EW #8: The Gold Rush (1925)

Charlie Chaplin and Mack Swain in The Gold Rush (1925).

Entry #8 on Entertainment Weekly's list of 100 All-Time Greatest films constitutes the first (and only!) appearance on the list of silent comedy legend Charlie Chaplin.

Now there is no denying that The Gold Rush is a comedy masterpiece, though so too are several of Chaplin's other features, including The Kid (1921), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940). My personal favorites of these are City Lights and Modern Times, and while I can understand the arguments in favor of The Gold Rush, both my personal taste and my film history knowledge convince me that Modern Times (which EW does not include in its rundown) deserves to be the highest-rated Chaplin film on any "best film" list.

In defense of its choice, EW writes that The Gold Rush contains "the most iconic performance by Hollywood's most indelible movie star," and that may be true, for Chaplin's gags in this film -- especially the dinner roll "shoe" dance -- are some of his most memorable and iconic. Yet a film is more than the performance of a single actor.*

The dinner roll dance, one of the most famous sequences in The Gold Rush and in Chaplin's career.

That said, there is much to love in The Gold Rush, and it surely marks a key moment in Chaplin's trajectory as a director. It is only the third feature-length film to star Chaplin as his "Little Tramp" character, and the first Tramp-centric film to be released by United Artists, Chaplin's co-venture with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith. It is also a landmark film for silent comedy in general: film critic Luc Sante calls The Gold Rush "one of the first truly worldwide cultural phenomena" and notes that "it remains the highest-grossing silent comedy" bar none.**

Yet the film is not as coherent as the later Chaplin films I've already singled out as favorites, a fact that even Chaplin himself indirectly acknowledged by re-cutting certain scenes and omitting others in his 1942 re-issue of the film. I am a snobby purist who has never seen the 1942 version, so cannot comment on the relative merits of 1925 vs. 1942, but what I can say is that Chaplin's desire to tinker with the earlier version and to declare the later iteration his preferred, "definitive" cut speaks to the fact that the director was not totally satisfied with how the original hung together.

To be clear, I love the 1925 version and my pointing out that it is not as narratively tight as, say, City Lights or Modern Times is not meant to detract from how completely enjoyable, hilarious, and touching it is. I love watching The Gold Rush. I am simply saying that whatever its pleasures, and they are many, The Gold Rush does not mark the height of Chaplin's powers as a director, nor is it the most memorable, entertaining, or indelible screen appearance of the Tramp character.

The Tramp always represents the socially outcast and the poor, but whereas Modern Times is a sustained, scathing critique of U.S. capitalism, The Gold Rush leavens its critique by allowing the Tramp to strike it rich by the movie's conclusion. Sure, the Tramp (known here as "the Lone Prospector") never succumbs to greed, and is always motivated by "romance" according to Sante.*** Yet his ascent into the upper classes robs The Gold Rush of its reality principle, diminishing the bittersweetness that attends the endings of Modern Times and City Lights, in which the Tramp must uphold his trademark optimism and pluck in the face of unchanged, deeply impoverished material circumstances. I contend that The Tramp's comedy is funnier, and his pathos far more penetrating, when he remains an outcast and (somehow) a survivor. While The Gold Rush dares to show the Tramp being ostracized, marginalized, and mistreated during many touching sequences earlier in the film -- most notably during his failed New Year's Eve dinner party -- it cops out at the conclusion, sacrificing vulnerability and pathos for a more standard happy ending, which is satisfying in its own way but lacks the power and punch of the later Tramp outings.

The tragicomic ending of Modern Times, in which the Tramp 

puts a brave face on an all-but-hopeless situation.

So while I admire and enjoy The Gold Rush a great deal, and consider it a must-have for a "Top 100 films" list in general, I have to go with Modern Times as my pick for the top Chaplin film and probably the top silent comedy as well. Despite The Gold Rush's amazing special effects and its immense global popularity, I find Modern Times to be every bit as technically impressive, every bit as funny, and, in both an ideological and historical sense, more impactful than EW's chosen film.† Ideologically, Modern Times is the most direct critique of capitalism I have ever seen in a mainstream movie. And historically, Times is the Tramp's swan song and Chaplin's final "silent" picture, so is extraordinarily important to film history for both of those reasons.

