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We first meet Max (Max Records) as he violently roughhouses his dog.  Is he playing?  Is he always this violent?  Are we supposed to connect with this character?  The answer to all these questions is yes.  Where The Wild Things Are starts with all the momentum of a sled speeding down a massive hill.  Max plays in the snow with a joyous youthful exuberance.  He runs wild in snowy streets; he builds an igloo and provokes a fight against the friends of his older sister (Pepita Emmerichs).  There is no wasted second for Max.  He must cram in every element of play as if there is simply no time to just stop and appreciate his surroundings.  After provoking a snowball fight he is charged by adolescents.  Max smiles one last time before retreating into his igloo.  He giggles out of impish pride before being crushed alive as one of the teenagers jumps on top of his igloo.  He emerges crying.  His tormentor leaves without so much as a glimpse back.  Max nearly died.  No one cares.  As Max retreats into his home he is consumed by uncontrollable rage.  He destroys his sister’s room in a violent and vengeful frenzy.  She ignored him; she must be punished.

This is by no means a movie for children.  Max exists alone in a tumultuous world.  There are no other children.  He exists as a lonely entity without so much as a friend besides his mother (Catherine Keener).  Even she seems to grow tired of him after he attacks her while she’s sipping wine with an innocent suitor (Mark Ruffalo).  Max runs down the stairs in his ruffian monster costume, attacks his mother and bites her as she tries to pick him up.  She brings him into the kitchen, whereupon he roars, “Woman, feed me!”

Frustrated with those whom are deservingly angry with him, Max runs away.  He sails to a fantasy world, intended as an escape from the complex people of reality.  Unfortunately, the creatures that inhabit this new world become allegories for all the impenetrable people that inhabit the real world.  Max models them in his own image; unfortunately that means they are equally rage filled and bipolar.  The most important of these creatures is Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini).  He has the same wants, needs, and fears as Max.  We watch Carol pine over the loss of KW (voiced by Lauren Ambrose) with the same alternating dejection and wrath that Max has over the growing rift between him and his sister.  Max empathizes with Carol and inspires him to rediscover his own spirit of play.  As they grow closer and closer, Max grows to appreciate his natural talents more and more.  As Carol opens up to Max, the two explore their own insecurities with the general transience of childhood.  Carol is Max’s imaginary friend, created to have everything Max loves about himself.  Carol is Max’s projected feelings, and in their interactions Max gains a unique perspective on himself.

As the wild things play a game at Max’s suggestion, they begin hurling “dirt clods” at one another.  The inevitable conclusion brings to mind a common phrase heard by most children Max’s age: it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.  The game culminates in Douglas the giant bird (voiced by Chris Cooper) having his arm ripped off by Carol. In this Chaotic proliferation, Max finally embraces the consequences of unbridled mayhem.  He finally understands that he is simply too free and too angry.  He is ungrateful, and he is in essence a spoiled child.  His sudden revelations create a natural divide between him and Carol, and Carol reacts as old Max would: he gets angry.  As Max flees the horrors that are himself, he longs for his old life.  He is capable of appreciating it now.  Eventually we see these same maturations in Carol, but they are still in the style of old Max: he roars, then he cries.  There is nothing in between.

It’s very common for something to be lost when a music video director attempts to direct a feature.  David Fincher’s first feature after directing Madonna is the incoherent mess that is Alien³.  Michel Gondry’s first feature after directing Björk was the sputtering Human Nature.  Some directors making the transition forget about character development (i.e. Tarsem Singh’s The Fall).  Others forget that they need occasional breaks in action (i.e. Michael Bay’s Bad Boys, The Rock, Armegeddon, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys II, The Island, Transformers, Transformer 2). Where The Wild Things Are feels far too much like one of Jonze’s music videos.  Although visually stunning, it doesn’t allow viewers any time to stop and appreciate the visuals.  Oddly enough, Jonze’s first two films (Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.) are all-around great movies, but it’s beginning to seem that credit is entirely owed to their screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman.  In Where The Wild Things Are, Max doesn’t give so much as a second glance to any of the fantastical landscapes and structures surrounding him.  This perspective leaves the audience to also ignore them as commonplace.  Just as a music video must for lack of time adjust tone in a jarring shift, the movie approaches every emotional change with an uncomfortable abruptness.  While sudden tone shifts are certainly effective when used once or twice, their frequency in this movie give it a manic quality that virtually eliminates any emotion that isn’t as severe as it is sudden.  Both Max and his creatures cry and then roar, then fight, and then cry again.  There is never a break; there is no appreciative moment where the creatures look at each other with a subtle smile.  Each emotion is entirely explicit.  Kaufman and Eggers should know better.  Jonze’s Adaptation. emphasizes the subtle, unstated (and frustrating) love between brothers and Egger’s Away We Go shows a couple completely in love expressed entirely through casual conversation.  The wild things never stop saying, “I love you” or “I hate you.”  All the work made to create truly organic creatures is virtually destroyed by cardboard bipolar dialogue that would be more believably uttered by 6 year olds.  Hopefully Jonze will eventually adapt to the unique demands feature films.

