Well I Wouldn't Want to Live There

Avatar

Directed by James Cameron

Three and One Half Stars

Much like Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy earlier this decade, James Cameron has created with “Avatar” a world that I would like to experience first hand.  I want to stand on the road-like branches of these mountainous trees.  I want to see the moist glossy fauna of the forest floor illuminate under my bare feet and swim in the stainless crystal springs.  I want to emerge from the cover of the canopy and the heavy fog and see the Hallelujah Mountains floating in the sky above me.  More than anything else in “Avatar”, the lush and ethereally beautiful planet of Pandora is Cameron’s crowning achievement.

The Prodigal Son Defamed

Brothers

Directed by Jim Sheridan

Three Stars

Jim Sheridan’s “Brothers” comes out focused and prepared. It takes a strong warm-up lap, properly does its stretching and calisthenics, steps up to the blocks, and hits the showers. It is an excellent first two-thirds of a film.

Sheridan based this film of postwar trauma on a Danish film of the same name, in which a prodigal son is sent to war while his delinquent brother is saved from the battlefield by his own delinquency. Toby Maguire plays the prodigal son, Capt. Sam Cahill, in an intensely over-the-top performance. He has a wife, Grace (Natalie Portman) and two daughters, and they are, of course, quite happy.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays the delinquent brother, Tommy, who houses a quaint shyness that makes it hard to picture him as someone who just got out of prison for armed robbery. The two men share a relationship that is respectful but under duress. Expectations, both failed and surpassed, have formed a wall between them, and their father (Sam Shepard) has laid the mortar.

Of the general plot, I will not go into extreme detail. The whole of the story is explained in the trailers, and if you’re like me, you felt like the trailer had only revealed the establishing sequences of the film.

Sam goes to war and is presumed dead after a helicopter crash. Grace is distraught, and Tommy, fresh out of prison, eases into her and her daughters’ lives as a surrogate father.

But Sam emerges alive and returns to his family, strung out, traumatized and paranoid. He senses a relationship between his wife and his brother and punishes himself for a life-changing decision he made while imprisoned in Afghanistan by allowing his paranoia to snowball into violence.

“Brothers” is, in many ways, a story that Michael Cimino told with “The Deer Hunter” in 1978, which was a far superior film. Both films deal with the psychological and emotional losses that soldiers face when returning from war.

Cimino’s film was more about the soldiers, though, and the emptiness that they felt at home after returning from Vietnam. “Brothers” assumes the reverse perspective of Grace and Tommy and how they attempt to recreate a family that was destroyed overseas.

Grace goes through the motions of the loving marriage she had with Sam before he left, but he is a different man now and their love seems one-sided. Grace is clinging to an idea more than a person, and her daughters respond to the new-found distance in their father with a growing fondness for their uncle Tommy.

Sheridan observes this family drama with great detail. The project is a bit too glossy to become completely involving, but the performances, particularly Maguire’s manic, bug-eyed intensity and Gyllenhaal’s gruff shy-guy warmth, bring gravity to the film and its themes.

Most importantly, though, the film ends far too soon, cutting itself off when it is only beginning to break into something genuine. Sheridan seems afraid to make the leap. He cuts his emotional ark short by mistaking the firing of a gun for the climax of the film, and tidies up to such an extent that he jeopardizes the very commentary he was threatening to make.

“Brothers” is a good film. Make no mistake. If I seem harsh it is because it got off a station too soon and, in so doing, amplified many of its other shortcomings. Consider simply that if it were not a good film, I would certainly not be complaining that it ended sooner rather than later. “The Deer Hunter” was more than three hours long.

Rollan Schott

December 15, 2009

Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

Are You Cussin' with Me?

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Directed by Wes Anderson

Three and One Half Stars

There is a moment late in Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” when Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and Company pause to recognize a moment of serene beauty, a majestic(ish) wolf on an elevated stone before the backdrop of snowcapped mountains. 

It seems like an ambiguous moment, or at least it seems like it’s meant to be ambiguous.  What’s strange is that it isn’t.  It’s a flat moment, relatively void of meaning.  I was frustrated with this at first, but quickly realized that this moment isn’t about mysterious themes or hidden meanings.  It’s a send-up of those same moments in other films.

Understanding this conceit is central to appreciating “Fantastic Mr. Fox” which relies on flat compositions and deliberate actions to achieve a dry and wildly audacious style of humor that Anderson has made all his own.

He occupies his films with characters who are either bored stiff with the roles they are meant to play or relish them with the enthusiastic thrill of classical theater.  Consider the way two relatively similar characters inhabit this world. 

Kristofferson (Eric Anderson), a wildly talented white fox with speed, brains, and a budding romance, trudges through the film with relative disinterest.  It’s not that he’s bitter, he’s just, I don’t know, indifferent?

Mr. Fox, on the other hand, has the same athleticism and smarts, and a loving and devoted wife, and he walks upright and speaks in an assertive matter-of-fact enthusiasm that is most certainly on the smug side.  His suave confidence lends the film much of its wit.

Mr. Fox, having sworn off chicken thievery at the request of his wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), moves his wife and son Ash (Jason Schwartzmann) out of their lowly hole-in-the-ground hole in the ground and into a lavish tree after assuming an occupation as a newspaper journalist (who nobody reads).

But his identity cannot be denied.  He is a fox, after all, and foxes steal chickens.  Mr. Fox plots to rob the three heavyweight famers nearby, Boggis and Bunce and Bean.  He succeeds, of course, and the three outraged farmers plot to steal his hide in return.

Fox and his family burrow deep beneath their tree, meeting up with other members of the local animal population.  Their misfortune is held against Mr. Fox, who seems unfazed, and tensions mount as the farmers try first to blow them out then to starve them out then to wash them out then…

Much of the humor in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” comes from moments outside the narrative, or at least moments that exist within the narrative that are not well-suited to its continuity.  I can think of no better example than the poor bloke playing his banjo and improvising a song.  The song itself is funny, but the response it garners is one of the biggest laughs of the year.

And what a deliberate movie this is.  When the camera races in on a face you can almost hear Anderson somewhere off screen shouting “Aaand CLOSEUP!” The characters all say their lines matter-of-factly, their expressions artificial but strangely human.  It’s almost as if they’re trying to slip the jokes past us.

But that moment with the wolf is still haunting me.  It is a funny moment, over the top and obvious in its intentions, so what’s with the staying power?  The secret to the film can be found here.  That secret may well be that there is no secret at all, that the movie is what it is and should not shy away from its clichés, a theme that digs deeper than it seems.


Rollan Schott
December 2, 2009
Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

A Vampire, a Werewolf, and an Antifeminist. What's not to love?

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Directed by Chris Weitz

One and One Half Stars

“The Twilight Saga: New Moon” is composed entirely of attractive people making voluptuous expressions, sometimes at one another, usually at the corners of the screen.  The film is nothing more than a visual companion, a template of pretty faces that prepubescent teens can gawk at while they recall Stephanie Meyer’s popular novel in their minds.  It is a single note held for two hours, littered with thoroughly irrational characters occupying a dimwitted story.  But then again, the faces are pretty, the expressions voluptuous.

I guess that’s all that director Chris Weitz really intended.  Most of the people who see this movie will already know its secrets, which makes it more of an exhibition for the bare chests of its toned male leads.  Kristin Stewart, on the other hand, hardly ever even wears short sleeves.  This is a tale of chastity after all.

