Blockbuster Screenwriting and the New Cinema of Attractions

The question of why I don't like very many contemporary action blockbusters has been haunting me for some time now, probably ever since I realized (circa 2008) that I might be one of the few people in the world who was underwhelmed, even off-put, by the Christopher Nolan-directed Batman films. I WANT to like today's "popcorn movies" and do not intend to become a highbrow cinephile who ONLY enjoys art films. Yet something about most of today's summer action blockbusters continues to displease (or at least fails to entertain) me.*

This became evident again recently when I realized that, despite my great enjoyment of The Amazing Spider-Man (2012, dir. Marc Webb) and contrary to my original strong intention to see the sequel when it hit theaters a couple weeks ago, I have decided not to bother with The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The two main reasons are:

1. I noticed its two hour and twenty minute running time, and

2. I then noticed, after digging deeper, that its screenplay was penned by two of Hollywood's most incompetent scribes, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

I will return to that first point shortly, but first let me say that Kurtzman and Orci are flat-out terrible screenwriters. Red Letter Media notes this in their Amazing Spider Man 2 video review, during which Mike states (just after the 19:38 mark) that it seems like "any terrible new movie has been penned by these two." On both the story structure and character development fronts, all of this duo's screenplays are just lousy: Transformers (2007), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Star Trek (2009), and Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) are all, in Mike's words, "shit scripts." Similarly, a recent CinemaBlend article characterized Kurtzman and Orci's two Star Trek scripts as "typically-complex but still dopey screenplays," and I would call that an accurate assessment.**

To be fair, due to the huge amounts of money involved, non-creative executive production staff interfere with the development of blockbusters in many ways that probably weaken the material: as the CinemaBlend piece notes, "many masters must be served when you're working with $150 million budgets." Yet the consistency and persistence with which these two guys write particularly disorganized and ineffective scripts is hard to overlook.

A prime example of the kind of crappy screenplays Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci 

churn out for today's action blockbuster directors. 

Of course, Kurtzman and Orci are merely part of a much broader contemporary Hollywood trend toward increased emphasis on visual spectacle and intense action over considerations of characterization and script coherence.*** Hell, this trend has been trending since the late 1970s, when a synergistic combination of the multinational corporate takeover of the entertainment industry and the successful release and marketing of the summer blockbusters Jaws (1975) and especially Star Wars (1977) changed the way Hollywood did business. Nowadays all major Hollywood studios hang all their hopes for the fiscal year upon one or two mega-budgeted blockbuster films which need to be "high concept" -- that is, based upon an extremely simple premise -- in order to perform well across all global markets.

Furthermore, various critics from David Bordwell to video essayist Mathias Stork have noted the faster-paced editing, imprecise camera work, and "scattershot" video game aesthetic that has begin to permeate contemporary blockbuster cinema, especially (but not exclusively) in its action sequences. This has led to more of a theme park ride / spectacle based approach to big-budget film production, and a concomitant de-emphasis upon story and character.

This tendency reminds me of Tom Gunning's "An Aesthetic of Astonishment," which outlines the phenomenon of the "Cinema of Attractions" in early cinema:

I have called the cinema that precedes the dominance of narrative (and this lasts for nearly a decade, [from 1896] until 1903 or 1904) the cinema of attractions. Rather than being an involvement with narrative action or empathy with character psychology, the cinema of attractions solicits a highly conscious awareness of the film image engaging the viewer's curiosity. The spectator does not get lost in a fictional world and its drama, but remains aware of the act of looking, the excitement of curiosity and its fulfillment. This cinema addresses and holds the spectator, emphasizing the act of display. In fulfilling this curiosity, it delivers a generally brief dose of scopic [visual] pleasure.†

In his incredibly sharp and penetrating book Post-Classical Hollywood, Barry Langford discusses the push-pull dynamic between visual spectacle and the demands of narrative in Hollywood films. Although he admits that in contemporary (post-1990s) blockbusters "narrative and character are [often] handled in a slapdash and contemptuous way," he also reminds us that "spectacular elements, often highly intrusive and in strictly narrative terms excessive if not superfluous, have co-existed with more straightforward storytelling throughout much of Hollywood history" (253, 251). Langford concludes that we can therefore potentially see today's action blockbusters as "[building] on the experience of the past two decades: 'perhaps the movies of the 2000s are the movies of the 1980s, only more so'" (247).††

In any case, although today's blockbusters are surely part of a longer tradition of spectacle-intense film production, Gunning's description of the "cinema of attractions" seems particularly apt when discussing the contemporary (that is, post-1980s) big-budget action film, especially with regard to the "more so" aspect of Langford's formulation. Indeed, Gunning's comment that "the attraction addresses the audience directly, sometimes [. . .] exaggerating this confrontation in an experience of assault" squares with Stork's assessment of the assaultive, visually excessive dimension of what he calls "Chaos Cinema." I would also point to Charlie Jane Anders' satirical and yet strangely accurate evaluation of Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as "a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot" that "isn't a movie, in the conventional sense," but rather "an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery."

As I have confessed before, I came of age in the 1980s and was raised on the blockbusters of Spielberg, McTiernan, Verhoeven, and George P. Cosmatos. None of these guys ever even dreamed of breaking the rules of Hollywood continuity style: their shot compositions were coherent, their editing choices logical, and their sense of character motivation and spatial legibility rarely faltered. They were trained in the ways of "classic" Hollywood, and even when their films were thinly plotted or even over-the-top silly, they nevertheless followed the aesthetic rules that had been in place in Hollywood since about the mid-1910s.

Arnold Schwartzenegger in the great, if silly, mid-1980s action blockbuster Commando.  

