Embrace the Mediocre

Monday Review: Cyrus

July 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Susan:
Let me start by addressing my good friend Geoff:  Man, I am so glad we decided to see this instead of The Last Airbender.  Not that The Last Airbender didn’t look awesome, but man, The Last Airbender really didn’t look awesome.  Cyrus on the other hand?  It’s like if Judd Apatow bought a hand-held DV camera and made a movie on a rainy day when he’d had too much red wine.

The movie is basically a love story about John (John C. Reilly) and Molly (Marisa Tomei).  They meet at a party, they fall in love, they have crazy hot sex, he makes her dinner.  It’s all super adorable.  But then (DUHN DUHN DUHN) John shows up at her house one day and finds out she lives with her 21-year-old son Cyrus (Jonah Hill).  And not only does the son live there, but he and his mother have a strangely close relationship.  Like, wrestling and hanging out in the bathroom together and leaving bedroom doors open and stuff.  Cyrus tries to sabotage John, John retaliates, Molly gets caught in the cross-fire, and hilarity/heart-felt conversations ensue.  Seriously, it’s Emo-Apatow.  Apatemo if you will.

Even though I joke, I really really really liked this movie.  I loved how John wasn’t just another doofy schlub who gets to bang the hot chick but actually seemed aware of his luck and invested in the relationship.  I loved that the movie was both really funny and really genuine.  I loved that at the end of the film lessons are sort of learned but not in a saccharine way.  Though it did get slow in the middle and though Jonah Hill probably shouldn’t be expected to carry dramatic weight, the movie on the whole is totally solid and well worth a watch.

Geoff:
Man, do I ever love John C. Reilly. I will watch him in anything, and he’s one of the few who has incredible comedic timing and tone while also being able to convey a genuineness even in the most bizarre of situations. Tomei does a great job, too, but she’s the straight character, so it’s a little harder for her to stand out here, I feel.

The film is written by the Duplass brothers, who — depending on how much of an indie-film freak you are — you might recognize as the gentlemen behind The Puffy Chair and Baghead. They’re famous for shooting on a shoestring budget with more of an outline of a script and letting their actors pretty much improvise the entire thing, and this is the first time they’ve been given the opportunity to work with some bigger names. Looks like mumblecore’s going mainstream.

The loose structure works beautifully for the most part, and especially for the comedy. I was laughing but good for large swaths of the movie (Jonah Hill holding the butcher knife comes to mind, and then there’s Reilly pretending he had panic attacks as a kid), and Reilly and Tomei, even in improvisation, are able to pretty convincingly pull off the awkwardness of people falling into something quickly.

The only time things kinda fell apart for me was near the end, when, as you’ve already pointed out, Susan, Jonah Hill’s attempt at something sincere and heartfelt falls a little short as Cyrus pleads for John to come back to make his mother happy again. Improvised drama is tough, and I just don’t know that Hill’s completely up to the task. I should give the guy a break though. He’s up against Reilly, who really is just a powerhouse, and by the time John was pulling up in his car and exchanging looks with Molly as she stood on her porch for the final scene, I was already saying “aw” again.

As much as it might have been fun to rag on Airbender, I think we made the right choice.

The praise continues after the cut…

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Tuesday Review: Knight and Day

June 29, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Geoff:
So, this week’s selection was Knight and Day, the beginning of the maybe comeback for Tom Cruise, who’s spent the last few years trying to get past all the TomKat jokes and Scientology. It should be noted that for tonight, the film’s premiere in Chicagoland, the theatre was pretty much only half-full. That’s how much faith the world has in Tom Cruise these days. That, or (less likely to my mind) the preview so turned them off that they just didn’t feel like going.

I don’t know what you’d call this kind of narrative, but basically you’re following the side character instead of the person who seems like they should be the flashier main character. We’ll call it the “Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead” narrative for lack of time and creativity on my part. Cameron Diaz plays June, a pretty gal who likes to restore old muscle cars from the ’70s, and in a Kansas airport she accidentally bumps in Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), which run-in turns out to not have been an accident at all. You see, Roy’s actually a secret agent with the U.S. government, and he’s been betrayed by one of his fellow agents for a little battery that can run forever (the battery’s the McGuffin, so pay it no mind), and part of his escape from Kansas (where super batteries are apparently made) involves getting the battery through security using sweet, innocent June.

Once that happens, June finds herself on the business end of a lot of explosions and gun play as Roy attempts to save her after getting her involved in the whole mess in the first place. I haven’t said it yet, but this is a comedy, and Diaz and Cruise do play well off of each other with some funny dialogue. Lines such as “I shot the first pilot, and then he shot the second pilot. It’s just one of those things,” end up getting a lot of laughs, and the movie is actually pretty fun for about it’s first three fourths.

