Kelly Reichardt makes very slow movies about nothingness. Her previous two films, Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy both follow people (and a dog) doing mundane stuff with no real plot or formal narrative structure. Her movies are basically the answer to the question, "What would a movie about my life look like." The simple answer is: it would be rather uneventful.
But Reichardt shines in this dullness and makes it rather beautiful. Her newest film, Meek's Cuttoff is a departure from her previous films as it is not set in our contemporary world, but is otherwise very similar in tone and concept. It follows a wagon train of three settler families as they cross the desert wastelands in Eastern Oregon in the mid-1800s. They are being led by a mysterious man named Meek who has either lost his way and is lying about knowing it or knows where he is going but can't explain to the families how long the journey will take. Whichever one it is, the train seems to not be making much progress in the middle of the desert.
As they move along, there is tension between the families and Meek, fighting within the families and a constant fear that the Native people of this part of the country will kill them for trespassing on their land. Along the way they pick up a native guide who speaks no English (his dialogue is not subtitled, leaving us as much in the dark about what he's saying as the characters are) and seems to be as much a harbinger of death as a pathfinder. The eeriness of desolate landscape is made even more spooky by the lack of any particular action or the change in topography. It seems the group might be going in circles, but it's never really clear.
Technically this film is a real triumph of doing a lot with a minimal amount of flare. Whereas with her past two films Reichardt showed a particularly DIY quality, here everything looks a bit more polished, though still with a very simple, non-showy nature. She uses mostly available light so it's particularly bright and white/yellow during the day and is black with firelight at night. She employs wonderful silhouettes during the day and shadows at night.
Her very natural recording of sound is one of the most amazing parts of the film, where the microphones are clearly put in positions to not only catch the blowing wind but also the snippets of conversation of people talking far away, as if you were in the desert with them. The most remarkable scene has the men talking in a group about 50 yards away from the women who are watching them. Reichardt sets up the mic close to the women so you hear what they hear, drowned out by the distance, rather than what most directors would do, setting the mic over by the men and just gaze at them from afar.
There does seem to be a rather feminist or at least "women's" point of view here. The costumes throughout the film are particularly wonderful (designed by Victoria Farrell) but the women's costumes are bright in fantastic colors, and much more interesting than their very basic designs. What's very important is that all the women wear bonnets whose brims hide their faces. A few times Reichardt puts the camera inside the wagons looking forward or backward so the arch-form of the frame imitates the arch-shape of the female headgear, giving us a similar view to what they are seeing.
Almost all of the characters appear throughout the film with obscured faces. Meek (Bruce Greenwood) has one of the all-time bushiest beards ever seen on film (you can barely tell it's him because you can't really see much of him). The men all wear hats and the women wear their bonnets, and everyone has filthy faces from the miles they've traveled, of course.
All of the acting is very strong, thought none of the performances are particularly noteworthy as they all become part of the harsh landscape. Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson, Will Patton and Zoe Kazan are all very talented actors and recede into the background when it is most important.
The allegorical content here is very interesting and just as unanswerable as any question in the film. There are clear allusions to the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Book of Numbers and, of course, the Inferno. It seems like the group might be traveling through hell and that maybe they're dead already or on their way to being dead. It's never clear if Meek is a charlatan, a false idol, or if he is really a cryptic guide who moves in a timespace that humans can't understand so well.
This really is an existentialist film at its heart and the closest literary connection might be Sartre's No Exit. Whether these people are really going anywhere or are just stuck with one another for eternity is never totally clear. The only person who seems to have a clear vision of what is going on is the Native tracker who abandons the group at a point. I particularly love that Reichardt gets all this amazing thematic and formal content into such a simple-looking film. She touches on all these things but doesn't dwell on any one aspect. It's really a beautifully and brilliant execution.
Stars: 4 of 4
8 Nisan 2011 Cuma
WIN WIN: The Film Babble Blog Review
WIN WIN (Dir. Thomas McCarthy, 2011)
I was a little worried during the first 5 minutes of this comedy drama. Mainly since it starts with a certain four-lettered word (the one that begins with “s”) being spoken by a little girl (Clare Folley).