Nowadays, new forms of visual excess have taken hold, and today's blockbuster directors -- Nolan, Jackson, Snyder, Bay, and the late Tony Scott -- have not only diverged from the old rules of continuity editing and coherent camera work, but they (or their studios) have seen fit to expand the length of these narratively incoherent CGI-driven "attractions" to over two, often almost three hours. This is a strategy that echoes the expanded visual scope and running time of many of the "widescreen epics" of the 1950s, yet those films were still made in the classical mode: they had compelling stories and world-class stars, actors, and screenwriters on board. True, their widescreen-ness was heavily marketed in order to compete with television, which had just arrived on the scene, and it is also noteworthy that the 1950s also saw the first major rise of 3D movie technology, another parallel with the "striking but superficial imagery"-driven 2000s.††† Yet I argue that those earlier epics, despite their lengthiness and emphasis on spectacle, still hewed closer to classical Hollywood's demand for rigorous continuity, comprehensible character motivation, and tightly scripted narratives than today's blockbusters typically do.

Note that the shortest of the contemporary blockbusters in my sample,
Man of Steel, has the same running time as the longest of the

 1970s-80s blockbusters, 1978's Superman. 

Which brings me back to The Amazing Spider-Man 2. As A.A. Dowd of the Onion AV club puts it in his review,

Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci struggle to transition among scenes of city-demolishing combat, indie-rock-scored montages of Peter pouting in his room, and intrusions of corporate-espionage backstory. They’ve written a checklist, not a screenplay.

So, I am boycotting of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 not because, like all other Hollywood action blockbusters, it is sexist or racist, though it's true that in general I am weary of the retrograde ideologies of our biggest blockbusters. No, rather, I am resisting it because I actually want character development and decent screenwriting in the films I watch, even the "popcorn movies," especially at their current, incredibly lengthy running times. I truly do not think that this is too much to ask.

UPDATE 5/17/2014: It looks like Cracked.com more or less agrees with my assessment, noting The Amazing Spider-Man 2's "abysmal script" in their rundown of 4 Bizarre Choices That Doomed 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2'

UPDATE 6/18/2014: The Red Letter Media guys also seem to notice that a tight screenplay =  a better blockbuster. In their video review of X-Men: Days of Future Past, they laud the film for the coherence of its screenplay and even single out Amazing Spider-Man 2 as a negative counter-example.

Godzilla says: "Come see MY movie this summer! It's gonna be great!!"

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* There are exceptions: as I have previously written, I really enjoyed The Avengers (2012), the first Iron Man movie (2008), Pacific Rim (2013), Skyfall (2012), and a great many earlier blockbusters such as the first two Die Hard films (1988 and 1990) and the great Schwartzenegger vehicle Commando (1985).
** For a more in-depth exploration of Star Trek: Into Darkness's baffling incoherence, see the Red Letter Media guys' brilliant review of the film here.
*** In fact, Kurtzman and Orci are only two of the most egregiously mediocre members of a larger group of sloppy, vapid, "high concept" screenwriters that includes David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel), Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens (the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies), and doubtless many others I don't happen to know by name.
† Gunning, "An Aesthetics of Astonishment," in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism Seventh Edition (2009), pp. 742-43.
†† This is a particularly sharp insight given how many of today's summer blockbusters are literally reboots of '80s hit films. Also, I really cannot recommend Langford's excellent history of Hollywood from 1945 to the present (published by Edinburgh University Press in 2010) highly enough. It is a must-read for any serious cinephile and/or film historian.
††† Langford, Post-Classical Hollywood p. 246.

EW #7: Mean Streets (1973)

Harvey Keitel leads a stellar ensemble cast in Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese's best film.

This entry in the Entertainment Weekly All-Time Greatest film list represents one of the most pleasant and exciting surprises on the list for me personally. True, EW's placement of Mean Streets so high in the rankings seems to support the notion that EW's critics overwhelmingly favor Baby Boomer cinema -- The Godfather, Bonnie and Clyde, Mean Streets, and Nashville are all in the Top 10, with seminal Boomer comedy Annie Hall just around the corner at #13. However, their placement of Mean Streets as the highest-ranked Martin Scorsese film, described in their laudatory blurb as "the director's greatest exploration of crime, rock and roll, Italian-American manhood, and the wages of sin," also agrees with my own firmly held contention that Mean Streets is indeed Scorsese's best film, bar none.

While Bonnie and Clyde (1967) pioneered the form of the revisionist, anti-heroic gangster film, it was nevertheless a period piece and an homage (intentional or no) to the 1930s Warner Brothers gangster film cycle. Scorsese's Mean Streets brought that form up-to-date and into the present moment. Mean Streets is the progenitor of the contemporary, fast-talking, pop-culture-referencing crime film, and without it, the careers of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, not to mention the more polished and ultimately less interesting Scorsese picture GoodFellas (1990), are all unthinkable.*

But more important than its enduring influence is how truly enjoyable Mean Streets is to watch. With few exceptions (like possibly Bonnie and Clyde or Hal Ashby's The Last Detail) there are few 1970s Hollywood films that feel this lively, fresh, witty, and urgent. There is a lot of life and a lot of humor in this film, and unlike the later GoodFellas, which is polished and controlled and very "clever," the humor and action in Mean Streets emerge (dare I say) organically from the tension between the youthful naivete of (most of) its main characters and the very real dangers they face as they cockily take on forces much more powerful and deadly than they. As the only level-headed one in the bunch, Harvey Keitel's Charlie does his best to herd these kittens, but despite his best efforts, their ambition and anger will not be contained or corralled. This, of course, has brutal and disastrous consequences.

The famous "mooks" pool hall fight, viscerally shot using a steadicam and set ironically 

to The Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman."

