(500) Days of Summer

So, Kari's back to sleeping on her own, in her own bed. I kinda made a fuss about it - jokes about clinginess, jabs about "moving in together" - but I actually kind of miss her. I know this sounds bad, but I liked that she needed me. I'm glad she's getting better though (although her getting involved in the investigation the way she is is WAY too dangerous).

Anyway, last week, we rented out a movie. We expected it to be a typical indie romcom; quirky, offbeat, and probably not as intelligent as it thinks it is (see: Youth In Revolt) but instead we got a remarkable deconstruction of romance fiction, the Mary Sue, and of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl idea. (500) Days of Summer is the story of Tom Hansen, and his obsession with emotionally unavailable Summer Finn, and proceeds as a non-linear sequence of notable days in their relationship. The movie's structure being told in such a jumbled fashion allows for fascinating storytelling turns, Joseph Gordon Levitt returns as my leading man-crush (He's actually better in this than in Brick!), and the movie is absolutely worth whatever you have to pay to see it. Go do so, then read the rest of this - otherwise, just skip to "SPOLERS OVER". SPOILERS AHEAD.

The best thing about (500) Days of Summer is that it doesn't bullshit us. This actually tuned off a lot of people I know who honestly wanted the bullshit, but this movie isn't concerned with this. The emotionally immature, over-romantic protagonist, who'd be the Mary Sue author avatar in any other work, is here presented as a flawed person. At no point does he try to engage Summer as anything other than a symbol representing his perfect woman. Indeed, the most important line in the film, and one which sums up Tom's problem, is his friend's line during the interview sequence: "Robyn's better than the girl of my dreams. 'Cause she's real." And his inability to grasp this is what causes his eventual heartbreak. They were never right for each other, and the film won't just stick them together because "They're the romantic leads, it's what we do!" It didn't surprise me to find out that this film was based on an actual relationship, heartbreak, and accompanying revelation, because it possesses an honesty and a brutal reality (think the heartbreaking "Expectations vs. Reality" scene) which most indie romcoms avert, instead putting the author avatar with the vague representation of the girl who got away.







































SPOILERS OVER.


Of course another thing to be aware of is that this movie is frequently hilarious, well acted, stunningly written and brilliantly put together piece of cinema. Chloe Moretz continues to be far and away the best under-18 actor in Hollywood, Zooey Deschanel continues to be the knit-cap-owner's alternative to Katy Perry, for what that's worth, and the whole thing comes off as the best, most refreshing and by far most intelligent romantic comedy since Annie Hall back in the 70s. A must-see.

Whatever Works

Kari's getting better. She's got a new post up on her blog. It's...she's been through a lot. But yeah, she's improving. After what she was in that flat, it's going to be an uphill battle. She's basically trying out anything to bring her comfort; she's delving more into her religious beliefs (which I have...mixed feelings about), trying to spend more time with her family. Seeking comfort wherever she can find it. But she's not finding it. I don't know why my nihilistic ass is so saddened by her coming to the same conclusion about the world that I did years ago, but it's troubling to me. Her genuine belief that the world is fundamentally a good place is...it's going fast. There's no two ways about it.

But anyway, the show must go on. This isn't a fucking LiveJournal, this is a movie blog! And next up is a review which, for once, isn't about a movie which has the sun shining out of it's hindquarters.

Woody Allen could almost be seen as an inspirational figure, one who plods ever onwards in his quest to make the movie he's made over and over again since the early 80s. His tenacity may be admirable, but his writing and directing chops are unfortunately nowhere near the levels they were at during those Annie Hall/Love and Death/Manhattan years, despite a light patch with Match Point back in 2006. With Whatever Works, he hands the lead role over to Larry David, perhaps trying to cash in on the rightly lauded Curb your Enthusiasm (The Season 1-7 boxset of which I have right here, and which I display more love than I would towards my firstborn). Both David and Allen delve into untrodden ground by, of all things, having the lead character be a neurotic, audience aware Jew.