But maybe this is all deliberate.  When the wild rumpus starts, the audience is swept into the free wheeling style of a contemporary Smirnoff commercial.  Jonze captures the joyful cadences of roughhousing in his directing.  This is probably his best skill as a director.  He creates extreme emotions.  Thinking about how most 10 year olds appreciate the world around them, it can be absolutely solely in these extreme emotions.  They have very little patience, and little to no desire to stop and appreciate the beauty that is life.  Is it the fault of the director that he so convincingly eliminates all pauses from life?  Isn’t he really just perfectly emulating the frustrating un-appreciativeness of this particular ten-year-old child?  Yes, it is irking to watch someone act with complete abandon, but if the perspective is true to the character, then is it truly at fault?

At heart, Where The Wild Things Are is a morality tale.  It is about self-discovery and growing up.  Reread Maurice Sendak’s book and you will discover that it and Jonze’s movie center around the same themes.  By exploring these themes of family and youthful ferocity further, Jonze has created a movie that is too complicated for kids, but too juvenile in its revelations for adults.

- Paul Brinnel

Ang Lee’s latest film is a bit of a departure from his past body of work.  The director of an eclectic mix of tragedies (i.e. The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain) has opted to make a light comedy based on Elliot Tiber’s memoir, Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life.  Lee’s abridged title removes “a true story of a riot, a concert and a life;” this seems appropriate considering how screenwriter James Schamus has managed to glaze over all three of these pieces to what might have potentially been a very impactful story.

The year is 1969, and Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin) is trying to help his Jewish parents, Jake and Sonia (Henry Goodman & Imelda Staunton) save their dilapidated Catskill motel from being foreclosed.  Jake and Sonia clomp around their property with a disdain for the lifestyle they have chosen to lead.  They both hate their business, and there’s never any clear motivation on any character’s part as to why they didn’t sell the old place years ago and make a living doing something that they both don’t utterly despise.  Then some rather uninteresting things happen, all of which laying a path for Elliot to act as a middleman in getting the Woodstock Music Festival moved to Bethel, NY.  The festival that was supposed to have a little over a hundred thousand attendees quickly has half a million.  Throughout this, we are only privy to Elliot’s experience at the festival (after all, this is based on a memoir).  The memoir is supposed to explore the complexities of leading a double life as a Greenwich Village gay-rights advocate and a straight businessman in the conservative town of Bethel.  The movie virtually ignores this entire theme, with the exception of a minor romantic subplot that has no impact on any other events in the story.

The first half of the film exists solely to establish a range of clichés.  First there are Elliot’s decidedly Jewish parents, an old married couple virtually incapable of showing any affection for anyone.  In one not particularly memorable scene Elliot’s mom extrapolates on life after potential foreclosure with the line: “And then on goes the gas!”  It’s moments like this that complete her Seinfeld-esque transformation into the archetype Jewish parent.  Next we meet Elliot’s childhood acquaintance, Billy (Emile Hirsch), the ex-Vietnam vet who has sporadic (yet somewhat comical) flashbacks.  He spouts such indelible insights as “over in Nam I’m fuckin’ normal!”  There’s also the “variety” of Bethel townspeople, who all seem to hold the same predictable opinions, and act at all times with a terribly un-endearing mob mentality.  There’s the group of cliché hippies running the festival, and their accompanying suits who seem to do little more than carry briefcases and stand in clusters.  It would be nice if the movie went on to force these varied groups to unite and hopefully learn to appreciate one another; a pity no such thing happens.  There might be a single uniting of unlikely characters alluded to, but nothing such happens on-screen.

The main issue with this film is its floundering of purpose.  It’s a movie about Woodstock that never makes it to the festival.  It’s a film about a closeted homosexual that never quite has to deal with coming out.  It’s a movie about a family learning to trust one another for profit.  It’s nearly two hours about varied groups doing nothing with any apparent variety.  Essentially, this movie is about an incredible event, told in a painfully un-incredible way.

It’s a given that any film about the 1969 Woodstock Festival is going to take a lot from the definitive film account of the festival, Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary, Woodstock.  Where Taking Woodstock tries to be about the impact of the festival on one person and his direct acquaintances, Woodstock is a direct account of the festival itself.  Ang Lee has done homage to this nearly 40-year-old film foremost in his cinematography.  While Wadleigh used split screen as a means to emphasize the diverse experiences all happening simultaneously at the festival, Lee has opted for this “multi-ring circus” concept instead as a mean of convoluting the point of view of his lead character.  Woodstock had multiple cameramen shooting multiple actions from multiple angles, therefore split-screens make absolute sense.  Taking Woodstock is about a single person’s perspective, yet split screens persist, seemingly giving Elliot several consciousnesses, all gawking at different things simultaneously.

