Lawless

We open with a voiceover narration which usually makes me tune out right away, and I almost did here except it costs $11 and I was eager to see my newest man crush Tom Hardy kick someone in the balls and John Hillcoat's other Neo-Western feature, The Proposition, was excellent. So I stuck with it, even though I subscribe to the "Show Don't Tell" club, which is different than the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" or the "Ask and and Ye Shall" clubs, this one has nothing to do with fear mongering. Voiceover is usually a narrative cop out and this one was especially shitty due to the fact it was performed by Shia LaBeouf - sounding like Lenny from Of Mice and Men mixed with Matthew McConaughey.
But I got past it.
The film is just not gritty enough. Possibly pressure from the studio to make it more accessible? 
I go back to The Proposition, also, as with Lawless, penned by Bad Seed Nick Cave. In particular the scene where Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) meets bounty hunter, Jellon Lamb (the incomparable John Hurt). You can feel the stench of the bar; feel the flies buzzing around you. The scene makes you want to take a shower after it's done. And not one of those quick, "oh shit I'm late for work" rinses, a real Bruce Willis reentering the future in 12 Monkeys scrubbing.
There are no scenes like this in Lawless.
Even Hillcoat's other recent feature, The Road, has a feeling to it. Though along with grit it has desolation, emptiness. A similar scene to the one in The Proposition has Robert Duvall, nearly unrecognizable as the Old Man, uncomfortably sharing a night fireside with the father and son; everyone sleeping with one eye opened of course.
Compared to these two films and other Neo-Westerns like Deadman, The Assassination of Jesse James, or even Last Man Standing, Lawless is a Disney movie.
The film isn't helped with the miscasting of the Jack character or the fact that Jason Clarke, the actor who plays middle brother Howard, looks like Matthew Perry/Howdy Doody, not a wild, uncontrollably violent drunk.
Seriously, some actor's faces aren't made for makeup.
I will say most of the other casting choices are rock solid, this is what saves the film. The aforementioned Tom Hardy is believable as Forrest. Jessica Chastain plays reformed dancer Maggie with pride and dignity. And Noah Taylor is perfectly slimy as Gummy Walsh, Floyd Banner's (Gary Oldman) right-hand man. The list goes on.
Lawless is a western. It has most of the criteria and conventions we associate with the genre including:
Theme: Civilization vs Wilderness
This is abundantly clear on the surface. The Bondurant boys live out in the mountains of Franklin County, VA (the Wilderness) where everything seems to be going fine with their bootlegging operation until a Special Deputy from Chicago (Civilization) arrives with a mind to cut in in the boys' business. So the dichotomy is there. There sometimes too is a dirty villain-type who runs the town and goes head to head with the hero. Here there seems to be an overall lawlessness of the entire county, they run themselves and are happy doing it. Guy Pearce's Charlie Rakes tries to become that person, but is cut down in his prime as it were. There is also Mason Wardell (Tim Tomlin) the District Attorney who seems to be running things from behind a curtain.
But in this film the traditional conquest of the wilderness by the civilized is thwarted and it's the wilderness, the Bondurant boys, who win out in the end.
Character Types
The Hero is often an anti-hero, a retired gunslinger who rides into to town and, eventually, saves the day.  In the case of Lawless, it's the three brothers with a combination of character traits. Forrest, Howard and Jack, though not retired gunslingers, they are anti-heroes who inhabit major qualities we associate with other Western heroes: quiet stoicism, intense desire for right, or even the wildcard factor.  
Maggie is the whore with heart of gold who wants to go straight.
Drunk brother, Howard, who can add some comic relief. Though the crippled from a batch of rickets and aptly named, Cricket (Dane Dehaan) fills this role as well.
Bad guy - Guy Pearce
The Other - Brothers are part Injun
Bertha (Mia Wasikowska) - the other girl, schoolmarm-type who is attracted to the bad guy.
Story Formulas - good vs evil, uh, yup.
But then again Jaws is a Western as well:
Theme - Civilization (Amity) vs Wilderness (the ocean)
Presentation - extreme long shots of the vast desolate ocean
Story Formulas - good vs evil
Character Types - sheriff? check, rogue killer/bad guy? check, side kick? check, drunk dude? check
The ending of Lawless is slightly reminiscent of another of these "Neo" Westerns, in tone only. In Tombstone after all the violence and the kick ass montage of the Earp boys taking down the cowboys and Doc's showdown with Johnny Ringo (played by Michael Biehn, with way more spitting venom and evil than Pearce's Rakes), we get a coda of Wyatt (Kurt Russell) and what’s-her-face (Dana Delaney) coming out of the theater then dancing in the snow talking about room service or some other shit. This should have been the end of Overboard II or Insert Kurt Russell 80's film here. Instead it puts a superfluous cap on a film that was already hanging on by a thread were it not for Val Kilmer's humorous, dark turn as Doc Holiday.
By the way, I'm not counting the long credit sequence of the Earp boys and Doc, back from the dead, walking towards the camera like some over-the-hill boy band as the music swells.
Maybe I'm off here. Maybe larger populations go for a cutesy, tie-it-up-in-a-bow ending like this. Not me.
They should have made two endings, one for each of us. And wasn't Wyatt's gift to Doc on his deathbed cute enough? "My Friend Doc", aw. End the film right then, right there. With Doc looking at his bare feet, saying, "I'll be damned. This is funny"
In Lawless its Mr. The Beef's voice over again, summing up events that needed no summing. The film spends so much time building up the myth of oldest brother Forrest, though we do see moments of weakness especially when it comes to Maggie. Why do we need to see him dance in the snowy riverbank, then fall in? (Dancing? Snow?) We don't - though it does function to affect the audience into thinking, "how ironic for him to be killed now after all that" then when he climbs out of the frozen river, "Hooray!"
Another Western trait takes form in the Stars associated with the genre. In Tombstone it was Robert Mitchum's voiceover that really gave the film some ruggedness. In Jaws Robert Shaw adds some West experience. In Lawless its Shia LaBeouf's experience in  Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that gives the film it's "western-ness" because he wore a hat in a few scenes. Seriously, LaBeouf is a whiny bitch. (See my Michael Bay blog for more on him). Was it Even Stevens season 3 episode 7: "Raiders of the Lost Sausage" that prepared him for his role as Mutt Williams in Indiana Jones? Maybe I'm missing something. Why does he keep getting work? Here's a list of young actors that would have been a better choice to play Jack in Lawless:
Anyone.