“New Moon” picks up more or less where last year’s “Twilight” left off.  Bella (Stewart) has just turned 18 and displays her innate knack for turning even the most modest of joys into cause for sorrow.  With another year under her belt, she is reminded of the simple fact that she is aging, a curse that her pale skinned hubby Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) could fix with a little nip on the neck.

But alas, after an unfortunate incident at the Cullen family mansion, Edward decides, in the film’s only application of legitimate rationality, that Bella’s obsession with becoming a member of the elite undead is call for concern.  The Cullens pack up and leave town and Bella is left, well, about as despondent as she seemed before.

Bella finds some arbitrary solace in the suspiciously buff Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), but is haunted by images of her beloved Eddy, usually advising her not to choose the stupidest option available at present (Don’t get on the bike with the potential rapist, Bella).  Bella works out all by herself that making stupid decisions will summon this image of Eddy telling her not to make stupid decisions, so she goes into adrenaline-junky mode, fixing up a pair of bikes with Jacob, introducing hers to a rock, and then literally jumping off a cliff.

All of this is a prelude to the film’s primary revelation.  I don’t feel as though I’m spoiling it for anybody when I say that Jacob is a werewolf, running with a gang of other werewolves who do a lot of running about topless in the rain until the story demands that they assume more animal like characteristics.

From here there’s some globetrotting, mind reading, and a lot more brooding.  Bella and Eddy’s love for one another is exemplified in moments of tender dialog in which they talk about how much they love one another.  There’s no real investigation of the couple’s feelings.  They love each other, now shut up.  Finally, after two hours and in true franchise form, “New Moon” ham-handedly sets up for the sequel.  Tune in next year to see if Bella and Edward will continue to be miserably in love together.

Why this story is popular with women I will never know.  Surely in an age of liberated, working, and independent women, they’re not sympathizing with Bella?   Here is an eighteen year old girl who is more than willing to sacrifice her education, her devoted and loving father, and even her soul so that she can be with her high school sweetheart.  Is this what you ladies find romantic?  Bella needs a therapist, not a husband.

If “New Moon” sends a damaging message about women’s place in society (and it does), it’s because it is written by a woman who doesn’t seem to understand what that place is.  Weitz does what he can with the material, but he’s too subservient to Meyer’s naivety to bring any substance to it.  The project is undone by its obsessive loyalty, which is strangely appropriate.

Rollan Schott

November 23, 2009

Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

But He Didn't Do Anything!

A Serious Man

Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

Four Stars

That poor Larry Gopnick.  His wife is leaving him for his best friend.  His daughter is stealing money from him to pay for a nose job.  His son is stealing money from his daughter to pay for weed and listening to Jefferson Airplane in Hebrew school.  His leach of a brother spends hours in the bathroom draining a cyst.

One of his students may have bribed him to improve a grade on an exam.  The student’s father may be suing him for accepting a bribe.  Someone is writing libelous letters to the college in an effort to foil his bid for tenure.  On top of bills from his divorce lawyer and his brother’s doctor, he’s been slapped with a $400 fee from the Columbia Record Club, of which he is not a member.  He finds some semblance of solace in his beautiful neighbor, but she’s definitely the type of woman he would avoid if he knows what’s best for him.  God only knows how those X-rays will come back. 

Why is all of this happening?  Why poor Larry?  Why now, and why all at once?  Is it something he did?  Karma perhaps?  Could it be because one of his ancestors allowed a dybbuck (A dead man’s lost soul) into his home?  Could it be that someone upstairs just has it in for him?  He keeps saying “I didn’t do anything,” which may or may not be the answer to all of his problems.

The Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man”, a reenactment of the book of Job set in a quiet Jewish neighborhood in Minneapolis, is about a man’s painful search for answers that aren’t there, about how we try to prove our worth to fate rather than to ourselves.  It won’t likely play at any nearby theaters, but I hope you take the time to seek it out.  It is a tough pill to swallow, but it is also one of the year’s very best films.

Rollan Schott

November 20, 2009

Originally Featured in the Nelson Gazette

The Mayans Predict a World Undone by Ambitious Cliches

2012

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Two and One Half Stars

Roland Emmerich, it seems, exists as a filmmaker for the sole purpose of destroying the planet more authoritatively than the last time Roland Emmerich destroyed the planet.  His list of credits, in order (some titles excluded), include “Independence Day,” “Godzilla,” and “The Day After Tomorrow.” Look at these titles and you can see how he has steadily upped the ante. Emmerich lays pretty thorough waste to the planet in his latest, “2012,” which I suspect will become some sort of opus for end-of-the-world epics.

Some peculiar shift in the sun’s rays is his latest justification for worldwide pandemonium, transforming our sunlight essentially into microwaves that have cooked out planet from the inside out. And now, with the earth’s mantle melted and unstable, the tectonic plates twist, turn and tango into oblivion, and we humans are not strapped in for the ride.  With this premise, Emmerich obliges himself to turn cities upside down, flood them, blow them up and scramble them around until China is a puddle jumper’s hop from Hawaii.

These events are primarily witnessed through the eyes of novelist Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) who pieces together the pending disaster during an evening long vacation with his estranged son and daughter to Yellowstone National Park, when he stumbles across the U.S. government’s head geologist (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and a hippie conspiracy connoisseur (Woody Harrelson) stumbles into him.

The government has long been aware, we learn, and have been assassinating anyone who threatens to release the information in an effort to avoid widespread panic. Soon rumors are surfacing of spaceships or something of the like being built to save a small, wealthy sliver of the human race.  Jackson pieces it together pretty quickly. No one else has a clue.

From here Jackson and his estranged family join a typecast Russian bureaucrat who has tickets for him and his children to enter these survival pods, whatever they may be, and set off around the world to China, so that we might see that disaster has not confined itself this time to the United States alone.

As is usually the case in effects epics, the human story of “2012” is weak, populated only by stereotypes in place to shout expository lines and provide emotional cues. That the human drama is not the focal point of movies like this does not make this entirely forgivable.

Emmerich’s special effects are exciting and ambitious, but suffer from that artificial big budget gleam that prevents them from being particularly realistic and involving.

This brings me to “2012’s” biggest problems. Special effects, no matter how breathtaking, cannot carry a film for 158 minutes. A film that cannot invest its audience in its characters cannot convince them to care. After 2 1/2 hours of earthquakes, volcanoes and tidal waves, none of the previously mentioned phenomena can be particularly engaging if we have no stake in them.

“2012” is inspired by predictions from countless ancient civilizations who predicted that our world would come to an end on or around Dec. 21, 2012. Most notable of these were the Mayans, whose astronomical studies led them to believe that one of the many stars they had tracked would eventually collide with earth.  We are close enough now, as NASA informs us, that if this were actually the case, we would be able to see this celestial body with the naked eye.

“2012” takes a different approach, one that deals not with “When Worlds Collide” sensibilities, but with the “When Earth Strikes Back” mentality that M. Night Shyamalan explored a couple years ago in “The Happening” and that Emmerich himself had already explored in “The Day After Tomorrow.”

I’m not sure the earth can be more thoroughly destroyed than it is here, which provides it with a sort of audacious charm that many people will probably enjoy. And for all the casualties and chaos, Emmerich remembers that what is really interesting about this material to us Americans is not how the human race will survive, but rather whether or not Jackson and his estranged wife Kate will get together again.

Rollan Schott

November 17, 2009

Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

For Those of You Who Thought Health Care Reform Was a Waste of Taxpayers' Money...