Lastly, besides the possible fumble it represents in terms of accurately evaluating Chaplin's ouvre, the other problem that this entry exposes is the stupefying dearth of silent films on the EW Top 100 Films list as a whole. I say this not simply to be highbrow; I am genuinely baffled that a great many enjoyable, thrilling, and thoroughly entertaining silents have simply been omitted or ignored by EW, while drek like Return of the King is included on the list. This is ridiculous. Just in the comedy realm alone, I can think of several features -- the Chaplin titles mentioned above, Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality (1923) and The General (1926), and Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (1923) -- that are much more entertaining AND historically significant than many titles that appear on EW's list.

A lovely shot from The Gold Rush that poignantly depicts the Tramp's 

perennial outsider status.

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* This focus upon a single performance rather than the whole picture also distorts many peoples' views of The Dark Knight, a film which taps the post-9/11 cultural zeitgest like practically no other (if we ignore Zero Dark Thirty) and is elevated by Heath Ledger's bravura performance but is simultaneously plagued by many other glaring structural and aesthetic problems.
** The Gold Rush Criterion Edition booklet (Criterion Collection, 2012), p. 7.
*** Criterion Edition booklet, p. 13.
† Anyone who wants to be blown away by the ingenuity of Chaplin and his cinematographer Roland Totheroh simply must get hold of the Criterion Edition of The Gold Rush and watch the "A Time of Innovation" documentary on the second disc of the two-DVD set.

Review: Godzilla (2014)

The recent remake of Godzilla is what I call a "noble failure." It tries hard to achieve many interesting things both visually and thematically, but it fails because it just isn't very entertaining or fun or, ultimately, coherent. To be clear, I (mostly) really enjoyed the film as it was unfolding before my eyes, and must state right away that I thought it was quite visually stunning. The MUTO attack at the foggy railroad trestle was one of the best paced and best looking scenes in this film or any action film I have seen in quite some time. The final showdown in San Francisco was beautifully lit and photographed, and most of the scenes of Godzilla -- even though they were too few and far between -- looked frikkin' awesome.

But the film is nevertheless a failure, if a noble one. It failings mainly stem from:

(1) Taking itself too seriously,

(2) Committing some of the worst characterization and character-arc blunders I have seen since The Dark Knight Rises, and

(3) Trying to do too much thematically (or at least not doing it clearly enough).

Going in, I gave this film a lot of benefit of the doubt due to the excellence of director Gareth Edwards' previous feature, the superb Monsters (2010). While I am not a rabid Godzilla fan in the holistic sense, I am a huge fan of the original 1954 Gojira and I have seen and enjoyed my share of other related films such as Rodan (1956), Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Gamera (1965), Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), Godzilla 1985, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002), and Roland Emmerich's 1998 "Godzilla" film. But most of my hopes walking into the 2014 Godzilla were pinned on Edwards, and at least in the visual sense, he did not disappoint.

Yet as Lee Weston Sabo puts it, the very skills which served Edwards so well on the low-budget Monsters were misapplied here, creating a distracting "identity crisis" at Godzilla's core:

Oddly enough, [Edwards] used the same techniques he used in Monsters to hide the poor CGI (which he reportedly did on his laptop) to hide the monsters in Godzilla, even though the budget was two hundred times larger, resulting in a lavish Hollywood production that is often obscured from view. Most distracting is a recurring motif where the monsters are shown on a television screen rather than in the flesh. The movie is so embarrassed by its giant monsters that it has to constantly show them on the news to make it seem real.