If Michael Bay makes a film and nobody sees it, does it still make a sound?

While I have always gone against the notions of what a filmmaker and educator should put their top 10 (favorite film: RoboCop), I can't help but question certain things. I can usually see films for what they are, be it pure entertainment, gratuitous pulp, rock/rap star-become-actor vehicle, whatever.
But there is nothing good about what Michael Bay does, nothing.
Sometimes I get on rants about particular things...Joel Schumacher for instance. I have long stood on my soap box, screaming to anyone who would listen that Mr. Schumacher might just be the worst filmmaker ever. This is all based on the fact that he single-handedly tried to ruin the Batman franchise forever and thanks only to Christopher Nolan do we get redemption. In hindsight, after looking at his career as a whole, I may have been a bit rash. He has, in fact, made some of my favorite films from youth. But that all may be skewed (see my post: Nostalgia Takes the Place of the Real, 12/2/10). I did re-catch The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) a few weeks ago on TV, and besides being a nice attempt at social satire on consumerism and women's role in society, the film is hot garbage. But The Lost Boys, Flatliners, Falling Down...are all great for sure. And who can argue with Marsha Warfield's riveting portrayal of a poor and desperate cab driver trying to save her boss's business, along with the likes of Mr. T, Gary Busey, and Bill Maher,  in 1983's D.C. Cab? Seriously though, Schumacher's career has hit on many different emotional levels from a fun romp (D.C. Cab) to a moving biopic (Veronica Guerin) to an emotional study of a complicated relationship (Flawless). And even though he did attempt to destroy Batman with absurd casting and suits with nipples, it's not all bad.
 