Anyway, the movie details a Russian physicist's relationship with a young southern runaway (Played by Evan Rachel Wood) and eventually her family, and the theme of the movie ends up coming across as "everyone's life would be better if only they lived like Woody Allen." Everyone in this movie's problems are solved by integrating into the Manhattan social scene which, while always a trapping of Allen's cinema, has never quite taken the reins this way before, and it just comes off as unbearably smug.

Of course, what sucks the most is that there's nothing to back it up. David flounders with too rigid a script, the supporting cast, with the exception of Wood, are entirely forgetable, and the script falls flat and feels altogether unfinished. The comedy in particular lacks any real humour, and never once made me laugh.

I wanted to like this. I love a lot of Allen's work, and I outright resent having to criticise Larry David, but this film comes off as smug, without the chops to back itself up. Avoid if at all possible.

Last few days've been stressful. Kari is still in a really bad way. Having walked in on what she saw would do that to anyone. She needs me there for her to sleep, and she wakes up screaming every night. She's not eating. Police questioning didn't help. They wouldn't say it, but her calling it in was too close to the proposed time of death for her not to be a suspect. But she's getting better, slowly but surely.

She's not telling me something that happened up there. She wouldn't tell the police, and she hasn't told me. But she's scared. And I can't help her.

Bad stuff going down here. Check Kari's Blog over on the right there to see what I mean. That's what's going on in my life.

Sucker Punch

Hey all! Sorry for the...errr, dark last post, just felt the need to get down what I was thinking. To make it up for you, here's a new review.

Zack Snyder's status as the geekiest director to be largely disliked by geeks isn't exactly an enviable one. His Dawn of the Dead adaptation was interesting, if ill-realised, his 300 adaptation was flat, if meme-riffic, and his Watchmen adaptation was...well, it was fucking superb, but people were so determined to hate it that it's still gone down in infamy. For this, his first non-adaptation, the internet hate machine (no, not THAT one) was already fully powered up. Indeed, the first wave of reviews have largely panned it as flashy, superficial crap, the kind of mindless processed cheese which shouldn't get out of the studio in this day and age. They're missing the point spectacularly.

Of course, on a superficial level, the movie does have a lot on display. Sucker Punch, a phrase meaning a surprise attack, tells the story of Baby Doll, a girl banished to a corrupt insane asylum by her evil step-father following her mother and sister's deaths, as she seeks to escape, both mentally and physically. The tale of mental patients, imagining themselves as old-time prostitutes and dancers, imagining themselves as badass super-soldiers gives a lot to look at, certainly; rip-roaring action scenes which use their in-universe fictionality to whip up anime-esque Japanese temples, besieged castles, futuristic train jobs and steam-punk warzones, each offering the main girls' imagined selves a playground of baddies on which to show their violent, powerful sides. This is a film where scantily-clad badasses with sub-machine guns take on both sides of a Lord of the Rings-style battle while Search and Destroy plays in the background. That's all kinds of awesome by itself. The film itself uses a similar photography style to 300 and Watchmen, using heavy post-production to weave a sense of hyper-reality in the visuals, full of inky blacks and limited colour palettes. This allows Snyder to establish a sense of place with startling efficiency, and gets him showing off his action scene expertise in visually sumptuous combat sequences.

However, there is a lot more going on under the surface than the film has been given credit for. The hints at a greater underlying intelligence should have been clear, particularly in the subtle use of feminist themes. The film is one of the girls using their sex appeal to get the better of the men who have them trapped, in a way which clearly draws a parallel between the use of feminine sexuality and the power they display in the combat fantasies; of a violent, pragmatic, objective-based nature typical of male action heroes. Indeed, while the girls, in both the bordello and war-zone delusions, are very scantily or sexily attired, the camera never stoops to male gaze in order to pander to the males in the audience, instead choosing to shoot the girls like any other action hero. Again, their sexuality is analogous to the more typically masculine power gained through violence and pragmatism. Their femininity gives them power. Directorial choices like this make the accusations of exploitation on the part of the movie's detractors ring hollow.

