Top 5 Favorite Movies To Watch When I'm Sick

When I talk about favorite movies, I’m talking about movies I can watch over and over again. This could be for a number of different reasons: there are comedies where the jokes come so fast that I have to watch it again to pick up on all of them; or films so full of detail that every time you watch it, I see something new; or I just love it, and I can watch it again and again for that very reason. For those of us who have favorite movies that we can watch over and over again, those movies are like comfort food, just as helpful for feeling better when you’re sick as chicken soup, or picking you up after a bad day as mac & cheese or apple pie. After spending the last week sick, I thought I’d share the list of my Top 5 favorite movies to watch when I’m sick.

Radioland Murders

I’ve mentioned this movie in another blog post ("Top 5 Favorite Movies That Nobody Knows"), and I really cannot say enough about it. While I first saw this movie only four years ago, this has quickly made it to this list as, in that time, I've watched and rewatched this movie over two dozen times. As I've said before, this film is pretty much a love letter to the golden age of radio . . . Complete with references to every type of entertainment that could be found in that medium in 1939. For a kid who grew up listening to his father's collection of radio shows as well as in the community-theatre back stage, the goings-on both on the air and behind the scenes are almost too nostalgic, but mix in a solid murder mystery, a cast of brilliant and thoroughly funny character actors, and enough rapid fire jokes, gags, and one-liners to make even 'Airplane' look timid, and you have an amazingly fun film that never fails to leave me feeling better afterwards.

Rear Window

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbgVGF2J95c

This movie is both my favorite movie of all time and, in my opinion, the greatest film ever made. It’s got everything; comedy, suspense, action, romance, smart dialog and solid social commentary. It is paced perfectly, the characters are well-acted and well-developed, the cast has good chemistry, not only between the leading couple, but every relationship dynamic. Even the setting itself, while fairly obviously set in the time in which it was filmed, has very few aspects about it which date the story and prevent it from being relatable yet today. I could write pages about this film (and have), but the simple point is this: it fits perfectly into those conditions of which I spoke at the beginning of this post. I can watch it again and again, and every time I enjoy it, every time the curtain comes down (or, actually, the blinds) at the end of the film, I just feel better.

Charade

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAzUFti-nVM

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I stayed home sick from school by myself for the first time.  Bored and alone in a big empty house, I found this movie in my parents' collection. I loved it, and I've continued to love it. I love the premise, the sense of humor, the complexity, the twists and turns, the suspense, the chemistry between Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, James Coburn as a villain . . . I really just love everything about it. Ever since that first time seeing it, this has continued to be one of my favorite movies, as well as one of my pics for one of the greatest movies ever made. This is the movie that made me love mysteries and continues to be one of the few romantic movies that I love. Even though the movie involves the deaths of five people, I can't help but enjoy it.

Cluehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDDdeHtrxfA

This is another one of those films that I first saw and loved as a kid, and my appreciation has only grown for it over the years. This is also easily one of the most quotable movies that I know, and I share my love of this movie with friends and family alike. Clue, much like Charade, was one of those that, because we owned it, I watched it a lot when i was a kid, whether sick or healthy, but, whenever I was sick, it was there, and was usually my standard choice to help me feel better. Honestly, if you have not seen this movie yet, this is, in my opinion, one of the funniest movies ever made, and, while it is not without it’s flaws or inconsistencies, particularly with the third ending (yes, third ending), it is also a very smartly written murder mystery in the vein of “The Thin Man” and “And Then There Were None”. A few years ago, the experience of watching this movie was made new for me when I upgraded from the VHS version I had grown up with to DVD. The VHS had all three version as a part of the same movie, but, with the DVD, you could watch it that way, or the way it was shown in theaters, with one ending chosen at random. It was like seeing it for the first time all over again.

Down Periscope

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsEDh9XKwKk

This is one of the most ridiculously stupid movies I know, and I love it. While the psychological satisfaction of seeing Rob Schneider walk the plank is alone worth the price of admission, the whole movie is fun. I first discovered this movie in college, and it quickly became my goto movie to help me destress. While it was originally made to parody submarine action dramas like “Hunt for Red October” and “Crimson Tide” by turning the crew of the sub in question into the Navy version of the residents of “Animal House”, including Harland Williams and ‘Artie, The Strongest Man In The World’ (of “The Adventures Of Pete And Pete”). However, unlike “Animal House”, the cast of “Down Periscope” actually face real conflict and stakes, and, while the movie is a solid comedy, it also has a good amount of action, making for a great ride.

Honorable Mention: Princess Bride

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtj_Ix5IUo8

As was brought to my attention by a friend, "princess bride" is the quintessential movie to watch while you are sick, albeit a little on the nose. Being sick and watching a movie where a kid who is home from school sick is being read a story by his grandfather may be a little 'meta', but it does have a lot in common with the other films on my list. It has a little of everything: action, comedy, romance, suspense; and it is also one of the most quotable films I know, maybe even moreso than Clue. Either way, at the end of the day, its a fun movie with a solid ending that just just leaves you feeling good.