Unfortunately the end of the film turns completely cookie-cutter with lines that’ll make your eyes roll so much they’ll wind up in the back of your head, and Roy and June fall in love, and everything ends pretty fucking lame. Until then, I was having a good time.

Susan:
I don’t know, Geoff.  I thought the whole thing was pretty damn charming.  And don’t get me wrong, I expected to hate hate hate this thing.  I mean, HATE it.  I’m using the word “hate” here, about my expectations for this movie.

But Cameron Diaz remains charming and Tom Cruise, though seemingly unaware that he is supposed to act WITH anyone else, pulls off his end pretty well too.  This flick defines the Cute Summer Date Movie genre — romance for her, action for him, and Cameron Diaz gets to shoot a few guns at the end of the movie too.  The end of the flick isn’t NOT cheesy, but it wasn’t saccharine or stomach-turning.  You might have been rolling your eyes, Geoff, but that’s probably because your heart is made of stone.

In fact, the dialogue bothered me far less than June’s inability to stay out of goddamn trouble.  Not since Kate on LOST has a character so riled me with her stupidity and unwillingness to just listen to people when they tell you NOT TO FOLLOW THEM.  Lord knows I’m all for not letting some dude tell you what to do, but when said dude is a secret agent and you are a mechanic or whatever, just listen to him for Christ’s sake.  I know this is how they moved the movie’s plot along but seriously.  So obnoxious.  I will watch people fall in love in a sappy way til the cows come home (okay, that’s actually not true, but bear with me), but don’t make me watch some stupid girl get caught up in international espionage because she wouldn’t just hang out at a swank-ass hotel in Austria for an hour or two.

The conversation continues after the cut…

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Thursday Review: Splice

June 10, 2010 · 2 Comments

EDITORS NOTE:  THIS REVIEW IS FULL OF SPOILERS.  THIS MOVIE IS TOTALLY CRAZY AND WEIRD AND IF YOU ARE EXPECTING ANY OF IT, THE THING WILL BE RUINED.  IF YOU ARE GOING TO SEE THIS MOVIE, TURN BACK NOW.

Susan:
Oh my fuck, where to even BEGIN talking about this movie.

Basically, Splice is about a married couple (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) who are also edgy scientists doing genetic experiments on various sorts of animals.  They have successfully spliced together a bunch of animals to make some really good protein, but their funding gets cut before they can start splicing in human DNA.  But because they are edgy rock-n-roll scientists, they break the rules and make a human/amphibian embryo in secret. (Get it??  That’s why the movie is called Splice!)  Things go predictably awry and the first part of the movie is pretty boring and all about, like, science and the danger of playing God and also about this married couple trying to decide how to treat the thing they’ve made.  She wants to keep it and treats it like a pet.  (Lady scientists, always wanting to raise their experiments like babies, AM I RIGHT??)   He wants to destroy it or at the very least treat it like a scientific specimen at first, but then later when Sarah Polley starts being mean to it, he gets all soft and fatherly-ish about it.  Anyway, all of that is a real yawn-fest.  BUT THEN THE THING GROWS BOOBS AND ADRIEN BRODY TOTALLY DOES IT WITH THE THING AND YOUR BRAIN EXPLODES.  And then the rest of the movie has you squirming and uncomfortable in that totally good Orphan-esque kind of way.

Most sci-fi movies about creating new creatures and playing God and all of that raise questions about the humanity/morality of the scientists who do it.  And most of those movies end up killing off the creator of the monster, which has been a tradition since Frankenstein.  But man, I have never seen a movie about creating monsters in which the creator has SEX with the thing it made.  Splice was a whole new level of awkward-weird and I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

Geoff:
Man, there is just really nothing else to focus on, is there? I mean, you’re sitting there, and you can see the writers leading you down a path where the chimera/monster/freak/whatever is going to jump Adrian Brody, but you’re thinking, “Well, there’s no way Brody’ll go for it.” But then there’s the scene where he’s dancing with her/it, and then he’s reaching out to her unconsciously when she’s staring at him through the video monitor, and then she’s jumping him in the barn, and you think “AH AH AH!!!” It wasn’t fear, but something had me covering my eyes and watching through one break of my fingers. I think you could more accurately describe it as some combination of disbelief and revulsion.

Here’s what I’ll say. I actually wasn’t completely hating the first portion of the movie. I thought Brody and Polley made a decent couple, and I could see (at least to a point, but the sense of the whole thing started to break down real quick) why Brody stuck around even as Polley kept going too far and then going too far again and etc.