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Directed by Grant Heslov

Three Stars

Albert Stubblebon III makes an interesting point. In the British documentary “The Crazy Rulers of the World” that inspired “The Men Who Stare at Goats”, he tells us, “You know the electron, or the atom, is mostly made up of space,” he said.  “My space is made up of atoms.  The wall’s space is made up of atoms.  All you got to do is merge the spaces.”  In other words, if you can realign your atomic structure, you can pass through the empty space of the atoms in the wall.  You’ll know when you’ve figured it out, I think.  Your clothes will fall to the floor.

Stubblebon was a U.S. Military sergeant in 1983.  He was a part of Project Jedi, a small and confidential branch of the military who were trying to find ways to walk through walls, bend spoons, and intercept the thoughts of others.  That this is true is why “The Men Who Stare at Goats” is funny.  Director Gant Heslov treats the film mostly as a history lesson.  No need to go out of your way to make this seem absurd.

There are essentially two stories at work.  One is a history of the early years of Project Jedi, now the New Earth Army, how it was formed by a zenned out general (Jeff Bridges) and how it operated within and outside the tapestry of the military, as documented by a present-day journalist, Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) who travels to Kuwait to pick up some story, any story, on the outskirts of the war.

He meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a former member of the New Earth Army, who is venturing into Iraq after sensing telepathically that he should.  That the two should meet can be accredited only to fate.  Anyone who can sense which way to turn at a fork in the road probably knows fate when they see it.

It is through Lyn that the flashbacks are constructed.  He was the most promising soldier in the New Earth Army, the only one who once killed a goat just by staring at it.  He recalls the Army’s rise and fall, how and why it was formed, how it was paid for, how it was received, how it was misused and how it was destroyed.  All the while, Lyn and Bob are travelling deeper into the war looking for, well they don’t know what they’re looking for, but Lyn will know it when it comes.

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is an intermittently funny movie, occasionally rising to the level of hilarity.  Every major player in the film is given a memorable one-liner and director Heslov takes the right approach to the material.  By looking at the paranormal the way the members of the New Earth Army did, as a reality, there is a kind of comic absurdity bubbling beneath the skin of the narrative.

But the film also spends far too much time waiting for itself, and its pacing issues reach their peak with its all too neatly packaged climax that wouldn’t have felt like one had it not loudly announced its arrival.

“More of this is true than you might believe”, reads the title card at the beginning of the film.  Well, I believe that there are people in this country who find such madness plausible, and I believe that they have occasionally risen to stature of high office in our government.  The United States military funded research in the field of paranormal weaponry.  I think that title should have read, “More of this is true than you’d probably be comfortable with”.

Rollan Schott

November 15, 2009

Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

Ghost on Screen's Top 13 Horror Movies

Over the past one hundred years, horror has proven to be the most durable genre of the cinema.  It has survived countless failures and relentless critical disapproval, and has continued to sell well since it was popularized in the thirties.

I think it is because fear is such a universal sensation, and that we have always been excited by its capacity to thrill us and to heighten our senses.  The following thirteen films have done that.  Many continue to do that.  Here are the top thirteen horror films of all time.  Why thirteen?  Why not?

13. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Tobe Hooper shot “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in triple digit heat in Texas over a period of about thirty sixteen hour (plus) shooting days.  The result is about as close to sadism as high art can get and still be high art.  Many think the film is based on a true story.  It isn’t, but it’s a testament to the film’s raw power that its myth has become so engrained in American culture.

12. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

“Dr. Caligari” might not be the most frightening horror movie on the list, but it is the first.  The film was a first in many ways.  It contained the first wild twist of an ending, and it was also the first film to use set design and lighting to convey the distorted mind of its characters.  It also scared its 1920s audiences out of their seats.

11. The Night of the Living Dead (1968)

George Romero invented zombie horror with “The Night of the Living Dead”, which was one of the first Vietnam era horror movies to exemplify the darker direction in which horror was headed.  There were no gleefully creepy bumps in the night here.  Romero deeply rooted his film in hopelessness and despair.

10. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Hannibal Lector has become one of the two or three most iconic movie villains of all time.  Anthony Hopkins plays the role with a quiet but daunting intelligence, a man who gets under our skin because he so easily gets into the minds of everyone else.  Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece is the most recent of only three examples to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay)

9. Freaks (1932)

Director Tod Browning had worked in the circus before “Dracula” (1931) launched him into the limelight.  One year later, casting real circus freaks for all of the lead roles, “Freaks” destroyed his career.  The film premiered only once in 1932 and was so shocking that it wasn’t shown again in the U.K. until the 1960’s.

8. Diabolique (1955)
Henry-Georges Clouzot pleaded to his audiences that they not reveal the shocking twist at the end of “Diabolique”, a gimmick that Alfred Hitchcock would later borrow for “Psycho”, among most everything else that made the film so revolutionary.  Both films are inspired examples of sly misdirection.

7. Halloween (1978)

If director John Carpenter had patented the slasher movie formula he coined with “Halloween”, he would now own four islands in the South Pacific and half of Frito Lay.  Modern horror movies begin here, with what has become one of the most profitable independent films of all time.

6. Jaws (1978)

Many people might not consider Stephen Spielberg’s aquatic thriller a horror movie, but note that for weeks after “Jaws” was released to theaters, beach attendance plummeted across the country.  Why?  Because people were scared to go in the water.  If that’s not horror, I don’t know what is.

5. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Roman Polanski founded his paranoid chiller set in sixties Manhattan on the inherent fears of motherhood, that something could be wrong with your child while it grows inside you, that someone you know could be plotting to take your child from you.  “Rosemary’s Baby” is a slow-burning candle in a room full of dynamite.

4. Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror) (1922)

F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” is the greatest vampire movie of all time.  It will not scare movie audiences today, but I admire it for the beauty of its composition, and for the sincerity of its delivery.  Complimented by the constraints of silent cinema, “Nosferatu” feels now like a half-remembered nightmare, the residue of evil left over after we wake.

3. Psycho (1960)

It’s hard to find any movie lover who doesn’t know the secrets to Alfred Hitchcock’s remarkable “Psycho”.  The reason for this is simple.  Hitchcock earns the right to manipulate us by selling his misdirections so sincerely.  “It wasn’t a message that stirred the audiences,” Hitchcock later revealed in an interview with Francois Truffault.  “Nor was it a great performance…They were aroused by pure film.”

2. The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” is like one of those closed-door mysteries as seen from the inside out.  Nothing makes sense, because there is no one there to make sense of it.  Widely regarded as the most epic horror movie ever made, “The Shining” was Kubrick’s most financially successful film and immortalized Jack Nicholson with the great horror catchphrase, “Heeere’s Johnny!”

1. The Exorcist (1973)

William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” dropped like a bombshell into theaters across the country just in time for Christmas in 1973.  The result was a documented spike in church attendance.  Ambulances were called to theaters to treat viewers who suffered violent panic attacks and seizures. 

People fled theaters screaming.  Those who stayed often wept or occasionally vomited.  Televangelist Billy Graham declared that the original celluloid reel of the film was possessed by evil spirits.  The Pope even took time to publically condemn the film.  Unsubstantiated rumors would eventually surface of a devout Christian couple committing suicide hours after seeing it.

What a visceral movie this is, how mercilessly it preys on our sympathies.  The tale of a beautiful twelve year old girl falling pray to the devil is in itself unsettling, but Friedkin’s realistic presentation and unrestrained courage pushed the project over the edge.  Shots of young Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) projectile-vomiting pea soup and stabbing her crotch with a bloody crucifix are images that have still not lost their staying power.  When it comes to truly terrifying movies, “The Exorcist” is in a league of its own.  It is a black, evil, soulless movie.




