The Last Few Movies I Saw: Episode VI – Stop Me!

Kill yourself:

We should quit while we’re ahead.

I already wrote at length about The Lone Ranger (2013). Read why it sucks HERE and save ten bucks.

Like the ladykillers themselves masquerading as musicians so too the Coens seem to have been masquerading as the Farrellys.

It’s weird to see a film by the Coen Bros. (Fargo, No Country for Old Men) so far down on a list like this, but their version of The Ladykillers (2004) is just terrible. A decent cast, colorful setting, and great cinematography can’t make this garbage barge float. It looks pretty and some fun, goofy faces but the comedy and tone is so off. Sorry, Coens, but you don’t get to take one of my favorite British comedies and remake it dumber and with fart jokes. You are better than that. Stars Tom Hanks, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, and Irma P. Hall.

Meh:

Still. Better than a Bert I. Gordon movie.

Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) is almost a lot of fun. I watched it because Stanley Tucci was in it and Ewan McGregor’s mustache and hair looked cool. I really did appreciate this film’s levity and that it managed to have scary monster fights in sunny daylight (unlike Pacific Rim) It’s light and weightless and anodyne. The special effects aren’t great and the story is fairly simple, but you could do worse.

Remember “Badlands”?

Terrence Malick is responsible for several interesting and visually stunning movies (Tree of Life) and while his latest, To the Wonder (2012), is indeed beautifully shot, but its murky, elliptical plot comes off as a little pretentious. Looks good, but don’t really connect with the aimless story, which is a shame, because I feel like he was touching upon some important issues about love, faith, and feeling culturally isolated. Stars Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, and Rachel McAdams.

This might make you a vegetarian.

I wish John Dies at the End (2012) was a better movie. It has so much wonderfully sick, inspired lunacy going for it and many of the zany twists are pulled off nicely. Dropouts have to save the world from a metaphysical alien drug that could destroy everything. The stuff Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho-tep) tries to pull off here is crazy. Only he could pull it off. Or maybe Sam Raimi. Alas, much of the finished product feels disjointed and half-baked. It has made me want to read the book though. Paul Giamatti has a supporting role.

You can fly? That’s weirdly charming.

Woody Allen only makes two kinds of movies: masterpieces and mediocres. I might be the only person in the world who was not smitten by the musical comedy, Everyone Says I Love You (1996). Some of the songs are cute and fun and it does have a couple funny moments, but ultimately it feels like a Hallmark card. It’s corny and harmless, but maybe Woody Allen doesn’t do ‘sweet’ as well as other things. Features Woody, Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda, Eward Norton, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Drew Barrymore, and more.

Getting More Interesting:

I kid you not, the worst review I saw of this film was a long, angry rant about how the Sicilian accents were not accurate enough.

It Was the Son (2012) is an Italian movie about paying debts to the mob following the unfortunate death of a young girl. The film looks great and has some interesting characters and a killer final two minutes. It’s not higher up because my brain wasn’t sure whether it was watching a comedy or a drama. I think it’s a bit of both, but I don’t know if it all congeals the way it should. I also probably shoould watch it when I’m not on a plane.

Is the lighting gonna be like this the whole movie? —Yeah, pretty much.

There was nothing but praise for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) so my lukewarm feelings were met with some hostility. It’s a fine film with some fine performances and shows one of the most important acts of legislation in American history. It looks normal and has a few of those scenes where a side character says something important at just the right time and a few scenes wrought with sudden emotional weight or a perfectly timed monologue. I guess it all felt a little safe and simple. Maybe that’s what was needed, but I be curious to see what a different director might have done with it.

Godzilla could still kick it’s ass.

Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) was the perfect guy to direct the kaiju-homage flick, Pacific Rim (2013). I wish I liked this one more. The first few monster fights were fun, but they become repetitive. The robot suits are great, but they kill off the Russian and Chinese guys too soon. I thought it was going to be a fun all-the-countries-band-together-to-fight-the-monsters type thing. Most of the main characters are boring and tool-ish and the “drifting” thing is weird and ill-explained. I like the old kaiju movies for their cheesiness, and it was fun to see awesome special effects realize them with affection and detail, if only the story and characters had gotten a similar upgrade.

Here we go:

Choke me.

If you like sado-masochism, Japanese nudity, and genitalia-severence then this is the movie for you. Nagisa Ôshima’s controversial In the Realm of the Senses (1976) is based on the true story of a steamy romance that requires increasing amounts of pain incorporated into the act of sex until their mounting obsession results in tragedy. It’s got a lot of sex, but it ain’t always sexy and that’s part of the point, I think.