For a few minutes the word becomes a bit of a running gag, and I feared I was in for a JUNO-type time with cutesy quirky humor, and over-simplified characters.
I needn’t have worried because director McCarthy (THE STATION AGENT, THE VISITOR) gradually shapes a realistic slice of small town life centering on Paul Giamatti as a worn down, yet still determined, New Jersey attorney who works nights as a high school wrestling coach.
But don’t expect THE BAD NEWS BEARS here. The film is more about the situations around those moves on the gymnasium floor, with Giamatti trying to figure out how to deal with one of his star wrestlers – Alex Shaffer (a former wrestling champ in real life).
Giamatti gets involved in the troubled teenager’s life when he becomes the guardian of a rich old man (Burt Young) just so he could collect a caretaker fee as his law business has been suffering.
Shaffer, as Young’s grandson, shows up trying to get away from his junkie mother (Melanie Lynskey), so Giamatti, and his wife (Amy Ryan) find themselves having to take care of the bleached blond boy.
In one of the film’s only comical contrivances, Bobby Cannavale as Giamatti’s best friend is constantly fretting over his ex-wife. However Giamatti and Cannavale’s exchanges are fluid and funny enough to make up for that.
Much better are Giamatti’s convincing relationships with Ryan and Shaffer. There’s also Jeffrey Tambor playing just the right note as Giamatti’s shrugging assistant coach.
Giamatti, which I believe is Latin for “good flick,” never disappoints in his sharp depictions of schlubby men on the edge of total defeat. His performance here is another winner (sorry), as his desperate (at times devious) dealings are utterly believable, sympathetic, and ultimately endearing.
When that initial fear of cringe-inducing quirkiness faded after the first few minutes, I was quite pleased at how McCarthy’s movie played out.
I predict audiences will be too, for WIN WIN is a fine underdog indie that doesn’t try too hard to get you on its side.
More later...
4 Nisan 2011 Pazartesi
The Double Hour (Monday, April 4, 2011) (23)
The Double Hour is a movie about... well, about doubles. Boom! The title comes from the moment when the hour on a digital clock match the minutes (10:10, say). At these times there is some magic in the air and there is a suggestion of an alternate world - a parallel world to ours (though not as elegant as the Double Life of Veronique).
In the film, Sonia (Kseniya Rappaport) is an Eastern European immigrant maid working in a hotel in Turin. One night she goes to a speed dating event and meets Guido (Fillippo Timi) a widower who is working through the pain in his life by dating (and fucking) as many women as he can. There is an instant connection between the two of them as they are both trying to escape their pasts and enjoy the romance and eroticism of the other's company.
One day, on a date to Guido's work as a surveillance security guard, they are caught up in robbery that goes wrong. It seems to us that Guido is killed and Sonia survives, but in this world of doubles, things aren't always what they seem.
Director Guiseppe Capotondi is anything but subtle with the double imagery and motifs. Guido's deceased wife looks just like Sonia (as does one of the women he's screwing at the beginning of the film), leading us to make constant double takes (get it?!) and question who we are seeing at any given moment. There are a lot of mirrors throughout (an easy thing to put on screen when Sonia's work involves cleaning bathrooms) and the screen if frequently split by masking devices (like in the poster). All of this style is clever, and overall this is a very good looking film, but it is totally overdone. It's impossible to watch the film and not notice every single double, which gets very tedious and really doesn't add up to much in the end.
This feels like a movie that has a slick script that looks great on paper and is nice and sleek looking on screen, but really doesn't mean very much once all is said and done. As an exercise in technique it's a lovely work, but it's emotionally rather hollow and has such a pedestrian twist it could just be a big budget Hollywood studio piece (though such a film probably wouldn't look so good).
My problem with Euro movies that feel like Hollywood garbage is that Euros don't really know how to make Hollywood garbage well. They put too much beauty in them (they're Euros after all). On the surface this seems like a nice movie, but if you dig just below the surface there's not that much there. I guess that's yet another "double'.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
In the film, Sonia (Kseniya Rappaport) is an Eastern European immigrant maid working in a hotel in Turin. One night she goes to a speed dating event and meets Guido (Fillippo Timi) a widower who is working through the pain in his life by dating (and fucking) as many women as he can. There is an instant connection between the two of them as they are both trying to escape their pasts and enjoy the romance and eroticism of the other's company.