Rollan Schott
November 6, 2009
Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

The King of Pop Still Reigns

This is It

Directed by Kenny Ortega

Three and One Half Stars

“This Is It” works best as a eulogy.  It captures the king of pop on stage, the only place he was ever really at home, still deeply passionate about his music and still in fine physical and vocal form during what we now know were the last few months of his life.  The film should lay to rest most of the rumors about Michael Jackson, that he was too dooped up on tranquilizers and sedatives to perform, that he was alienated or isolated from those around him, or that he was just plain crazy.  The Michael Jackson in “This Is It” is gracious, humble, intelligent, and keen.  He treated his technicians and fellow performers with the utmost respect, and that respect was returned.  The Michael Jackson in “This Is It” was a great a man.

It should be know that “This Is It” is not one of those ‘concert-experience’ movies like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cirus have been cashing in on lately.  It would have, though, if Jackson had not passed away between the time this footage was shot and the series of sold out London concerts where the serious shooting was meant to take place.

Fortunately the concert director Kenny Ortega, who also directed the film, kept quality cameras running for most of the rehearsals.  Likely intended for behind-the-scenes special features or maybe some intercut footage cut between live songs of the feature, Ortega used the rehearsal footage to paint a portrait of Jackson and the farewell concerts he was preparing that is far more intimate and personal than a concert film would have been.

A concert film would have been just that – a concert on film.  “This Is It” shows Jackson synchronizing with engineers, communicating with his backup dancers, making mistakes and correcting them, and doing so with grace and confidence.  The man knew his music inside and out, and had a very particular vision for its presentation.  He was fortunate to have such talented people around him to realize that vision.

Because the rehearsals were not meant to be the whole of the film, much of the footage is regrettably low in quality, often grainy or slightly out of focus.  The limited number of cameras however, means that the average shot length is much longer than it might have been with more, so we get a cleaner, more revealing look at Jackson’s performances.  Also, in a disappointing moment, Jackson explains to his vocal director that he isn’t singing to his full potential because he’s saving his voice for the shows.

I have always felt that Michael Jackson’s music was missing a key component if Jackson himself wasn’t there dancing to it.  The music itself was always just well made pop music.  It was the thrill of the performance that made Michael Jackson a superhero.  There are times, though, when Jackson’s music does becomes political.  His message is simple and pure, and delivered with heart.  There is a monologue in “This Is It” in which Jackson explains his deep love of nature and the beauty of the earth.  To quote any of it would be redundant.  Like everything else in Jackson’s remarkable career, the magic is in the delivery.

Rollan Schott

November 5, 2009

Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan.

He's He-ere...

Paranormal Activity
Directed by Oren Peli
Four stars

Like all good horror movies, Paranormal Activity taps deeply into what makes us scared. I’m not talking about heads on pikes, explicit violence or gore. Those things tend to disgust rather than terrify. Like Rosemary’s Baby, Paranormal Activity contains almost no blood and guts (and what little gruesomeness there is leaves more of an imprint on your psyche than on your stomach), and most of its terror is implied. While the film is about supernatural forces and demons, chances are it will scare you regardless of whether or not you believe in spirits. The reason Paranormal Activity is so effective is because it expresses the very real human fear of being unable to escape from something horrifying. In its own pared-down way, Paranormal Activity is just as brilliant and scary as any horror movie of the last twenty years. Yes, including The Blair Witch Project, its forefather which it has often been compared to.

The film’s scenario is simple -- a couple who have recently moved in together, Katie and Micah (Katie Featherstone and Micah Sloat), have been experiencing weird things in their San Diego home. Doors opening and closing by themselves, footsteps from downstairs, the occasional thud. Katie is convinced that it’s a ghost that has haunted her throughout her life. Micah is not convinced that the disturbances have been caused by anything paranormal (the film intimates that he thinks it’s an intruder of some sort), but he buys an expensive, HD camera to capture whatever strange things happen on film. The conceit of the movie is that all of the footage is filmed by Micah’s camera, and was found after the events depicted in the film.

Katie and Micah invite a ghost expert into their home to see what he makes of the situation. In any other context, this character would seem like a deluded and superstitious charlatan, but the situation that the film creates make him seem wise and plausible. Once again, as in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, we know intellectually that the suggestion of something paranormal happening is silly, but the evidence keeps mounting in its favour. The crazy idea is the only one that makes sense.

The ghost expert, after listening to Katie’s story, tells the couple that rather than dealing with a ghost, they’re being haunted by a demon, a malevolent being who exists purely to create terror in the humans it targets. It wants something from Katie specifically, the expert says, and that’s why the demon has followed her all her life. Micah, in alpha male fashion, tries to isolate the problem and find a solution for it. “Why don’t we find out what it wants and give it to it?” He asks. The expert looks at him, and says almost with derision: “Because it probably wants Katie.”

The movie gets really interesting once Micah sets the camera up in the master bedroom, to record what happens when he and Katie are asleep. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that the introduction of the camera was a big mistake for Micah and Katie. The demon seems to perceive the introduction of the camera as an invitation to put on a show. One of the best sequences in the film is seeing what it does with an Ouija board (a horror movie cliché, subverted brilliantly in this film) that Micah erroneously decides to use to communicate with it. If that scene doesn’t convince you that this thing’s raison d’être is to freak Katie and Micah out, I don’t know what will.

That’s another thing about Paranormal Activity -- this demon, this intangible villain, is given so much personality. We can feel its presence as a being, rather than as an abstract thing introduced into the film only to create conflict. This demon knows perfectly how to push Micah and Katie’s buttons, and how to make them feel deep anxiety. When we see it flicking lights on and off, hear it thumping around downstairs, we may wonder ‘why is it doing that?’ The answer is: for the camera. Everything that the demon does is for the camera. One fun aspect of the movie (and despite the scares, Paranormal Activity is a very fun movie) is that we see what the demon is doing before Micah and Katie do. On the mornings after, we see how Micah and Katie react to the footage that we’ve already seen.

The performances are perfect for this material. This story doesn’t call for ‘big’ acting moments that we expect from movies like this. These are two young people, one a cocky stock-broker, the other a student aspiring to be a teacher. There were discussions, prior to the film being released, of remaking it with a larger budget and different actors (those discussions were quashed after Steven Spielberg saw the original and just how brilliant it is). Not necessary -- both of these actors find exactly the right note for their characters. Micah Sloat, as the cocky and kind of jerky boyfriend basically invites the demon into their lives by constantly antagonising it. There are moments where we just want to throttle him, but that’s because we can see what the demon is capable of before Micah or Katie can. Much of the apprehension we feel in the film stems from the fact that we could shout warnings to the couple, but are powerless to help them.

Paranormal Activity was made for around $10,000, uses only two principal actors and two secondary actors, is set in one house (first-time director Oren Peli’s own house) and is relatively light on special effects, although one or two of the effects are astounding.

There are one or two minor flaws with the movie, but I was, and most people probably will be, too engrossed in the terror to notice them until after it’s over. For instance, Micah and Katie are given the details of a demonologist that is an expert in cases like theirs. When the situation becomes dire, they attempt to contact him only to discover that he’s overseas for a few days. Seems to me that these guys would be desperate and scared enough to try and find another demonologist, of which I imagine there would be several in an area like San Diego. Even if there aren’t, these guys are desperate enough to do more than call after just one demonologist.

The film’s conceit may also be a little egregious, particularly as the demon’s behaviour escalates. I bought the idea that Micah would film everything up to a point, but once real fear and desperation sets in, I can’t imagine he would ensure that the camera was set up to record certain events, particularly the final scenes.

