“I’m talkin’ about friendship. I’m talkin’ about character. I’m talkin’ about – hell, Leo, I ain’t embarrassed to use the word – I’m talkin’ about ethics.” If you’re a cinephile of any sort, The House Next Door is probably already (or should be) on your reading list. Still in case it isn’t, Matt Zoller Seitz wrote a particularly intriguing essay on the Coens’ view of morality last week (which you absolutely should NOT read until after seeing No Country for Old Men — it gives away the whole game.) “Though they are habitually described as snotty formalists with nothing on their minds but cinematic gamesmanship, the Coens’ body of work is one of the most sneakily moralistic in recent American cinema. To some extent, all of their movies poses questions that supposedly deeper filmmakers have broached time and time again: if we cannot be certain of God’s existence; if there is a possibility that no one’s watching what we do; if, to reference Johnny Caspar in Miller’s Crossing, ‘morality and ethics’ are agreed-upon lies…then what’s the point of being good? Just because.” Update: Also via THND, the Chicago Sun-Times‘s Jim Emerson offers up another quality dissection of No Country.
Tag: Cinema
Drawn into Grendel’s Den.
“I am the ripper, the terror, the slasher. I am the teeth in the darkness! The talons in the night! My name is strength! And lust! And power! I AM BEOWULF!” Well, ok then. If Zack Snyder’s 300 last spring only whetted your appetite for cartoonish sword-and-sandal epics featuring hyperstylized gore and naked men bellowing, you’re in luck. For now arises Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf, a rousing 3-D mo-capped glimpse into the future of filmmaking and the ancient past of storytelling. To be honest, it’s harder than usual for me to judge Beowulf on its own terms, since this was my first feature-length IMAX-3D experience (notwithstanding documentaries like Aliens of the Deep), so I can’t say if it’d have the same effect at your regular 2D cineplex. But, in three dimensions, Beowulf is pretty darned impressive, what with arrows, swords, and viking viscera flying in all directions…We’ve come a long way from Captain Eo. And, while the film is basically a pretty standard three-act summer action movie, I’ll give it points for daring to be both more bloody and more downbeat than your average animated fare. If you see one movie this Thanksgiving holiday, see No Country for Old Men…but, if you’re in the mood for it, Beowulf is well worth a look-see as well.
In late 5th century Scandinavia, as rumors of a new god, Christ Jesus, leak out of lands to the South, the Danes under the dissolute King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) and his lovely Queen Wealthow (Robin Wright Penn) are just looking to have a good time. This they proceed to do in the manner of ancient peoples and Ren Faires immemorial, with ribald songs and lusty wenches, meat straight off the bone, and more mead than you can shake a spear at. But interrupting these hearty proceedings is an uninvited guest, an oozing, decaying nearby troll known as Grendel (Crispin Glover), who proceeds to wreck the mead hall, tear Danes limb from limb, and otherwise bring the party down. Seeking respite from Grendel’s gory visitations, King Hrothgar and his people need a Hero. They find one in the traveling Geat warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone), who arrives via ship with his loyal lieutenant Wiglaf (Brendan Gleeson) and a band of battle-tested scoundrels, all seeking honor and glory. Beowulf is tough, Beowulf is fearless, Beowulf is…a bit of a braggart, as deduced by one of the local noblemen (John Malkovich). But that’s beside the point, as, having enlisted under Hrothgar’s standard, mighty Beowulf must now confront the demon Grendel whether he likes it or not…as well as his more powerful, more alluring mother (Angelina Jolie), who has certain feminine wiles in her arsenal that our Hero may find harder to resist.
If you read, or were forced to read, Beowulf back in school days, you’ll quickly find that screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary have changed the story considerably — They’ve made it bawdier, they’ve completely rewritten the second and third acts, and they’ve emphasized the human fallibility of the characters rather than their epic heroism. (While I’m sure this is anathema to many, none of this bothered me very much, as I’ve actually never read Beowulf before…sad, I know.) Still, for what’s here, Beowulf works decently well, although a Faustian bargain is made at one point that doesn’t seem nearly as tragic and horrible as it’s made out to be. (Sure, regrets he’s had a few, but Beowulf seems to do pretty well by the deal, and you could argue he’s only undone once it is inadvertently broken, rather than as a consequence of consummating it in the first place.)