Agreed. Yet even these errors in judgment might not have seemed so egregious had it not been for the profound mistakes made simultaneously in the character department. Why on earth this film kills off Joe Brody (played compellingly by Bryan Cranston) a third of the way in is one of the most baffling decisions I've seen made in any film -- it is as bad and distracting a decision as the numerous similarly terrible choices made in The Dark Knight Rises.* Furthermore, once the film murders its best character and most logical candidate for protagonist, it subsequently utterly wastes the talents of Ken Watanabe as Dr. Serizawa, who, as the namesake of the original Gojira's protagonist, seemed to me the next best choice to step up and take the reins in Joe's deeply felt absence. But no, Serizawa stands around pointlessly while the straight-laced Admiral Stenz and Joe's boring son Ford get all the best lines and scenes.

Why, oh why, does the (potentially) interesting character on the left do nothing this whole movie while the boring character on the right is narratively centralized?

And, as Sabo points out, Ford's role in Godzilla is unmotivated and pointless: "there is no functional reason Dr. Brody could not have been the hero of the film – and, by extension, no reason why Ford Brody needed to exist as a character at all (for instance, even though he’s established as a bomb disposal expert in a plot that surrounds several nuclear bombs, it never actually comes into play)." So even though the main point in a monster movie is to enjoy the monster battles, Godzilla commits a dual sin by depriving us of the monsters AND providing us with a horribly lackluster, "droopy" human plot, as even this mostly positive review of the film admits.

Thus, despite its stunningly impressive visuals, the main problem with Edwards' take on Godzilla is its lack of compelling characters and its over-serious tone. To be fair, these problems are endemic to many contemporary blockbusters, as I have discussed before. In an Entertainment Geekly blog post titled "A Call for an End to Serious Blockbusters," Darren Franich writes that the new Godzilla film is disappointing precisely because it is "so, so serious. Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s mom dies and his dad dies and his wife is a nurse and his son misses his daddy. Godzilla is probably the first movie to not even have fun when it destroys Vegas."

Franich is well aware that this serious, boring, "dark" tone is not unique to Edwards' Godzilla but is a general trend in contemporary Hollywood filmmaking -- he writes that

this whole vogue for seriousness has become a tic: For the filmmakers, but also for the studios, for the marketing teams, for the whole apparatus behind Hollywood blockbusters. And for us, the audience, too. There’s a tendency to throw this seriousness on Christopher Nolan’s doorstep, but mainstream geekstuff was turning in that direction long before Batman Begins. You could start with Bryan Singer’s moody X-Men. Or you could point to Peter Jackson’s decision to de-Bombadilize Lord of the Rings. Maybe it’s George Lucas’ fault, devolving Star Wars from a fun-times space adventure to a mopey-faced parliamentary melodrama.

In any case, Franich bemoans this trend (in a very smart article I encourage you to read in full) and names Pacific Rim as a positive counter-example to this tendency, a view I wholeheartedly agree with.

Pacific Rim vs. Godzilla = fun vs. serious. 
As Darren Franich writes, "Godzilla wants so badly to make sense. 
Pacific Rim wants so badly for Ron Perlman to wear golden shoes."

Thematically, the new Godzilla appears to want to re-engage with the 1954 original's indictment of nuclear weapons, but seems confused about what its actual stance on this issue might be.** Is the 2014 version pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear? It is hard to tell. The film does not endorse Admiral Stenz's ruthless approach to detonating nukes in the San Francisco Bay, yet it is pro-military and does not seem all that troubled by the existence of nuclear weapons in general. Sabo labels this ideological muddle "a vague commentary on environmentalism" that ultimately means very little in the context of the film. And despite Robin L. Murray's contention that the film "provides a space in which to explore the complexities of a monstrous nature humanity both creates and embodies," conveying the message that "monstrous nature may also save us," I must agree with Sabo that the film carries self-contradictory and confusing messages along this line.