Of course, a feminist reading still doesn't plumb the depths of this film. The central themes would be "seduction" and "escapism". Indeed, the film's aesthetic and narrative choices are largely informed by escapism. The story uses escapism as a motivation for it's dream worlds, with the characters' imaginations taking them away from the horror of their violent, degrading, sexually abusive asylum into places where they have power. The aesthetics and set-pieces, however, heavily borrow from OUR forms of escapism; films, videogames, comics, anime and the like. The futuristic train invasion is straight out of Firefly's "The Train Job", with elements of Final Fantasy XIII amongst others. The castle draws from both Lord of the Rings and the Dragon Age games. The WWI/WWII steam-punk battlefield is more than just reminiscent of Killzone (the enemies in particular look EXACTLY like the Helghast). The Japanese setting could be any anime or samurai film ever, realised as gorgeous live-action HD. This gives the audience a level of familiarity and comfort in these worlds that mimics the sentiments of the girls; these digressions are a welcome shift from the sincerely horrible mental hospital, and the only-slightly-better bordello, which draws us in with the characters with startling efficacy. Indeed, what of the film was delusion, and whose, is an issue which is left tantalisingly ambiguous.

The seductive elements are also at work both on the characters and the audiences. I won't say much, but keep in mind that the fanservice elements of the combat fantasies are there to appeal to the audience in the same way that the erotic dancing it represents is meant to appeal to the viewers, presenting a (rather self-effacing on Snyder's part) critique of geek culture, and rightly so, given that culture's recent, seismic expansion, thanks in part to Snyder and his contemporaries. Thus, the sucker punch of the title isn't just the tactic favoured by the girls in their escape, it's a philosophy which ultimately shapes the entire narrative structure.

The nuts and bolts of the film impressed me too. Emily Browning makes an underwhelming lead as Baby Doll, but one which admittedly grows in strength substantially as the film goes on. Jena Malone, unrecognisable from Donnie Darko, where I last saw her, makes Rocket a crowd favourite, and Abbie Cornish makes a startlingly compelling Sweet Pea. Vanessa Hudgens as Blondie shows off how her prowess as a dancer translates to great action sequences (She steals the scene in the trench warfare fantasy). Oscar Isaac makes for a great primary antagonist; it is Jon Hamm, however, who somehow becomes the only redeemable male character, despite ultimately being the threat at the heart of the movie as the "High Roller". The score is great, with mashups and covers of classic songs, with a notable emphasis on songs about dreams. As I mentioned earlier, a great cover of The Stooges' Search and Destroy was a personal favourite for me. The editing is sharp and well-judged, and the video quality is superb.

One thing to mention, however, is that this is a VERY DARK movie. How it got a 12 is beyond me. Indeed, to achieve this, several vital scenes had to be cut (particularly to get it past the MPAA), so it might be a good idea to wait for the Director's Cut home release, as it will almost certainly be the better version.

So yeah, not for everyone, ideal for the geeks in your life, much smarter than it at first seems, still great fun. I had a great night at the cinema with it, and you may well do too.

Personal post: An old memory came up...

When I was eight, I was bitten by a dog.

I loved animals so much when I was a kid. I wanted to be a vet more than anything in the world. My mum worked a few shifts at an animal shelter run by the RSPCA, just as a volunteering thing, and after she picked me up from school, she'd take me over there so I could play with the animals. They were mostly ex-pets the old owners just didn't have the time for, so they were perfectly fine, and it was like having a dozen pets of all different kinds: dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, sometimes lizards. They had someone to play with them, the staff could go and do other things, and I even helped out taking care of some of the sick ones. I loved it, and it wasn't just about the play. I didn't get why people wouldn't want these animals. They took a little more care than they were willing to give, but they were beautiful animals, loving and full of life and personality. I felt proud that I was there for them, and I loved them so much that I was happy to be their friend.

Then, one summer night, they brought in an old dog they'd rescued from an abusive household. The kids would beat it up, the parents would ignore or not feed it. Once or twice, the kids would shave it, and there were still tufts of hair longer than the other parts and deep cuts in its skin. There were even a few burns. It had been through a lot. It was tranquil enough around the adults - repeated beatings had taught it not to tangle with anything as large as them - but I went bounding up to it, arm outstretched, ready to love it like I loved all the others, and it bit down deep into my arm. Its teeth tore through an artery and I was rushed to hospital.