One day, on a date to Guido's work as a surveillance security guard, they are caught up in robbery that goes wrong. It seems to us that Guido is killed and Sonia survives, but in this world of doubles, things aren't always what they seem.
Director Guiseppe Capotondi is anything but subtle with the double imagery and motifs. Guido's deceased wife looks just like Sonia (as does one of the women he's screwing at the beginning of the film), leading us to make constant double takes (get it?!) and question who we are seeing at any given moment. There are a lot of mirrors throughout (an easy thing to put on screen when Sonia's work involves cleaning bathrooms) and the screen if frequently split by masking devices (like in the poster). All of this style is clever, and overall this is a very good looking film, but it is totally overdone. It's impossible to watch the film and not notice every single double, which gets very tedious and really doesn't add up to much in the end.
This feels like a movie that has a slick script that looks great on paper and is nice and sleek looking on screen, but really doesn't mean very much once all is said and done. As an exercise in technique it's a lovely work, but it's emotionally rather hollow and has such a pedestrian twist it could just be a big budget Hollywood studio piece (though such a film probably wouldn't look so good).
My problem with Euro movies that feel like Hollywood garbage is that Euros don't really know how to make Hollywood garbage well. They put too much beauty in them (they're Euros after all). On the surface this seems like a nice movie, but if you dig just below the surface there's not that much there. I guess that's yet another "double'.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
2 Nisan 2011 Cumartesi
EVEN THE RAIN: The Film Babble Blog Review
EVEN THE RAIN (Dir. Icair Bollain, 2010)
In FrançoisTruffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT (1973), the famous French director (playing a fictional famous French director) said: “Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old west. When you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive.”
As the producer and director of a low budget film about Christopher Columbus in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Luis Tosar and Gael García Bernal can relate to that sentiment greatly.
The "Cochabamba Water Wars" of 2000 are raging, and García Bernal just happened to cast the leader (Juan Carlos Aduviri) in the demonstrations against the water hikes to play a pivotal part in his film - Hatuey, the Taínotribe chief who led a rebellion against the Spaniards in 1512.
Tosar and García Bernal fret about how this conflicts with their filming, but Aduviri simply states: “There are more important things than your movie.”
Scenes from the film within a film about Columbus are often presented without the film makers or crew visible, with documentary style recordings from the actual protests interspersed throughout so a jolting juxtaposition occurs.
We feel the stress in the faces of the extras hired on the cheap as they are unable to take a break from the reality that plans to privatize their vital water supply will threaten their already poverty stricken existence.
Aduviri, is aware of being exploited by the film makers, but is determined to push on for his cause. His passion rivals theirs, as well it should, and the fragility of a threadbare film project contrasted with the escalation of rioting demonstrators is striking to say the least.
By the time the finale comes around, the historical context of both events in Garcia Bernal and Tosar's film, and the overwhelming severity of the strike against the Bolivian goverment is tightly intertwined.
Director Bollain is sympathetic in her storytelling drawing vast humanity from the performances of Garcia Bernal, Tosar, and especially Aduviri who definitely steals the film.
EVEN THE RAIN is a powerful film that illustrates just what it means to survive, whether through cinema or through the strength of one's convictions.
More later...
Win Win (Saturday, April 2, 2011) (22)
Writer/director Thomas McCarthy has a very straight-forward, frank style to his comedies. He makes movies that are totally set in our world, inhabited by characters who we could easily know as our neighbors (or ourselves) who get into difficult situations partly because of their own doing and partly because they have bad luck. His latest film, Win Win, explores how when stuck inside a world of deep malaise, people do dumb things for good reasons, and that, as with life, stuff generally works out in the end.
Mike (Paul Giamatti) is a suburban lawyer in New Jersey who has a small practice that he is struggling to keep afloat. He's married to a wonderful, loving woman, Jackie (Amy Ryan), who takes care of their two kids and has a very sensible head on her shoulders. Mike is also the wrestling coach of the local high school, where his team is one of the worst in the area. He loves wrestling and working with the kids, but the team's mediocrity and the floundering of his work is getting to him.
