not at the movies

[calimac]

An article a month or two back about the forthcoming outcrop of fall movies - the serious films, you know, that succeed the empty-headed summer blockbusters - had me so excited, I'm sorry to say, that I was writing premiere dates in my calendar. Now they're starting to come out, and whaddaya know, they're turning out to be lousy. I shouldn't have been surprised. Winner for snarkiest review so far goes to Dana Stevens on The Changeling, citing "an interrogation that will lead to revelations so shocking they will cause the investigator's cigarette ash to fall to the floor in slow motion."

That, plus having to have a Godfather II reference explained to me (I've never seen it, having found Godfather I so bad), prompts me to polish and present my list of categories of "good" movies I will no longer go see. (So this is leaving aside all the superhero cash-ins, all the horror movies, all the films with "III" in the title, etc.)

1. Boxing movies. Sorry, but I see nothing heroic in two men - or women - standing on a stage punching the crap out of each other. Exception (a movie, with boxing in it, that I liked): Mighty Aphrodite.

2. Gangster movies. Sorry, but I also see nothing heroic, or believable, or identifiable, in gangs killing each other off at such a rate that they ought to have all been dead before the movie started. Yes, I mean The Godfather. And what was with that scene with the bloody horse's head? The sheer logistical implausibility of this just ruined the entire movie almost before it got started.

3. Movies about corrupt cops in Los Angeles. Enough already. True, I enjoyed L.A. Confidential, though I only watched it because I was stuck in an airport hotel one evening with nothing else to do, but: enough.

4. Biographical films in the form of blackout sketches of highlights of the person's life. I like a good bio-pic [and please, use the hyphen: "biopic" looks like it should be pronounced "bi-opic"], but I couldn't stand more than about 5 minutes of Pollock or Hilary and Jackie. That's why I'm skipping Oliver Stone's W. Please, don't let Milk turn out this way.

5. Steven Spielberg movies. Can you say, "crassly manipulative"? Also, his penchant for lovingly framed shots of naked people being totally humiliated (Amistad, Schindler's List) is more than mildly disturbing.

6. Albert Brooks movies. His oeuvre is a cellarful of bottles of expensive whine.

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

2. Gangster movies. Sorry, but I also see nothing heroic, or believable, or identifiable, in gangs killing each other off at such a rate that they ought to have all been dead before the movie started. Yes, I mean The Godfather. And what was with that scene with the bloody horse's head? The sheer logistical improbability of this just ruined the entire movie almost before it got started.

You should see "Once Upon a Time in America".
Everything "The Godfather" wanted to be but failed at.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

What part of "categories of movie I will no longer see" didn't you understand?

Seriously, I've read about this film. It had "Not for me" written all over it.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

It doesn't try to be heroic.
It doesn't justify it's character's actions to make them appear so.
But, I will say having been the recipient of the famous calimac snark I'll be more careful in the future.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It doesn't try to be heroic. It doesn't justify its character's actions to make them appear so.

And that makes it better?

I have really not made myself clear if I gave that impression.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Totally agree, though I don't mind Spielberg's entertaining movies. His serious ones? Blech.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You mean like Indiana Jones (boring), E.T. (repulsive) and Jurassic Park (stupid)?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I thought he did more than that! Well, I never saw Jurassic park as I have zip interest in dino disaster movies, and I thought ET turned treacly at the end, but I liked the first and third Indie movies a lot.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

I liked The Secret Life of Bees. And I'll probably go see The Changeling because JMS wrote it, and I usually like his stuff.
I'm always taking Mom to movies and she likes just about anything that isn't too violent. So that gives us a pretty good range.
We do Matinees which means the pocketbook isn't too badly damaged if the movie sucks. And like I said, Mom loves movies and it gets her out of the house.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

And what was with that scene with the bloody horse's head? The sheer logistical implausibility of this just ruined the entire movie almost before it got started.

Funny you should mention that. I was just thinking the other day that it might be possible to do a mildly-amusing (if gross) comedy sketch about the poor Corleone family underlings who have been given the task of carrying out that job.

[emerdavid.livejournal.com]

In general, I agree with you. For the last several years at least, most of the "Oscar bait" movies have been overly serious to the point of pomposity (Crash, Babel), over-rated (Sideways, Lost in Translation), or just plain depressing (Million Dollar Baby, No Country for Old Men). I found all of the previous to be quite dull. Even the Oscar nominees that I actually enjoyed (Juno, Little Miss Sunshine) I thought were good but not terrific.

A while ago I resolved to catch up on all those cultural-unconsciousness films that I'd never seen, so I could see for myself the origins of such common references as the horse's head in the bed, or "What we have here is a failure to communicate." So I watched Godfathers I & II. It was like getting a colonscopy.