Those minor issues aside, Paranormal Activity is nearly a perfect terror delivery system. Why bother going to see a movie that will unsettle and terrify you? For me, there’s an adrenalin rush in seeing any movie that succeeds so supremely in achieving its goals. Paranormal Activity’s aim is to frighten its audience senseless. Just watch the movie’s trailer, featuring reaction shots of normal people at a test screening to see how it succeeds.

And what a triumph of film-making this movie is! This is a movie that understands that terror doesn’t need to be explicit, loud, over-stylised or overtly gory. Much of the experience of watching Paranormal Activity is waiting for something to happen. But it’s the waiting that will get to you.

By Jonathan Fisher (www.thefilmbrief.com)
October 31st, 2009

For Chrissakes People, You've Had Six Chances to Get it Right

 Saw VI

Directed by Kevin Greutert

Zero Stars

My response to the “Saw” franchise has been an ever-evolving process.  I began with relative indifference to a mediocre original that showed an early penchant for romanticizing Stockholm syndrome.  The film’s most notable watershed was simply that it provided us with manipulation while depriving us of revelation, the concept that the entire franchise would eventually be founded on. 

With the second in the series, however, came the formula, and I found myself suddenly enthusiastic about the inevitable franchise’s comical ineptitude.  My friends and I would have bad scary movie nights, of which “Saw II” and “Saw III” became staple finales, following the likes of “Mosquitoman”, “Stay Alive”, and “Santa’s Slay”.  Hilarity always ensued.

But somewhere during the fourth installment the joke grew old, and I began to realize that what I had always been laughing at were the people who reveled in this tripe, the people who were systematically blown away by the exact same plot line on repeat, the people who confused fear with their gag reflex, the people who just plain got their kicks out of people being mutilated.

I sat through a sold out weekend opening of “Saw V” last year offended by this country’s reprehensibly bad taste.  The crowed whooped and hollered and clapped and cheered.  They thought they were watching something shocking, something provocative and clever.  That anyone could look at the “Saw” franchise and see that, let alone enough people to make the series an annual chart topper, shows what a decrepit state this nation’s culture is in.

Of this year’s “Saw VI” I can describe my experience only as catatonic, not quite asleep and not quite alive, watching the movie as though I were waiting for it to catch up with me.  “Yes, yes, I already know this,” I found myself thinking.  “This happens in every movie.  No need to present it as some kind of mammoth reveal.”

The theater this year, which promisingly was only modestly full on opening night, erupted in applause after a young woman chopped her own arm off.  I shook my head.  This is why they came.  This is what they wanted to see.  They’ve proven that with their vocal enthusiasm.  The masochism in this society is off the charts.  This is a problem. 

The story of “Saw VI” proceeds as it usually does, loaded with cheap little mysteries, the most tantalizing of which was why on earth anyone would care.  Of this film I will not provide any explicit spoilers, but I will point out that in every “Saw” sequel up until now, the main character has died, always only moments after it is revealed that their ‘game’ had one unforeseen phase remaining.  Oops, my mistake.  Looks like that was a spoiler after all.

I say this of course, because there are scores of people out there who still insist they go to the “Saw” movies for the story, and I have to wonder what the hell they’re talking about.  People who are excited by the storylines in the “Saw” series, I would modestly propose, do not have a very good idea of what constitutes a quality “story”.  I would recommend that they try films like “Diabolique”, “Psycho”, or “Rosemary’s Baby” if they wish to meld their horror fetish with inspired storytelling.

I am sure that there will be a “Saw VII”, and I am sure that I will see it.  The experience will continue to evolve.  However, I doubt very much that I will see fit to give a higher rating to next year’s installment than I have given any of these sequels, which has always been the lowest rating available.  Why I continue to see these films I cannot say for sure.  Perhaps my own level of masochism is equally distressing.

Rollan Schott
October 29, 2009
Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

How Do You Solve the Problems of the Justice System? Disregard the Justice System

 Law Abiding Citizen

Directed by F. Gary Gray

One and One Half Stars

“Law Abiding Citizen” is a film about all of the horrors of the American justice system.  You know, like diplomacy and civil rights.  It’s a film that advocates the death penalty, such that one of two potential corpses is about a dozen too few.  That the film is reasonably well acted and directed doesn’t make it any less irresponsible.

Gerard Butler plays the instigator, Clyde Shelton, one of those wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly-unless-that-fly-was-really-super-annoying tough guys with an adorable little daughter, a beautiful wife, and a history they probably don’t know about.  One night his doorbell rings, and he is greeted with a baseball bat to the face and a pair of serial killers who murder his wife and daughter.  If the word arbitrary doesn’t come to mind, you’re not paying attention.

The two men are caught.  Motivations are not pursued.  Clyde lands attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Fox) who cuts a deal with the DA to send one of the two murderers to death row but lets the other off with a short jail sentence in favor of his testimony.  Clyde is less than satisfied.  They both deserve to die.

And so, ten years later, Clyde begins his killing spree, wiping out everyone who had anything to do with the case.  This includes everyone from the judge right down to the prosecutorial assistants.  The process calls not for the suspension of disbelief, but for the euthanization of it

Part of me wants to admit that there’s a “Clockwork Orange” style courage in director F. Gary Gray’s assault on human decency and fairness.  His approach here suggests that fairness within the legal system is too often insufficient to provide adequate justice.  If you know that someone is guilty, why do you need to prove it to the court?

There is a difference between being the best available justice system and being a perfect justice system.  Because this system proves itself imperfect during Clyde’s case, he assumes it to be a total failure, and aims to dismantle it entirely.  In favor of what?  He doesn’t seem to have any alternative outside of unrestrained violence.

There’s something reprehensible about “Law Abiding Citizen” and the way it misrepresents the capacity of the courtroom for the purpose of unleashing anarchy on the audience.  That Nick Rice learns a ‘valuable’ lesson, taught by said anarchy, sinks the project completely.  Of my final observation of the movie’s message I will not comment, but rather will leave that to you.  The American court system will only work on those who choose to work it.

Rollan Schott
October 28, 2009
Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

The Year's Biggest Bombshell is All About Preventing Explosions

 The Hurt Locker

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Four Stars

"Open the hurt locker, and learn how rough men come hunting for souls." -- Brian Turner, from his poem "The Hurt Locker"

The Hurt Locker has no axe to grind, pro or con, with the current Iraq war. The film opens with a quote by American war correspondent Chris Hedges: "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug." Perhaps a tad obvious, and I'd like to think I would have worked that out for myself from the film that follows the quote, but the quote doesn't only apply to the people on the battlefield. War is a drug for humanity. We wage war over resources, over beliefs, for power. It has been said by many that if we lived in a world without religion, many of the great wars of our past would have been averted. Nonsense. If there was no religion, we would find other reasons to murder, maim, and attempt to control each other.

Kathryn Bigelow's film -- one of the most riveting, spellbinding and best of the year -- doesn't care about the politics behind the Iraq war. It cares about the people on the battlefield, the effect that war has on them, and the massive chasm between the reality of on-site war, and the way the public respond to it. The Hurt Locker dispells some myths that we all perpetuate about this war. I am no authority on war personally, never having enlisted in the Army, Navy, or Marines. My grandfather was with the air force, though, and I think he would agree with what I'm about to say: war is messy -- despite the press conferences for our benefit held by generals about tactics and progress, war is by nature anarchic. War is also surprisingly quiet. Punctuated by disturbances of violent attacks and explosions, yes, but for longer than we might think, it involves waiting. War is also, despite what the recruitment advertisements propagate, not fun.