As part of an elaborate and unethical scheme, Mike becomes the guardian for one of his elderly clients, Leo (Burt Young... Paulie from the Rocky movies) for which he gets a few thousand dollars a month. One day Leo's estranged grandson, Kyle (Alex Shaffer), shows up unannounced and Mike feels obligated to take him in until his mother (who is in jail and rehab) can come collect him from Ohio. Kyle, a champion high school wrestler, joins Mike's team and starts to make an impact on their record and the structure of Mike and Jackie's house beings to help him. The problem, of course, is that this could all fall apart if Mike's scheme is exposed.
This is a particularly well written script. I really like the structure of this story, going from order to chaos to order, but in a very natural, understandable way. After it ties up in the end it is clear how we got to that point. It does not feel overly-manipulated by the writer, which happens much more often in movies than I'd like. It seems like more often than not, writers have an idea for a story and an ending and put a bunch of filler in the middle for no reason that moves along clumsily to that end point. The plot here winds along very organically, which fits in well with the matter-of-fact style of the film.
McCarthy loves the mediocrity and sadness of Northern New Jersey (those words are my judgement, not his). Unlike directors like Todd Solondz or Kevin Smith who delight in the weirdness of the place and paint caricatures of it, McCarthy's New Jersey is very direct: a suburban area that has a life apart from the big city it is next to, but is somehow a place of lost dreams. Life is what it is, in this place. It's not romantic, it's not silly, it's just a bit grimy but mostly good.
My biggest problem with the film comes down to this issues of naturalness, or lack thereof, where the script gets a bit jumbled. Mike's friend and business associate is Vigman (Jeffrey Tambor) a CPA who he shares the office with. Vigman is his assistant wrestling coach and good for a funny line here and there (Tambor is typically dorky, bitter and hilarious here). Unfortunately McCarthy also includes another character, Terry (Bobby Cannavale), Mike's best friend who is going through a mid-life crisis and sees helping Kyle and the wrestling team as some sort of mid-life mission. The problem is that there is simply not enough material here for there to be two friend/coach/confidant characters. It would have been better if these two characters had been merged into one. Cannavale's tone is also too jerky, too frat-boy for the film, which is otherwise sorta subtle and dark and clever.
Amy Ryan has become one of my favorite actresses in recent years with her work in The Wire, Gone Baby Gone, a comedic role on The Office and the HBO series In Treatment. She's always fantastic and never overdone. Here she continues this great streak as a woman who you almost feel bad for (she's very average) until you realize she's probably the strongest and most sensible characters in the film. She also does the most impeccable life-long-New Jerseyite accent I've heard in awhile.
Perhaps the best thing McCarthy does in this movie is to make Paul Giamatti somewhat likable. I think this is his most natural, normal, calm character since he played Pig-Vomit in Private Parts (he was brilliant as Harvey Pekar, but Pekar was a weird guy very much up the Giamatti explosive alley). Giamatti has become almost unwatchable for me as each one of his characters reaches a new depth of sadness and misanthropy. Here he's just a normal schlub with normal life problems on his back. He tries to figure out a way out of his situation, but digs himself deeper into a hole. This normal, every-manness of the character is totally the core of this film. It's a lot of fun.
Stars: 3.5 of 4
Mike (Paul Giamatti) is a suburban lawyer in New Jersey who has a small practice that he is struggling to keep afloat. He's married to a wonderful, loving woman, Jackie (Amy Ryan), who takes care of their two kids and has a very sensible head on her shoulders. Mike is also the wrestling coach of the local high school, where his team is one of the worst in the area. He loves wrestling and working with the kids, but the team's mediocrity and the floundering of his work is getting to him.
As part of an elaborate and unethical scheme, Mike becomes the guardian for one of his elderly clients, Leo (Burt Young... Paulie from the Rocky movies) for which he gets a few thousand dollars a month. One day Leo's estranged grandson, Kyle (Alex Shaffer), shows up unannounced and Mike feels obligated to take him in until his mother (who is in jail and rehab) can come collect him from Ohio. Kyle, a champion high school wrestler, joins Mike's team and starts to make an impact on their record and the structure of Mike and Jackie's house beings to help him. The problem, of course, is that this could all fall apart if Mike's scheme is exposed.