Michael Bay is a jerk. He's like the star high school quarterback who everyone hates. Cocky, brazen, a real show off. I'd probably like him, he reminds me of...me. I'm all for violent battles full of explosions, so fast that if you are sitting too close to the screen you miss half of it. And who doesn't enjoy scantily-clad women who have little to no lines to speak? But to look at someone's career as a whole and not be able to discern any level of depth, passion, or narrative is a great concern, especially to someone who often preaches to his students the importance of a story with a beginning, middle and end, of character development, and taking pride in what you do.  Even Ed Wood, Hollywood's best known hack, had passion for what he did. He believed in his heart of hearts that he was making good cinema. And he tried, you could see it on screen, even through the continuity errors, the strings from the flying saucers, and terrible make-up effects. What he lacked in talent he made up for with unmatched verve.
So let's take a brief look at Mr. Bay's catalog:
I can find humor in some of the witty banter between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in the Bad Boys series but how much of that is Smith and Lawrence or the four, that's right four, folks it took to script it?
I hate Nicolas "Coppola" Cage too (not Hollywood's biggest example of nepotism, but possibly the worst results. And who isn't waiting, losing sleep over even, the reboot of Thelma & Louise starring Suri Cruise and Rumor Willis?). So it only seems too fitting that he and Bay meet up in the pressure packed The Rock (1996). To hear Cage utter "I love pressure. I eat it for breakfast," has to be a highlight of any $70 million blockbuster. Then there's Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), and The Island (2005). Judge for yourself.
And of course there's The Transformers series. Films that should have starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the nerdy, bumbling high-schooler turned action hero, Sam Witwicky, but instead we get Shia LaBeouf whose acting is reminiscent of Doug Kinney #4 in Multiplicity. Come on, can't you picture him turning to Optimus Prime, with that slack-jawed look, motioning towards Megan Fox, "She touched my pepe, Steve!" And speaking of Megan Fox, can it be true that this talentless "actress" has been the only one to call out Bay? Or is the fact that no actors with any actual talent will work with him a sort of silent protest that points directly to his reputation in Hollywood?
I'm not sure. But look for Bad Boys 3 and another Transformers sequel by 2014 and another, and another, and another...

click here

Recently reading an article about pedophile and all-around scum bag Jerry Sandusky, I came across something that gave me pause. Something almost as disgusting and egregious as the man himself. At the end of the short article about Sandusky's latest charge, boy's 9 and 10, the website had an ad reading:  
Take to the field, it's bowl time! Sign up for College Bowl Pick 'em.
(With a link to click on the "Pick 'em", of course.)

This is not an ad on the side bar where more ads tracking your web surfing seem to appear daily. Not at the header or footer either. This sat centered at the bottom of the article looking as if it were part of the correspondence, with no separation, no fancy pictures, borders, or font difference.

And below that, maybe more ironic than anything, were ads for lawyers and of course for Penn State gear.

This got me thinking, as much as I can think after a day of listening to stupid questions about things I already covered minutes before and the dramatic complaints of teenagers whose worlds are ending because of broken hearts and no tater tots at lunch. So I went back to Yahoo Sports homepage searching for another article where I might find similar subject matter. I didn't have to look far. The first article in the headline section read : Sex-abuse scandals - Too much time has passed for a DA to file charges vs. Bernie Fine. Perfect. I click over to the article highlighting Mr. Fine, the Syracuse Men's Basketball assistant coach accused of Sandusky-like acts. Deciding to skip the article, I know how this one turns out, I scroll to the bottom and there it is. Centered, italicized, and with a link to the Yahoo Sports NCAA Twitter account, another, yet different, ad: Follow Yahoo! Sports' college basketball coverage on Twitter. 

What this says about the editors of the website, I'm not sure. Are we to expect them to filter their ads based on the content of the articles to make them more appropriate? Can we really expect them to be in complete control of all their content, when the job really is to simply get the news out there?
The answer: Yes, we can.
We can be a bit more sensitive, or just less douchy, without sacrificing the truth.
We don't have to be like Diana Christensen, a real heartless bitch. Or build websites that are the digital personifications of Tom Grunick, opinion-less and vacant, yet pretty.
Just sometimes I wish we could get up, get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick our heads out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

Wild Wing Tuesdays at Buffalo Wild Wings, don't miss it!