All that being said, in most eyes Beowulf is less likely to be judged for its capturing the nuances of the ancient poem than it is for its motion-capture, and here’s it’s going to be up to one’s personal aesthetics. Some reviewers are completely creeped out by the effect, but it didn’t bother me much at all. (The 3-D assuredly helped.) Sure, there were a few establishing shots — the viking ship, horses crossing a bridge — that screamed World of Warcraft cutscene, and the men, with their chiseled features and facial hair, still look more realistic than the women, whose faces often lack as much definition. But, all in all, I was rather impressed by the quality of the animation. And, besides, it’s animation — it was more important to me that Beowulf and Grendel seem part of the same world than that Beowulf looked exactly like someone I’d see at the deli. (And if this is what it takes to see Ray Winstone and Brendan Gleeson as the two leads in a buddy picture, so be it, although it still might be more fun to see them face off in a Sexy Beast II.)
So, yes, Beowulf is more a cartoonish action flick (see below) than a somber and faithful retelling of the epic poem. But, as far as cartoonish action flicks go, I thought it was pretty entertaining. (And if you have an IMAX 3-D theater near you, it’s pretty much a must-see.) And, while admittedly it may achieve nothing close to the heights of the original poem, I still admired the general sense of dread and melancholy at work through much of Beowulf. Even the greatest heroes in our canon, it seems, often have a failing for beauty and proud words.
Update: If you’re a first-time visitor arriving via The House Next Door today, welcome! (And, happy thanksgiving.) This way to the site’s front page, and down the hall on your left is the movie review archive. And, sorry, the turkey isn’t ready yet (unless you mean Southland Tales.)
The Monster and its Critic.
“Zemeckis took the oldest and most important text of our ur-language, and turned it into a 3-D Disneyland ride so cheesy he should have called it ‘Anglo-Saxons of the Caribbean.’…But the ‘Beowulf’ travesty is especially glaring, because of the obvious contrast with another work that mined the same ancient field: J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings.’” Taking issue with the “plastic entertainment‘ that is Zemeckis’ Beowulf much more than I did, Salon‘s Gary Kamiya movingly explains what Tolkien understood about the poem, and how it informed his own work. “Tolkien’s brilliant essay can be seen as a ringing defense not just of ‘Beowulf,’ but of the work he was soon to embark on, another great tower composed of ancient stones. And the themes of lateness, of heroic loss, being caught between one age and another (his world is not called ‘Middle-earth’ for nothing), are the deepest and most sublime parts of his own epic.“
Not with a Bang but a Whimper.
Well, I guess nobody can doubt its commitment to Sparkle Motion. But, sadly, the sprawling, incoherent Southland Tales, the second film by Donnie Darko creator Richard Kelly, is a ghastly trainwreck, and easily the worst film I’ve seen in a theater since 2003’s Gods and Generals. As I said to my brother on the way out (and as David Edelstein also noted), it makes the excellent Donnie Darko look worse in retrospect (and goes a long way toward explaining why the needlessly expository Darko Director’s Cut is so much less satisfying than the original version.) A hackneyed, overwrought stoner mishmash of leaden political satire and borrowed apocalyptic sci-fi influences, Southland Tales is so terrible I left the theater irritated that it even got made. It’s not so-bad-its-good…it’s just bad. Really, how does a movie this lousy get filmed? How do the actors and everyone else involved not see they’re in the midst of a disaster? And why didn’t marginally more talented folks like Kevin Smith or Eli Roth take a break from their oh-so-cutesy cameos and give their boy a heads-up? As it is, Southland Tales basically feels like something composed in the back of a high school notebook, amid album cover doodles and lyrics about being misunderstood, after a long night at the bong.
As Southland Tales begins in the near-future of 2005 (which should give you a sense of how long this film was stuck in development hell), a family barbeque in Abilene, Texas is disrupted by nuclear devastation, and WW3 begins in earnest. As then explained in voiceover by a disfigured Iraq vet (Justin Timberlake) over an impressive infotainment presentation (probably the best thing about the film), the US is now at war with Dubya’s entire Axis of Evil (and Syria to boot); the world is facing a global oil shortage which may be alleviated by a newly-created hydrothermal energy source known as Fluid Karma; the Department of Homeland Security has taken NSA wiretaps to the next level and fashioned an Orwellian nightmare known as USIdent; “Neo-Marxist” (really?) cells have sprung up around Venice Beach, CA to fight Big Brother; and the crucially important election of 2008 pits the staid Democratic ticket of Clinton/Lieberman against the sinister Republican team of Eliot/Frost (both poets which Kelly quotes throughout like they’re going out of style –They’re not.)