This is a particularly well written script. I really like the structure of this story, going from order to chaos to order, but in a very natural, understandable way. After it ties up in the end it is clear how we got to that point. It does not feel overly-manipulated by the writer, which happens much more often in movies than I'd like. It seems like more often than not, writers have an idea for a story and an ending and put a bunch of filler in the middle for no reason that moves along clumsily to that end point. The plot here winds along very organically, which fits in well with the matter-of-fact style of the film.
McCarthy loves the mediocrity and sadness of Northern New Jersey (those words are my judgement, not his). Unlike directors like Todd Solondz or Kevin Smith who delight in the weirdness of the place and paint caricatures of it, McCarthy's New Jersey is very direct: a suburban area that has a life apart from the big city it is next to, but is somehow a place of lost dreams. Life is what it is, in this place. It's not romantic, it's not silly, it's just a bit grimy but mostly good.
My biggest problem with the film comes down to this issues of naturalness, or lack thereof, where the script gets a bit jumbled. Mike's friend and business associate is Vigman (Jeffrey Tambor) a CPA who he shares the office with. Vigman is his assistant wrestling coach and good for a funny line here and there (Tambor is typically dorky, bitter and hilarious here). Unfortunately McCarthy also includes another character, Terry (Bobby Cannavale), Mike's best friend who is going through a mid-life crisis and sees helping Kyle and the wrestling team as some sort of mid-life mission. The problem is that there is simply not enough material here for there to be two friend/coach/confidant characters. It would have been better if these two characters had been merged into one. Cannavale's tone is also too jerky, too frat-boy for the film, which is otherwise sorta subtle and dark and clever.
Amy Ryan has become one of my favorite actresses in recent years with her work in The Wire, Gone Baby Gone, a comedic role on The Office and the HBO series In Treatment. She's always fantastic and never overdone. Here she continues this great streak as a woman who you almost feel bad for (she's very average) until you realize she's probably the strongest and most sensible characters in the film. She also does the most impeccable life-long-New Jerseyite accent I've heard in awhile.
Perhaps the best thing McCarthy does in this movie is to make Paul Giamatti somewhat likable. I think this is his most natural, normal, calm character since he played Pig-Vomit in Private Parts (he was brilliant as Harvey Pekar, but Pekar was a weird guy very much up the Giamatti explosive alley). Giamatti has become almost unwatchable for me as each one of his characters reaches a new depth of sadness and misanthropy. Here he's just a normal schlub with normal life problems on his back. He tries to figure out a way out of his situation, but digs himself deeper into a hole. This normal, every-manness of the character is totally the core of this film. It's a lot of fun.
Stars: 3.5 of 4
In a Better World (Saturday, April 2, 2011) (20)
Susanne Bier's In a Better World, which won the Oscar this past year for Best Foreign Film (over the far superior Dogtooth), is about bullying and facing bullies head-on. It is far from a subtle film, generally clobbering you to death with parallels, symbols and important meanings of small gestures. There is no way to watch this movie and not understand exactly what Bier is trying to get you to understand. This makes for a dull viewing experience; I'd much rather watch something and have my own journey deciphering it rather than having my hand held through the narrative.
Anton is a doctor in Africa for Doctors without Borders (or some NGO just like that). He works in a very poor village where people not only suffer from typical diseases like malaria and infections, but are also being beaten and cut up by a local warlord who terrorizes them. Anton's family back in Denmark is hanging on by a thread. He and his wife are separated and about to get a divorce and their early-teen son Elias is constantly the target of classmates at school for being fat (and partly Swedish... Danish kids can be so cruel!). If you didn't understand the connection, both Anton and Elias deal with bullies in their daily lives.
Elias meets Christian, a transfer student who has been living in England for several years with his parents. His mother just died and he and his father have moved back to the family estate to regroup. Clearly Christian is emotionally affected by his mom's death, and he doesn't like that Elias is the butt of classmates' jokes. The two become friends when Christian violently defends Elias. This sets the tone of their relationship: loyalty, but at a price.