"Faces In A Crowd"

The game of ‘Texas Hold’em’ poker is one of progression: over the course of a given hand, the dealer reveals more and more cards to the players as the players themselves raise the stakes of the game (quite literally) until the players themselves reveal their own cards to see who wins and who’s broke. Murder mysteries are the same way: the storyteller gradually reveals more and more secrets to the audience while raising the stakes at the same time, until finally the true identity of the killer is revealed, and we find out who’s going to emergency and who’s going to jail. 

The key, in both cases, is to maximize the ability to raise stakes in the game / story, so that, when the payoff comes, its that much bigger. In both cases, though, there are two things that you never do: you never play any cards other than those that you are dealt, and you never show your cards early. Both of these seem like obvious rules, since the first is cheating, and the second is just stupid. Storytellers have been violating the former for so long that there is actually a literary term for it (it’s called ‘Deus Ex Machina’ which means, literally, ‘God in the Machine’, but, really, it means cheating), but the more egregious violations of the ‘stupid’ rule are not the filmmakers, but are, instead, the studios which produce and distribute the films (although the filmmakers have plenty to answer for in this respect). 

Most of these crimes against their own films happen due to promotion of the film: in order to convince people to go see the film, they release so much information about and even from the film that they end up revealing elements of the story that give away so much that the audience’s viewing experience is tainted. In other words, the audience knows what will happen before they see it in the movie. 

The most deplorable case of this, to me, was “What Lies Beneath” (2000) from filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (“Back to the Future” trilogy, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, “Forest Gump”). In the middle of making “Cast Away”, the crew took a break from making that film so that Tom Hanks could lose the equivalent of Peter Dinklage in weight, and followed Zemeckis in that time-honored quest to which every filmmaker seems to feel obliged: namely to massacre the works of Alfred Hitchcock and call it ‘homage’ (I’m looking at you, Brian De Palma). Zemeckis would’ve pulled it off, too, if it weren’t for the trailers. The studio marketing department, being as brilliant as they are, used, as the story synopsis for the trailer, the major dramatic reveal from the later half of the second act, effectively giving away the movie, and, therefore, making the entire first eighty minutes of the film unnecessary.  Too bad for Zemeckis, since he (and screenwriter Clark Gregg) had created the most Hitchcockian film I’ve seen since “Charade” (1963). 

Since “What Lies Beneath”, I have not seen a film quite so violated by the ‘stupid’ rule (although I’ve seen some come close). 

That is, until now.

And this most recent violation blows “What Lies Beneath” out of the water.

As I said, you never show your cards early. In a ‘whodunit’ type murder mystery, that means you don’t say who the killer is. You don’t show his face if there’s a kill scene in the first act. You don’t show him holding the one piece of incriminating evidence that the killer was just holding immediately after that same scene. You don’t give him a song and dance number following that scene in which he declares himself the killer.

You definitely, under any circumstances, do not credit any actor with both their character’s real name and the killer’s nom de guerre side by side (see, there’s this thing called ‘the internet’, I know it seems like just a fad now, but . . .).

In the case of “Faces In A Crowd”, this is exactly what was done. This would be bad enough, but this mistake is compounded by the nature of this film, in which characters are portrayed by multiple, even numerous actors as a way of presenting the main character’s affliction. When the point of the film is that you can’t tell who’s who without a scorecard, you don’t taint the scorecard.

This is, unfortunately for me and any other viewers, not the only crime committed against this film. The film itself is, in its entirety, a crime against its own potential. As stated, the film is the story of a woman who is the only witness to have seen the face of a serial killer and survived, but far from being able to help the police catch the killer, she is forced to relearn how to live her life as an injury sustained in her flight from the killer’s chase has left her unable to recognize people’s faces, even, and most arduous, those to whom she is closest. 

This premise doesn’t just imply potential, it demands it, screams and cries out for it like Pinocchio entreating his own humanity. Unfortunately, the filmmakers were hardly up to the task of executing their plot; instead falling back on devices of cliche older than Otto Preminger (legendary filmmaker of “Laura” and “Porgy and Bess”, not, fortunately, connected to this film in any way). Each particular ‘twist’ and ‘revelation’ is more predictable than the last, so that, once the secrets which the aforementioned ‘scorecard’ revealed are finally arrived at, they’ve already been made so plainly inevitable as to declare a pardon for the earlier crime of stupidity.

In the end, the best thing I can say for “Faces In A Crowd” is that it would make a fitting addition to the ‘Lifetime Movie Network’.

"Hotel Transylvania"

So, it’s a Saturday and we needed groceries, which means time to stop at Redbox.

When I wrote about “Beautiful Creatures”, I described something of the thought / discussion process my wife and I go through when choosing what to see at our local multiplex on the off chance the grandparents will babysit. However, when we stop at the Redbox, the considerations are reduced to three questions: what do we want to watch with the kiddo; what are we going to be able to stay awake for after we put him to bed; and what am I interested in watching that my wife isn’t that I can watch in the morning when I wake up at 5am before everyone else is up?

This time, the answer to the second question was ‘nothing’, the answer to the third question I’ll give sometime in the next few days, but the answer to the first was “Hotel Transylvania”.