At no point in The Hurt Locker do the characters appear to have fun. The film opens with a spectacular sequence involving the diffusing of a bomb in Baghdad. An elite Army bomb squad, led by Sgt. Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce), performs a delicate operation in trying to disarm a bomb on a quiet Baghdad corner. One thing I noticed in this scene, and just about all subsequent scenes involving bomb disarmament, is that the local Iraqis simply stand on the street or their balconies and watch the proceedings. They're just as helpless as the Americans, though the Americans have the illusion of possible control of the situation. Sometimes they get lucky. And it does feel like luck, despite the fact that these men know bombs intimately, and behave like neuro-surgeons when faced with dismantling them.

Let's just say that in the opening scene, they don't get lucky. It's not a big spoiler to tell you that we see the bomb go off, and for the rest of the film dread experiencing that feeling of resignation and hopelessness again. The rest of the film follows the team, particularly Sgts. William Jones (Jeremy Renner) and JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Spc. Owen Eldridge (Brian Gerarghty) on their bomb squad rotation. They patrol Baghdad, and sometimes are called to diffuse a bomb. Sometimes, trouble just finds them.

While The Hurt Locker is a war picture, it's also an exciting action movie. Bigelow constructs her action sequences with clarity and tension. She shows us what the consequences are if these guys don't do their job right. The action scenes in this film are infinitely more exciting than those in most blockbusters you'll see this year, because we care about the characters involved. While they may merely be cannon fodder from the callous and indifferent war's perspective, to us they are human.

Jeremy Renner brings massive intensity to his role as Sgt. William James, and Oscar glory could well await him come February. There is relatively little dialogue in The Hurt Locker, but no line is wasted. Every conversation, every exchange between the characters says something to us about their state of mind. One scene in which the group come to blows in their dormitory shows us the lengths some will go to in war-time to feel something, even if it that 'something' is anger with the people that are supposed to be on their side.

In so many ways The Hurt Locker represents how the public at large feels about this Iraq war, but it never once calls attention to the political forces that instigated it. Like the soldiers, we're all tired and weary. Most of us feel that the war is directionless and infinite. The Hurt Locker offers a rather uncomfortable suggestion: we might all be right.

Jonathan Fisher
October 26, 2009
Originally Featured at The Film Brief

A Child's Imagination Run Wild

Where the Wild Things Are

Directed by Spike Jonze

Two and One Half Stars

I suspect that many lifelong fans of Maurice Sendak’s acclaimed children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are”, have already formed in their minds a masterpiece of a film.  They’ve become fans of it on Facebook weeks before its release and will exchange catchphrases like “it’s gonna be awesome” as they stand in line to see it.  It is a testament to the human imagination, I suppose, that many people will leave the theater convinced they’d seen that masterpiece, regardless of what transpired on screen.

Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are”, an adaptation of Sendak’s immortal children’s book, is very much about that kind of imagination.  It is an emotionally poignant movie distracted by wildly inconsistent characters and obtrusive camerawork.  Jonze does a wonderful job in his film recalling the essence of a nine year old boy, but he does a poor job of really bringing this particular one to life.

Max Records assumes the lead role of Max, a young boy with a penchant for applying his fantastical ideas to his not-so-fantastical reality.  Most notable is his ability to internalize great tragedies out of ordinary familial conflicts, which is the type of incident that sets the real story in motion.  Max’s mother (Catherine Keener) is, for all I can tell, a loving a devoted parent.  She empathizes with Max when his sister’s friends smash his snow fortress, but promptly and responsibly punishes him for his revenge.  She also has a boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo), which brings to mind the potential trauma of losing a father in some way or another.

When Max flees into the night and into his fantasies after a spat with his mother, it isn’t because she is an abusive or neglectful parent (as would have been the case in a lesser movie), but because Max likes to think she is in order to fuel his wild imagination.  Then Max sails away on a sea of fantasy to an island where the wild things are.  They are most unhappy, and he determines to help them.

Why are the wild things unhappy?  Because this is Max’s fantasy, you see - a scapegoat the film falls back on a few too many times.  “Where the Wild Things Are” eventually begins to feel like a game with a child who keeps changing the rules.  Sure, it’s an accurate depiction of the mind of a child, but it’s not much fun to participate in.  This inconsistency subjects the wild things to bizarre mood swings and choppy relationships.  Even Max becomes more and more of a mystery as the tale proceeds.  Instead of learning more about him, we begin to doubt what we thought we already knew.

“Where the Wild Things Are” is a beautiful film, full of gorgeous landscapes and exciting images, but it’s difficult to get a good look at any of it, because Jonze’s queasicam is out of control.  The camera shakes gratuitously, disorienting and nauseating the audience for no apparent reason other than to needlessly doll up the production with the whimsical notion that the whole thing was shot with a handheld camera. 

Queasicam shots have become a technique that lazy filmmakers fall back on when they have nothing exciting to shoot but want to manufacture the illusion that they do.  It has become a common practice in gunfights and car chases, over-simulating the sensation of displacement within the action.  But Jonze does have something exciting to shoot, and I was quite frustrated that I couldn’t get a clean look at it.  This could have been an infinitely better film if Jonze had busted out the tripod and actually composed a shot.

That said, there is a beauty to Jonze’s imagery, and the essence of Sendak’s artwork has been effectively translated to the screen.  If I seem a bit upset at “Where the Wild Things Are”, it is because, like you, I was very much hoping for a masterpiece, and am convinced that there is just such a masterpiece barred away within this film, trying to break free and roar.

Rollan Schott

October 16, 2009

Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

It's Alright, I Suppose. Could Use Some Spicing Up.

 Julie & Julia

Directed by Nora Ephron

Two and One Half Stars

I knew very little about Julia Child going into Julie and Julia, and as such wasn't quite sure what to make of Meryl Streep's performance. After seeing the movie I did a little research on Julia Child and from what I read and saw, Streep's performance is spot-on. During the film I wondered if she was hamming up the role of Child, with the strange accent, mannerisms and peculiarities. Having watched some Julie Child on YouTube, it seems that Streep has underplayed Child, if anything.

Nora Ephron's Julie and Julia is an enjoyable enough flick, even if it eventually reveals itself to be a standard mid-year comedy/drama. Just about everything about it is light, inoffensive and not particularly challenging. The music swells, subsides and chirps at the right moments. The dialogue has a patter that only exists in movies like this, and the movie's conflicts are all-too-perfectly timed.

Meryl Streep plays Julia Child circa 1959, as she travels with her diplomant husband Paul (Stanley Tucci). When the couple move to Paris, Julia studies haute cuisine at a school for professional chefs. Eventually Child would write a groundbreaking cookbook called "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", a book that made French cooking accessible to Americans. Not that it really helped. I get the feeling most Americans would rather a Philadelphia Cheese Steak over boeuf bourgignon nine times out of ten.

Amy Adams, always engaging, plays Julie Powell, a mid-level NYC bureaucrat who in 2002 began a blog chronicling her attempt to cook 524 of Child's recipes in 365 days. The blog begins as an outlet for her creativity, but eventually grows into an all-consuming activity that alienates her from her supportive husband (Chris Messina) before being picked up for a book deal and, eventually, turned into a movie. Julie and Julia cuts back and forth between these stories, not-so-subtly reminding us of the parallels of these two women. Both love to cook, love to eat, want to write, have supportive husbands and feel a little out of place in their respective environments. Child was 6'2" and, while not unattractive, had an unusual demeanour. Julie, in 2002, finds herself as a poorly-paid public servant with high-flying friends. In one scene, she has lunch with her friends who tell her all about the success of their professional endeavours while simultaneously texting, calling and e-mailing. It's scenes like this that tip Julie and Julia into standard, unchallenging territory (not, to quote "Seinfeld", that there's anything wrong with that). The film tries its darndest to show us the dichotomy between the women's desires and the reality they find themselves in. Many scenes like this are presented in the most straight-forward, palatable way as possible. Fine if you want pure escapism, but I'm a guy who likes his movies with a little meat on their bones.