I thought her whole I’m-a-mom-and-this-is-my-baby shtick got a little annoying, but I was willing to go along with it. But the whole thing just goes nuts in the third act. When Polley turns and suddenly it’s Brody who’s okay with letting the creature live, and then suddenly he’s doin’ it with it, and then Polley’s getting raped by the thing’s son … well, I just had no words.

Does it seem incredibly morbid that I laughed for much of this movie? I laughed during their fundraiser unveiling (WORST. FUNDRAISER. EVER.), and I laughed HARD during the sex scene. And I wasn’t the only one. The couple behind me couldn’t stop either, and we were exchanging looks. I don’t know whether the film’s Italian director was trying to play the final third completely straight or with a smirk on his face. Regardless, you laugh for a while, but then (particularly when the rape scene happens, and then the PREGNANCY) you just feel like taking a shower and getting the movie off of yourself.

The discussion of monster/human doin’ it continues after the cut…

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Tuesday Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

May 4, 2010 · 1 Comment

Geoff:
Drag Me to Hell was fairly slapstick, and Orphan was scary but not much of a slasher, so Susan and I thought we’d finally take in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street and offer some thoughts on a true flick of the blood-and-guts genre. Anything for the blog, right?

If you’ve even caught a whiff of the major horror franchises in the U.S. anytime in the last twenty-five years or so (I don’t know the exact year the original Nightmare came out, but I believe it was sometime in the mid-’80s … maybe I should Gigablast the answer [you'll know what this means if you see the movie]), you’re probably already familiar with the basic premise of this Michael Bay-produced retread. Basically, a bunch of teens suddenly find their dreams haunted by a burned and disfigured man wearing a tattered fedora, a red-striped sweater and a truly nasty set of claws on his right hand. His name’s Freddy Krueger, and when he kills you in your nightmares, you die for real, and the group of high schoolers is picked off one by one even as they try to stay awake and figure out what’s happening and why Krueger is after them. They eventually discover he’s a pedophile who was burned alive posse-style by the kids’ parents when they were young (I think this slightly deviates from the original, where he was a child murderer … but the point either way is that he’s a supremely bad dude), and the finale of the movie involves a plan to go into the dream world and pull Freddy out so they can kill him in reality.

All of this could be very interesting, but the film instead chooses to go through the motions. There’s virtually no character development to speak of, outside the brief establishment that the lead female is a misfit painter and that the lead male likes her, and it becomes clear early on just how much the other teens are there simply as meat for the plot to grind. I’m aware that horror films are supposed to have stock characters that can be killed off easily, but here they’re barely fleshed out enough to even fit archtypes, and they all die so quickly, too. Out of the main cast of six teenagers, four are killed off seemingly before the film’s even half over, and then you spend the rest of the time waiting to see how the final two will survive rather than feeling any suspense about an increasing death toll. The climax is similarly disappointing, Freddy getting dispatched in less than a minute after entering the real world. I mean, c’mon, at least escape briefly into the shadows and make it a challenge.

No doubt thanks to Mr. Bay, the film certainly looks good, and it still induces a jump at one or two points, and there are a scant few moments where the filmmakers betray a sense of humor about the whole thing (Freddy’s claw going back under the bathwater when there’s a knock at the door). But on the whole the remake of Nightmare is without much of a heartbeat.

Susan:
GEOFF WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU THIS MOVIE WAS AWESOME.

I laughed!  I jumped!  I sat tensely in my seat!!  Cheesy maybe, and yeah, the kids do start dying off right quick, but so what?  Even if they didn’t fit specific archetypes, they all read as “teenager in a horror movie” which was enough for me.  Also, I am a sucker for any film with a brooding arty couple that band together.  She draws!  He wears a jaunty stocking cap!  They are victims of child molestation!  Oh tortured youth!!

Blame it on my lack of exposure to horror films as a child/young adult, but I found the movie charming in its kitsch.  I laughed at Freddy’s cheesy horror/action movie lines (“How’s this for a wet dream?” for example, as our girl Nancy drowns in a hallway full of blood) and most of the jumper scenes totally got me.  I’d not seen the original either, so I really enjoyed watching the psychological backstory develop.  (Although I’ll admit I wanted him to be wrongly accused and turned evil by the monstrous acts of the suburban parents, but I guess whatever, he’s a better slasher villain if he’s just a monster and then the audience doesn’t have to feel conflicted about being somewhat sympathetic to his plight.)  The sets were creepy, the dreams were dreamlike, and the cast did a good job of seeming really tired and really, really scared.  TWO THUMBS UP FROM THIS GIRL.