Over the years, and, especially more recently, I've come to expect a certain quality (or lack thereof) from Adam Sandler vehicles, and, particularly after the public reception of Jack And Jill (which, when I first saw the trailer, I thought it was some kind of elaborate joke that he was playing on the public instead of an actual movie . . . Turns out it was both), my expectations were sufficiently low.  Shoulda known better.

The problem with Adam Sandler movies is one of inconsistency. Actors who manage to have a career of lead roles tend to fall into certain patterns.  When Tom Cruise or Billy Crystal or Katherine Heigl do a movie, they’re always the same. When Johnny Depp or Christian Bale do a movie, they’re always someone different, but they maintain that consistency. Even actors who develop a split career, consistently being one type of character for one type of movie or genre, and a different type of character for a different type of movie or genre. Ben Stiller and Jim Carrey are each either an over the top, ridiculous caricature, or an ordinary schlub in either a ridiculous or serious/dramatic situation.

But Adam Sandler has a habit of departing inconsistently from his standard role ("Punch Drunk Love" and "Reign Over Me", both of which are excellent, but are nothing like a typical Sandler flick), or taking his standard role and putting a twist on it (the endings of both "The Wedding Singer" and "Click" are both uncharacteristically heartfelt, and "Funny People" gets into some pretty heavy drama while poking fun at Sandler's own career). What is evident is that, when he tries, or when he has the right director to reign him in, Adam Sandler is a capable talent. That is, as long as he isn't too busy doing stupid jokes.

While Sandler's influence definitely shows through (particularly in the songs), it complements well the humor of its writer, Robert Smigel, and is powerfully tempered by the film's stylistic director, Genndy Tartakovsky. Smigel is best known for his "TV Funhouse" animated sketches on "Saturday Night Live", such as the "Ambiguously Gay Duo". He has also been a writer for Conan O'Brien, and the voice of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog ('for me to poop on!'). Smigel's influence, however, manifests itself in simple jokes and dialog. The overall tone, pacing and technique of the film are, to anyone familiar with his work, uniquely Tartakovsky’s.

Any kids who grew up through the nineties with Cartoon Network probably remember some of Tartakovsky’s most notable creations, namely “Dexter’s Laboratory” and “Powerpuff Girls”, but at the turn of the century, Tartakovsky’s work for Cartoon Network took a darker and more serious turn, first with “Samurai Jack”, then, in between the theatrical releases of Star Wars: Episodes 2 and 3, with the ‘micro-series’ “Star Wars: Clone Wars” (not to be confused with the CGI series which airs presently), an experiment whose individual episodes were only 5 minutes in length. While “Hotel Transylvania” signifies two firsts for Tartakovsky, namely his first CGI work, and his feature length directorial debut, his signature style permeates the film.

As for the film itself, although it is not a Pixar film (it was produced and released by Sony Pictures Animation), it has many of the earmarks of a Pixar film. It’s bookends of a tragic opening and a celebratory denouement, it’s focus on family, attention to detail, imaginative action sequences, and it’s wide, spanning, epic, beautiful visuals have all become hallmarks to the films of Pixar. While the humor of the story is both more blue and more literalist than the humor of pixar films tends to be, this, in my mind at least, is the first film by a rival animation studio in years to compete in quality of story and storytelling that Pixar has shown in years.  I know that Sony has Tartakovsky contracted for at least one more film, which, I feel, is smart on their part. If they are as smart as I think they are, all evidence of “The Smurfs” to the contrary, they’ll keep him under contract and happy.

My only problem with the film was the song at the end. When “Shrek” featured a cover of “I’m A Believer” as a finale, I took it in stride.  When “Shrek 2” boasted, as a finale, a duet of Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas covering “Livin’ La Vida Loca”, it felt completely out of place. But having Adam Sandler, as Dracula, rapping with, as his daughter, Selena Gomez, as a finale was . . . indescribable. While I loved the rest of the original music throughout the film, both the songs by Adam Sandler, and the score by Mark Mothersbaugh (film composer and former lead singer of ‘DEVO’), this finale was the most over the top and out of place I’ve seen for an animated film - ever.

Otherwise, if you’re at the Redbox tonight, looking for something to watch with the kids, pick it up.

For a buck and a half, it’s worth a watch.

"April Fool's Day" (1986)

Sherman, set the Wayback machine for 1986.

As a fan of horror films, I’m sure that I’ve seen every cliche in the book. However, there are times when I find that I can still be surprised. Last week, when I watched “Don’t Look Now”, I was surprised by just how awful it was. However, when I watched “April Fool’s Day”, I was surprised by something else entirely. Actually, I was surprised by two things.

Admittedly, it wasn’t the ending. I’ve been aware of the ending of “April Fool’s Day” for a few years now; ever since the tv show “Psych” did their “Friday the 13th”/”Sleepaway Camp” parody episode, and made reference to the “April Fool’s Day” ending. (Just so you know, I’m not going to reveal the end.) I’ve only seen the “April Fool’s Day” ending used in one other place: the movie “Cry_Wolf” (2005), which, just like the “Psych” episode, added it’s own twist onto the “April Fool’s Day” ending. I have not, however, seen the 2008 remake.