All that said, I look forward to Edwards' next attempt at the franchise -- he is currently contracted to direct Godzilla 2 and Godzilla 3 -- and hope he and his team will learn some valuable lessons from the mixed critical response to the 2014 Godzilla. If he can bring a bit more zip and fun to the next installment, if he can build upon his accomplished visual style to get us more invested in both his human and non-human protagonists, then he might overcome this noble failure and make the potential-laden Godzilla franchise so much better.

Bonus Afterthought: Though I understand why Godzilla purists despise it, I am not a hater of the Roland Emmerich Godzilla and am inclined to agree with Gabe Toro's claim that the much-maligned 1998 version is at least a rip-roaring good time.***

"Don't I seem more fun now, in retrospect?"

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* That is, the utter pointlessness of Matthew Modine's character, the severe, plot-crippling under-development of Talia al Ghul, and the totally disastrous decision to have Michael Caine's Alfred, the only remotely believable and relatable human being to appear in the entire Dark Knight trilogy, vanish for the bulk of the film's run time.
** Sabo calls the 1954 original "ham-fisted" and criticizes its "audacity and crudity [in] trying to seriously represent the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a man stomping around in a rubber dinosaur suit." Yet I find that audacity somewhat admirable and compelling, and would add that the dark, gloomy tone of the 1954 version helps its theme to "land" with me despite the film's exploitative dimensions.
*** Anyone interested in reading a more detailed discussion of the merits of Emmerich's 1998 version should read this Vanity Fair piece, which makes the bold claim that "if you love the 90s, you pretty much have to love 90s Godzilla."

Review: Mother (2009)

Poster for Bong Joon-ho's amazing 2009 thriller Mother.

Some while ago, in a post discussing several contemporary (and active) directors I feel are worth every filmgoer's time, I concluded with an "Honorable Mention" shout-out to Bong Joon-ho, my favorite South Korean director.

Since posting that, I have now seen Bong's 2009 thriller, Mother, and my estimation of his talent and abilities has only increased as a result. I am immensely fond of his two previous feature-length works, 2003's Memories of Murder and 2006's monster movie The Host, but now I might have to claim Mother as my favorite.

In fact, my initial reaction to Mother was documented via an email exchange I had with a good friend familiar with Bong's films:

ME: In prepping for teaching Bong this week I finally watched Mother a couple days ago. Literally the best movie I've seen in years, with the best "twist"/reveal EVER! 

FRIEND: I feel the same way. The most unique and arguably subversive take on monstrous motherhood I've ever seen, especially given the title character's star text as a popular character actor who mainly played lovable moms on Television. I think it's an important film to juxtapose with The Host to understand Bong Joon-ho as an auteur. 

ME: I think it is the greatest deployment of "trick" point of view and generation of audience sympathy since Psycho. And I agree that it pairs well with The Host as a precis on parenthood.

As this dialog (and my profile on the sidebar) reveal, I am a professor of film studies by trade, and in my "Film History Since 1945" course this spring semester, I taught a week on "The Global Blockbuster" which required the students to watch The Host. I have seen and taught that film many times and it is always a big hit with students. Not only is it a superb monster movie, it also functions as a kind of over-the top family melodrama about a slackerish dad who spends the whole film trying to make up for the fact that his carelessness leads to his daughter's being taken by the river monster in the movie's first act. The redemption of this father character is a primary theme in The Host, and is handled as well as (if not better than) the father-son sequences in Spielberg's Jaws, a film to which The Host is frequently (and favorably) compared.

Yet my appreciation for The Host was enhanced by seeing Mother. As its title indicates, the movie is a suspense thriller about the investigative efforts of the single mother of a young man named Yoon Do-joon. The son is arrested and  incarcerated for the murder of a neighborhood schoolgirl. The local police all believe they have their man, but Do-joon's mom never wavers in her faith that her son is innocent of the crime, so takes it upon herself to conduct her own dogged investigation of the events leading up to her son's arrest. The result is nail-bitingly suspenseful, beautifully shot, superbly acted, and ultimately revelatory in its brilliant deployment of a narrative "twist" that is not so much a twist as a catharsis for the characters and viewer alike. I am not kidding when I say in the email exchange above that Mother contains one of the best "reveals" I have seen in any film since Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

Do-joon's mother makes a crucial discovery during one of 
Mother's most suspenseful scenes. 