My one complaint about the film would be the casting of the new Freddy Kruger.  There is just no way to out-creepy Robert Englund.  I think they tried to make the burn makeup more gruesome, but without Englund’s crazy eyes, your new Freddy just isn’t going to hold a candle to the old one (no pun intended).  Also, I don’t know if they did the dubbed voice in the original, but I found it distracting and silly.  It sounded like the guy who does horror movie trailer voiceovers — not very scary.  So the Freddy character wasn’t as creepy as I might have liked, but other than that, this movie got me hook, line, and sinker.

We say a couple more things after the cut…

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Monday Review: Greenberg

April 26, 2010 · 2 Comments

Susan:
Generally speaking, writer/director/asshole apologist Noah Baumbach can make even the most emotionally stunted, mean-spirited, barely-functional man-child seem vaguely likable, or at least sympathetic.  That’s how most of his movies work, in fact.  However, in Greenberg, his latest opus, Baumbach chooses to lay the onus of making a total dick likable on Ben Stiller of all people.  I don’t know about you, but I have a hard enough time liking Ben Stiller when he’s playing someone I’m supposed to like (e.g. Michael in Reality Bites).  So at the end of this thing, I mostly just hated him.  Hated him, hated the character, and therefore, hated how it felt to watch this movie.

The story of the film follows Greenberg (Stiller) a 40-year-old former musician and carpenter who has moved back to L.A. briefly from New York after having a nervous breakdown (because he’s a completely self-absorbed, neurotic asshole who alienates everyone on purpose and doesn’t take any responsibility for himself and that’s what people like that do when  no one wants to listen to their bullshit anymore).  While staying at his brother’s house, he begins a brief and super awkward love affair with his brother’s personal assistant/nanny-type-thing Florence (Greta Gerwig), an infinitely relatable (if somewhat unbelievable) 25-year-old woman who doesn’t quite know what she wants to do with herself.  He also spends his time trying to reconnect with Ivan (Rhys Ifans), a former band-mate, and Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh), an old flame with whom he seems to hope to rekindle things.  He also works on building a doghouse.  Other than that, the plot of the movie seems to center on his being a total asshole to everyone in his life and never really apologizing for it or having any kind of negative consequences.  Oh and the dog gets sick, I guess.  That happens too.

I don’t even know where to begin talking about how just plain upsetting this film was.  For a while there, I even thought maybe that was the point.  Maybe, I thought, Baumbach is sick of making movies about assholes who are sympathetic and he decided to finally go all out and make a movie about an asshole who is that and that alone and to portray him with such honesty that people (especially women) would squirm in their seats whenever he opened his stupid asshole mouth.  But then the film started making gestures toward change and redemption and I realized, no, no, I’m supposed to start liking him now.  But I didn’t like him, and I never started liking him, and then the movie was over.  Whatever this awful, depressing film was supposed to do, it just didn’t work.

Geoff:
Boy, what I wouldn’t have given for a solid female character here. Greta Gerwig does what she can with the script she was given, but man oh man does Baumbach put her in some awkward positions (literally) for seemingly no reason at all. What’s with Florence’s monologue in the middle about getting drunk and dancing topless with her girlfriend? It feels so completely unnatural. When and why did it seem like a good idea to add that scene? What purpose does it serve within the narrative? What purpose does it serve outside the narrative? As far as I can tell, it’s just to make her seem like a bit of a simpleton in the face of Greenberg’s know-it-all misanthropy.

I don’t know that I share your personal distaste for Ben Stiller. Put anyone in that role, and there’s just not a whole lot they’re going to be able to do with it to make the guy likable. There are interesting aspects of his character, specifically the sometimes not-so-subtle hints about his DSM-IV-grade OCD (the passenger-seat driving comments, the chapstick, the general agoraphobia, the general hypochondria) and his clear obsession with the past, but the mental maladies and regretful nostalgia do not make him likable or even all that sympathetic. I’ll admit I laughed a time or two because Stiller does know how to deliver a world-weary line, but a dick is still a dick. And, ultimately, there’s not much that redeems him or makes you want to cheer for him, especially when you know he’s never really going to change.

It’s funny you should mention Reality Bites because I felt the same way after that film that I did after this one. Namely, I was thinking, “those two are going to try to work things out again???” I’ll tell you what happens after the film cuts from Greenberg’s face to the credits. He’s going to watch Florence listen to his drunken, apologetic phone message, he’s going to decide he hates how she listens to her messages on the phone, and he’s going to go into another tirade. She’ll be hurt, he won’t be sorry, and they’ll both wait a couple days to perform the whole thing all over again.

I know I’ve watched and enjoyed movies with despicable central characters before, but what does it say about the film when you’re actively cheering against its main pairing?