No, what surprised me about “April Fool’s Day” was how good it is, and who all I recognized in the film. “April Fool’s Day” is a cavalcade of 80’s ‘almost was’s’; actors who may be vaguely recognizable (as in “oh, I know him, he was in that one thing I saw, what was that called” or “oh, look, it’s that guy, what’s he doing in a slasher movie”); or showed up all over numerous miscellaneous episodes of popular 80’s and 90’s tv series, but almost never had a starring or recurring role; or who may have showed up in starring or primary roles in various 80’s films, but whose careers either dead-ended or were never as widely known for any role that followed.

The most recognizable member of the cast is Thomas F. Wilson, best known for playing every visible male member of the ‘Tannen’ clan in the “Back To The Future” trilogy. Since the 80’s, Wilson has been doing mostly voice work for cartoons and video games.  The other most notable is Clayton Rohner, other than Tom Wilson, will be the most likely to make you go, “oh, it’s that guy”. In the 80’s, Rohner showed up all over 80’s tv, including T.J. Hooker, Hill Street Blues, and Miami Vice, and starred in “Just One Of The Guys”. Rohner has been able to maintain his career, never really hitting it big, but in the last few years, Rohner has appeared in Justified, Burn Notice, Castle, and The Mentalist.

I could spend the rest of this review listing the mediocre careers of the rest of the cast, but I’m not going to. I, instead, recommend that you, dear reader, peruse the IMDB listing for “April Fool’s Day” yourself. It is, in this regard, a solid movie for any “6-degrees” gamer to have in their arsenal.

Anyway, as I said before, what surprised me most about “April Fool’s Day” is how good it is. In my review for “Tucker and Dale vs Evil”, I referenced a group of horror movies which were not only solid as horror movies, but also cleverly lampoon the genre as a whole.  I had mentioned “Scream”, “Tremors”, and “Cabin in the Woods”, but I had not realized that a “meta” movie (a movie that parodies movies of a given genre, but is also solidly of that genre) for the ‘slasher’ genre of horror had predated “Scream” by a decade.

“April Fool’s Day” presents a thoroughly non-traditional execution (no pun intended) of a ‘slasher’ movie and does so in two clear ways.  

In horror movies, there are three elements which contribute to what makes it scary; suspense (the anticipation of the moment; the atmosphere), surprise (the arrival of the moment; the jump-scare), and slaughter (the revulsion of the moment; the gore). In ‘slasher’ movies, particularly in the 80’s, emphasis is usually placed on the ‘kill’ scenes, focusing on jump-scares, quick setups and gore, depending on the idea that anyone could be next to provide the suspense and atmosphere. “April Fool’s Day” breaks this convention, setting up the kill in ways similar to other slasher films which had come before, particularly “Friday the 13th” and “Sleepaway Camp”, but, instead of showing the kill, the scene fades to black before hand, revealing the victim’s body some time later. In this way, the film depends more on building and maintaining suspense throughout the movie.

This also allows the characters the opportunity to maintain a more tongue-in-cheek disposition.  Instead of the campy stereotypes of standard ‘slasher’ picks, the characters in “April Fool’s Day” are smart, clever, sarcastic, and a little twisted, making them feel a little more dimensional, more real, which, as it always does, makes the story better, richer. The movie does a solid job of combining “Meatballs” type comedy, gallows humor and self-effacing jokes which also (deliberately) send-up the rest of the ‘slasher’ genre.

Just like today, the 80’s saw the bulk of theatrical release films which were comedies as bawdy farces, and those in the horror genre as campy gore fests, with few diamonds-in-the-rough in either genre. I had thought that I had seen them all.

Nice to know I can still be surprised.

"Grave Encounters 2"

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"Top 5 Worst Movie Endings"

Part of what makes the best movies great is a great ending. Whether it’s an original ending like  “Casablanca” or “Rear Window”, or a stock ending where ‘they live happily ever after’ or ‘they all die in the end’ like “When Harry Met Sally” or “Hamlet”, or even ambiguous endings like “Inception” that can haunt an audience and keep them guessing for years to come, the right ending makes the story complete.

Traditionally, a film or screenplay has three parts or acts. In the first act, the characters are introduced. The first act ends where the second begins; with the inciting incident. In the second act, the situation develops. About halfway through the second act, there is some sort of revelation about the situation, and the protagonist faces further obstacles. The second act ends where the third act begins; with the point-of-no-return, where the protagonist faces their final confrontation, resulting in the climactic moment in the story, and maybe some kind of aftermath. The purpose of the confrontation and climax is to provide some sort of catharsis and closure to the audience.

But there are many ways that an ending can go wrong. It may be out of place, like if, just as Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are about to meet at the top of the Empire State building, King Kong would reach out and grab Meg Ryan. There might be no confrontation, no catharsis, like if, just after the cops get the camera feed from the bus to loop, Dennis Hopper had just blown up the bus. It may just be that the final confrontation is too easy, like if Dorothy had just spilled water on the witch when she first got brought to the castle.

The wrong ending, or an absence of one can ruin a movie. The following are, in my opinion, the five worst, and should be viewed as a cautionary tale to any potential storytellers.

As a final warning, while in most of my reviews, I attempt to avoid spoilers at all costs, I am speaking in these cases directly about the endings to the films, so, be aware: Here there be spoilers! (if you didn’t read that in a pirate voice, try it now)

1. They (2002)

It’s difficult for me semantically to say that this movie has the worst ending when it really has no ending to speak of, it just stops.