Lee also has stuck in a few recreations of specific events depicted by Wadleigh.  Sometimes he is just content to show a recognizable image in the background (i.e. a nun giving a piece sign to a cameraman).  These moments aren’t obtrusive, and act as fun “easter eggs” for those familiar with the 1970 film.  There are other times, however, where Lee takes a piece of Wadleigh’s imagery, and attempts to inject additional meaning into it by having a character explain its personal significance.  Before Billy slides down the famous muddy hill, he explains to Elliot how this hill has been a reoccurring object in his life.  His explanation coupled with his proclamation, “I love this hill!” seem to devalue all of the other attendees similar enjoyment of said hill.  This moment isn’t one about sharing an experience with likeminded people— it has been debased so that only Billy seems to have a reason to feel something.  These isolating moments fall one after another, culminating in Elliot’s acid trip in the back of a stranger’s van.  Elliot never bonds with his fellow trippers, or any other specific people.  He exists as a narrator that doesn’t participate in the grand point of the festival.  The emphasis of Woodstock has ceased to be one of togetherness; Lee has ignored the ultimate point of the festival and instead made a movie about vague personal growth.

-Paul Brinnel

Inglourious Basterds is without a doubt, one of the most beautifully composed films ever made.  The camera swoops unpredictably around sets, subtlety emphasizing the tone of every confrontation.  Every set is convincingly historically accurate, but complete control over color is maintained in every shot.  Tarantino demonstrates a masterful command of every aspect of filmmaking; every sight and sound presented on his screen is calculated to make the viewer feel absolute exhilaration, absolute drama, and most impressively, absolute empathy with his characters.

In essence, Inglourious Basterds is a film about persecution and revenge; each subplot follows this arc.  The first scene is a confrontation between Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and a dairy farmer, Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet).  A perfect scene in every sense, the audience gets to witness both the civility and degeneracy of Waltz’s expertly crafted “Jew Hunter.”  Next we are introduced to Lieutenant Aldo Raine’s guerilla band of Jewish Nazi hunters.  Together, the Basterds represent an entire race’s rage, and viewers quickly identify with the ruthless avengers.  Lastly, we meet Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a French theater owner seeking her own revenge on the ruling party.  The rest of the plot is simple: everyone tries to kill the Nazis before the Nazis kill them.

Seemingly in tribute to the diversity apparent within the Basterds, Tarantino has assembled a huge variety of actors coming from a whole slew of international filmmaking backgrounds.  Each and every one of them is perfectly effective within their roles.  Every character is so believable, that even the tiniest throw away lines seem to steal the scene, and go on to compose some of the movies most memorable moments.  A particularly mundane moment that stuck with me occurred as the Basterds are disguised as Nazi officers in a French bar; a local Nazi officer sits down with them and proposes a game of twenty questions.  Quickly realizing that he only has one pen, he asks the bartender for more pens, who then proceeds to hand him several pens.  This small touch of realism amid a moment of the utmost dramatic tension serves the realism of each scene.  Even in the most unrelatable of circumstances, we still see characters acting completely human.  Fueling this incredible sense of vitality is Tarantino’s completely familiar, yet wholly unique sense of dialogue.  Gone are the days when his best developed characters were the quick talking, street smart thirty-somethings of his early works.  Each member of the incredible diverse ensemble consumes the audience.  Even Sosanna Dreyfus’ seldom seen love interest, Marcel (Jacky Ido) succeeds in carving out a residence within the viewer’s gut.  Each shot of him simply existing fuels a need to know more about his character.  Considering each of the dozens of characters was able to accomplish just as much, this movie could have been hours longer, and each minute would have still been a joy to experience.

To my knowledge, the action sequences in Inglourious Basterds are simply the best action sequences ever to grace the screen.  It’s not hard to understand why this might be, though; great directors seldom touch true “action” scenes, with few exceptions (i.e. Scorsese).  When a story they wish to tell requires moments of action in order to move along the plot, it is typically done with a concentration on the perspective of one or two characters, so their feelings and motivations can be observed throughout.  By forcing the audience to concentrate on what characters are feeling, instead of the specifics of the situation, a director can emphasize the dramatic implications of any excitement, rather than the spectacle.  This approach is partly the reason why every exciting moment in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction was so engrossing.  In Death Proof, Tarantino attempted to ignore this convention, focusing on the spectacle over all else.  In Inglourious Basterds however, Tarantino has managed to find an optimized medium between focusing on the characters versus the spectacle of an event.  The oft forgotten key is contained entirely within the minutes preceding said action.  There’s a great scene where Sergeant Werner Rachtman (Richard Sammel) has been captured by the Basterds and is awaiting his execution at the hands of Sergeant Donny Donowitz, a.k.a. “the Bear Jew” (Eli Roth).  For what feels like an eternity, we experience Rachtman’s perturbation as Donowitz clanks his baseball bat against a wall off-screen, then proceeds to slowly stroll towards his victim.  In this way, when action is planned or anticipated, the audience experiences the contemplation and anxiety with the characters beforehand.  In this case, the audience connects so much with Rachtman they can begin to forget that his punishment is deserved.  Once this point is reached, whether or not the action actually follows this is inconsequential.  Conversely, when an action is a surprise to those involved, it must surprise the audience as it does the characters involved.  Only by catching both off guard, can true empathy be established and maintained.  Keeping in line with this, if those involved are confused by their surroundings, then the audience must also be confused.  The scene in the French bar contains a shootout that couldn’t last more than ten seconds, but it all happens in such real time, that no sense can be made of it until after the fact.  No gimmicks are needed at this point.  A dead body should speak for itself.  After the smoke has cleared, then there can be breath: a chance for all involved to process everything that has just happened.