Days spent in the bed after the operation. I spent the whole time wondering why it bit me. I realised that it was only chance, blind luck, that that dog had had that family, that its life was ruined. It wasn't a bad dog to start with; it was made that way by a whim of fate. There was no meaning behind it's life; it was bought as a puppy, abused for years, and now it was going to be put down because it bit a child in what it thought was self-defence, and none of it was anyone's fault. None of it had purpose. There was no agency on its part. Our lives, and our course down them, are simply the products of a dice roll. For an eight-year old child, the realisation that lurking behind my fragile little world of order and happiness was a universe of writhing chaos and cruelty was painful, but not so much as the knowledge that I would never love animals again the way I did. The chance that the dog would be bought by that family, abused, abandoned, and exposed to me was enough to ruin one of the first things I ever really loved. I was a victim of chaos. I found other loves; writing, film, music, science. Eventually I found Kari. But it never felt stable. It never felt like the good things in my life, the things that made me happy, could sustain against a cold, malicious outside and an aloof, uncaring universe.

Last night, I slept with Kari in my arms, pressed tight against me, but I still had a nightmare about that damn dog.

Thanks, Kari...

http://boxofpreciousthings.blogspot.com/2011/03/day-2.html

My girlfriend. She loves me. ¬_¬

Though it's nice she had one day without nightmares or bald guys stalking kids. Nice for the audience I mean, because we don't have to hear her florid drivel about her nightmares, or bald guys stalking kids.

(Love you too! :P )

Four Lions

Chris Morris has never been one to avoid controversy if he can help it. His superlative Brass Eye series was a deft and stunningly unrestrained satire of sensationalist news media, replete with the "Paedogeddon" special (Featuring a before-he-was-famous Simon Pegg, and co-written by a before-he-was-famous Charlie Brooker, funnily enough) which famously was described by one tabloid as "sick" while, on the page opposite, they cooed over a 15-year old Charlotte Church's breasts. Here again, he takes a hilarious look at an issue a lot of people find very serious; terrorism.

Following a small, northern England-based terrorist cell, Four Lions explores their incessant bungling in the leadup to their planned terrorist attack. The cell themselves are an insular group of idiots and psychotics, far removed from mainstream Islam, including the clearly-trying-too-hard British convert Barry, the idiotic Waz and the overly impressionable Hassan. Leader Omar, played by Riz Ahmed, is the closes thing to the only sane man, but even he is a dimwit who is willing to die for...what exactly? He is shown in his interactions with his far more devout brother to not take scripture seriously, or even understand it. He claims to be railing against western imperialism, but embraces western living and popular culture over his native lifestyle time and time again (The characters repeatedly compare themselves to Rambo and prefer Toploader's Dancing In The Moonlight to Muslim music.) These are not fundamentalists; these are impressionable idiots looking for a cause. Ultimately, this seems to be the message at the centre of Four Lions; that anyone who'd kill people in the name of a religion that largely espouses peace is an ignorant moron.

Of course, in spite of all the statement of it all, it's easy to forget when looking back that this was also the funniest comedy anyone made last year. Early on, especially, there was rarely a scene I wasn't doubled over with laughter. The script, courtesy of Morris and the writing team of Peep Show, is pitch-perfect, and all the actors in the comedic roles make every line work beautifully. However, what's most impressive is the two sides to the tale; the characters who aren't there for comedy but for drama never feel like dead weight, instead providing their own side to the story, and when the comedy does die away to give way for the drama, it's very effective.

So, if you want a side-splitting comedy and a thoughtful meditation on terrorism...you're officially in a weird mood, but either way, this film is both of these things and more. Utterly hilarious, very thought-provoking, and well worth watching.

PS. Of course, something of note is that in the UK, this film wasn't that controversial. Fun little values dissonance fact to any Americans reading; the British don't care that much about terrorism. We had our first major blow against us a long time ago, so we're used to the idea that we're not invincible. That's why we could make this happen. Have fun following this act.