Bier might have more White European guilt than any other director working today. One of her last films, After the Wedding from 2007, was about a Danish man trying to split his life between a swank Copenhagen family and his job as an orphanage director in India. I guess it's nice that she makes movies about sad, poor people who are not as well off as Euros, but her back-and-forth style in this film and that earlier one is a bit tedious and uninspired. I'm smart enough to understand that a white doctor in Africa or India is probably seeing things that he wouldn't see back home where he's from, I don't really need him to sit around contemplating how different the worlds are.
There is a very nice moral dilemma moment when Anton has to decided if he should keep his doctor's ethics and help save the life of the warlord, which would in turn let the evil man live to hurt and kill other villagers, or if he should let him die, playing God and saving more people down the line. This is a sorta fun moral game that one can think about for hours and hours. What are the limits of ethics and morals? Is it ethical to let one man die so you can let hundreds others live? This should really be the core of the film, but it's really just a chapter in a greater story. I think this is a mistake in the script (by Anders Thomas Jensen).
Aside from the pain of seeing people starving and sick in Africa, this is not a very difficult movie. It's nicely shot and well acted, but it's directed more like an after-school special than an Oscar winner. There is nothing particularly challenging and generally the Euros live to buy Ikea another day. The Africans are basically forgotten about by the end, which is a strange twist on this holier-than-thou tale. Interesting....
Stars: 2 of 4
Anton is a doctor in Africa for Doctors without Borders (or some NGO just like that). He works in a very poor village where people not only suffer from typical diseases like malaria and infections, but are also being beaten and cut up by a local warlord who terrorizes them. Anton's family back in Denmark is hanging on by a thread. He and his wife are separated and about to get a divorce and their early-teen son Elias is constantly the target of classmates at school for being fat (and partly Swedish... Danish kids can be so cruel!). If you didn't understand the connection, both Anton and Elias deal with bullies in their daily lives.
Elias meets Christian, a transfer student who has been living in England for several years with his parents. His mother just died and he and his father have moved back to the family estate to regroup. Clearly Christian is emotionally affected by his mom's death, and he doesn't like that Elias is the butt of classmates' jokes. The two become friends when Christian violently defends Elias. This sets the tone of their relationship: loyalty, but at a price.
Bier might have more White European guilt than any other director working today. One of her last films, After the Wedding from 2007, was about a Danish man trying to split his life between a swank Copenhagen family and his job as an orphanage director in India. I guess it's nice that she makes movies about sad, poor people who are not as well off as Euros, but her back-and-forth style in this film and that earlier one is a bit tedious and uninspired. I'm smart enough to understand that a white doctor in Africa or India is probably seeing things that he wouldn't see back home where he's from, I don't really need him to sit around contemplating how different the worlds are.
There is a very nice moral dilemma moment when Anton has to decided if he should keep his doctor's ethics and help save the life of the warlord, which would in turn let the evil man live to hurt and kill other villagers, or if he should let him die, playing God and saving more people down the line. This is a sorta fun moral game that one can think about for hours and hours. What are the limits of ethics and morals? Is it ethical to let one man die so you can let hundreds others live? This should really be the core of the film, but it's really just a chapter in a greater story. I think this is a mistake in the script (by Anders Thomas Jensen).
Aside from the pain of seeing people starving and sick in Africa, this is not a very difficult movie. It's nicely shot and well acted, but it's directed more like an after-school special than an Oscar winner. There is nothing particularly challenging and generally the Euros live to buy Ikea another day. The Africans are basically forgotten about by the end, which is a strange twist on this holier-than-thou tale. Interesting....
Stars: 2 of 4
Super (Saturday, April 2, 2011) (21)
Super is a gonzo comic book movie straight out of the brain of a disaffected 15 year-old boy... or out of the brain of writer/director James Gunn. There is nothing here that your mother would like. It's crass, bawdy and silly - sorta Mystery Men meets Evil Dead.
Frank (Rainn Wilson) is a loser fry cook living in Anytown Exurbia, U.S.A. He has a terrible life and his wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), hates him and only married him because she was getting straight after a stint in rehab. She leaves him for Jacques (or Jock, as Frank understands his name) (Kevin Bacon) a piece-of-shit strip-mall strip club owner and drug dealer, which sends him into a downward spiral of self-loathing.