Viscerally, the movie is completely engrossing.  There were long expanses of time in which it was truly impossible to blink, and eventually all I could do was shake.  By the time the credits rolled, I felt an orgiastic release as I thanked God for this piece of beauty that doth exist in the world.  To all this, only one reasonable conclusion could I reach: Quentin Tarantino has undoubtedly created a masterpiece that will seal his place as one of the greatest auters of all time.

-Paul Brinnel

In a world like today’s (albeit with aliens) how will the media oversimplify complex class struggles?  The answer: District 9.  News footage and interviews tell of the day twenty years ago when an alien mother ship came to a halt right over Johannesburg, South Africa.  A human recovery crew enters the ship and discovers an ill-kept alien race, clearly abandoned without any hope of survival.  These supposed millions of aliens (although at most a dozen are ever shown on-screen at one time) are relocated to an internment camp in Johannesburg, and segregated from mainstream society.  The story picks up in the present day, when multinational company peon, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is appointed head of relocating said alien threat to a new camp a few miles outside of the city.  The bumbling Wikus talks of his job with pride and fulfills his duties with a comically misguided zeal.  After exposure to an alien contaminant, Wikus becomes an invaluable asset in alien research, and is subjected to a battery of increasingly inhuman tests by his corporation.  A good while after it has become obvious to the viewer, Wikus suddenly realizes that those strapping him to a table and preparing to dissect him are evil.  How does the decidedly timid Wikus respond?  He spontaneously transforms into Rambo.  From this moment on he exhibits a warrior spirit that completely defeats the purpose of establishing him as an antihero in the first place.  He might not have the best aim, but regardless he throws himself into battles with a fearlessness completely uncharacteristic of his previously established character.  Every massive character change in the movie is completely based around a turning point that might last all of two seconds.  There is never any sense of building motivations or mounting change.  This gives Wikus’ character a bipolar quality that makes his motivations too convoluted to relate to.

District 9 starts with an incredible original documentary feel.  Exposition is revealed via interviews and shown in clips compiled from fake news footage.  Eventually, the movie takes on a Cops feel, as a cameraman trails the characters as they explore the alien camp.  Unfortunately, as the movie progresses, this documentary footage is replaced by very standard action cinematography on regular film.  Whereas the presence of the news crews or surveillance cameras fit into the narrative style, the sudden apparition of an omnipotent camera simply doesn’t fit.  Whenever interviews suddenly come back on the screen, it becomes terribly ambiguous what the film is trying to be.  Cutting between surveillance footage and regular camera work similarly makes no sense.  Within the first half hour, the Cops vibe is gone, and the presence of a film crew ceases to be justified or explainable.

Redemption seems to be a central theme of District 9.  The lead character is essentially an oppressor, then because of situations beyond his control he must ally with the oppressed against the oppressors he previously belonged to.  This device has been used countless times.  Unfortunately, this time it is completely missing any contemplation, and therefore any potential pathos.  At the beginning of the movie is a scene where Wikus happily destroys an entire nest of alien larvae.  After he has “seen the light,” there is never again any mention of his past sins.  He fights with the aliens out of necessity, and it’s very obvious that he hates doing it.  There really isn’t any redemption for Wikus.  There is only convenience and Sun Tzu’s principle: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Any film about internment camps is obviously going to have some type of political message.  I believe the entirety of District 9’s political message is summed up by a quick comment from an interview early on: “If [the aliens] were from another country, we’d understand.”  I get it.  They’re aliens.  But they’re people too.  There’s no statement really here to make, aside from the obvious, “discrimination is bad.”  Ideally, writer-director Neill Blomkamp could have extrapolated and gone on to explore such complex ideas as the necessity of repression for the effective policing of certain groups, or even shown more (or any) of the alien backlash, or even actually show their “dehumanizing.”  At most, there were a few “no aliens allowed” signs, but no real interactions between mainstream humanity and the aliens were shown.  A few testimonials at most were meant to convey any possible message the film had.  (Unsubstantial as it might have been.)