Watch Geoff flip-flop after the cut…

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Tuesday Review: Hot Tub Time Machine

March 30, 2010 · 2 Comments

Editor’s Note: Hey guys.  It’s good to be back. Today is the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of Embrace the Mediocre. SERIOUSLY. I know we’ve been lax about our posts this last semester, but we’re going to celebrate a year’s worth of reviewing mediocre movies anyway. So do shots for us! Because Geoff and I will still be working on our MA projects.

Geoff:
Hot Tub Time Machine follows in the footsteps of Snakes on a Plane, the idea being a studio film so steeped in its own amusingly direct title that it’s guaranteed at least a little profit and some cheap laughs from people who think the studio’s being cleverly self-aware rather than being cleverly manipulative in getting you to notice and be amused by its self-awareness. What’s the difference to them as long as they get their money, right?

John Cusack plays a guy who’s meant to stand in as a generic John Cusack character. He doesn’t even need a name, and I certainly didn’t remember it until I looked it up on IMDB. It’s Adam. No last name. That’s the kind of character development we’re dealing with here. At the beginning of the movie, he’s just divorced his wife (or broken up with his girlfriend? It’s not even all that established), and his nephew (Clark Duke) is living in the basement and feeding off the light from his laptop as he builds his Second Life character. Adam used to have two best friends, a black one named Nick (Craig Robinson) who used to sing but is now employed at a workout center for pets and a wild one named Lou (Rob Corddry) who used to and still does get drunk and who’s unable to hold down a break pedal much less a job. Lou careens into his own garage one night, closes the garage door, and almost asphyxiates himself on car fumes while jamming out to a song. His old friends, thinking he’s made a suicide attempt, meet up with him at the hospital and opt to take him to their old haunt, which turns out to be a ski resort that used to be Partytown, USA but is now boarded-up and defunct. While at the resort, the four hop in the hot tub, get drunk, and the next morning they discover they’re in 1986. What’s more, the three older men appear young again, and they quickly realize they have to follow in their youthful footsteps lest they wind up changing the future by doing something different.

Of course, all of this is an excuse for a series of comedy set pieces, only a scant few of which are actually amusing. There’s a funny sideplot involving Crispin Glover’s arm (yes, he makes an appearance), and there’s a reference to the movie Red Dawn that inspires some laughter, but the majority of the humor involves Rob Corddry throwing up, getting punched in the face or making jokes about getting/giving head. The other plot that’s going on is John Cusack meeting up with a pretty writer (Lizzy Caplan) from Spin magazine after breaking up with his ’80s girlfriend (Lyndsy Fonseca) to maintain the sequence of historical events. For the most part the time travel here just feels like a convenient plot device the studio’s using to continue pairing 40-something John Cusack with 20-something women.

Is the whole “don’t change anything in the past” plot forgotten almost as soon as it’s introduced? Yes. Does John Cusack end up with the lady from Spin? Duh. Is there any dramatic tension (or even just adequate non sequitor humor) to make the film compelling or to get us to care whether Cusack et al. make it back to the present? No. No there’s not. I wish I could say better things about this movie, but the better things just aren’t there.

Susan:
Oh Geoff.  You’re not WRONG.  I mean, you’re not EXACTLY RIGHT either, but you’re not WRONG.  I wish you were.  But you’re not.

I wouldn’t say I went into this movie with high expectations.  It looked like one of those hey-The-Hangover-did-well-let’s-do-a-similar-thing movies, so I expected basically what I got.  A generic, somewhat forgettable, not particularly quotable Dude Movie with some 80s nostalgia and some ham-handed life lessons about living for the moment and how to be a Good Friend to your Bros and Doing The Right Thing and all that.  Sort of dumb plot that doesn’t really work and doesn’t seem even cohesive really and a lot of gross jokes about puke and some generalized homophobia.  Oh and boobs.  Because if it’s a Dude Movie, you need the Dude Movie Trifecta–heavy drinking, boobs, and gross-out humor.  It’s Dude equivalent of the Chick Flick trifecta–shoes, chocolate, and long-lasting love with a man who used to be an noncommittal asshole.

But I digress.  In the interest of not having this review be a total downer, let me talk about some things that I thought made this movie kind of awesome or at least, like, neat or something.  First off, CRISPIN GLOVER??? Yes please.  He is my density.  I mean, my destiny.  Not only do I LOVE him, but it was also a nice nod to Back to the Future (although the joke potential in that could have been exploited far more fully).  Second, hey!  That girl from Freaks and Geeks who taught Nick to disco dance after Lindsay broke his heart!  Apparently, her name is Lizzy Caplan.  Who knew?  I guess IMDB did.  But it was pretty cool to see her still working.  Third, I did think there were a handful of funny moments in the movie that made it sort of worth seeing.  For example, when Nick calls his 9-year-old wife to scream at her for cheating on him.  That was an unexpected moment of humor in a fairly predictable movie, which was very much appreciated.