Even so, it's interesting that a film like Julie and Julia couldn't exist at any time but this one. Ephron labours on the similarities between Julie and Julia, but the most interesting difference between the women to me was their methods of attack. Julie's is a quintisentially modern one, and is the dream story for an internet writer -- an average person begins a blog which becomes hugely popular before being turned into a best-selling book. Despite that, there's a kinship between her and Julia Child, who had to rely on the analogue methods of writing a book, and persisting and persisting before convincing someone that it is commerically viable. In that way, Julie and Julia is kind of comforting, presenting technology as a helpful, logical progression in humanity's timeline, rather than something to be feared.

Amy Adams makes good work of her character, who could easily have had a simple up-down-down-up arc. As Adams plays her, every facial expression and line has something to say about Julie. She's a great actress being a little reined in by this material. If Julie's character was a tad constrictive for Adams, the character of Julia Child is right up Meryl Streep's alley. Her Julia Child is flamboyant and lovable, cheeky and kind. Streep seems to be in the 'enjoyable' phase of her career. It's nice to see her breaking up roles in intense fare like Doubt with films like this one.

Julie and Julia, while competently made, is not entirely this reviewer's cup of tea. The ending, particularly, overdoses on gooeyness and actually struck me as kind of creepy. Does Julie want to be Julia Child, or does she want to be with her? Hero worship in the movies can only go so far before seeming a little sinister.

Jonathan Fisher
October 15, 2009
Originally Featured in The Film Brief

The Free Market's Gotten a Bit Expensive

Capitalism: A Love Story

Directed by Michael Moore

Three and One Half Stars

Michael Moore’s latest documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Story” brings new life to a simple truth, that capitalism parades itself as a vehicle for free enterprise but ultimately rewards greed more than any other virtue.  Those who have benefitted the most from the free market have become a significant threat to the rest of us.  Capitalism began as a revelatory concept for a national economy, but as time went by the disparity between the top and the bottom stretched out of control.  I’m reminded of a little piece of wisdom from a little movie called “Citizen Kane”.  It’s no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money.

Moore makes a pretty compelling case against capitalism here, even if he doesn’t really offer any solution.  Make money your number one priority, he argues, and you shall reap the rewards of capitalism, but it’s your own fault if your dream job doesn’t pay well, or if your employer keeps that extra surplus for himself, or heaven forbid, if you have a pre-existing medical condition and must spend your life savings on hospital bills after a car accident because you can’t acquire health insurance.  Some people just work harder than others, you see, and those people will make more money.  That’s only fair, and everyone gets an equal opportunity.

No, there is very little that’s fair about capitalism.  At least not anymore, not since President Reagan opened the doors and let the hounds of Wall Street loose on the United States government.  The wealthiest one percent of the country has more money than the bottom ninety-nine percent combined.  This has nothing to do with some people working harder than others.  This is about people who have more than enough, more than they could probably spend if they tried, many of whom came into inherited fortunes, who used their money to gain power, and used their power to systematically steal from the undeserving middle class.

How are they doing this?  Moore takes a close look at a few examples, which make up the bulk of the film.  The most interesting of these are derivatives, which, as best as I could tell, basically mean that your bank bet your mortgage that you won’t foreclose.  They chopped it up, divided it, and invested it, and if you foreclose, they’re screwed and will try to regain what they’ve lost by screwing you.  Moore’s best advice in “Capitalism”: if the bank forecloses on your home, assert that you will not budge until they produce a copy of your mortgage.  Often, the bank has mutilated it to such an extent that they can not.

Michael Moore is an artist of blatant propaganda, but I’ll be damned if he isn’t a great filmmaker.  Often, it’s not about Moore being right, but about him raising the right issues.  The state of the free market is a scalding subject right now, and the word itself has taken on a kind of divine connotation, which the far right recite in glory and reverence against the domestic threat of “socialism”.  Isn’t it interesting that Obama began to significantly pull ahead in the 2008 election as McCain and Palin began to fervently label him a socialist?  Perhaps middle class America has grown tired of capitalism not serving their best interests.

“Capitalism” is an attempt to remove the rose colored glasses from the concept of capitalism.  Moore shows us plenty of figureheads reminding us that capitalism is the best economic system there is.  Whether or not this is true, I cannot say for sure.  But even it is, capitalism is far from perfect.  Moore’s documentary is clever and provocative, as one might expect from the man.  Love him or hate him, agree or disagree, there’s no denying that he has made some of the most significant films of our generation.  He’s the best there is at stirring the masses.

Rollan Schott

October 6, 2009

Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan

An Empty Movie About Empty Bodies

Surrogates

Directed by Jonathan Mostow

One Star

“Surrogates” is such a half-assed effort on so many levels.  To grant the project the time and effort of a review is to award it more time and effort than the filmmakers did.  I would understate if I accused director Jonathan Mostow of merely recycling old ideas.  Nope, he dug this stuff straight out of the dumpster and slapped a new label on it with scotch tape and a glue stick.  He didn’t even wash off the grime from that old, brown banana peel.

Comparisons to Ridley Scott’s brilliant “Blade Runner” are imminent, but not particularly necessary.  The discussion would be one of imitation, not influence.  Mostow isn’t so much following in the footsteps of that film as he is wearing its boots and sleepwalking.

In Scott’s film, the term was replicants – robots that looked and behaved like humans, which were designed and manufactured to serve as slaves.  When the replicants began to adopt basic human survival instincts, they were equipped with a modification that set their life spans concretely at four years.  When an unusually strong willed replicant got wind of the modification, he hunted down his makers in search of either answers or vengeance.

In ‘Surrogates”, the robots in question still look and behave like humans, but this time they are operated by the thoughts of their vegetable owners, who lie hooked up to gadgets and operate their lives safely but vicariously through their surrogate machines.  The creators proudly claim that murder rates have plummeted since the inception of the surrogates, though I would imagine that destruction of property charges went through the roof.

Where the replicants were manmade machines who developed human psychological traits, the surrogates can serve only as receptacles for them.  “Blade Runner” is about machines becoming human, and “Surrogates” is about humans becoming machines.

The plot, so far as I could bring myself to care, centers around a cop named Tom Greer (Bruce Willis), one of those speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick sort of fellows who doesn’t seem to care much for his job until one of his fellow officers gets gunned down (imagine his dismay when five of them kick the futuristic bucket).  Of course, Greer conducts his job through his surrogate, a blond haired, fair-skinned likeness of him that doesn’t particularly match his persona.

Greer is investigating a string of murders from the barrel of a mysterious space-blaster-looking-thingajob that’s capable of melting both the circuits of the surrogate and the brain of its operator.  Also Greer is having marriage problems, and I just spent about as much time on that subplot as the movie did.

The weapon falls into the hands of a cult of anti-surrogate rednecks, more specifically the hands of their leader (Ving Rhames), a prophet who appropriately calls himself The Prophet and sports a human nest of dreadlocks and a pimp shirt.  The goal?  Wipe out every surrogate and surrogate user on the East Coast.  I think.