A category I would add would be teen-age gross-out movies (e.g. American Pie). I saw "Knocked Up" (only because I admired Katherine Heigl's performances on "Grey's Anatomy"), and that was enough.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Did you see "Lost in Translation" in the theatre, or on DVD? A strange division seems to pertain to that film: those who saw it in the theatre (including me) liked it a great deal; those who saw it only on the small screen did not.

And here I am flushing all the "Godfather"-haters out of the woodwork. I'd thought I'd be lighting a match by criticizing it, that everyone admired it except me. Last time that happened was with a film called "Whale Rider", which I'd thought was widely praised until I saw it and found it bad. Then it turned out that nobody liked it, not even the critics.

[emerdavid.livejournal.com]

Well then, I am a supporting datum for your hypothesis. I did indeed see it on DVD, not in a theater. I have been told that Bill Murray's performance was brilliantly understated, but that must have only come across on the big screen; on TV, it just seemed flat.

I liked "Whale Rider" okay enough, I guess, but I thought the plot was entirely too predictable to warrant the praise it seemed to be receiving.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Well, I like gangster movies, as a genre, and Godfather I in particular.

However, I am 100% in agreement with you in re Spielberg. Yech.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I still feel kind of guilty because I can't force myself to watch any Godfather movies, but I just can't see the point.

You know, I love Albert Brooks. His TV comedy was incredible, and his two LPs are superb. His movies end up kind of disappointing. I don't suppose I can blame you for that.

But don't avoid seeing MOVIE MOVIE just because half of it is a boxing movie. MM is the greatest parody movie ever made -- a double feature with overlapping casts in a black and white boxing movie and a technicolor musical, with Larry Gelbart dialogue and Stanley Donen direction and an entire cast that not only plays it straight, but plays it right. George C. Scott, Trish VanDeVere, Harry Hamlin, Barry Bostwick, Art Carney, Red Buttons, Eli Wallach, and every detail is perfect. Try and skip the intro, it's just George Burns yakking.

That's what you wrote this post for, right? So that people would tell you to go see movies that you explicitly said you'd never go see? But seriously, the humor is as perfect as Bob and Ray. It's what MAD satires should be but never are. It just shows to go ya.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

It's interesting when you finally see something everyone says is so wonderful.

Yesterday, I started watching Being John Malkovich, which I had not seen ever. I had hopes, as I like John Cryer in a lot of things.

I watched about an hour of it, and then gave up. "What's going on here?" I thought. "Is Cryer supposed to be the main character, or what? If so, why all this focus on his wife's fascination with being John Malkovich? And why would 15 minutes of Malkovich's mundane routines be so life changing for those suckers how line up to do it? And what's the point of him being a puppet master, if he's not going to do it again?" So at the hour point, I gave it up.

It's an intriguing concept, to be sure, and I bet it hooked a lot of people. I bet a lot of people stuck it out waiting for something to happen to the main character, for him to take charge of his own life. I don't know if that happens in the second half of the film. If it does, then it came much too late for me to stay engaged in the story.

It wasn't the brilliance all the praise had led me to expect it to be. And yes, Stranger than Fiction was much better.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I think you mean John Cusack. This may have been the first film I saw him in.

I wouldn't call it a brilliant film in the ordinary sense; it is a weird film. As in, I emerged from it saying, "That was a weird film," in a tone of deep, deep satisfaction rarely achieved.

Now, concerning your plot problems. There may be some spoiler here, but:

1. Craig (Cusack's character) is not a sole protagonist. Structurally, this film is about a triangle of Craig-Lottie-Maxine, with Malkovich drawn in as an unwilling fourth participant. They're as important as he is.

2. Puppets. Didn't you catch the continuing puppetry theme? What Craig wants to do in Malkovich's body is to control it, as he would a puppet. This is clear from maybe the second time he does it, and it does become a major theme later on.

3. Craig's failure to take charge of himself didn't bother me for two reasons: first, so much of the film is devoted to figuring out what the heck is going on, and not just on the characters; second, it becomes clear that Craig's problem is a character flaw that makes him interesting as things begin to happen to him and he reacts.

4. The line of people who want to be Malkovich are not characters to be seriously explored. Their function in the story is to make money for Craig & Maxine's enterprise and to intensify the violation of Malkovich's sense of privacy when he finds out about it.

Gradually, and I thought with timing only a little slow, and forgivable because of the whole strange world the viewer needs to absorb, the various disparate threads of the story come together: Craig's need for control, Lottie's to escape herself, and the whole weird business of Dr. Lester and the company on the half-floor, finally clicking to answer, with surprising agility (for stories like this are usually a great let-down at the end), the question of: so what is the portal doing there, and what's it intended for?