District 9 is actually based on a six and a half minute short film from 2005 written and directed by Blomkamp.  Alive in Joburg has a nearly identical setup, but uses its limited time to interpolate on a modern apartheid that is revealed by the narrative completely in medias res.  Incorporating these themes into a sci-fi movie is an incredibly original idea, and provides a new take on a story that’s been around since H.G. Wells first published The War Of The Worlds, 111 years ago.  It’s a tragedy that District 9 just devolves into yet another overblown action cliché.  Each chase scene alternates with a firefight, and they seem to occur on such a smoothly planned rail.  In a tight spot, a character glances over to a table, grabs a conveniently placed bomb, and blows out a wall that happens to lead to a parking garage.  Endless climaxes make way for increasingly comical escalation.  By the movie’s end, our once lovely dimwit is in a conveniently found mechanical exoskeleton, fighting off a dozen bald tan men with machine guns.  A nice, entirely human antihero was established, only to be lost amid an orgy of blood and brain remnants splattering onto the camera lens.

-Paul Brinnel

After 2007’s Knocked Up, I was at least a bit excited for writer/director Judd Apatow’s future.  I thought he might have finally learned how to mold his power to pen raunchy comedies into the ability to integrate edgy humor with character driven stories.  Unfortunately, his latest movie, Funny People, seems to have pushed that threshold a bit too far.

Plunged into the incredibly convincing fallout of a commercially successful comedian’s career, we meet George Simmons (Adam Sandler), the rich bastard who just found out he’s dying.  Realizing that he’s driven away every human being in his life, he finds a rather pathetic standup comic, Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), and for whatever reason, invites him to write for him, and to hopefully also become his friend.  Maybe this would be heartwarming were it in minimalist Kurosawa film from 1952, but unfortunately we’re stuck with the writer/director of The 40 Year Old Virgin.

Judd Apatow has attempted to make a meta-comedy.  This movie is not about laughing at raunchy witticisms; it is about what fuels people to make said quips.  While watching this movie, I couldn’t help but think of the 1981 Woody Allen movie, Stardust Memories.  Both movies take what could be comically lucrative situations and ruin with them with lofty self-actualized humor.  Of course I’m not saying that comedians don’t deserve to be broken down, but the movies that do it best manage to maintain relatability within the lead character regardless of the humor or tragedy of any given situation.  Three superior films that play off similar themes are Lenny, Man on the Moon, and The Comic.  Where Dustin Hoffman, Jim Carrey, and Dick Van Dyke respectively succeed is in just how much they connected to the viewer.  You felt good when they felt good, and bad when they felt bad.  A simple moviemaking device, but nonetheless important to maintaining weight and investment in the story.  I’m well aware that where Funny People differs from these three movies in that the main character of the movie, Wright, isn’t said tragic comedian, but merely an impartial observer telling the story of the comic.  Regardless, in order to instead connect with this observer, motivations need to be clear.  In this movie a pathetic idiot befriends a despondent jerk, and then puts up with a lot of endless grief pursuing a lifestyle he is drawn to for no explainable reason.  Everything Wright envies about Simmons seems to be either completely superficial or completely vain.  This part of the story feels like a dumbed down, modernized version of La Dolce Vita, minus any carried out attempt at substance.

Eventually the movie stumbles into a more upbeat second act, where Simmons is meant to use all of the lessons he learned in his previous screen time.  Oddly enough though, he hasn’t learned a thing.  If anything, he has regressed to just the same old bastard he was, except now without any of the ridiculous moroseness.  What’s left is a poorly staged domestic drama where a tragic love triangle turns into a completely unmemorable exchange of by the book conflicted romance dialogue.  This whole sequence is so slight that I found myself beginning to doze at times fueled wholly by the ennui of this plodding and overplayed cliché.  Not until this second act does it really strike you just how bad Apatow is at writing/developing any women characters.  With the emergence of Laura (Leslie Mann) as Simmons’ love interest, it becomes even more obvious that you’re watching a movie with a predestined outcome.  Believability and fluidity of romance are destroyed when the audience can’t understand why a female character is considered at all desirable.  In this case, the fault belongs to both Apatow for inherently not understanding women, and Mann for playing her character with such convincing objectivity.

Over the course of this nearly 2 and a half hour movie, I witnessed at least a dozen people in the audience leaving.  Despite a plethora of shlong shtick, Funny People certainly doesn’t appeal to anyone looking for this year’s frat boy, gross-out comedy.  Unfortunately, Funny People also fails to be insightful enough to strike a chord with higher brow viewers, too.  When everything is said and done, all that’s really left is a pile of peters that failed at self-actualization.

-Paul Brinnel

With no explanation The Hurt Locker starts off amidst a moment of extraordinary anxiety.  A U.S. bomb-squad task force is in the midst of weighing their options.  Just a few hundred yards ahead of them on an abandoned Iraqi street lies potential instantaneous death.  It is their job to approach it, disarm it, and return to base unscathed.  This fear of death looms over the scene.  Little noise is heard aside from light dialogue.  Although the set is simple, the visuals are a complex blend of real and imagined anxiety.  The camera, to great effect, is tremendously shaky.  It helps to transport us inside these men’s minds.  The barren landscapes all appear to be minefields, ridden with a million ways to die, and no expectation of forewarning.  Visually, this is without a doubt one of the most immersive war films ever made.