Like Hitchcock before him, Bong seems to have no great esteem for cops, for they often come across as corrupt, buffoonish, or a little bit of both in his work. This is a theme that ties Mother to Bong's 2003 serial killer mystery thriller Memories of Murder -- the cop protagonists of the latter remind me very much of the supporting police officer character in the former, and even though we are meant to sympathize with the two cops in Memories, the ending of the film tells us a lot about how Bong feels about the ways and means -- and ethics -- of police work in his home country.

One of the last shots of Memories of Murder, in which a police officer 

is shown possibly abusing his position of authority.

Similarly, cops and government officials are not to be trusted in The Host -- in that film, Gang-du's extended family bond together to rescue his daughter Hyun-seo, all the while evading the police and military personnel who would impede them in their morally necessary task.

All three films echo each other in certain ways: always there are young girls in danger, and always a different type of protagonist -- two cops, a father and his siblings, a lone mother -- seeks a solution to the crime and and end to the threat posed to the children. All three are strongly envisioned, well-scripted genre pieces (two crime thrillers and one monster movie) into which elements of family melodrama are artfully woven.

And then there are the visuals. The screenshots I've included here really cannot do justice to how beautifully shot and edited Bong's films are. No fetishist of the long take, Bong nevertheless knows when to allow for thematically appropriate long takes, as in the opening and closing shots of Mother or in the incredibly long steadicam shot that wends its way through the police station (and eventually outside to the parking lot) partway through Memories. Bong and his cinematographers Kim Hyung-ku (Memories and The Host) and Hong Kyung-pyo (Mother) are amazingly artful in how they compose shots, yet they never let that artfulness impede the forward momentum of these films' suspenseful, exciting scripts and plots.*

One of the funniest moments from The Host, in which Gang-du's family writhes around 

 on the floor in an expression of over-melodramatized grief.

The last component of Bong's work that really stands out for me is his sense of humor. Even in the middle of the direst of situations, Bong always allows for some silliness and human foible to leaven the tone a bit. In fact, one of the director's great gifts is his ability to introduce comedy without allowing it to puncture or nullify the suspense. This is perhaps especially true of The Host, which features the most outrageous comedy moments of any Bong film I've seen, yet also maintains its sense of paranoia and doom throughout, and even includes a few genuinely tragic and touching moments as well. Some of these involve character deaths so I won't spoil them, but my favorite of The Host's touching-yet-comedic scenes is when Gang-du's father explains to his other two grown children why they should cut Gang-du some slack and respect him, describing with great pathos how Gang-du suffered from malnutrition as a child. At the culmination of the father's speech, Bong cuts to the two siblings, revealing that they are asleep and not listening to a word of this profoundly moving speech. This is a moment that is both funny and subtly reveals the film's deeper agenda, which is to unfold that background information about the hapless Gang-du to us, the film's viewers.

It is artful touches like this, combined with Bong's films' sense of excitement and fun, that leads me to recommend his work to anyone who enjoys well-made suspense and/or monster films. Last I checked, The Host was streaming on Netflix, in Korean with English subtitles -- the DVD editions of Bong's films come subtitled AND dubbed.

"I gotta get out of here and go see Bong Joon-ho's latest film!"

UPDATE 8/5/2014: Here is a link to a superb video analyzing many of Bong's visual techniques in Mother.

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* The closest comparison I can make to an English-language director's work is probably to that of David Fincher, who, in most cases (including Alien 3, Se7en, Zodiac, and The Social Network but possibly not the hyper-stylized Fight Club or a few indulgent moments in the generally underrated Panic Room) lets his films' stories and characters drive things forward, interwoven with an abundance of rich visual artistry to be incidentally enjoyed along the way. Fincher also seems to like to work in the suspense thriller genre like Bong does.

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.