Finally, to kick off our story (which is apparently Part IV of a larger, presumably even more boring saga), we learn that an impressively-tattooed, Schwarzeneggerian movie star with top GOP connections (The Rock) has shown up in the middle of the desert suffering from amnesia, and has been taken under the wing of talk show hostess/porn star Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her drug dealer roommate (Will Sasso). Got all that? We also discover along the way that the GOP and the Fluid Karma gurus (more on them in a second) might be in cahoots, that the NeoMarxist underground is basically run by former SNL alums (and poor, poor Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) — guess he won’t be making fun of McNulty anymore for 300), that — paging Mr. Darko — there may be a time travel aspect to all of this, and that the secret to everything may rest on a pair of twin brothers (Seann William Scott), who find themselves getting drugged and/or knocked out a lot. Oh, and since JT keeps quoting Revelations over various scenes, its a solid presumption that the End of the World is more than likely on hand too…Bummer.
If this all sounds splendidly bizarre, well, it’s not. Southland Tales‘ strained attempts to come off as surreal might have worked if they had seemed effortless, but sadly they always feel here as if they required Herculean labor. Too much of the dialogue is drowning in exposition or weighed down by ponderous nods to Eliot, Frost, Revelations, etc. (I fear Kelly defenders will cite these to argue the film has hidden depths, when really they just expose how often Tales languishes in the shallows. But, admittedly, they might seem profound if you were completely baked out of your gourd.) Kelly has also clearly tried to give this project some weirdness cachet by dint of offbeat casting — the film is overloaded with C-grade celebrities and former ’80s icons. Case in point: Early in the film, we meet the team behind Fluid Karma, and they’re — I kid you not — composed of Wallace Shawn (best known for his “inconceivable” rants in The Princess Bride), Bai Ling, Zelda “Poltergeist” Rubenstein, Beth “Sparkle Motion” Grant, and Curtis “Booger” Armstrong. This sort of thing is good for a chuckle every so often, but after awhile — John Larroquette plays Karl Rove, Christopher Lambert drives an ice cream truck — it all just seems glommed on and irritating, particularly since Kelly seemingly expects the sheer presence of these people to do all the heavy lifting.
So what’s good about Southland Tales? Lordy, not much. As I said earlier, the satirical CNN of the near-future is well-constructed. The cast do what they can with what they’ve got, and most of ’em rise above the material: The Rock is charismatic enough to jet by, Seann William Scott at least seems like he’s trying, and Justin Timberlake redeems himself with one of the better scenes in the film, a lip-synched video to The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done” (which nonetheless comes off as a Big Lebowski ripoff set to ski-ball, and mirrors quite closely the “Happiness is a Warm Gun” routine from Across the Universe earlier this year.) But these brief moments are by no means enough to recommend this dismal misfire of a film. Let me put it this way: I really liked the original version of Donnie Darko (note the rotating header), I really like cutting political satire and big-think sci-fi (for a classic example of how to do it right, see Brazil), I really like seeing semi-forgotten actors find work (see my post on Matt Frewer and Watchmen earlier this week) and I hated — hated — this film. You’d be hard pressed to find someone more likely to give Richard Kelly and Southland Tales a larger benefit of the doubt than I did going in, but this movie is rambling, incoherent, puerile, and, worst of all, tedious. Revelation 3:16: So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Blackjack, Bigfoot, Binomials [and Beast.]
In the trailer bin, which should be teeming over soon with Thanksgiving upon us: Did Bosworth break up the band? Across the Universe‘s Jim Sturgess forgoes the Beatles for a blackjack team in the trailer for Robert Luketic’s 21 (a.k.a. Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House), also starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, and Laurence Fishburne. Nature documentarian Steve Zahn goes on the trail of Bigfoot in the so-so trailer for Fred Wolf’s Strange Wilderness, also with Allen Covert, Mac Guy, Jonah Hill, Ernest Borgnine, Jeff Garlin, and Joe Don Baker. And Frodo (Elijah Wood) and (animated) Aragorn (John Hurt) team up to solve a string of horrific math-tinged crimes in the Spanish-language trailer for Alex de la Iglesia’s The Oxford Murders, from the book by Guillermo Martinez. Doubt I’ll see any of these, but you never know. Update And another: Don’t say Lovecraft didn’t try to warn us…something Huge, Malevolent, and (hopefully) Cthulhuian stalks the streets of New York in the new trailer for JJ Abrams’ monster movie Cloverfield.
From Arwen to Lenore?
Viggo Mortensen as Edgar Allan Poe? Quite possibly. Apparently Mortensen is thinking of signing on for the Sylvester Stallone-helmed biopic, “although he wants some slight revisions in the script.” Maybe take out that Ivan Drago sequence.
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!
Matt Frewer (best known as Max Headroom, of ’80s television) joins the cast of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen as Moloch the Mystic, the team’s formerly satanic, now born-again nemesis. Extra points to Snyder for choosing a fanboy veteran.