After this first scene we get to meet the characters.  After being made to feel each and every nuance of perturbation from their perspective, you’d think that there would be something equally engaging going on under the hood.  Unfortunately, with lines of dialogue like, “Every time we go out it’s life or death; we roll the dice,” the characters we are made to care so much about quickly devolve into shallow stereotypes.

In between every action scene is one of lockdown dialogue.  Character development is delivered this way in a form best expressed as loutish exposition.  Each of the half a dozen characters has a single dimension developed.  Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) is a seasoned bomb diffuser with his own reckless, yet no nonsense approach to his work.  Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) is a sniveling coward who, after years in active combat, still winces at the thought of actual confrontation.  Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) is a by-the-book ruffian who is frustrated by his new CO.  As the movie progressed, these soldiers made startling, yet entirely predictable changes for no particular reason.  The dramatic turning points play out like they were written for the original outline, unrelated to any other moments in the film.  Such are entire subplots within the movie.  James makes the occasional reference to his own mixed feelings on fatherhood.  He then has three encounters with a young boy, which are meant to affect his feelings on his own son.  This is the point where a change is supposed to be observable and a commentary on said change is supposed to be made.  Any attempts at having the characters develop over the course of the film were inconsequentially trite.

As I watched The Hurt Locker, certain patterns began to make themselves painfully obvious.  When two men are gathered together, they talk; when more then two men gather together, they are either fighting, about to fight, or about to blow up.  It’s a pity that each incredible action scene was so easy to anticipate.

At some point even the incredible action turns into clichés, as well.  In order to keep the tension climbing in an already adrenaline filled movie, extra elements needed to be added to later action scenes to make them even more intense than their preceding bomb diffusions.  It becomes harder and harder to connect with the characters as their dealings become more and more overblown.  Case in point: at some point Will James gets sucked into a revenge side plot.  He pulls a sweatshirt on, and then proceeds to chase down run after his invisible enemies in the night.  This action simply feels like it’s meant for a different movie entirely (perhaps one starring Daniel Craig).  Later on there’s a moment where James’ squad approaches a fresh detonation.  As chaos reigns around them, James tells his squad that through pure intuition, he knows that those parties responsible are still in the vicinity.  Like a bad episode of Law & Order, James leads his men through grainy, poorly lit darkness, only to emerge at a fork in the road with three alleyways, a perfect number for three men to explore to ideal dramatic effect.  These moments where James does something reckless and it turns out to be prophetic seem to ruin the entire point of the movie.  One of it’s major theses, “war is a drug,” seems at odds when every time the supposed “junkie” tries to get his adrenaline fix, he ends up having some type of lucky success.  Now multiply that times the hundreds of bombs our protagonist has allegedly diffused.  Every time, William James, the reckless prophet comes out on top.  That’s realism, folks.

Amid these terribly flawed scenes there is one that breaks from the format, and stands out as one of the most brilliant combat moments ever filmed.  Ralph Fiennes shows up as a British contractor for a single scene in which one of the perfect paradoxes of war is on display.  Although vigilant to the point of paranoia, James’ team is completely caught off guard by an enemy sniper.  The scene plays out with the same suspense that is present in the opening scene, and is truly incredible to experience.

In the end, The Hurt Locker falls into the same trap as movies like Requiem For A Dream.  Incredible technique alone might allow an audience to see through a character’s eyes, but if there’s little or nothing behind said eyes, then there’s not really a lot to connect to, is there?

-Paul Brinnel

For those who loved Sacha Baron Cohen’s last film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, then I’m afraid you’re in for disappointment.  As with the aforementioned movie, Cohen uses Brüno as an opportunity to set up outrages situations with a brazen character.  Unfortunately, whereas Borat might have been fun to watch because of a simulated culture shock, Brüno’s “quirkiness” is completely inexcusable.  The few moments truly worth laughing at have nothing to do with the intricacies of the character as much as his pure moronity.  There’s a particular moment where he confuses the terrorist group “Hamas” with the chickpea based spread, “hummus.”  Couldn’t any character with a low IQ have made the same hilarious faux pas?  The only real purpose Brüno’s offensively exaggerated flamboyancy has is to fit in as many close-ups of penises waggling around as time would permit.

The movie opens up with a short ecstasy induced monologue where we first learn to hate Brüno.  He then treats us to a scene of him performing various sex acts with a pygmy named Diesel (convincingly played by Clifford Bañagale), which seems to be right out of an Austin Powers movie.  Shortly thereafter he is shunned by the Austrian fashion world he alleges to have belonged to, and is then shuttled off to the U.S. to shout unmarketable catchphrases at B-list celebrities.