Déjà vu!

Peter Lorre and Syndey Greenstreet star in this film noir based on an Eric Ambler novel. Jean Negulesco’s The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) is a bit of a poor man’s The Third Man, but it’s not bad. A pulp novelist becomes mixed up in a real-life European double-cross. It’s got a few decent twists and is a lot of fun if you like your noir.

It wasn’t the planes. It was naïveté killed the beast.

Jack Black gives a strangely nuanced performance in Richard Linklater’s Bernie (2011). Based on a true story, this little pseudo-mockumentary chronicles the events leading up to the murder of a nasty spinster (Shirley MacLaine) by the ineffably good-natured Bernie (Black). Justice isn’t all black & white and behind every small town tragedy is a hundred smaller stories.

Animals!

There’s a predatory animal behind me. It’s symbolism.

I’ll admit there’s not a whole lot terribly special about Murders in the Zoo (1933), but the finale really got me. Lionel Atwill stars as another nefarious ne’er-do-well in another crime melodrama. The lecherous zoo keeper isn’t exactly the most menacing of screen villains and maybe he doesn’t use his animals as much as we might like, but it’s a light romp through the pulpy shadows. It’s a typical genre piece from the period, but the ending is worth it.

Our movie’s tiger is better than your movie’s tiger and it’s not even real. Pity about the bankruptcy.

Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) paints a sumptuous adventure-survival tale with sweeping CG strokes in Life of Pi (2012). The colors and effects and music are great. The story is engaging and exciting. The guy who plays the Canadian author is terrible. It also suffers (or perhaps gains) from an ambiguous ending—that I say was handled slightly better in the book. All in all, it’s a worthy screen adaptation of the fun story of a young boy adrift at sea with a tiger.

Stop taking things so seriously and enjoy life:

You see that Andrzej Wajda movie? “Man of Iron.” Yeah, it was terrible. I wasn’t in it.

I was somewhat dismissive of the first two Iron Man movies, but Iron Man 3 (2013) was a lot of fun. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang director, Shane Black, gives us more laughs and more exciting action. Robert Downey, Jr. is as snarky as ever and Sir Ben Kingsley provides one of the more interesting twist-foils in any superhero movie. Iron Man might be kind of fun, but wandering Mechanic of Tennessee is more interesting.

Throw down that strongbox and answer the question.

Beauty is Embarrassing (2012) is a pleasing documentary about kooky, renegade media artist Wayne White. After working on several TV shows (including Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Beakman’s World, and Shining Time Station) he turned his attentions to painting offensive and humorous slogans on top of thrift-shop landscape paintings. Puppet-maker, painter, sculptor, whatever, he’s eccentric and he can’t stop.

Seriously. Recast this whole movie—minus Salma and Harvey. It’s so close.

Here’s the thing: I might actually hate 30-40% of this movie, but I love the rest. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) is a wild, genre-bending grindhouse splatterfest from director Robert Rodriguez and writer Quentin Tarantino. Some bad guys kidnap a family to escape across the border and hide out at a rowdy desert bar that is run by…demon vampires! It’s ridiculous fun and the final matte painting composite shot is awesome. It’s a lot of over-the-top, ridiculous fun but it seriously needs to be almost entirely recast (with the exceptions of Harvey Keitel and Salma Hayek).  Also features George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Juliette Lewis, John Saxon, Cheech Marin (he can stay), Danny Trejo (he needs to do more cool stuff), Tom Savini (he can stay too), and Fred Williamson (he needs to do more cool stuff too).

Three parts greatness:

Tune in again in 9 years for “Before Brunch.”

The third installment of Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke’s romantic series, Before Midnight (2013) sees the characters aging more and more. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset comes to a close…maybe? Taking place on one day at the end of a family vacation in Greece, we witness how they deal with their relationships, careers, divorce, children, and each other. While it might be sad that they seem more at each other’s throats than ever, perhaps it is the only logical place these two headstrong characters can go. Perhaps not quite as sublime as the first two films, this latest chapter is rewarding for those of us who love these characters already and want to see what will happen next.

These aren’t the state secrets you’re looking for.

Carol Reed (The Third Man) directs Sir Alec Guinness (The Bridge on the River Kwai) in an adaptation of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana (1959). A milquetoast expat vacuum salesman living in Cuba with his daughter gets commissioned by the British government to be a spy. A slight embellishment gets blown out of proportion in this Cold War comedy and tensions and fears run high as the impromptu spy desperately tries to hide his fib and keep people from getting killed. Also stars Burl Ives, Maureen O’Hara, Ernie Kovacs, Sir Ralph Richardson, and Noel Coward.