In essence, all the elements that constitute Scorsese's best-known signature style -- fast-talking street toughs, brilliant use of pop songs, brutal violence, and long takes of people entering crowded clubs -- are already present in Mean Streets, accompanied by a rawness and energy that just isn't there in most of Mr. Scorsese's later films, not to the same degree anyway.** I simply cannot recommend Mean Streets highly enough to anyone who likes GoodFellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Departed, or any of Scorsese's other "hit films" of his middle and late career. If you have seen those others and you haven't seen this, then you truly are in for a treat. Do yourself a favor and see Mean Streets.

Mean Streets is also required viewing for anyone interested in the "Hollywood Renaissance" period of filmmaking. It stands alongside Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Waltz as one of Scorsese's crucial contributions to that bygone yet enormously influential era of 1970s Hollywood.

"I'm a mook? What's a mook?"

Bonus Afterthought: After Mean Streets, Raging Bull, and Taxi Driver, my next couple of favorite Martin Scorsese pictures include Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) and The King of Comedy (1982). Both are unusual in Scorsese's filmography: the former is a female-centered romantic drama, and the latter a dark comedy starring Robert DeNiro as a social misfit, would-be comedian, and stalker. But both films display a remarkable subtlety and sensitivity in Scorsese's directing style, and are just flat-out pleasurable to watch. Alice is especially recommended if Scorsese's usual testosterone-laden approach is not your thing. If you prefer mellower slice-of-life fare closer in vibe to Altman or Ashby rather than to "usual" Scorsese, then King and especially Alice are not to be missed!

Rupert Pupkin says: "Check out The King of Comedy!"

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* It's true, I am no great fan of GoodFellas -- what many see as a career apotheoisis, I see as a harbinger of  Scorsese's long slow slide toward the middle. But since GoodFellas has its own entry as # 68 in EW's Top 100 List, I will discuss my specific views on that film once we get there.
** I exempt Taxi Driver and Raging Bull from this declaration; though much darker in tone and theme than Mean Streets, those two seminal works have the same vital energy and gutsy drive that make this earlier film a must-see.

Review: All Is Lost (2013)

Veteran Hollywood star Robert Redford gives a career-topping solo performance 

in the gripping survival adventure film All Is Lost. 

To begin with, I think choosing the "best" acting performance or film of a given year is an inherently absurd task, since it's comparing apples to oranges, but that said, there is something seriously fishy about the fact that neither All Is Lost nor its star, Robert Redford, were nominated for Best Actor or Best Picture at this past year's Academy Awards. In my personal ranking, I wouldn't put Redford's performance above Chiwetel Ejiofor's in 12 Years a Slave, or above Bruce Dern's in Nebraska, but Redford should have given actual winner Matthew McConaughey a run for his money in the category.* And the film itself may not be better than either of the above-mentioned movies either, but I assume it is better than either Gravity or Captain Phillips, both of which it may even structurally resemble at certain points, being an adventure film about survival at sea.**

In short, I am baffled that All Is Lost was not an even more buzzed-about and critically recognized movie of last year. True, Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawaty placed the film at #9 on his year-end "Top 10 List," but meanwhile the more erratic EW critic Owen Gleiberman didn't place it anywhere on his list (the only films they both listed were Fruitvale Station, 12 Years a Slave, Before Midnight, and Gravity). And how the Academy overlooked this wonderfully written, shot, directed, and acted gem is a mystery to me.***

The reason for my bafflement is that, taken as a whole, All Is Lost is simply one of the best films I have seen in many years. Its premise is utterly simple, yet it is executed with such confidence, competence, and artistry (on several levels) that the end result is utterly absorbing from start to finish. Redford gives the performance of a lifetime in this one-man show, even though (or perhaps because) he speaks only about three lines of dialogue (one of which is an opening voice-over) throughout the film's entire one-hour and forty-five minute running time. The visuals throughout are spectacular, both onboard his damaged yacht and during the various scenes of underwater cinematography. The editing is very well paced, fast enough (especially during the many action sequences) to keep the viewer on the edge of his or her seat, yet allowing for graceful pauses in which Redford's unnamed protagonist -- and the viewer -- may take in the ramifications of each new calamity and setback. And even when things are going wrong for "Our Man" (as the end credits call Redford's character), which is much of the time, the scenes at sea are nevertheless breathtakingly beautiful. Some of the best shots are during a nighttime storm-at-sea sequence, or when the camera shows us a perspective on events taken from underwater.

One of many beautiful underwater shots from All Is Lost. 

I could go on, but in some ways this is a film best seen, not talked about. I cannot imagine who wouldn't enjoy this film. It is a suspenseful, taut adventure yarn with extremely high stakes for its main character, conveyed in simple, and always strikingly visual, terms. And while there are some subtle hints at a political sub-theme (about which more in a moment), the main emphasis here is upon the survival narrative, and the small but crucial choices Our Man makes at each step in his solitary struggle against chance and the elements. All Is Lost presents a well-crafted, gripping story conveyed with great precision and surprising depth.

One other aspect of this movie that I enjoyed is the very subtle implication that (a) Our Man is a man of privilege, given that he is white, owns a yacht, and eats "organic" canned beans, etc., and that (b) many of his calamities come about due to the global consumer capitalist system from which he, as an affluent American white guy, presumably benefits. I do not wish to give away any spoilers, but let me simply say that a couple key plot turns occur as a result of shipping containers like the kind seen in the photographs of Edward Burtynsky:

A Vancouver Container Port photographed by Edward Burtynsky.

The idea here is that, as in so many monster movies and "revenge-of-nature" films, All Is Lost connects the misfortunes that befall Our Man at sea to these emblems of the hidden labor flows undergirding his exploitative lifestyle under global consumer capitalism.