The basic format of each vignette in the movie goes as follows: first Brüno says or does something inappropriate.  Then the affected party either yells at Brüno, ignores him, or runs away while also opting for one of the former two options.  Keep the camera pointlessly running for a few minutes after the punch line, then multiply this times a dozen and you have in essence, Brüno.   Even with this repetition withstanding, at an 88 minute running time, it is painfully obvious that the producers were scraping the bottom of the barrel to get enough viewable footage to consider this a “feature film.”  This film would have been more suited had it instead been released as a 45-minute HBO comedy special.

Littered throughout the mess are scenes between Brüno and his assistant that are meant to connect the dots, giving us a reason for the characters to move onto the next scene.  These moments feel like they were stripped right out of a Fiedberg and Seltzer movie (i.e. Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie).  Need I say more?

After Brüno has played the pilot of his new talk show to a focus group, we are left with the comments made by some members of the test audience.  After watching Brüno interview clueless celebrities and wag his genitals at the camera, one man responds, “No logical person would ever consider a show like that unless they had some sort of moral defect.”  Let’s just say that I left with the same sentiment.

-Paul Brinnel

Science fiction as a genre has pretty much been dead for the past eight years.  Duncan Jones has attempted to revive the genre with his directorial debut, Moon.  Unfortunately, this attempted reinvigoration quickly devolves into nothing more than a regurgitation of nearly every sci-fi movie since 1968.

The movie starts with Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) alone, finishing up the last two weeks of a three-year stint with a lunar mining company.  His only companion is a computer, Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey).  Sam of course has the occasional hallucination, but such is moon-cabin fever.  After an atypical event interrupts his established routine, Sam ends up finding himself trapped inside his humble abode with a sickly doppelganger.

At this point in the story you’d really expect some twists.  Unfortunately, none ever come.  The conspiracy is figured out halfway through the film, and the rest is spent boringly pacing around the outpost trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the movie.  Interestingly, the biggest twist is when we find out that a single element isn’t ripped off from another movie.  (SPOILER: Gerty isn’t just HAL’s younger brother, he’s a boring, motiveless computer.)

I can only assume Duncan Jones’ original outline to his producer read something like: “Start with 2001, add a half cup Silent Running, a pint Wall•E, and a pinch of Alien.  Whisk until The Sixth Day starts to take form then just keep pouring in Solaris until you hit the 90 minute mark.  (And if you’re feeling particularly festive, you can even garnish it with a single leaf of Midnight Cowboy.)”

Sam Rockwell tries really hard to build two individually interesting characters that have an inherently conflicted dynamic.  Unfortunately, the movie just doesn’t give him an opportunity to build their relationship in anything more than staggered uninteresting dialogue.  There’s an elephant in the room as soon as the two characters meet, and it’s addressed with complete casualness.  If someone meets an identical version of himself, chances are, they aren’t going to treat them like the new kid on the playground.

In the end, Jones tries to tie everything together with a profound statement, an apparent conclusion we should all draw from this movie: (Sam to Gerty) “We’re not programmed.  We’re people.”  This attempt at dramatic social commentary falls flat.  This whole movie falls flat.  Moon is nothing more than a tepid retread through familiar yet emotionally devoid waters.

-Paul Brinnel

This movie opens up with Burt Farlander (John Krasinski) and Verona De Tessant (Maya Rudolph) in the act of coital foreplay.  With his discerning sense of smell, Burt realizes that his longtime girlfriend is pregnant.  Cut to the title card displaying the movie’s title.  Thus it has begun.

This quick opening sets the tone for a beautifully paced, skillfully developed character study artfully crafted by the great Sam Mendes.  Mendes’ last film, Revolutionary Road addressed a couple similarly surprised by a pregnancy, albeit strictly within a dramatic drama.  Within the aforementioned film, not even in the poignant moments were there ever any sense of joy, as much as the terrible anxiety of waiting for the next tragedy to strike.  Away We Go however, has a spectacular lightness in tone that is wholly uncharacteristic of the typically bleak Mendes.

The basic story is a series of vignettes where Burt and Verona travel around the country having encounters with a colorful cast of characters.  Each encounter with a new couple introduces a new perspective on becoming parents.  Each encounter is incredibly distinct with each new family introduced serving both as comic material and tragedies of misdirection.

Away We Go isn’t simply a comedy.  It isn’t simply a drama.  It is meant to depict life; it insightfully represents all of its ups and downs.  Through their humor, we see each characters’ true pathos revealed.  When Burt jokes with Verona, there’s always a wonderfully apparent motive, which is most of the time an attempt at cheering her up.  Conversely, when Lily (Allison Janney) jokes about her kids’ physical shortcomings we can tell that its her way of justifying the oration of her own shallowness.  With some of the more zany characters, such as LN (pronounced “Ellen”) (Maggie Gyllenhaal), all of their funny lines are meant to be reflections of their own misguidance, which sometimes can be just as funny as it is sad.  In an almost Freudian way (i.e.Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious) this movie reminds us that any need for humor is mostly used to compensate for feelings of sadness, anxiousness, awkwardness, or other feelings of discomfort.

