Review // THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX - A Cussin' great film

The Fantastic Mr. Fox almost single handedly redeems an industry that seems hellbent on rubbing our noses in shit. There is so much invention, joy and creative energy in every single frame of this frame-by-frame movie that you can't help but drop your guard almost immediately, allowing your cynicism and bitterness towards Hollywood to get chipped away with humanity (foxmanity?) and humour. This is what we used to expect from the movies: magic. I hate to bring up a tired argument, but it's so rare that CGI can achieve the level of wonder that Fox does with puppets, cotton balls and sweat. In the 20 + years since we handed over special effects to computers, you can count the number of CGI movie miracles on one hand.

All this talk of magic is not to say that Fox is some wide-eyed ode to childhood innocence, far from it. The story has an edge, its characters are flawed, they have vices--they drink and smoke and die. But this edgy quality is certainly not out of place or overwhelming. Director Wes Anderson is not injecting darkness or premonitions of adulthood into a family picture, he's simply restoring what has been eroded away by the Happy Meal Toy approach to children's entertainment. Traditionally, children's fiction has always used darkness and morbidity to wrap morality lessons in the gore and goop that kids love. The Brothers Grimm stories are as brutal as anything in a Nightmare on Elm Street, only with more social relevance. Beloved author, Roald Dahl seemed like the 20th Century's answer to the Brothers Grimm, a writer who delighted in giving kids exactly what they wanted, while weaving in a blueprint for how to behave in a society addicted to shortcuts. No child that finishes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory wants to be Augustus Gloop. They delight in the comeuppance of Violet Beauregarde and aspire to the quiet empathy of Charlie. Dahl crafted modern fables about manners and civility that never shied away from turning a mirror to the ugly side of humanity. His work seems a natural fit for bringing the edge back to kids movies and Wes Anderson uses his Fantastic Mr. Fox as a jumping off point for tackling some grown-up sized issues in a beautiful package that puts nearly all other animated movies to shame.

Roald Dahl is the perfect ingredient for a classic children's film. It's director Wes Anderson that seems like the wild card here, but that's only before considering his other films and perhaps his strongest directorial imprint: meticulousness. I saw Anderson's first movie Bottle Rocket in the theatre when it first came out and it left a lasting impression on me. The glut of Mexican Standoffs audiences had to suffer through during indiedom's Tarantino craze of the 90's made the airy silliness of Bottle Rocket the perfect antidote to all the macho posturing. However, Anderson and Bottle Rocket would've been forgotten if the movie had just been about fools trying at crime (did Palookaville or Safe Men spawn auteur's?) It was the sadness of the characters and their earnest yearning to find their niche in the universe that grounded the antics in emotional relevancy. Anderson's next film Rushmore drew on the same ingredients, but coupled it with a stunningly assured hand and an irresistible main character (the revitalization of Bill Murray didn't hurt either), creating an instant classic and announcing him as a distinct voice in cinema.

Anderson's next film, The Royal Tennenbaums felt like a movie made by someone who had just spent the last two years reading about his own genius. I didn't dig it. A formula seemed to be settling in: classic rock, vintage costumes, font-fetish title cards. Every detail of every shot seemed fussed over and characters seemed to be less than the sum of their precious names and outfits. Next came The Life Aquatic, and it's absurdist adventure comedy allowed Anderson to follow his art direction whims even further. I didn't make it through Anderson's last one The Darjeeling Limited (although I plan to tackle it again). I was just so distracted by all the characters accoutrement's that the story never took root for me. I kept considering Adrien Brody's sunglasses, but not his character. I wondered where Anderson had hunted down Jason Schwartzman's pants, but not why his characters were on a train voyage. I finally just shut the movie off. I wasn't in the mood, and sometimes mood is everything.

At worst, Anderson's fussy attention to detail can pull you right out of the picture and make you feel like you're watching a moving catalogue of stuff he thinks is cool. At best, these details build a world that is at once recognizable and yet fanciful--a lush, alternate reality constructed of objects and artifacts pulled from dusty corners of our shared memory. While I never would've made the connection on my own, Anderson's meticulous eye is a perfect fit for stop-motion animation in general. The very art form is about subtly manipulating objects in a static image and Anderson loves an intricately designed one-shot. In stop-motion, detail is everything and fussiness is a prerequisite. Fox is stunning in this regard. The world feels lived in and its characters inhabit it with an ease that doesn't keep you looking for the animators hand. They give true performances with character and comedy coming out of the unique movements and mannerisms of each puppet. This isn't a technical breakthrough of any kind. Nearly everything about Fox's execution could have been accomplished 50 years ago. It's more of a marvel of artistic expression and dedication in the face of technological shortcuts brought on by CGI. The beauty and wonder of Fox looks much more difficult to achieve than that of your average Pixar movie, but it's also more satisfying. Many of the films most stunning sequences are achieved in a single static shot, with characters moving throughout the frame. This is a constraint of the stop-motion process, it's simply easier to lock the camera off and manipulate the puppets. But it leads to ingenious creative flourishes and is immediately striking in an era when most sequences are relentlessly spliced together out of hundreds of shots taken from every conceivable angle.