But you do not need to notice, care about, or even agree with my ideological interpretation to truly enjoy All Is Lost. I highly recommend this great, well shot, amazingly acted adventure movie to all my readers.

Redford's unnamed character experiences an extremely vulnerable moment, 
the likes of which I have never seen in the actor's earlier career. 

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* Yes, I have now seen Dallas Buyer's Club and while I really like the film a lot and think McConaughey is great in it, he's got nothing on Ejiofor or Dern.
** Please do not give too much weight to this last sweeping comparison; I do not believe I have any right to judge a film I have not seen, and I have seen neither Gravity nor Captain Phillips. I presume the latter is a very well-made thriller but I am suspicious of its racial politics; the former is surely visually dazzling but for whatever reason I just am not drawn to it.
*** Though not really: the strong likelihood is that distributor Lionsgate did not have the wherewithal or inclination to mount an effective Oscar campaign for All Is Lost. Perhaps they had their hands full with the release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

EW #6: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Many people remember It's a Wonderful Life mainly for its happy ending.

I should come right out and say that in general, I am not the biggest fan of Frank Capra's work. He is a very skilled and talented director, to be sure, but there is something about many of his films' "aw, shucks" style of crude populism that rings false and even feels ideologically dangerous to me. I am in agreement with Mark Harris when he says of Capra's onscreen politics that they are marked by "a kind of  easy yahooism" that reflects the Italian-American immigrant director's "overheated and erratic political impulses." *

That said, I have come to really appreciate It's a Wonderful Life over the past several years, not so much for its overt message "about how hard it is to see the magic of life as we're living it" (as Entertainment Weekly cheerily puts it) but rather for its subtext about how our inflated sense of self-concept often blinds us to the fact that, as the Buddhists say, "life is suffering." For me, Life is about how profoundly off-base and un-self-aware George Bailey is throughout most of his existence, and how this only increases his dissatisfaction with what is, in the end, a pretty limited set of life choices. He imagines himself as a man of action, an adventurer, a man destined to see the world and do great things. Instead, he is just an average schmuck who is so fearful of leaving Bedford Falls or taking real risks or letting his late father's business collapse that he ends up right where we'd expect him to: in Bedford Falls, paternalistically protecting his family, friends, and community just like he has done since childhood.

And there is nothing wrong with this. I find Life's somewhat neorealistic** ideology to be a welcome change from the relentless Pollyanna-ism of, say, Capra's 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. If Mr. Smith naively suggests that the little guy can make a difference if he just does what's right and follows his heart -- a comforting, if bullshit, message -- Life suggests that the average guy won't really accomplish jack shit or make any major changes in life at all, but that that is to be expected. I think a little "reality principle" injected into a Hollywood film like this is a good thing; it constitutes a real breath of fresh air.

The real power of It's a Wonderful Life is its unrelenting look at the 

stultifying, soul-crushing aspects of small-town American values. 

Now many might resist my dark reading of this beloved film and interpret George Bailey's successful holding action against the vile capitalist Potter as a heroic accomplishment. According to this reading, George's community's love for him is a justly deserved reward for his heroically protecting them from Potter's exploitation. Superficially, this is accurate: Potter is indeed the film's main villain and the nightmare version of Bedford Falls that Bailey sees when Clarence the Angel shows him around near the end of the film is called Pottersville, a stark, hostile urban space symbolizing the "dark underside of Hollywood ideology" that looks like it came out of a film noir.*** Some would say that that nightmare vision is just that -- a vision -- and that it is wiped away or obliterated by the supposed "real world" of a restored Bedford Falls in the film's denouement. Yet I am inclined to agree with Rich Cohen when he writes that Life is actually a "terrifying" movie whose dark undertones are not erased by Bailey's temporary stymieing of Potter or the film's stock ending: "I do not think the hidden message vanishes when the movie goes Hollywood and happy. I believe the resolution of the darker movie is, in fact, still there, wrapped around the happy ending of the classic."

Indeed. And that darkness, that grim tale of "the good man driven insane," all the way to suicide, is what makes Capra's "holiday classic" stick with me. It is an extremely bleak film for the normally upbeat Capra to have made. And if its pull back from the edge at the last minute feels a little hollow or contrived -- which it does to me -- it is because of the film's admirable willingness to look at the exploitative and soul-crushing dimensions of small-town American capitalism square in the eye for the preceding two hours of its runtime. Like Citizen Kane and The Godfather, It's a Wonderful Life tells us something essential about American life precisely because, unlike so many other lesser films, it documents the life of a relatable and sympathetic man who, in the end, fails miserably. It is an American tragedy and, mainly for that reason, an enduring work of art, because its tragic dimensions balance out Capra's usual giddily populist impulses to make It's a Wonderful Life so much more than the sentimental film that a literal reading of its (ironic) title would suggest.

Plus, Wonderful Life features my all-time favorite character actor, Thomas Mitchell.   

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* Harris, Five Came Back pp. 66, 67.

** I refer mainly to Italian neorealism, which was just getting started around the time Capra made Life, but you can also learn about the legacy of neorealism by reading this A.O. Scott article.
*** Robin Wood, "Ideology, Genre, Auteur" p. 673.

Review: Nebraska (2013)

Bruce Dern as Woody in Alexander Payne's amazing, downbeat comedy Nebraska.

I saw Alexander Payne's latest film, Nebraska, a couple of weeks ago, and I was blown away. It was completely delightful and satisfying, definitely the most enjoyable filmgoing experience I have had in quite some time. I was utterly enchanted the whole way through. With the exception of one extraordinarily minor hiccup, to which I will return, the film was flawless. I strongly suspect that Bruce Dern's lead performance was the best performance by a Hollywood film actor last year.*

Up until I saw Nebraska, I would have said that director Payne's best film (by a long shot) was 1999's Election, a razor-sharp, expertly wrought satire starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. Election is one of my all-time favorite comedies, and while it technically did not make my (arbitrary and bullshittish) top 40 films list back in November, it probably should have.