Personal post: Kari's blog

Hey all, just to say, Kari's got a blog up ahead of her internship at the local primary school.The post up now's just about her continuing ill health and a weird nightmare she had, but apparently she's going to post about her time at Motcombe, because, well, who uses a private diary these days?

http://boxofpreciousthings.blogspot.com/2011/03/first-post.html

Movie review this evening. I can tell you're drooling in anticipation.

Brick

Brick, director Rian Johnson's 2005 debut, is one of those great gems hidden amongst the independent film stockpile. Filmed on a budget of $475,000, this wonderfully crafted neo-noir takes the tropes of Dashiell Hammett and transplants them into a Californian high school.

Jospeh Gordon Levitt (post-3rd Rock From The Sun, pre-(500) Days Of Summer) takes the lead as Brendan Frye, the school loner turned amateur sleuth, trying to bust a local drug ring and avenge a murdered friend, and this role was really where the Nolan-endearing star quality Levitt showed off in Inception and (500) Days of Summer really begins to shine. As the lead, he radiates cool as the character who knows how to play all the angles and how not to get played himself, but also explores vulnerability in his performance (emotionally and literally - note how the various injuries he takes stack up throughout the film). His, however, is just one of many great acting jobs in this film - Lucas Haas as drug lord The Pin, Nora Zehenter (who I did NOT recognize from Heroes!) as sexy femme fatale Laura and Noah Fleiss as Tug. Each character brings life to well-worn noir archetypes, but simultaneously imbues them with modern energy brought on by the sincere emotional rawness of a contemporary indie film.

Of course, the MVP here is Rian Johnson's superb screenplay. With the style of dialogue modelled directly after those old Raymond Chandler books, it brings the achingly cool world of noir to life. Surprisingly, it rarely seems contrived or forced, but instead really feels like what these characters would say. The story itself is a great little mystery which unravels at a fine pace and really keeps the audience on their toes. That said, that the DVD doesn't come with subtitles is going to hurt for those who can't get past the intimidating slang.

All in all, Brick is a great little movie which packs both style and substance, and to this day is an utterly unique, beautifully realised work.

Ran

Here's a fun one. Ran ("Chaos" in Japanese) was the final samurai epic of the undisputed master of samurai epics, Akira Kurosawa. As fortune would have it, it's also one of his great masterpieces, easily one of the best films ever made.

Ahhh, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Akira Kurosawa is one of those names which comes up whenever "greatest directors ever" are being talked about. Director of, among others, The Seven Samurai, Rashomon and Yojimbo, his formidable canon of work stands out even amongst the highest-end directs you could care to name. And towards the end of his life, at age 75, he created his 1985 opus. A treatise on the chaos, brutality and nihilism of warfare, it adapts the tale of King Lear into a story of warring states tearing a kingdom apart. To say anymore would be spoiling the film for one half of you and patronising the other half for not knowing how King Lear ends.

What is particularly striking is the way the battle scenes are shot; they watch down from up high, frequently lingering only on piles of corpses in the mud or blood-splattered scenery, giving the impression of a deity gazing down upon the carnage. Despite striking scenery and wonderful use of colour, the shots are never beautiful, only sombre, stark and tragic. The characters are similar; a collection of manipulators, madmen and power-hungry warlords, all watching the world around them fall apart beneath Machiavellian schemes, the horror of warfare and the lack of sentimentality from the storytellers. It's brutality is, if not enjoyable, then certainly refreshing; this is a film which sticks to it's nihilistic story.

The visual and narrative sumptuousness of this film could only be achieved through the acquisition of years of expertise which Kurosawa possessed, and make it a must-see.

Personal post: Slightly hairy morning...

Had a hell of a fright this morning. My girlfriend Kari (the girl from the comments on the last post) is heavily allergic to quite a lot of things, and the list keeps growing. And she must have put something in or near her mouth that she didn't know she was allergic to, because when we met up to talk into college together, the inside of her mouth was swelling rapidly. It ended up getting so bad that she had to go to the hospital (fortunately, the general hospital is right next to our college - lucky for her, as she is something of a ill girl). She's okay now, although the inside of her mouth still stings. Luckily, she didn't keel over or anything but still, it's scary when stuff like that happens. She starts her time as a classroom assistant at the local infant school next week, and if she has a reaction like this one, or one of her myriad other long-term ailments flares up...