As a whole, this movie is quite incredible, but this is certainly due to the tremendous strength lying within each of its parts.  I laughed harder than I have from any film this year, but I simultaneously felt extremely touched by the simple problems of the people on screen.  A level of poignancy is reached that can only be found in films that show life within the reality that there are both good and bad things going on, more than likely simultaneously.  The language in this movie is quite foul at times, but it never once feels offensive.  It is all used within such loving context, as a simple means of venting about other bigger problems within a given character’s life.  Together Krasinski and Rudolph create a magnificent chemistry on screen that manages to radiate warmth and the utmost Eros, even in the absence of all eroticism.  So much love is felt with only dialogue as a means of conveyance.  This script fit the actors with such fluidity that the entire movie feels like a series of completely spontaneous dialogues.

Most criticism for Away We Go has been at an alleged superiority complex within Burt and Verona.  These claims are truly baseless.  Both characters express doubts of their own lives, and don’t ever hint at any self-appointed eminence.  Burt’s charm and wit come from his pure benevolent compassion for Verona, and his inherent courtesy for all those around him.  He’s a smart, nice, likable guy.  Verona is possibly smarter than Burt, but not nearly as self-assured at times.  They have a great understanding between the two of them that isn’t seen in any other on-screen couple during the film.  Does this make them better than everyone?  If the issue is really that they are just a little bit better adjusted, or just a little bit luckier, or even just a lit bit more in love, than what’s there to be mad about?

My recommendation is that everyone should try to see this movie.  It’s an absolute joy to watch, as it manages to stay funny whilst building poignancy throughout.  I sincerely hope that Away We Go secures one of the ten Best Picture nominations this year.  Thankfully for the Academy, Juno has already proved to us that indie comedies with dramatic elements are still in contention.

As a final note: Dear Sam Mendes- Stay Upbeat.  It suits you.

-Paul Brinnel

What’s the only thing worse than a comedy that doesn’t make you laugh?  The answer might be a comedy that’s so fixated on setting up the next joke that it forgets to establish any normal semblance of “story” or “character development.”  This movie is not just unfunny; it is downright boring.  I felt myself squirming with boredom far more than I’d be had I saved the trip to the theater, instead opting to sit on my back porch watching plants sway in the wind.  I’m sure some might be quick to peg me as someone who simply doesn’t “understand” the ever evolving genre of comedy.  The one so jam-packed with irreverent pop culture references that it only takes a break from those to flash you one of the main character’s asses.  Are these actually movies?

The film starts with four friends on their way to Vegas for a bachelor party.  Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), Alan (Zach Galifianakis), and Doug (Justin Bartha) each have a rather one-dimensional problem in their respective lives: Phil is a dismissive and money-laundering school teacher who comically hates his wife and kids.  Stu is a dentist who has been dating a one-dimensionally evil woman, and is planning on marrying her when he gets back from the trip.  Alan is hilariously a registered sex offender.  And then there’s Doug: the character not on-screen long enough to have any established problems with his life.  It’s ironic that the least developed character is the one we’re expected to care so much about after he mysteriously goes missing.  The rest of the movie is a painfully witless odyssey while these three friends trace their steps (á la Dude, Where’s My Car?) to try to recover Doug in time for the wedding.  (For awhile, they even hypothesize he might be dead!  Boy howdy, wouldn’t that have been a riot?)

In good comedies, entertaining vignettes can exist, but characters must connect them if only with subtle expressions of growth or lack thereof (i.e. Fellini).  Instead of accepting this fundamental approach to storytelling, this movie sets up scene after scene as if it were a crappy MadTV sketch, where the only constraint in writing was the number of characters with which to alternate giving marketable catchphrases.  Take the story and the characters and put them in situations where their reactions fuel the humor (i.e. The Big Lebowski, Superbad).  Alternatively, lazy or ignorant comedy writers can instead take stock characters and put them in stock situations and throw in completely sophomoric clichés.  Don’t expect any more than the latter from this movie.

Continuing to spiral out of control, The Hangover runs around in circles until the writers simply run out of “ideas.”  At which point, the characters make a convenient realization, and all in the world is right again.  Sadly, after an hour and a half of alternating juvenile one-liners and men’s asses, the last thing I wanted to see was a feeble attempt to have all the characters learn a lesson.  What I thought was just a setup turned out to be an attempted frame story.  This movie never tries to be anything, yet still fails wholeheartedly.

My thoughts walking out of this movie turned to some simple math: The Hangover has already made over $150 million.  If we assume people are paying roughly $10 a ticket, then that works out to 15 million tickets sold.  At a running time of 100 minutes, mankind in general has lost 25 million hours on this movie.  That’s almost 3 millenia of time people have already spent watching The Hangover.  I pose to you the question: was it really worth it?

-Paul Brinnel