Buscemi freak-out in 3-2-1…

Living in Oblivion (1995) is a must-watch for any aspiring filmmaker. Yes, even moreso than Ed Wood. It’s a dark comedy about the struggles and trials of making a low budget independent movie. The mounting tensions, increasingly short fuses, and unraveling strings of sanity are catalogued in three parts, each taking a different perspective. Anyone who has ever worked on a set will recognize every single crisis showcased here and anyone who has not might wonder why anyone would ever want to make a movie if it takes so many headaches. Steve Buschemi, Katherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney, James LeGros, and Peter Dinklage star.

Ever stalwart:

The classic riches to rags to riches story.

French comedian and filmmaker, Pierre Étaix, keeps pantomime alive (like Jacques Tati) in Yo Yo (1965). It’s a quaint, cute, and visually inventive comedy about a billionaire who loses everything and joins the circus to find love. The sets and sight gags are wonderful and the story is sweet and complete.

It’s been a few scenes since I saran-wrapped a cat.

The perverse Australian cult hit Bad Boy Bubby (1993) is sick and twisted and abrasive and strangely pensive, cutting, and eloquent. Bubby (Nicholas Hope) is locked in his sadistic and abusive mother’s basement for 30 years before he escapes only to be confronted by a harsh, terrible, beautiful, tragic, funny, demented world he could never be prepared for. Like Being There and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, we learn much about society by watching these obtuse yet perceptive innocents interact with a world we have just learned to accept. Bubby has to learn everything all over again. It’s a deranged and graphic satire full of horrors and heart.

Apex twins:

Love is hard sometimes.

In the Mood for Love (2000) is a sad romance about isolation, longing, and missed opportunities. Wong Kar Wai (Chungking Express) directs Tony Leung (Lust, Caution) and Maggie Cheung (2046) as two lonely souls in 1960s Hong Kong. Both feel disconnected from their never-present spouses and seek to enjoy the company of each other, but gradually develop deeper feelings. Through simple interactions and quiet conversations their love grows, but their situation, their culture, and the disaffected sands of time continue to erect barriers. It’s a beautiful film full of regret.

At the time of his death, if he were on Jupiter, Elvis would’ve weighed six-hundred and forty-eight pounds.

Mystery Train (1989) is easily my favorite Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes) film. There are three mostly unrelated stories set in Memphis on the same day. There is a yuppie Japanese couple straining to see their romanticized image of a fabulous musical metropolis rich in blues history. There is a stranded Italian widow (Nicoletta Braschi) who must share a hotel room with a vacuous American chatterbox. And then there is the story of the chatterbox’s unemployed and irascible English boyfriend and his friends (including Steve Buschemi) who try to keep him from hurting himself and others until the sober dawn. All the characters must spend the night at a dilapidated city hotel run by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Cinqué Lee.

What did you see? Anything good?

Lone Ranger Sucked: Beating Off a Dead Horse

So The Lone Ranger (2013) sucked and everybody knows it, but where did it go wrong? What was wrong with this throwback to spirited western serials? The good news: it’s kind of sort of better than Wild Wild West (1999).

Problem Number One: Pirates of the Caribbean.

This movie is essentially Gore Verbinski, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Disney trying to make a fantasy cowboy movie that looks and sounds and feels like the The Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Why is this bad?

Westerns are not exactly pirate movies. True, outlaws and greed for lost treasure can be crucial elements, but they’re not really the same. While the weird overuse of magic in the Pirates movies is mostly gone, it still relies heavily on physics-defying suspenseless mayhem. The Pirates movies had a lot of problems and most of those problems are not fixed here.

Problem Number two: True Grit, Django Unchained, and Rango.

1.) Three far superior and very popular western movies have already done it all better. True Grit (2010) was a great straight western. It had a simple story (catch the bad guy who killed the little girl’s dad) and it had great characters that were larger than life, but still very relateable. Add some smart and cynical Coen Brothers sensibilities and you got a great movie.

2.) Tarantino already cornered the market on stylized western cartoon violence (but with much more gore). Django Unchained (2012) already answered the call for a bold retooling of classic motifs and managed to be much smarter, more socially significant, and wantonly cathartic. It presented truly sick and evil villains and punished them in satisfying ways. Again, the cast was fantastic.

Django Unchained is about racism and slavery and the vengeful splatter-violence is a righteous re-writing of history and integral to the story. The Lone Ranger is a fun cowboy movie that tacks on the genocide bit to transparently avoid being labeled another white-washed fun cowboy movie that forgets the tragedy of First Nations. Hidalgo did a better job of talking about the injustices done to the Native Americans in just a few short flashbacks. And that movie takes place in Arabia!