I would have liked there to be one likable/believable female character with depth in the movie.  That would have been okay with me.  All the types/tropes are there:  the mystical pixie, the whore, the bubblehead hottie, the girl with a nice rack who does it with the guy in the band in a bathtub.  And yet there isn’t a one woman in the film who isn’t just there for the men to act against.  Not that I should have expected that, but it’s always nice when they can find the space to include at least ONE cool chick.

The cynical response to a studio film continues after the cut…

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Grad School Hiatus

March 2, 2010 · 2 Comments

Those of you who are loyal fans of Geoff and my reviews of stupid movies may have noticed that we haven’t posted anything in, well, a really long time.  Both of us are finishing our master’s theses this semester (yeah, we are kind of a big deal) and have no time for, well, anything really.  Hence, no posts.  We hope to return with a vengeance just in time for the summer blockbuster season.  Stay tuned!

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Uncategorized

Sunday Review: Nine

January 11, 2010 · 2 Comments

Geoff:
The first time I heard about Nine as a musical version of Fellini’s 8½, I thought, “Man, they will take and add song-and-dance numbers to anything these days.” Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t say that I’ve been asked to think much differently

Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) directs Daniel Day-Lewis as Guido Contini, an Italian director beset by writer’s block as production for his latest feature film looms just days away. Day-Lewis plays Guido very well (would you expect any different?) as a cock-sure asshole driven by libido who’s reached a point in his life of almost pure self-centeredness and ego.  He seems no longer able to tell the moments when he’s being sincere from those when he’s simply lying in order to feel like he’s still a kind, decent, and honorable person. The plot follows him as he encounters the different women in his life, his wife (Marion Cotillard), his motherly costume designer (Judi Dench), his mistress (Penelope Cruz), his lead actress (Nicole Kidman), an admiring American critic (Kate Hudson), and as he remembers other women from his life, his real mother (Sophia Loren) and a beach-dwelling prostitute (Fergie). Each woman is given her own musical number (and Day-Lewis gets his own, too) as Guido struggles with his own emptiness and tries to shed the mental, emotional and sexual crutch that comes with constant admiration from others.

Some of the music is fun, and at times the dancing (or at least what there is of it, though Day-Lewis, Cotillard, and Kidman never really engage in any big synchronized numbers with other people) is, too. But so much of it feels unnecessary, in a way that goes beyond acknowledging the fact that every song in a musical is technically unnecessary. Kate Hudson’s song about Italian cinema during her seduction of Guido, for instance, is catchy but only serves to add an extra 5 minutes to what could have been a thirty-second battle against temptation. Because of such extraneous scenes, the movie just feels long after a while, and before it’s even close to over, it’s hard to care anymore.

I think part of the blame goes to the folks who thought this story should be turned into a musical in the first place.  Granted, I don’t know how much of this is accurate, but here’s the Wikipedia description of the film’s debts:  “The screenplay, by Michael Tolkin and Anthony Minghella,[2] is based on Arthur Kopit’s book for the 1982 Tony Award-winning musical of the same name, which was derived from an Italian play by Mario Fratti inspired by Federico Fellini’s autobiographical film 8½.”

So, a movie adaptation of a stage musical inspired by a play that itself was inspired by another film? It’s the creative equivalent of a game of telephone, and with it comes a gradual watering-down and blurring of the original film’s intended message and effect. I’d rather just rewatch 8½ instead.

Susan:
I was also not a fan of the film, for the reasons you mentioned and also because I felt like it offered basically nothing to a female viewer other than close-ups of a brooding Daniel Day-Lewis.  I don’t know about you, female readers, but stories about singular male genius and its weight and how singular male geniuses become assholes but it’s sort of okay because they are, you know, singular male geniuses are kind of played out for me.  I liked it better the first time when it was any conversation about Ernest Hemingway.  Or like, the Marquis de Sade or something.  Regardless, what I’m saying here is that while Daniel Day-Lewis can make almost anyone sympathetic because he is so awesome and good looking and what not, I felt like the women in the film were projecting an idea of femininity or womanhood not based on the actual experience of women or of being a woman.  It seemed like what men who love musical theater might want women to be like or might think “strong” women are like.  Basically, what I’m trying to say is that when the end credits rolled and the writers were men, I thought to myself, Oh, of course they are.