In “They”, Julie Lund is asked for help by a childhood friend. After he eats a bullet right across the booth of a quaint little diner that they share, she begins seeing the same monsters-in-the-shadows which had previously plagued her friend. Her visions of these creatures continue to grow more intense, and, each time, as she flails to protect herself, she lashes out against anyone who might try to help her, while those same people continually grow more wary of her sanity.

Shortly after her well-meaning boyfriend has her committed, she is finally abducted by the creatures which have stalked her. When her doctor and an orderly come to check on her, she has disappeared from her locked room, and is shown as trapped in the invisible, parallel world of the creatures, unable to break free. Fade to black. Roll credits.

As I said, this movie has no third act. It’s as though the writer and director reached the point of no return, saying “We’ve just painted this girl into a corner and don’t know how to get her out” and then just gave up and made the movie anyway.

2. House On Haunted Hill (1999)

This is the first of three films in this list which, to me, fall under the category of ‘cheating’.

The premise of “House On Haunted Hill” is simple. The ‘house’ was once a mental institution, in which the inmates were all burned alive while the staff escaped. Now, the current owners of the house have invited a group of people to a macabre dinner party where the survivors of the evening will each have an equal share of $5 million. Unbeknownst to them, the ‘house’ has arranged so that the guests at the party are all the descendants of the staff who had escaped, so that it may have its revenge.

By the end of the movie, the house has taken all but two of the intrepid party-goers, one of whom has managed to escape, supposedly because she wasn’t actually the person the house was after, only masquerading as her. The other has just gotten trapped, and is staring into the gaping maw of the conglomeration of the hundred vengeful maniac ghosts, and he shouts at it, “But I’m Adopted!!!”, then manages to escape. Then the filmmakers just leave our heroes stranded on a ledge on top of the three-story evil house with the $5 million and no hope of rescue.

3. Ocean’s 12 (2004)

There is a phenomenon in mystery stories where the sleuth waits till the final reveal and ensnaring of the perpetrator to give the one piece of evidence needed to know whodunit, to the frustration of everyone else present, particularly the audience. In the bookending “Ocean’s” movies, the twists and turns of the cons and flimflams which permeate the “caper” movie genre are all revealed in due time with style, fun, and appropriate timing. However, in “Ocean’s 12”, one key clue is deliberately withheld from the audience until the very end.

In the film, Danny Ocean’s band of grifters and scoundrels, in order to pay off their debt to Benedict, take a job in Europe, namely a challenge by a rival cat-burglar to steal a rare Faberge egg from a museum before he does. One-by-one, each of the Ocean clan are nicked by the cops, and the cat-burglar gets away with the egg. However, once Ocean and his friends are released and regroup with the cat-burglar, they reveal to him that they had swapped out the egg with a fake before it ever made it to the museum.  That’s cheating on multiple levels.

4. Signs (2002)

I read an article recently of 'Pixar's Rules for Writing, and one of the rules was something like, 'coincidence which is a hinderance for the protagonist makes for a good story; coincidence which helps the protagonist is just cheating'.

In "Signs", Mel Gibson plays a former priest who lost his faith when his wife dies, and then aliens begin to invade slowly. In the last moments of the movie, when one of the aliens invades his home, he ‘sees’ that confluence of coincidences as more than just that, but as a pattern, a ‘sign’ of how to save his family.

5. Red Lights (2012)

An ending doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense.

“Red Lights” had such potential. It’s the story of a pair of scientists, Matheson and Buckley (Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy) who debunk psychics.  When they go after a particularly notorious and blind one, Simon Silver (Robert De Niro), bad, creepy things start happening to Buckley, and Matheson dies. After Silver undergoes a series of laboratory tests to try to confirm his legitimacy, Buckley confronts him at his ‘triumphant return show’ where the interior of the theatre begins to shake and fall apart (in much the same way as had been done previously in the story). Then, when the pseudo-quake stops, Buckley throws something at Silver who catches it, revealing in front of his audience that he can see, and, as Buckley is leaving, Silver is shouting over and over “How did you do that?”, and Buckley flashes back over all the creepy things that happened to him throughout the movie.

I don’t get it. Is Simon asking Buckley how he figured out that Simon could see? Or is he asking how Buckley shook the theatre, and is actually psychic? I don’t mind ambiguous endings, and love some of them, but there is a big difference between ambiguous and just flat out confusing.

"Dredd"

I read some time ago an article which stated that NASA was using the film "Armageddon" as a training exercise; asking their newest scientists and engineers to watch the film and point out all the scientific inaccuracies they could find (the number of which being somewhere in the neighborhood of 186). I feel as though the filmmakers of "Dredd" must have done something similar; painstakingly scouring its predecessor, "Judge Dredd" for its every cinematic failing.
 
Now, that’s not to say that the original doesn’t have it’s offerings; it is entertainingly bad.
In my post about “Don’t Look Now”, I talked about movies that were bad enough to earn from “AV Club” an ‘F’, a grade reserved for films which are bad in an original way. While this grade is reserved for the worst films in history, these films can be divided into two categories: those which are unwatchable, so bad that they are capable of doing psychological damage upon repeat or even singular viewing; and those which are so bad that they’ve somehow looped back around to entertaining, as though the presence of Joel, Crow and Tom Servo is implicit. For me, “Don’t Look Now” falls into the former of these two categories. “Judge Dredd”, on the other hand, falls into the latter.
 