In addition to Election, I would single out Citizen Ruth (1996), another hilarious and intelligent satire, as the other standout entry in Payne's body of work, which also includes such films as Sideways (2004), About Schmidt (2002), and The Descendants (2011). Of those three, the latter is my favorite, though I think it is a bit lopsided and uneven: Descendants starts out foregrounding the voice and point of view of the youngest daughter, Scottie (Amara Miller), but then shifts partway through to become exclusively focused upon Matt (George Clooney) and, to a lesser degree, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley). What happened to Scottie's interesting point of view? It just inexplicably fades away, to the film's ultimate detriment.

Despite these potential weaknesses, however, I still found The Descendants to be much more rich, interesting, compelling, and character-driven than either Sideways or About Schmidt. I just did not click with Sideways and have never understood its (cult) popularity. I liked Thomas Hayden Church's performance in it but little else; the movie struck me as an overdramatic paean to white masculinity, and while I assume it was intended as satire, the satirical elements just did not land for me, so it felt overwrought and false. About Schmidt is Payne's most uneven and aimless film, a tale about an aged retiree (Jack Nicholson) who goes on a road trip for some reason I cannot now recall. In retrospect, thematically at least, Schmidt feels like an early dry run for the vastly superior Nebraska.

Nebraska is simply pitch-perfect, with superb casting and memorable, funny, and moving performances by all its principle cast members: Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Bob Odenkirk, and longtime personal favorite Stacy Keach. Dern's Woody is cantankerous and crusty, but not in the stereotypical or predictable ways you might imagine. What slowly comes out over the course of the film, always subtly, never with a heavy hand, are the ways in which Woody has suffered, yes, but also the ways he has found to be consistently generous and loving toward those around him. Similarly, what at first appears to be a cliched, antagonistic relationship between Woody and his domineering wife Kate (Squibb) is revealed (slowly and surely) to be a relationship of surprising depth and largely unexpressed yet palpable tenderness. Kate's last scene in the film is one of the most touchingly rendered moments of love I have seen in any film for many years.

In a movie full of knockout performances, Dern and Forte sparkle 
as Nebraska's central odd couple. 

Although the film sports many top-notch supporting performances -- Odenkirk, for example, is perfect as the taciturn yet not quite prickly older brother -- Nebraska mainly belongs to Dern and Forte, who make a wonderful road-movie odd couple. I am not familiar with Forte's prior work on SNL, but he shines here as a patient, hangdog, and ultimately quite noble younger son who goes the extra mile (literally and figuratively) to learn more about what makes his verbally reticent father tick. Forte's David is our onscreen proxy, he makes Woody accessible to us, and his droopy, melancholy eyes alone are enough to draw us in and make us feel for this somewhat drifting and lost soul. Despite his initial exasperation with Woody's antics, it turns out that David needs his father at least as much as the latter needs him; aiding Woody in his quest to reach Lincoln, Nebraska helps David get focused on what really matters to him, which is his family ties.

Lest I have made Nebraska sound too heavy or sappy, it isn't; in fact, it is one of the most wry and funny movies I have seen in years, and Payne's funniest since Election. It is mainly a comedy that periodically drifts into dramatic territory, but always with subtlety and a light touch. Even in its serious moments it is more nostalgic and wistful than melodramatic. Between its brilliantly paced script and beautiful black and white cinematography, Nebraska ultimately evokes a deep appreciation for how the past, while far from being a trap we cannot escape from, nevertheless shapes every aspect of who we are in the present. The Grant family -- largely, it turns out, through Kate's agency -- have escaped the stultifying mire of small-town life in Hawthorne, Nebraska and have moved on, yet, as the film shows, revisiting and remembering where they came from gives them unique and crucial insights into how they interrelate (or have failed to interrelate) in their new life in Billings, Montana.

If Nebraska has one flaw, it is in how it handles one single moment in one of its climatic scenes. I will keep this review spoiler-free, but suffice to say that I would have liked to see David handle his final confrontation with Ed Pegram (Keach) a wee bit differently. Although the audience I saw the film with gave subdued cheers and applause during that scene as it is, I would have liked to see a little more restraint exercised in that scene; it felt like the one moment in the whole film that might be tonally out of step with the whole.

But that is a minor quibble about a film that is surely Payne's best movie to date and also one of the best films of last year. Had I seen Nebraska early enough, before I wrote my end-of-2013 roundup, it would have been discussed alongside 12 Years a Slave and Spring Breakers as one of my very favorite films of 2013. I simply cannot recommend it highly enough -- it is everything that great, moving, delightful, thoughtful, humanist cinema should be. The American cinema -- and the world -- would be a better and more enjoyable place if there were more beautifully crafted, funny, and subtly profound films like this one.**

Probably the most hilarious supporting characters in Nebraska are these two 

ne'er-do-well cousins of David's. "Three days!!"

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* Though I have no critical respect for the Academy Awards -- since they primarily measure which mediocre films of the past year conducted the best behind-the-scenes Oscar campaigns -- I am nevertheless using them as a yardstick here, and since I have not yet seen McConaughey's Oscar-winning performance in Dallas Buyer's Club, I feel I should not unequivocally declare Dern's performance the best one. But I have a feeling that Mr. Dern was unjustly robbed at the Oscars.
** One reason (among many) there needs to be more films like Nebraska is due to its focus on the lives and concerns of older people. There are so few good films addressing that demographic, and to get such a funny and revealing peek into the lives of characters like Woody and Kate is an all-too-rare treat seldom to be found in Hollywood's youth-obsessed fare.