One day he goes into a comic book store and meets the clerk there, Libby (Ellen Page). The two decide that they will design their own super hero personae (the Crimson Bolt and Boltie) and fight bad guys on their own. It's very similar in story (and tone) to Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim (both from last year).
What follows is one of the silliest Looney-Tunesy riffs I've seen in a long time. It's totally gross with tons of blood and foul language, but totally enjoyable. It's a sad world of despair and cruelty and Frank, as the Crimson Bolt, is violent and remorseless. After he blows someone's head off with a gigantic gun, he steps on his brains to rub in the point.
The script here is hilarious, bittersweet and very clever. Gunn has the perfect mix of stupidity and archness to make the dialogue feel as real as anything you'd see from an art-house think-piece. The acting is fantastic, particularly the supporting cast of Bacon, Tyler and Michael Rooker. Both Wilson and Page are actors who frequently err on the side of overdoing roles, but here they are both understated and give great, painful performances.
The best scene of the film, and one of the best comedy scenes I've witnessed in a long time, has Libby throwing herself at Frank, who is not really interested in her (he is, after all, trying to win back Sarah's heart). She convinces him that if they wear their costumes the sex will be better and easier for him to take and he won't really be cheating on Sarah. She puts on music and does this weird, uncomfortable dance (reminiscent of that Elaine Benes jig from Seinfeld), which is utterly unhot. She then mounts him and proceeds to... well, to rape him in the most silly and awkward way. In terms of "funny rape" scenes (yes, there's a category for that) it's up there for me with the one from Observe and Report (the best funny rape scene ever).
More than anything, this is a tale of melancholia and pitifulness, set in the most average, beige Americana background. It is hilarious, but there is a dark cloud of pain lying below the surface. I think it's a rather deep movie (like Observe and Report) that is wearing a gross-out comedy gown. I think there is more there than meets the eye... underneath the superhero mask.
Stars: 3 of 4
Frank (Rainn Wilson) is a loser fry cook living in Anytown Exurbia, U.S.A. He has a terrible life and his wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), hates him and only married him because she was getting straight after a stint in rehab. She leaves him for Jacques (or Jock, as Frank understands his name) (Kevin Bacon) a piece-of-shit strip-mall strip club owner and drug dealer, which sends him into a downward spiral of self-loathing.
One day he goes into a comic book store and meets the clerk there, Libby (Ellen Page). The two decide that they will design their own super hero personae (the Crimson Bolt and Boltie) and fight bad guys on their own. It's very similar in story (and tone) to Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim (both from last year).
What follows is one of the silliest Looney-Tunesy riffs I've seen in a long time. It's totally gross with tons of blood and foul language, but totally enjoyable. It's a sad world of despair and cruelty and Frank, as the Crimson Bolt, is violent and remorseless. After he blows someone's head off with a gigantic gun, he steps on his brains to rub in the point.
The script here is hilarious, bittersweet and very clever. Gunn has the perfect mix of stupidity and archness to make the dialogue feel as real as anything you'd see from an art-house think-piece. The acting is fantastic, particularly the supporting cast of Bacon, Tyler and Michael Rooker. Both Wilson and Page are actors who frequently err on the side of overdoing roles, but here they are both understated and give great, painful performances.
The best scene of the film, and one of the best comedy scenes I've witnessed in a long time, has Libby throwing herself at Frank, who is not really interested in her (he is, after all, trying to win back Sarah's heart). She convinces him that if they wear their costumes the sex will be better and easier for him to take and he won't really be cheating on Sarah. She puts on music and does this weird, uncomfortable dance (reminiscent of that Elaine Benes jig from Seinfeld), which is utterly unhot. She then mounts him and proceeds to... well, to rape him in the most silly and awkward way. In terms of "funny rape" scenes (yes, there's a category for that) it's up there for me with the one from Observe and Report (the best funny rape scene ever).
More than anything, this is a tale of melancholia and pitifulness, set in the most average, beige Americana background. It is hilarious, but there is a dark cloud of pain lying below the surface. I think it's a rather deep movie (like Observe and Report) that is wearing a gross-out comedy gown. I think there is more there than meets the eye... underneath the superhero mask.
Stars: 3 of 4
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