“Judge Dredd” is a clutter of disjoint stories and movie types, namely a John Woo style action movie starring Sylvester Stallone and Armand Assante, a Lifetime-television-esque conspiracy mystery starring Diane Lane, and a Rob Schneider ‘Comedy’ (to use the term loosely), all set against the backdrop of a 90’s-typical flashy scifi, complete with spandex and neon and disneyworld reject animatronic puppets and bad matting jobs and flying motorcycles, like they were trying to make a cross between “Blade Runner” and “Flash Gordon”.
 
"Judge Dredd" is hardly the first comic-book-based property to be eviscerated on celluloid in the eighties and nineties. "Spawn", "The Shadow", "The Phantom", "Steel", the '89 "Punisher" movie, the '91 "Captain America" movie, and even (somewhat) the third and definitely the fourth films in both the "Superman" and "Batman" franchises all, to some degree or another, fall into many of the the same traps. Instead of following the nature of a character to cast an appropriate actor to the role, the film is made a vehicle for a particular star.  Instead of trying to translate the world of the comic into one which fits a cinematic audience as opposed to graphic novel readership, the filmmakers attempt to make a movie that watches the way a comic book reads, which has only ever worked for "Creepshow", which doesn't count because that was a horror comic, not a superhero one. And then there are the tights.
 
The 1989 "Batman" movie of Tim Burton was groundbreaking in many ways, but the one for me that goes least talked about is the costume: this was the first time where the Batman costume consisted of something more than simple cloth or tights. It was a big, heavy suit of rubber armor, the most practical version of the costume for that point in time. This only helps to highlight one of the key problems in 90's comic book films: anti-heroes cannot be badasses and be flashy at the same time. They cannot ride around in neon and black lighting. They cannot have comedy relief sidekicks. And, most assuredly, they cannot wear spandex.
 
These are just some of the many flaws and false steps of 1995's "Judge Dredd", and 2012's "Dredd" side steps, avoids, or directly counters every one of them with a style all its own.
 
The shiny, bright and clean look and feel of the original is now grim, gritty, seedy and grey.  The bright neon and futuristic ‘Megacity’ is replaced by an unending slum, punctuated by monolithic tenements. The superhero-like judges are now beat-cops; their high-and-mighty smugness replaced with a world-weariness; spandex and linebacker shoulder pads replaced with SWAT-like body armor; their ridiculous flying motorcycles simplified and made more realistic. Even the titular character, himself, is completely different: while both are secretive, withdrawn, moral and brutal, the original’s conspiracy-centric genetically engineered past is ignored entirely, and this new Dredd is a colder, more strategic, and more mysterious. However, it doesn’t matter; this is not some major conspiracy, it’s a western.
In “Dredd”, the title character is partnered with a trainee.  The two enter a tenement called “Peach Trees”, and quickly find themselves hunted by any and all of the employees of the local drug kingpin, who turns out to have the entire building under her thumb and control. It’s a classic western theme; a crooked boss has run a town into a criminal empire under marshall law, dispensing their own brand of torturous punishment against any who might rebel or betray, when a new sheriff comes into town to take them all on, a masked man or a man with no name.
 
The environment is rich with additional detail which gives the film a ‘20 minutes into the future’ feel. The drug, ‘slo-mo’, giving the users the experience of slow time, also gives the filmmakers ample opportunity to justify utilizing ‘bullet-time’ techniques pioneered in “The Matrix”, but making them their own. Dredd’s trainee partner explained to be, within the first act, a mutant telepath, giving additional opportunity to create some artful visuals. In my review of “Don’t Look Now”, I criticised that film’s director for abandoning or ignoring his directorial duties in favor of dressing up the film with pretentious and insincere visuals masquerading as art.  “Dredd” does the exact opposite; it is a consistent, solid, cohesive film, well directed, well acted, with original and honestly artful visuals, dark and gritty, and, at the same time, beautiful.
 
It’s predecessor may have been entertainingly bad, this new “Dredd” is entertaining and stunning.

"Don't Look Now"

I was first alerted to this film some years ago when watching Bravo's "One Hundred Scariest Movie Moments" with my wife.  We're both movie fanatics, so we watched the list and made a check list. Not having seen it prior to the list, and striking out at our local video store (Hollywood Video, rest in peace), I hadn't given the movie another thought until last week, when I noticed it on Amazon Prime (a solid investment). So, I watched it.


I wish I could get those two hours back.