EW #5: Psycho (1960)

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho.

I should mention up front that I am quite favorably biased toward this film; it is one of my all-time favorites.

It is impossible to discuss Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho without first discussing Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960); the two are closely related cinematic doppelgangers. Peeping Tom was released in Great Britain several months before Psycho's U.S. release, and what happened to Powell's film proved a valuable lesson for Hitchcock. Peeping Tom depicts several weeks in the life of a cameraman / serial killer named Mark, whose murders are depicted in shocking first-person point-of-view. The film's opening moments consist of just such a disturbing sequence; Peeping Tom provides a prototype for the lengthy, handheld, first-person murder sequence that opens John Carpenter's Halloween eighteen years later. Adding to its gruesomeness -- and unlike Psycho -- Peeping Tom is shot in color.

It turns out that the British public, and especially the press, was not ready for such an explicit indictment of the close connections between cinematic voyeurism, desire, and murder in April 1960. Peeping Tom was roundly condemned by the London press and director Powell was blacklisted.*

Carl Boehm as Mark Lewis, protagonist of Peeping Tom and 

an important precursor to Norman Bates.

Hitchcock, preparing to premiere Psycho in the United States in June 1960, observed what happened to Powell as a result of Peeping Tom's disastrous critical reception, and made a key decision that there would be no press screenings for Psycho. Powell's film had made clear to Hitchcock that he needed to get his own very similar film in front of paying audiences before the critical establishment had a chance to condemn it for its provocative shower sequence, (relatively) sympathetic portrayal of a serial killer, and -- gasp! -- the first-ever depiction of a flushing toilet in a Hollywood film.

Of course, Hitchcock's release strategy for Psycho, which included lobby posters urging filmgoers to keep the film's narrative twists secret and a mandate that no exhibitor allow anyone into a screening of the film after it had begun, were also part and parcel with his general flair for showmanship and his interest in delivering maximum thrills to his audiences. However, the British reception of Peeping Tom also factored into Hitchcock's decision to enact these measures, and in many ways Powell's equally frightening and masterful film deserves kudos for "taking the hit" with the British public on Psycho's behalf.

Regarding Psycho, there isn't much I can say about this enormously influential film that hasn't already been said by smarter writers. Psycho is probably the most-written-about English-language film of the sound era.** It has been claimed as the first slasher horror film, or at least the structural prototype for that enduring subgenre. It also represents the apotheosis of Hitchcock's career-long obsession with point-of-view: the opening sequence alone, in which the camera pans over a Phoenix cityscape and then tracks into a window to find Marion Crane trysting with her lover Sam, implicates the viewer in an act of sexually charged voyeurism more explicitly than does any previous Hitchcock work. Then, when Psycho switches our onscreen point of identification from Marion Crane to Norman Bates about thirty minutes in, it revolutionizes the thriller genre and changes the rules for cinematic identification and point of view from this point forward. The first-person point-of-view camera work that pervade influential slashers Black Christmas (1974) and Halloween (1978) are made possible via the example and influence of Psycho. 

Vera Miles as Lila Crane, one of the great Hitchcockian female detectives.***

The film itself is an utter delight. While some critics, Robin Wood among them, claim that only the first twenty-five minutes of Psycho (up to and including the shower scene) is worthy of true "masterpiece" status and that the second half loses focus, I contend that the whole damn thing hangs together beautifully. It is true that once Marion (Janet Leigh) leaves us, her narrative function is taken over by a diffuse ensemble including boyfriend Sam (John Gavin), sister Lila (Vera Miles), and private detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam), all of whom pale in comparison to Perkins as Bates. That Bates is the most interesting character left alive at that point is Hitchcock's whole purpose, but I can see where the lack of a clear "good guy" (or gal) would be off-putting for some viewers.

Simon Oakland as Psycho's much-maligned psychiatrist.

It is also true of Psycho that the psychiatrist scene near the end does slightly impede the momentum of the film's last seven minutes or so. Yet I think the psychiatrist scene is necessary for setting up the penultimate shot of Norman/Mrs. Bates in the asylum, and that makes it all worth it. Not to mention that Hitchcock gets in one last dig with the film's true final shot: Marion's car being dragged up out of the swamp. The film begins and ends with Marion.

In any case, Psycho is doubtless the Hitchcock film I have watched the most number of times, and alongside Vertigo (1958), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), The Birds (1963), Rope (1948), and Frenzy (1972), it probably stands as my favorite Hitchcock film. It definitely belongs on Entertainment Weekly's -- or anyone's -- list of "All-Time Greatest Films." I might even bump it up a few slots to #2 or #3.

Bonus Afterthought: Two different behind-the-scenes dramatizations of Hitchcock's late career, The Girl (dir. Julian Jarrold) and Hitchcock (dir. Sacha Gervasi) were released in 2012. Although some critics find something to enjoy in the factually inaccurate and emotionally lackluster Hitchcock, I must cast my lot with those who find it to be the cinematic equivalent of a badly-shaped piece of dung. I normally like Anthony Hopkins, but his performance in Hitchcock feels phoned-in and misses Hitch's real-life deliberate speech mannerisms. The whole film is a shoddy affair from tip to tail, very badly done, and I cannot recommend it. By contrast, The Girl is flat-out excellent. Toby Jones plays a much more interesting and convincing Hitchcock than Hopkins does and the film is far better made than Hitchcock on all fronts. Plus The Girl puts forth a provocative thesis: it assumes that Hitch was erotically interested in The Birds' leading lady Tippi Hedren and that he actually made inappropriate moves on her. While that has never been concretely established, I think some lecherous tendencies probably existed in Hitchcock and I like the film's willingness to explore that dark side of him, connecting it to how he treated the (post-Grace Kelly) platinum blondes in his films. I recommend The Girl to anyone; it is artfully shot, energetically acted, well-scripted, and well-paced, especially compared to the much more predictable and dull Hitchcock.