Slice of Life - A Look at Terrence Malick's new film The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick's new feature, The Tree of Life, deals with concepts of creation and evolution, of loss and faith, and questions of being and existence. That is not to say the film need be watched by the mindful eye of a believer or the un-trusting one of a skeptic to make any sense. The film is, after all, on it's surface an exploration of relationships: a son's to his father, a son's to his mother, a husband to his wife, a human's to God, and so on.

At first glance, we are bombarded by familiar image. In fact, any person bored on a Sunday afternoon can turn on the Discovery Channel and see replicas of, or maybe even exact shots of, large chunks of Malick's Act II (what I like to call, Simulacra Earth). He brings the viewer through his version of the beginning of life here on Earth: an explosion of rock and fire, the beginnings of life in the ocean, even a vaginal-looking jelly fish, followed by a quite phallic-looking fish creature. Then dinosaurs, that's right, dinosaurs. All leading up to a fetus in utero and then birth.  The problem is (disregarding the none-too-real-looking CGI monsters/dinos) that we've seen it all before. The overdone shot of Earth as a large rock mass plummets to the surface causing ripples in the deep blue. The obvious replay of the unborn fetus, pink and black-eyed like so many eye-witness testimonies of Extraterrestrials. The much (over)used swooping tracking shot across the ocean, the desert, the whatever surface fits. All of it not new.

So what's all the fuss about over this film then you ask? I'm not really sure.

What we do have is an exploration through memory and death. What we don't have is a narrative to follow. Here's the premise: a man raised by a very strict father tries to come to terms with the loss of his brother years before. 2 hrs. 18 min.

Ok, ok, there are some positives here. Malick's characters are believable and warm, especially the father and mother (superbly acted by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain). And the boy, Jack, played by Hunter McCracken (unfortunate name, I know) takes us to depths of character with no dialogue needed.
The set design is nearly flawless as we seamlessly shift from the 1950's ahead to present day. The juxtaposition of the suburban world little Jack grows up in versus the glass and steel one he must try to make sense of as an adult nearly become characters unto themselves.

And then there's the themes mentioned above, specifically loss and faith. An important part of the film comes when a little boy drowns in the public pool. This is the moment when Little Jack really begins to question his faith, a faith written on him by his father not one chosen by him. His voiceover is a question to God, in fact all of the voiceovers in the film are not questions to self or to the audience, but instead a dialogue between the character and God, Jack simply asks why. From this point forward Jack struggles mightily with many things. The confusion of God and Dad being a biggy, along with the difference between right and wrong. Something Jack also struggles with. There are times when he is about to do something wrong and we can see in his eyes he knows the difference but his body goes ahead and does it anyway. Maybe to get attention from Dad/God; even though negative, it is still attention.  The major problem here is that by the time we see Older Jack (Sean Penn) we don't get enough of him. The audience can't connect to his older self. This mis-connection might be a casualty of editing, who knows.
        
This is a film of a 67 year old man (Malick) coming to terms with  life and death (his own), while at the same time dealing with loss and death of the people around him. And for that, I applaud Malick. He's honest and true and all of his films are beautifully composed and smartly shot. Sometimes though, I just need more.

You haven't seen that?

"You haven't seen that? And you call yourself a film teacher?"
Truer words were never spoken.  A true film lover should see every, single movie ever made. Not just the "important" ones, classics, and his/her favorites, but EVERY ONE. How else can you even begin to wax intellectual about them? Judge and criticize other films? What have you ever done? Roger Ebert wrote a movie, you know. But that's besides the point. Jumanji  is a classic movie.  When the guy runs out of bullets and they give him another gun, but the new one is, like, huge...awesome! Or in Snakes on a Plane when there was those snakes on a the...plane mother fucker! Should be canonized, I tell you!  
Gigli, Waterworld, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Troll 2, From Justin to Kelly, It's Pat, Showgirls, Battlefield Earth, Freddy Got Fingered, Who's Your Caddy?, The Hottie & the Nottie...
Go back, get a Netflix subscription and learn, my friend.   