I was reading recently about how the website "AV Club" rates movies. Following in the tradition of the "Gentlemen's C" (the lowest passible grade imaginable, reserved for well to do slackers), the "AV Club" utilizes what it refers to as the "Gentleman's F". This is not something dirty or taboo, but is, instead, a grade of 'D-' ascribed to films which are awful, but awful in a standard, cookie cutter way, that display blatantly the Hollywood assembly line they fell off of.  This grade is usually reserved for the films of Nora Ephron and Nicolas Sparks and Michael Bay. They do this to distinguish between these films and those failures which are truly deserving of the worst grade imaginable; great horrible implosions, overachieving underachievers, films which explore new frontiers of failure, that fail in a way that no film has failed before. Movies like "Gigli", "I Know Who Killed Me", and the collected works of Ed Wood and M. Night Shyamalan, and the remakes of Tim Burton would all fall nicely (to use the term loosely) into this category.


I've been asked time and again what I think the worst film ever made was, and I always reply "Lost Souls" (2000), but I've recently seen a film which will, now and forever remain a close second (and I've watched "I Know Who Killed Me").


"Don't Look Back" is the story of a couple, played by Donald Sutherland ("Invasion of the Bodysnatchers") and Julie Christie ("Doctor Zhivago"), whose young daughter drowns accidently, which the father somehow supposedly senses happening. After some unacknowledged period of time, the couple puts their surviving son into private school and moves to Venice, where the husband is working to restore a deteriorating church, and a killer is terrorising the populace. The story plays as though it were trying to be a John Irving story (“Cider House Rules”, “Hotel New Hampshire”, “The World According To Garp”); the couple are going through the motions of their marriage but are still mourning their daughter’s death and are thoroughly forlorn. Things change for them when the wife meets a pair of elderly sisters, one of whom is both blind and psychic. The psychic tells the wife of her dead daughter’s wishes.

I do not know how to begin to describe how bad this film is.


First off, the story is a discombobulated mess of cliches and stock plot devices, strewn together by blind luck and bad timing. The idea of someone sensing when family member is in trouble or dying is an urban legend, an old wives tale as old as time, as is the idea of the blind psychic communing with that same relative. There are numerous other films which also present either of these ideas, and do so in more imaginative ways. And then there’s the element of the killer . . .


The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once wrote, “If there is a gun over a fireplace in the first act, it should be fired in the second act.”  This anecdote coined the phrase “Chekhov’s Gun”, which has come to refer to a plot device which introduces an element into the story, many times innocuously or subtly, that is generally ignored through the rest of the story, until it is used or referenced again in another, usually unrelated or otherwise disconnected context. The most famous cases of this are the gadgets in the “Bond” movies or the clues in detective stories. In the movie “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (2005), Robert Downey Jr, as narrator, even lampoons this idea immediately after the scene that introduces the “Chekhov’s Gun” for that movie:

“Okay, I’m apologize, that is a terrible scene. It’s like, ‘Why was that in the movie? Gee, do you think maybe it’ll come back later? Maybe?!’ I hate that, a tv’s on, talking about the new power plant. Hmm, wonder where the climax will happen. Or that shot of the cook in ‘Hunt for Red October’. So, anyway.”

Ahh, palate cleanser.


Anyway, by the time the end comes and the killer is revealed and eighty-sixes Donald Sutherland, we’ve heard about it enough times that there’s no other way it could have ended.  All the twists and turns are so cliche, it’s like watching a single, short row of dominos falling in slow motion at a weird angle; you know exactly what will happen, and all you can do is watch it happen, wait for it to end, and wonder how the hell someone can get away with calling it art.


Well, this is what happens when you tell cinematographers that they get to be directors.
This movie might have been somewhere, anywhere, closer to mediocre than it is if someone had actually taken time to direct it, instead of just telling the actors to memorize their lines, do their scenes, and let someone shoot it. The actors play like the robots in Douglas Adams’ book, ‘So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish’; they have two emotions: happy and bored. Any mourning or sadness or anger or fear that they are supposed to be experiencing only plays as bored, any joy or pleasure or excitement just plays with simple, dopey smiles, like they’re stoned.  Meanwhile, the scenes look as though they were shot by a cameraman wearing moon boots, and cut together through the judicious use of the most unwieldy chainsaw and hatchett imaginable.  If someone was high enough, they might be able to call some of the shots artful, but to those of us who aren’t, it’s really just dressed up that way.


Speaking of dressed, the scariest thing about this movie is the ten minutes of screentime given to Donald Sutherland’s ass. Honestly, ten minutes. The tenth of a second that it’s shown in “Animal House” is more than enough, and not funny. To do so for ten minutes is sadistic in a way that should draw the attention of the Hague.


Honestly, Donald Sutherland’s ass has now given me worse nightmares than the NASA guys with no faces in E.T.

"Beautiful Creatures"

Go see this movie.

Do yourself a favor when you’re considering what to see at your local neighborhood multiplex tonight and choose to see this movie.  Forget about the big action blockbusters or horror extravaganzas like “A Good Day To Die Hard”, “Hanzel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” or “Mama”; those are box office chowder and will stick around for a while.  Forget comedies like “Identity Thief”, “Warm Bodies” or “This is 40”; movies like this tend to offer little or no visual candy, will be barely reduced if at all by watching it on your tv, computer, tablet or even phone when you get around to renting it in 6 to 8 months from Redbox or Netflix. Even the awards season will keep movies like “Silver Linings Playbook”, “The Impossible”, or “Zero Dark Thirty” on the big screen for a while.