This whole thing circles back to the man who invented the surrogates, Canter (James Cromwell), whose motives don’t make any sense to anyone anywhere, including himself.  His plot has something to do with the little space blaster being amplified to a global level.  Apparently a man of such limitless intelligence couldn’t come up with a more economical solution, like the one that eventually takes place.

That might be the film’s most glaring weakness, now that I think about.  No one involved in “Surrogates”, from the writers down to the actors, have any clue what motivates these characters.  To watch the film is to see people doing stuff and to not see why.  I can think of nary a fate so boring.  The movie’s eighty-eight minute running time threatens to go on forever.

Mostow takes the necessary ingredients of a sci-fi thriller and plops them on screen, where they sit lifeless and artificial.  Technically it is a movie, yes.  It is a visceral combination of sight and sound, with heroes and villains and action and special effects contained in a conventional narrative.  But on an emotional and ideological level, in the sense that it conveys even the most remote reflection of the human condition, it is not a movie.  It is a hollow shell of celluloid, behind which hides its makers.  You know, a lot like the surrogates.

Rollan Schott

September 28, 2009

Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan.

A Disorderly Romance Remembered Out of Order

500 Days of Summer

Directed by Marc Webb

Three and One Half Stars

The day before a relationship ends, you can only think about all the things that are crap about your present situation. The day after a relationship ends, all you can think about is the good times you and your now ex-significant other had. This pattern of misremembering, exaggerating and romanticizing is how humans work through the grief of essentially losing a loved one. Some days are filled with disappointment when all you can think about are the times that brought you happiness. Other days are filled with regret when you can only think of the times that brought you pain, or in which you behaved in a way that brought pain to someone else.

Mark Webb's 500 Days of Summer, a delightful film that works as both a comedy, a romance, and even sometimes as a musical, reflects the real-like workings of a human mind when pondering what went wrong in a romance. We don't start at the beginning, we start somewhere in the middle. Then with each scene, the movie jumps around to different sections of the relationship between Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), whose romance is doomed from the start. We can tell that, and Tom can probably tell that too, but he's darned if he isn't going to set himself up for a fall. In real life, we all do that.

The romance is doomed from the start because from the second he sees her, Tom idolises the cute, slightly alternative new personal assistant that sits across the office from him. The ability to idolise and idealise a new partner is vital in romance. Tom, as we all are wont to do from time to time, overdoes it. He extrapolates from a single-word greeting one morning that Summer's weekend consisted entirely of having great sex with someone who isn't him. When Summer agrees to let Tom ever-so-slightly in, he celebrates like he's won the lottery. But Summer is always a bit aloof, and we get the sense that "it's not you, it's me" isn't just a cliche for her. She constantly expresses doubt at the existence of 'love', and proclaims that she doesn't want to be anybody's anything, let alone girlfriend.

Tom and Summer's romance lasts for (you guessed it), 500 days, and the nature of their relationship is such that both characters could wind up being deeply unlikable, annoying, or both. Fortunately these characters are in the hands of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, two actors that are building impressive bodies of work. Gordon-Levitt is a long way from home when we consider his beginnings were in the sometimes funny but often cookie-cutter sitcom "Third Rock from the Sun", but eclectic and fine performances in films like Brick, The Lookout and Mysterious Skin have earned him respect in the movie industry, if not wild mainstream success. Deschanel manages, somehow, to make Summer seem not like a heartless bitch who seems to enjoy playing games with Tom's heart.

Rich in humour and warmth, 500 Days of Summer marks the debut of Mark Webb, a former music video director. His experience in that shortened medium is evident in several lovely vignettes that work well as stand-alone small films -- an animated sequence in which Tom's heart melts, a split-screen scene that breaks our hearts, and yes, even a musical number. But beneath all the gimmicks, this is a film that actually has something to say about the nature of human relationships. By the end of the film, Tom is like Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver in that we can almost hear the romantic time-bomb ticking away as the credits roll. Tom never learns. But, then again, neither do the rest of us.

Jonathan Fisher

September 24, 2009

Originally Featured in The Film Brief

To Feminism What 'Inglourious Basterds' was to Judaism

Jennifer's Body

Directed by Karyn Kusama

Two and One Half Stars

Written by a woman, directed by a woman, and starring the standard frat boy’s definition of “the” woman, Karyn Kusama’s “Jennifer’s Body” is a gleeful feminist revenge fantasy with an ear for slang and an eye for blood.  Diablo Cody’s follow-up to her Oscar winning script for “Juno” deals in flamboyant fashion with the dangers of objectifying women.  It won’t likely win any awards for subtlety.

Megan Fox stars in the title role as Jennifer, a voluptuous high school bombshell with a healthy superiority complex.  Jennifer rules over her high school in Devil’s Kettle with a swing of her hips and a seductive bat of her eyelashes that hints at a mean spirited joke only she knows the punch line to.

Her best friend is Needy (Amanda Seyfried).  Appropriately named, she’s the dime store nerd of the school in every way except that her best friend is the head cheerleader.  One night Jennifer drags Needy to a seedy bar on the outskirts of town where a nobody punk band with a “salty” lead singer is putting on a show.  When the bar burns down, the band members take Jennifer away in their van (wouldn’t you know it) and she returns to Needy’s house that night blood-soaked and spewing black bile all over the kitchen.  It takes forever to get that out from under your fingernails.  I hate that.

From here “Jennifer’s Body” settles down into the conventions of a fair slasher flick, with Jennifer picking off boys in the school one by one and eating them for sustenance.  Their deaths grow less and less tragic to the numbed residents of Devil’s Kettle.  We must be told this.  We’d never really get a sense of the community otherwise.

This is where the satire of Cody’s screenplay wears thin.  Jennifer seems to represent the objectified woman lashing out against her male objectifiers, and Needy represents the homely woman objectified be her more ideal female counterparts, but Cody’s characters are too disconnected from their society to comment on it. 

One could swear up and down that the town of Devil’s Kettle doesn’t exist at all.  We only see one street in town, and that street only once.  The school is out in the woods, and the bar Jennifer and Needy visit is farther out there still.  I’m guessing the parents are yet one stop further.

Jennifer is supposed to be the most popular girl in school, but no one seems to pay much attention to her, or to her friend.  Even their peculiar teacher Mr. Wroblewski (J.K. Simmons) tries his best to pretend the two of them aren’t in the room.  Needy’s detached narration speaks of the residents of Devil’s Kettle as if they were from another planet.  They can’t have too much of a beef with these people.  They’re all minding their own business.

One must admit however, that the casting of Megan Fox is an obvious stroke of genius.  There isn’t an actress working today who has developed such a hollow image in the public eye.  No one knows a thing about her other than the fact that she is beautiful.  She’s an ideal choice for a high school bombshell that men pursue without regard to her motives.

Fox pulls it off for the most part, but she can’t quite bring the same life to the hyper-hipster dialog that’s always present in Diablo Cody’s writing.  Cody used this same cutesy jive in “Juno” to create a unique, identifiable, and fully realized character, but here she seems to be hiding behind it.  The characters in “Jennifer’s Body” never quite make it off the page, perhaps because there’s nowhere to go from there.

“Jennifer’s Body” is pretty shallow entertainment, and the thousands of twenty-something guys who go just to ogle Miss Fox are only going to reinforce the ideas that Cody’s screenplay is trying to satirize.  That’s the lesson of the day, I guess.  If you’re going to comment on a society, make sure they’re listening, and if you’re going to sacrifice a virgin, make sure she’s a flippin’ virgin.

Rollan Schott

September 21, 2009

Originally Featured in the Daily Nebraskan