Jorge Luis Borges Created the Internet

Buddhist thought refers to something called, “momentariness.” In that thinking, there is nothing that exists for any length of time. Each moment exists separately, so there is no substance or length to things. And each moment is an entirely new reality, which is then seceded by another entirely new(er) reality. The only connection between one thing and the next is that one causes the next. This thinking permeates Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges’ work; which also deals with the idea of hypertextuality, a Postmodern theory of the inter-connectedness of texts. He writes, “Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures,” meaning, like Buddhist thought, each moment happens then it is gone. But also, in the case of hypertextuality, that moment forks off into countless other moments that are happening (existing) at the same time.

This works in much the same way as pick-a-path books, where the reader would begin the story then make choices about the possible outcomes and be lead to different portions of the book. This is, after all, the same way the internet works. Go to any page and you will be presented with hundreds of choices as to where to go next. Click on an option and you are brought to a new page with hundreds of more options.

In Borges’ text however, he infers that all the paths/choices are on-going even after a choice is made. In other words, there are multiple, alternate realities happening at the same time. He asserts that each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he simultaneously chooses all of them. Then there are multiple hims existing on alternate planes at the same time.

All of this brings me to an entirely other concept all together, that of Déjà vu, the feeling that what you are presently experiencing has happened before. If all of Borges’ theories hold true, then it could also be argued that when one experiences what has been called Déjà vu, it is not that that person has been in that particular situation before, but that two (or more) existences are occurring at the same time and those two worlds are intermingling; a glitch in the matrix, if you will. Two paths were chosen in the same way, therefore they have become, for one split second, unified. As Keanu would say, “Whoa.”

The End of Apocalypse

The slow-moving opening sequence of Coppola's Apocalypse Now is a dizzying combination of cinematography, music and images, putting the audience inside the crazed mind of a fucked-up Army Captain, too high and drunk to fight and too embedded in the war culture not to. 

Helicopters float forth and back across the edge of a green-canopied jungle of palm trees, napalm is dropped. Cue the music.  Robby Krieger's slow, mellifluous notes begin the familiar soundtrack; enter Densmore's cymbals. The Lizard King begins, "This is the end..."  Wait a minute Jim, hold on Francis, this is the beginning, right?  

A man's face, large and looming, dissolves in, upside-down with eyes closed; while some strange stone monument does the same on the opposite side of the frame. What are we supposed to do with these images?  Everything I learned tells me to assume the man, as yet unnamed, is dreaming.  Clue 1: closed eyes. Clue 2: dissolves.  If so, are these other images, the napalm explosion, the jungle, the stone head, all within the man's dream?  What about the music?  Does it come from the soundtrack, appropriate non-diegetic music to aide the viewer's experience? Or is that too coming from within this person's mind, an internal diegetic piece of a dream?  Notice that there are no traditional opening credits or titles, telling us the name of the film or who the actors are. (The title of the film actually appears as graffiti toward the end of the film on a rock within Kurtz's compound.)    

The answers will have to wait.  In fact, the questions probably come to few, if any, viewers upon first screening.  It's not until the final sequence, after Willard assassinates Kurtz, that we are once again shown these images.  Then, thinking back, a very large, stone issue appears.  When, in the end, we see the same stone head that dissolves in at the beginning of the film we have to wonder where the image came from.  If the stone head, as most people assume it is, is a statue on the Kurtz compound, then how in tarnation can it appear in Willard's dream/drug induced hallucination at the start of the film?
It is possible that the beginning of the film is, in fact, the end of the story.  These images and sounds we are "introduced" to when we put the DVD on are part of the end of Willard's story and occur after he returns from the mission to kill Kurtz.   

This is a man who is stuck in war.  The sounds and images of the ceiling fan in his hotel room blend with the images and sound of war chopper blades, in and out.  

During quiet parts of this sequence we hear sounds of the jungle: tree frogs/crickets, wind through trees, etc...It's subtle but noticeable.  All sounds which come from Willard's mind.  

During the frenzied, spastic, half-nude dance in the room, he self-destructively punches and breaks the mirror (symbolically destroying his own image), bloodies his right fist and then wipes the bright red blood all over his face and nude body. His jarring, spastic movements almost rhythmically match the chaotic crescendo of the song.  At one point he even seems to mouth one of Jim Morrison's famous grunts as he completes a clumsy tai chi move.  He falls exhausted, the song winds down as well.  This song is playing from inside the maniac mind. 

The images, the sounds, the Doors!  The beginning is the end.