However, judging from the nature of the trailer, and the fact that every other movie at the cineplex today seems to be receiving more buzz, more attention, and the fact that my wife and I were only two of four people seeing that movie last night, I doubt that “Beautiful Creatures” will be staying in theatres for very long, which is a real shame. I understand that, at first glance, this movie looks like another supernatural teen romance melodrama, attempting to cajole and mesmerize audiences of the “Twilight” films.  Quite to the contrary, any similarity between this movie and the “Twilight” films is purely coincidental: “Beautiful Creatures” is the precept to which “Twilight” should have endeavored.

The first, and most noticeable element of this film is the setting.  The story is set in a small town deep in the South Carolinian countryside, which the filmmakers expertly capture.  Lush and rich, natural and yet resoundingly unnatural, the 'deep south' has served a hauntingly beautiful setting for many a supernatural film: “Interview With A Vampire” and "The Skeleton Key" in New Orleans and rural Louisiana; “Midnight in the Garden of Good And Evil” and “The Gift” both in Savannah, GA (and “Forces of Nature”, but I think Ben Affleck would prefer we forget that one).

The other most immediate component to the film is the character of Ethan Wate. Ethan is our narrator (at least in the beginning) and one of our protagonists. Ethan's narration quickly sets the stage as a high school junior who has recently lost his mother. While cynical in his attitude towards his hometown, and in spite of his circumstances, Ethan is surprisingly upbeat and optimistic, especially with regard to the prospect of college; Ethan's one chance for escape. As one of the few people in a town full of book-burners who actually reads the books, sympathetic of 'Boo Radley' and an admirer of 'Billy Pilgrim', Ethan quickly curries favor with the audience; an important charge for the protagonist and the romantic lead. Actor Alden Ehrenreich brings just the right amount of subtle awkwardness, ‘aww, shucks’ charm and charisma and smartly tempered drive to the character of Ethan, making him perfect for the role.

Ethan’s love interest is the mysterious Lena Duchannes, whose family, the Ravenwoods, led by her overprotective Uncle Macon (Jeremy Irons), are lambasted by those same book burners which drive the town, of being satanists and witches. Lena is, herself, a malcontent in the best traditions of Winona Ryder in “Beetlejuice” and “Heathers”, and is, we learn fairly quickly, quite the reader of banned books herself.

Ravenwood manor is a character unto itself, in much the same way as '1313 Mockingbird Lane'.  On the outside, the manor looks every bit the part of a deserted southern plantation, decrepit and overgrown. The interior of the manor, however, could not be more divergent from its surroundings. Part metropolitan art museum, part 'Bond' villain secret headquarters, the Ravenwood sitting room and foyer is visually stunning and perfectly out of place. The Ravenwoods themselves are just as eclectic; they make the Addams family seem dull.

The story of "Beautiful Creatures" is, first and foremost, the love story between Ethan and Lena. The story is far more complex, with both Lena's uncle and her mother each conspiring to direct Lena's future (how best to use her special . . . talents), and how those interferences affect Lena and Ethan's love.

As I said, this story is everything that "Twilight" should have aspired to be. Lena and Ethan are far more likable characters than Edward and Bella ever were: more dimensional and better defined; their love story is far more impassioned; the stakes in the challenges they face are far more drastic. The settings and scenery are far more visually stunning than that of 'Forks'. The story is much more involved, and far more full of richly developed characters. For solid comparisons of quality and beauty and depth of character, "Twilight" can't hope to hold a candle to this film; one is better off looking to the body of work of the filmmaker responsible for "Beautiful Creatures".

Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese's career has seen critical acclaim for "The Ref", "The Bridges of Madison County" and "The Horse Whisperer", but his career has spanned from "The Fisher King" to "Water for Elephants". So, not a light weight. His directorial credits are far more sparse, the most well known of which being "Freedom Writers" and "PS I Love You". "Beautiful Creatures", however, is his first 'fantasy' film, and his first big-budget film. All that said and understood, I feel as though this film is a great achievement for him and hope it will be regarded by others as a success.

For all of my praise there was one area which impaired the film for me: an inconsistent narrative.  The narrative is the perspective from which the story is told. This may be from an external narrator, or one of the characters, and in film it may be with or without a voice over. A truly creative narrative may redefine how stories are told in film. Numerous filmmakers have experimented with first-person filming, as well as removing the constraints of chronology from the story, both of which can alter the very nature of the story itself. A poorly constructed or inconsistent narrative can, at worst, confuse an audience to a degree which makes the film unwatchable (I'm looking at you David Lynch), and, at the very least, unveils to the audience an area of weakness for the filmmaker ("District 9"). Many films and stories have been told through multiple narrators ("Dracula"), but when a story changes narrators suddenly and without warning, as this film does on occasion, the results may range from subconscious to jarring and confusing. Fortunately, the changes in the narrative are small and ineffective, but their presence in a film by such a renowned and acclaimed filmmaker appears to me an amateurish mistake.

There are also a number of small details which are left open ended at the end of the film, which may be disconcerting. This is more understandable when realizing that the book from which this film has been adapted is the first in a trilogy. I can only hope they make the other two.

In all, this film is a stunning effort, an intricately woven tale of love and responsibility, of fate and freewill.

Go see it and take a date; you won't be sorry.