We’ve all fallen in love with someone because they were really really awesome at something, only to find out later that that probably wasn’t the best idea we ever had.  I’m not saying it’s completely implausible that otherwise awesome women might get stupid over some loser filmmaker.  HOWEVER, his mistress tries to kill herself over him??  Seriously??  And then his amazing famous actress muse reveals that she is ALSO in love with him??  And despite having worked on all of his films before, his wife (who used to be his lead actress) doesn’t realize that he feeds the same line of shit to all the young ingenues until the screen tests for his NINTH film??  The only woman in the film I believed was Kate Hudson (though that musical number was maybe the worst thing I’ve ever seen ever and made me squirm like I was watching the seduction scene in Orphan) because at my core, I totally believe that Kate Hudson, were she a Vogue fashion reporter in the 1960s, would have thrown herself in a not-even-kind-of-coy way at whatever famous brooding dude they put in front of her.  And I used to like Kate Hudson so much.

My point is, blech.  This movie was at best boring and at worst kind of offensive.  Judi Dench and Daniel Day-Lewis both turn in stellar acting performaces, and Fergie brought some serious AWESOME during her “Be Italian” musical number, but none of that was enough to salvage what seemed, in the end, to be some sort of male meditation on what the great women who remain behind a great man look like, complete with mediocre musical numbers and an extensive display of Mommy Issues.

The general malaise continues after the cut…

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Wednesday Review: Sherlock Holmes

December 30, 2009 · 2 Comments

Susan:
Ostensibly, I should have loved Sherlock Holmes.  Shirtless Robert Downey, Jr.?  Check.  Hyper-masculine, aesthetically-pleasing violence and action? Check.  Homoerotic tension?  Um, CHECK.  Indeed, this movie is chock full of that Hollywood brand of AWESOME I love so well.  Yet something about it just didn’t sit right with me.

The aforementioned Robert Downey, Jr. stars as a haggard, troubled, possibly queer version of the classic literary character Sherlock Holmes.  Jude Law plays Dr. John Watson (of “It’s elementary, my dear Watson” fame), Holmes’ partner in crime-solving and possible object of his affection.  Rachel McAdams rounds out the lead threesome as Irene Adler, the only woman to ever outsmart Holmes and therefore the only woman to ever capture his heart.  The movie opens with Holmes and Watson fighting their way to Lord Blackstone (played by Mark Strong, who looks more like Andy Garcia than Andy Garcia does) and arresting him for performing black magic.  Blackstone is hanged, but comes back from the dead (OR DOES HE??) to lead the local chapter of the Evil Secret Fraternal Organization That Is Kind of Like The Masons.  There is far too much double-, triple-, and quadruple-crossing that goes on in the rest of the film to try to summarize the plot here.  Suffice it to say that Holmes gets into a number of sticky situations, Watson and Adler come to his rescue, he comes to theirs, Blackstone tries to kill members of Parliament using some sort of wacky 19th century device, Holmes hangs him off an unfinished London Bridge, and the movie ends with Holmes reopening the case to chase down another villain dude, setting Guy Ritchie up to direct Sherlock Holmes II: Maybe Holmes and Watson Will Do It In This One.

The movie is glossy, the action is well-shot and fun to watch, and the actors all do a great job with their respective characters.  But the problem with Sherlock Holmes is that it tries to be too many movies all at once and becomes muddled in the process.  There were moments that felt like a crime-caper movie (Snatch, for example), and others that reeked of From Hell or The Da Vinci Code or some other movie about the boundless power of secret fraternal organizations.  Holmes breaks into houses and destroys property and the what not, but we find out at the end of the film that he wants to arrest Blackstone rather than kill him because of some kind of reverence for the law or something.  Sometimes he seems like he’s in love with Watson, sometimes he seems like he’s in love with Adler, but mostly the plot just appears to exist to facilitate more slo-mo fight scenes and awesome exterior shots of a CGI 19th century London.  Not that I necessarily have a problem with that, but I guess I just expected or hoped for more.

Geoff:
I must say, I’m a little surprised, Susan, not because I disagree with you but because (as you already mentioned) all the ostensible requisites I’ve taken to be your bread and butter were there. I guess the glistening chest of Mr. Downey Jr. only carries so much weight.

From your reaction, I don’t know if we’re on exactly the same plane, but I think we’re close. If it’s possible to enjoy oneself without ever really being completely blown away, then this is that.  The movie’s worth a viewing.  The acting’s fun (Downey Jr. in particular).  But never once do I remember snapping smartly to attention at something I didn’t expect or something I felt I needed to pay particular attention/interest/respect to.  The double-, triple-, and quadruple-crosses come at such a rate that you’re just waiting for the next one after a while, and objects are constantly introduced in such a way that it’s impossible you won’t remember their significance for later (Holmes might as well have said things like, “Look, Watson, a bridge! Please take note of that bridge!”).

Guy Ritchie’s all about the flash and the fun, which is great, but he gets into trouble when characters have to talk beyond quips and/or interact without their fists. During the subplots (such as Watson’s marriage), you get the sense that Ritchie might have been just as uninterested in filming them as we then are while watching them.