3.) True Grit and Django Unchained managed to be sharper and grittier, with minimal to possibly no use of distractingly bloated special effects and CGI. Gore Verbinski’s own Rango (2011) was a totally CG movie, but it looked unlike any other CG family movie. It was smarter, faster, funnier, and the action was actually exciting and thrilling to watch. It even took a lot of chances with how much meta-narrative surrealism a mainstream movie audience could handle.

The classic but grittier western, the hyper stylized western, and the family-friendly western are all fresh in our minds and they’re all great movies. Then comes The Lone Ranger trying to be all three.

Problem number three: John Carter and Mad Max.

1.) Disney already made a big budget flop with John Carter (2012) but didn’t learn anything from it. While I personally feel like John Carter was a far better film, it suffered from stretches of boring bits, an uninteresting and unrelateable protagonist, and unyielding plot convolutions that keep on mounting with little justification and not enough payoff.

2.) Mad Max (1979) is the story of a good and morally conflicted policeman in a dystopic Australia who is beaten down by personal tragedy (the death of his partner, wife, and son) and the relentlessness of the forces of evil (renegade biker gangs) to become the ultimate vigilante. He will be swift, vengeful justice in a world full of corruption and injustice.

The Lone Ranger is the story of a naive and incompetent district attorney in the wild west who, despite personal tragedy (the grisly murder and heart-consumption of his beloved brother, the kidnapping and possible rape of the woman he loves, and witness to genocide), keeps fighting against justice and actively helps the forces of evil to continue (because of his blind dogmatic faith in due process) until he reluctantly decides to indirectly kill some of the bad guys responsible.

See the difference?

Problem number four: Tone, bad guys, and overstuffed crusts.

1.) This movie truly is tone death. You don’t put fart jokes in Schindler’s List and you don’t put wacky slapstick and cartoon action-adventure next to sick depictions of cannibalism, actual historical genocide, and shameful real-life atrocities. There is a time to shed tears and there is a time to cheer and they do not occur at the same time. The constant tonal shifts make for an uncomfortably awkward cinematic experience where the thrills feel hollow and the horrors feel too flippantly handled.

3.) The bad guys are boring. There’s a greedy railroad man who kills a tribe of Native Americans to hide silver until he can one day build a railroad back to the silver to become even more rich (bizarre plan). Then there’s a murderous outlaw who eats human flesh for some reason. It’s never really explained and it’s never really convincing or understandable. It just feels gross and inappropriate (especially for a Disney movie). There’s also a cavalry man who might have been a good guy had he not got mixed up with the wrong people. It’s all vaguely reminiscent of the far better Mask of Zorro (1998).

3.) The story is needlessly complex, all over the map, and the action—while occasionally almost fun—is too ridiculous and crammed full of overblown CGI that nothing ever feels grounded enough to be cared about or real enough to be exciting. It’s a flat, joyless experience that insists by simply playing the Lone Ranger theme song at the end, we might be fooled into thinking we are having fun.

Problem number five: The Lone Ranger and Tonto.

1.) I’ll say it. I like Johnny Depp for the most part. He’s even enjoyable in this movie. Maybe the only one who’s actually having any fun. His character doesn’t always work because the writing can’t seem to decide if they want him to be wise, vengeful, or out of his mind. And that he looks like a cartoon character when he’s an old man is really not a good thing. Is his portrayal offensive to Native Americans? I don’t know. Watch Dead Man (1995) after this to cleanse the palate, I guess.

2.) Armie Hammer is a boring Lone Ranger. Again, I blame the writing and not his performance. Even Tom Wilkinson and Barry Pepper can’t even make their awful characters work. He’s supposed to be in love with his dead brother’s wife, but it’s awkward, uninteresting, and obvious it’s only in the movie because the movie doesn’t really have any female characters and needs a romance—no matter how hackneyed and insipid.

Verdict: Disney’s The Lone Ranger is an exhausting, tone-deaf, mostly boring mess that tries to be a western Pirates of the Caribbean. The writing is sloppy and most of the characters are thin and uninteresting. There’s about 10% of what could have been a really fun and exciting cowboy action movie tucked in the cracks.

And I take it back. Wild Wild West at least knows its an asinine cartoon movie with no brain. It might actually be slightly better. At least it’s shorter, has Salma Hayek, and a giant robot spider.

Ultimately I just want to watch the Korean film, The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008) again. Now that was a fun action cowboy movie.

 

Originally published for The Alternative Chronicle on July 18, 2013.