Toby Jones as Alfred Hitchcock and Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren 
in HBO's excellent The Girl.

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* From A Very British Psycho (1997, dir. Chris Rodley), a documentary found on the Criterion Collection DVD of Peeping Tom. This documentary reveals that Powell's career in England ended due to Peeping Tom and that he emigrated to Australia soon after its release.
** A short list of key scholarly titles about Hitchcock and Psycho includes Tania Modleski's The Women Who Knew Too Much, Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Deutelbaum and Poague's A Hitchcock Reader, Kaja Silverman's The Subject of Semiotics, Stephen Rebello's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, and one chapter in Alexander Doty's Flaming Classics.
*** See also Young Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, Lisa Fremont in Rear Window, Barbara Morton in Strangers on a Train, and the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca for more examples of this type.  

Overlooked Directors: Jake Kasdan

The talented Mr. Jake Kasdan.

Jake Kasdan, the son of famed 1980s Hollywood screenwriter (The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi) and director (Body Heat, The Big Chill, Silverado, Grand Canyon) Lawrence Kasdan, has established a stellar track record directing quality television comedies and wonderfully sharp mid-budget films since the late 1990s. Let's run down a short list of the younger Kasdan's must-see directorial triumphs:

Ben Stiller and Bill Pullman in Zero Effect, Jake Kasdan's directorial debut.

Zero Effect (1998) is a wonderful detective story / comedy, which I have been told is a loose adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia" -- a fact I did not recognize since I am unfamiliar with that specific Holmes tale. But whether or not you are familiar with the source material, this is a delightful, well scripted and well acted buddy film that pairs eccentric genius detective Darryl Zero (Bill Pullman) with his uptight, long-suffering assistant Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller). These two have great comic chemistry together, and as usual, Kasdan finds time for some truly poignant character moments in between all the twisted plotting and zany antics. After The TV Set this is my second-favorite Jake Kasdan film.

The stellar cast of Freaks and Geeks.

Freaks and Geeks (five episodes, 1999-2000) -- Kasdan was a consulting producer on the series as well as director of several episodes including the pilot and the terrific "Beers and Weirs" episode. Freaks and Geeks is, quite simply, one of the finest "dramedies" ever aired on television, painting a squirmingly hilarious portrait of many of the serious trials and tribulations high schoolers endure. It also captures the historical moment in which it is set -- the year 1980, before "the 1980s" as we know them now truly set in -- perfectly (yes, I remember 1980). And while much of the credit for the series' brilliance goes to creator Paul Feig, executive producer Judd Apatow, the entire writing team, and the stellar cast, Kasdan was surely a key player in the success of many key episodes -- including the penultimate (and possibly his best) one "The Little Things" -- and the series as a whole.

Jack Black stars opposite Colin Hanks in Orange County.

Orange County (2002) is perhaps a lesser work by the younger Kasdan, as it lapses into some overt sentimentality atypical of the director's work. It also provides a fairly thankless role for Schuyler Fisk as Ashley, our protagonist Shaun's (Colin Hanks) girlfriend. She is too perfectly and consistently supportive of Shaun to be completely believable, and therefore comes off as a bit two-dimensional (where's the conflict?). But despite these relatively minor niggles, there is much to enjoy here, including Jack Black's turn as Shaun's slacker brother Lance, and a happy ending that does -- sentimentality aside -- feel earned.

Sigourney Weaver in Jake Kasdan's satirical masterpiece The TV Set.

The TV Set (2006) is Kasdan's masterpiece, a razor-sharp satire of the television industry with standout performances by the entire cast, including David Duchovny, Sigourney Weaver, Ioan Gruffudd, and Judy Greer, among others. Based loosely (I presume) upon the real-life trials of Judd Apatow during his years on Freaks and Geeks and other programs, this hilarious film depicts show creator Mike Klein's (Duchovny) attempt to get his TV pilot The Wexler Chronicles produced and picked up for broadcast by a network helmed by mercenary executive Lenny (Weaver). The latter's performance alone is worth watching the movie for, as she takes the kind of cutthroat character she played in 1988's Working Girl and ramps it several more notches, into truly "unhinged" territory. Also noteworthy is Fran Kranz as talentless actor Zach Harper, the other major foil to Klein's plans and visions for his precious pilot. An overlooked gem, The TV Set is literally one of my all-time favorite movies and I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.

David Duchovny stars as The TV Set's Mike Klein, 

an onscreen proxy for real-life writer / producer Judd Apatow.

In short, if you only check out one Jake Kasdan film, make The TV Set the one.

"The Beatles" as they appear in Walk Hard.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), while not my favorite Kasdan film, is surprisingly funny and enjoyable given its premise, and sits head and shoulders above other similar "fake biopic" style comedies like Talledega Nights and Anchorman. If you have given this film a pass due to its promotional materials, you may be denying yourself some delightful comedy fun here. But I wouldn't prioritize seeing this above seeing The TV Set or Zero Effect.

Coming soon: Jake Kasdan's next directorial feature is Sex Tape starring Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz, due out in 2014.

Darryl Zero sez: "Check out these movies . . . they're devilishly funny!"

Review: American Hustle (2013)

The cast of American Hustle, who are inconsistently directed 
in this sprawling mess of a film. 

I finally saw David O. Russell's American Hustle, a week after it was snubbed in all categories at the Academy Awards, and to be blunt, I was mostly underwhelmed. I really enjoyed a few of the performances, especially Christian Bale's, but I thought the film was extremely uneven and, despite a few glimmers of genuine fun, mostly quite boring. In my view, Hustle is another entry in the "my post-Huckabees career sucks" phase of Russell's tumultuous directorial trajectory, and herein I will attempt to briefly explain why.