I feel like I worry about her too much. She's an adult, and she's been coping with her illnesses for years. I just have a tendency to panic when something like this happens.

Just thought I'd get my thoughts down.
KTA.

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino likes dialogue. And feet. But mostly dialogue. This is a fact which anyone who's followed his formidable career path is aware of, yet one which we're all too predisposed to forget. After Kill Bill, in which action was at the forefront - for the first half, anyway - people seemed to have replaced any actual knowledge of his work with an image of him as an artier Michael Mann; a director whose sophisticated framework was there primarily to have elaborate action scenes draped over it. It was this which led people to assume that this would be a shoot-'em-up genre pastiche in which his specialty - scriptwriting - would be limited to a screenplay with increasingly large-fonted BANGs. Indeed, as it has been since Reservoir Dogs, the action scenes are superb; here, however, they are few and far between - the burst after the crecendo of what the film actually takes its delight in. What we have instead is the return, and return to centre stage at that, of Quentin Tarantino's love of dialogue. And feet.

Here, the scenes are extended dialogues, often spilling across different languages, with the characters using their wits to try and outsmart or outmaneuver their enemies in a manner closer to that of a spy movie than to the World War II shooters or Spaghetti Westerns it was supposedly based on. The emphasis on dialogue allows Tarantino's interesting, colourful characters to be deftly explored and fleshed out, detailing their personalities in ways that spill over the limits of the archetypes they represent; the Nazi, the Femme Fatale, the All-American Warrior. These aren't archetypes anyone expects to see a multi-dimensional portrayal of, given the predeliction amongst World War II movies of portraying the conflict itself as a one-dimensional good-vs.-evil showdown. And it's here where we get onto the main point of the film; propaganda.

World War II is a classic case of a conflict of black and grey morality. This is a war where one side committed the Holocaust (In my opinion, the worst thing humanity has ever done) and the other was the only side ever to drop a nuclear bomb offensively, and onto a civilian conurbation, with intent to be used on more (A good contender for the second worst thing humanity has ever done). However, most large-scale films of WWII have, understandably, taken a side; all Germans are explicitly Nazi death machines, all Allies are chiselled wads of machismo bandaging up their dramatically convenient gunshot wounds with their home flags being the norm. However, here, this is toyed with; a film largely based around the premier of Josef Goebbles's latest propaganda film, depicts a war hero, playing himself, gunning down hoards of Allied troops, is itself about soldiers shooting up a bunch of Nazis. Both the German audience in-film, and we, at home, thoroughly enjoy the scenes where this is happening. In the meantime, the film is working overtime to make us find the Nazis sympathetic and intriguing; see Cristoph Waltz' superb turn as SS Colonel Hans Landa, Daniel Bruhl as the earnest Private Zoller, Richard Sammel as an uncomfortably tragic villain in an early scene, and Alexander Fehling as a young Private celebrating the birth of his first child. The Basterds, on the other hand, commit war crimes and are, by any sincere definition terrorists; yet they too are likable. The film challenges us about the use of film to demonise enemies, making it the most explicit entry into the canon of Tarantino's films about films. And in this sense, it does what none of his other genre-inspired works have done, and make a genuine, perceptive comment on the genre and on the mindset of the people watching it.

On top of all that heavy stuff, it's great fun on the surface too. The dialogue scenes are tense and complex, the action scenes range from shocking to fist-pumpingly awesome, every performance is stunning (including one from, of all people, Eli Roth!), the comedy works great, the melancholy works even better, and the entire film is pulled off with a scale and complexity which could be too much for one film and a watchability that can only be achieved by a director who knows how to pull that scale and complexity off. It's also the final collaboration between Tarantino and Sally Menke, his long-time editor, so now's as good a time as any to start paying attention to the hard work that goes into that particular job. I personally hugely enjoyed this film, and I suspect that you will find something to enjoy in it too.