Wrestle and Trek.
Mickey Rourke signs on to play The Wrestler for Darren Aronofsky, set to begin shooting this January. (He replaces Nicolas Cage in the role.) And, more casting on the Star Trek reboot front: Bruce Greenwood is Capt. Christopher Pike, Winona Ryder is Spock’s mother, Amanda Grayson, and House‘s Jennifer Morrison and P2‘s Rachel Nichols are in too, possibly as Yeoman Rand and/or Nurse Chapel. Well, ok then. Update: Another Trek addition: Clifton Collins Jr. of Capote will play Big Bad Eric Bana’s #2.
In the Country of Last Things.
“Seen the arrow on the doorpost, saying, ‘This land is condemned’…” Well, Bob, East Texas may seem rough, but trust me, West Texas is even worse. I’m always going to have a soft spot for Miller’s Crossing, and The Big Lebowski is its own strange and beautiful beast, but the Coen Brothers’ tense, brooding No Country for Old Men, which I caught this morning, is right up among their best work, and that is no small thing. Admittedly, in some ways the Coens don’t seem quite right for a Cormac McCarthy adaptation: They usually thrive on witty, motormouth dialogue, but McCarthy’s men (Woody Harrelson’s character notwithstanding) are invariably strong, silent types. And you can feel the brothers trying to restrain their usual mordant sense of humor through much of the otherwise bleak No Country. (It still leaks out here and there: the mariachi band, “I pre-visioned it,” “these look to be managerial types,” the constant noting of the dead dog, and so on.) Nonetheless, for all intent and purposes, they nailed it. No Country is easily one of the better films out this year, and, if you harbored any doubts about the Coens after their botched remake of The Ladykillers, fret not. The brothers are back in form.
“The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure.” No Country opens on the arid, forbidding landscape of west Texas, as we hear local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, doing a lot of soul-searching this autumn between here and Elah), in voiceover, lament what the world has come to. As if to prove his point, we are then introduced to one Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, unforgettable), a chilling, wide-eyed psychopath with a lousy haircut, an air-powered cattle gun, and a penchant for making coin tosses with weighty implications. While Chigurh calmly breaks out of police custody (by strangling a deputy to death and murdering an unlucky motorist), a down-on-his-luck local named Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) happens upon the scene of a horrific shootout in the middle of the desert, one which has all the markings of a drug-deal-gone-bad…including $2 million in a black briefcase. Thinking his ship has come in, Moss decides to takes the money and run. But, he’s savvy enough to expect some blowback, and thus sends his wife (Kelley MacDonald, of Trainspotting) off to her mother’s place in Odessa and vacates his old trailer park before hitting the road, traveling from motel to motel across west Texas. But right behind him, ruthless, inexorable, is Chigurh, armed with a transponder that follows the money. And, if Moss can’t stay one step ahead of the madman, or if Sheriff Bell doesn’t find a way to reach him before Chigurh does, there’ll be hell to pay like West Texas hasn’t seen since…well, probably since this morning.
Having read the novel a few summers ago, I knew what I was getting into here, and thus (as with Chris Nolan’s The Prestige) I was prepared for a third-act jag that’s irritated a few moviegoers out there who expected a more conventional resolution. But, frankly, that’s the book. Near the end of No Country, one of the men we’ve been following tells us about two dreams he’s had recently: While it may seem in the early going that this movie is about the first, it’s actually more about the second. (Put another way, I’m guessing people who saw Lord of the Rings and thought the story was about the ring found all the endings to Return of the King more unnecessary and unsatisfying than those who thought the story was about Frodo and the fellowship.)
Yes, No Country is a crime yarn a la Fargo and Blood Simple, but it also has bigger game in its sights. One of the scariest aspects of Anton Chigurh is that he seems to believe himself an Agent of something else, something completely and utterly out of his control, and perhaps the scariest notion of all is that he might be right. “If the rule you followed brought you to this,” Chigurh tells one victim, “what was the use of it?” And would following any other rule have made any difference? Sheriff Bell is heartsick over the madness and grotesque violence that seeps out of the corners of society, and another aging lawman tries to lay the blame for “the dismal tide” on “kids with green hair and bones in their noses.” But, as another character reminds us, the West, and the world, has always been like this. You can’t stop what’s coming. At best, all you can do is light a fire in the dark.
Risky Business.
As Claus von Stauffenberg, Col. Tom Cruise (sporting a funky, funky eyepatch, man) plots to kill Adolf Hitler in the new trailer for Bryan Singer’s Valkryie, also starring Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp, and Eddie Izzard. Hmmm, maybe.