Not that I hated the thing. It’s an okay film to spend an afternoon with. It’s just that it feels more like another ride at the fair instead of being the new roller coaster you want to get in line for over and over again.

The general agreement continues after the cut…

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Sunday Review: Brothers

December 28, 2009 · 1 Comment

Geoff:
EDITOR’S NOTE: Embrace the Mediocre is back from a semester-long hiatus fraught with projects and papers so lengthy and numerous that finding a tall ledge from which to jump seemed at least at one point to be the best option to get out of the whole mess. It is the advice of both of us here at Embrace the Mediocre that you NEVER GO TO GRAD SCHOOL. EVER. That said, we’re back! So please, stick with us as we try to catch up over the holidays.

Blame it on the fact that I haven’t been to a movie in a while if you want to, but I enjoyed Brothers. It held me.

The setup’s fairly simple. Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is a Marine who heads to Afghanistan and leaves behind his wife, Grace (Natalie Portman), and their two daughters. Jake Gyllenhaal is Tommy, Sam’s brother recently released from prison after an armed robbery. Sam is presumed dead after being taken prisoner overseas, and while he’s away, Grace and Tommy get close as Tommy cares for Sam’s daughters. Sam, meanwhile, is forced to kill one of his own men while being held prisoner, and he’s a very broken, hollowed-out man by the time he returns home. Maguire’s performance, especially toward the end, is especially worth watching, if only because you so rarely get to see the guy play rage, and here he does it well.

I’ve heard a number of arguments from people who didn’t care for the movie, and I guess I can understand them. Yeah, you could say the characters seem a little empty at times (I’m aware that questions arise about the details and motives behind Tommy’s armed robbery when Jake Gyllenhaal appears so awfully kind and fatherly for an ex-con).  And yes, the film is clearly a very glossy, Hollywood-ized version of the Danish movie it was based on. The lighting, the score, the actors, etc.–they’re all very high quality and therefore obviously well paid for.

But damn it, I watched and I felt like I knew these characters. I recognized Grace and Tommy’s house, their living room with the beige carpeting and the wood paneling and the stone fire place. I recognized their neighborhood, the kind where it feels like cold, expansive, empty fields might lie hidden nearby. I especially recognized that picture on the bedside table of Grace and Tommy at age 17 at a party, just a couple of kids not yet burdened by anything. They’re the people from high school who dated, graduated, got married, stayed in the same area, took on responsibilities as they came, and were completely happy doing so. And because I recognized the characters, the story (however simple) grabbed me.

Susan:
Hey Geoff!  Long time, no argument.

I didn’t have the same character-recognition you did.  I’m not saying I hated the flick, but despite my own midwestern upbringing, I didn’t see these characters as relatable types.  Sure, I know military wives, but they usually don’t look or act like Natalie Portman.  Also, deadbeat dudes who’ve spent time in prison usually end up looking/acting a little rougher than Jake Gyllenhaal (as you mentioned).  I didn’t buy that he could come back from whatever it was that he had done and whatever family trauma he and Sam had in their past without his own sort of demons/PTSD thing.  The child actors also seemed very mature and not very childlike.  I think that while you and I can recognize these characters, perhaps the people playing them could not.  It’s hard to be a realistic midwestern military wife when you were a child actor who then went to an Ivy League school and can’t actually understand what it’s like to never leave the small town in which you grew up.

But like I said, I didn’t hate the thing.  I found it compelling enough to hold my attention for the two hours or whatever it was.  I especially liked the portion of the movie before Maguire’s return– the family dynamics, the way the characters dealt with the loss, Maguire’s portrayal of a POW actively working to forget the life he had.  After the “snap,” I had more and more trouble buying Maguire’s performance, even though I love him and wanted him to be totally awesome.  I just felt like his obsession with his wife’s fidelity wasn’t ever fleshed out enough.  His PTSD seemed like a New York Times article on the burden of war on returning soldiers and the inability of the military to deal with their emotional or psychological scarring.  But despite the thinness of plot and characters, it wasn’t a bad thing to spend two hours watching.  I haven’t seen a movie in the theater in AGES either, so maybe my standards are lower.  But yeah, basically not a bad movie for a glossy Hollywood thing.

Seriously though, why do all the movies they keep making about the current conflict have such thin plots and such fleshless characters??  Just because it’s a movie about war does not mean it’s going to instantly have gravitas.  It’d be nice if I felt like any of these actors had any conception of the lifestyle they are trying to portray, but it always just feels like a liberal caricature of a very real set of circumstances that aren’t being done justice.

The discussion of the merits of contemporary war movies continues after the cut…

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