant and its mysterious power away from the Nazis while trying to outwit his archaeology rival. So it has a smart, witty hero who can squeeze out of any trap and weild both a gun and a whip, exotic locations, and some of the most menacing villains ever: Nazis.

So why didn't I really like this film? I could blame part of it on the ubiquity of homages to this film (the race against the giant ball in the temple and the face melting at the end being the most famous), but that's not entirely true. While watching it, I could see on a technical standpoint that the action almost never stopped, but emotionally, I felt like I had been there and done that already, even though I can't recall exactly what. I think part of the problem might simply be the genre; maybe I'm just not into the swashbuckling type.

But I think another reason doesn't have to do so much with film, but with cartoons. When I grew up, the 90s, saturday morning cartoons reigned supreme, whether they were classics like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, or newer ones like Batman and Animaniacs. I guess the heroes I grew up with were either witty goofballs like Bugs or Wakko, or quieter, subtle heroes like Batman, and so Indy just doesn't grab me as much. Or maybe other cartoons filled the niche that Indy filled with most other people; the only example that comes to mind at the moment is The Adventures of Jackie Chan (which I remember giving up on after a season or so), but that show had the sort of artifact hunting combined with mysticism that Raiders has.

Of course, there's always the simple answer that I just hate fun.

What the hell is this all about? (Intro Post)

So welcome to Film Deprived! I'm a film studies about to go into my senior year of college, and I've called myself film deprived for a while because despite supposedly being a film scholar, I just really haven't seen nearly as many movies as I should have, the classics in particular. I've decided then to, with the help of Netflix, vastly increase the number of films I watch, and I plan to write something about each one I see.

I'm starting off by participating in a Nicolas Cage year-long marathon (see Deconstructing Cage) along with another effort on a film forum to get myself to watch some of the classics (and not so classics) that I've missed. When I go back to school, I might write more about more recent films; the town that I go to school in is a lot cheaper to go see a movie in than New York City.

Hopefully this'll be at least sort of interesting!