See, I am a huge fan of Russell's pre-2010 work; while his 1994 debut Spanking the Monkey isn't for everybody, I think Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings, and especially I Heart Huckabees are all just terrific. I would even call Huckabees a contemporary dark-comic masterpiece, surely Russell's most compelling and wickedly enjoyable film to date.*

Yet as this article documents, Russell seems to have been severely humbled and discouraged after Huckabees failed to hit big in 2004, and nowadays, in order to keep working in Hollywood, he has "fully accepted the ideology of an increasingly risk-averse industry that making unconventional, brazenly original work is somehow patently offensive and selfish." This seems to square with how Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle both strike me: as slightly offbeat yet extraordinarily conventional, even formulaic films that lack any of the remarkable, genre-mashing freshness of Russell's earlier work. For example, Linings is a totally by-the-numbers, male-centered romantic comedy with an unbalanced weirdo as its male lead -- if you like that film, you'd probably be better off seeing Punch-Drunk Love or even Safety Not Guaranteed -- and Hustle is a tonally disorganized mess trying to be a crime film. Don't get me wrong, I can find things to enjoy in Russell's recent movies. It is obvious that the man still cares about what he does, and that he can surely direct individual scenes very capably. It's just that he isn't pushing himself very hard or reaching very far artistically anymore, and that lack of risk-taking or striving seems to be causing him to go a little stir-crazy within the narrow narrative and generic parameters he has now accepted for himself.**

So, American Hustle. I frankly could not tell if this film was supposed to be a "real" heist film or a parody of one. Unlike Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas, to which this film owes an obvious debt, Hustle fails to blend its moments of comedy with its moments of gravitas with much effectiveness or consistency. For example, the character of Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) is mostly played straight, and Bale treats Irving Rosenfeld, his own somewhat humorous yet likable character, with some nuance, but Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) is a ridiculous caricature of an FBI agent that seems to be visiting the Hustle set from an entirely different (comedy) movie. It is impossible to accept his feelings as real because every moment involving him -- comedic or faux-tragic -- is overplayed to the point of parody. This is not Cooper's fault; it is in the script or (more likely since so much of the film was improvised) the direction.

In short, in terms of tone, Hustle is a convoluted mess. The crowning moment of failure for me, the moment I knew the whole thing was broken, is when an extraordinarily iconic actor strongly associated with the 1970s gangster genre shows up in a cameo. Without spoiling things by naming him, I will simply state that his appearance is so distractingly inappropriate that I became totally convinced at that point in the proceedings that Russell had indeed intended to make a parody film but had simply not made it funny enough to make its parodic intent consistently clear throughout.

 Amy Adams and Christian Bale give the two best performances in Hustle, allowing for occasional moments of wackiness within otherwise believable characterizations.

Unfortunately, though, I don't think parody is what was intended, as the performances by the film's two leading ladies seem to indicate. Amy Adams' Sydney is especially believable and relatable, and, along with Bale's and Renner's characters, really grounds this movie -- to the extent that something this uneven and inconsistent can be grounded. Jennifer Lawrence's Rosalyn is an extreme character as written, but is played well, and should have been the most batshit-crazy element in an otherwise more lived-in set of performances. But unfortunately, Cooper's Richie out-histrionicizes Rosalyn at practically every turn, and that imbalance, combined with too-excessive "1970s" mise-en-scene and several pointlessly heavy-handed musical montages, contribute to the overall feeling of over-the-top incomprehensibility here. What this film really needs is some toning down of the acting and set design, and a couple more editing passes. Trapped somewhere inside the bloated American Hustle we were given is a really delightful 90- to 100-minute heist film parody, and that is a movie I would really like to see.***

Did I enjoy some moments in American Hustle? Yes, for sure, especially when Bale was onscreen. But were there at least as many moments of baffling incomprehensibility, careening shifts in tone, and outright boredom as there were enjoyable ones? Yes.

Do I want the David O. Russell who made I Heart Huckabees back? You bet.

UPDATE 3/5/2016: Look, even Amy Adams hates this movie!

UPDATE 7/2/2016: Film Crit Hulk shares my disdain for American Hustle, arguing that "THERE IS ALMOST NO REAL CHARACTER SEQUENCING OR MEANING OR IMPORT OR THEMATIC COHESION OR DIRECT PURPOSE TO MOST OF THE SCENES IN AMERICAN HUSTLE." His insightful piece outlines director David O. Russell's mid-career about-face in much greater detail than I could, calling the disappointing second half of Russell's career a "FALLRISE" -- "THE WORD FOR A FILMMAKER WHO HAS FALLEN FROM THE NOBLE, EMBATTLED GRACES OF PURE ARTISTRY AND IS WHOLLY REWARDED FOR IT." Hulk concludes that Russell's recent work "FEELS LIKE A WORLD CHAMPION CHESS PLAYER THROWING A GAME TO A 10 YEAR OLD." Sad but accurately said!

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* To be fair, I haven't yet seen Russell's 2010 film The Fighter, so cannot judge it for myself or factor it into this sweeping claim.
** I recognize the irony of calling a man like Russell -- known for his extreme intensity on set in the early days -- "stir-crazy" now that he has noticeably mellowed in terms of his process. What I mean here is that he has gone artistically stir-crazy, he is eating his own tail and losing focus now that he is no longer pushing himself creatively.
*** For example, much as I enjoyed them in and of themselves, every single scene with Louis CK should have been cut from Hustle, as those scenes did practically nothing to move the film forward and only contributed to the out-of-place ridiculousness of Cooper's FBI agent character.