Fox announces itself as a Wes Anderson movie from its first frame: A copy of Dahl's book is opened to the first page, it's spine bearing a white library sticker with card catalog code. Only Anderson would include such a detail that at first seems like a precious frill. But it's actually a dirty trick. The sight of the library sticker unlocks a forgotten cache of childhood memories--trips to the library, the thrill of books and the thrill of opening a Dahl book itself. You fall in love with the movie and it's barely begun. But fussiness and a detailed eye aren't the only qualities Anderson brings over from his other career as a director of oddball dramedy. The same deadpan humour is present here, as well as familiar emotional conflicts that distinguished him as the preeminent chronicler of the lovable losers plight.

Mr. Fox is a dapper, charming and slightly roguish fox of the woods. Naturally he is voiced by George Clooney. Mr.Fox long ago gave up the thrill of chicken-killing in order to settle down and raise a family with Mrs. Fox (voiced by Meryl Streep). He has taken a respectable job as a newspaper man and is looking to move his family out of their hole and into better digs in a tree hollow. However, his move above ground has ulterior motives. Just in sight of the Fox family's idyllic new home are three of the biggest industrial farms in all the land, belonging to the three meanest farmers, Bunce, Bean and Boggis. Mr. Fox is going through a midlife crisis of sorts. He loves his family and enjoys the reasonable amount of respectability newspaper work gives him in the community. But Mr. Fox has been ignoring his true nature, denying himself the one thing that makes him vital: stealing from farmers (I love that industrial farmers are the villain of the film). He could go down to the local market and buy his chickens frozen like everyone else, but Fox loves the thrill of the hunt and a chicken neck between his teeth. Mr. Fox loves to prove his superior intellect in the planning an execution of a good chicken-thieving. And that is just what he does with the dim-witted Possum as his sidekick, knocking over Bunce, Bean and Boggins in turn. Mr. Fox is rejuvenated and feels alive for the first time in a long while. But he has made 3 very dangerous enemies in the farmers and they band together their considerable resources to get revenge. Bunce, Bean and Boggins declare war on Mr. Fox and drive him and the whole community of animals under ground and on the run.

Mr. Fox makes a mess of things. He ignores his lawyer's (Murray) advice and buys a home close to the ruthless farmers. He ignores his promise to his wife to stop chicken-thieving. He doesn't notice that his oddball son, Ash is desperate for his approval and instead heaps it on his visiting nephew, Kristofferson. He is a clever trickster and an excellent thief, but the details of his household and the trampled feelings of his friends and loved ones eludes him. In a key scene, as the animals gather around a bountiful feast of the farmers stolen goods, Fox cuts off the toast of his friend and lawyer, Badger to give his own speech. He says that the silver lining in their current troubles with the murderous farmers is that the animals have been made to rely on each other and rediscover their communal roots. Fox says "to be thankful and aware of

each other. I’m going to say it again. Aware." This as the farmers prepare to flood the underground tunnels with Boggins' sweet apple cider. Fox of course has not been aware of the impact his selfishness has had on those around him. It only starts to sink in when his wife tells him that she loves him, but should never have married him.

It's these kinds of explorations, along with Fox and Ash's father-son strain that distinguish The Fantastic Mr. Fox from the kids movie crowd. Many sons sitting through this movie will wonder if they are living up to the image of their father. Many of us truly are oblivious to the feelings of others as we follow our selfish pursuits in a society where this is encouraged and facilitated at every turn. These simple cautions for children and parents alike is in many ways far more relevant than the over-sized themes of the Pixar ilk, where parents are dying, obesity consumes humanity or childless couples face crushed dreams and death. The problems explored in Fox seem surmountable if our hearts and will align.

Together with Henry Selick's excellent Coraline and Spike Jonze's brilliant Where the Wild things Are, darkness and relevance have been returned to children's entertainment. These 3 movies made 2009 look like a full-on revitalization was underway. Of course, I'm also likely talking about the three lowest grossing family films of the year. But the films that made more money, the CGI Pixar-wannabe shit that Dreamworks put out for instance, will not stand the test of time, while these movies will stick in viewers minds and appreciate in value. The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a classic.

Review // THE INFORMANT - Bad movie or just a bad mood?

Since starting this blog, I now find myself watching movies with a little notebook and pen sitting on the couch beside me. I obsessively scribble down notes, thoughts and even questions I want to know the answers to. The whole reason for pursuing this blog (that something like 4 people occasionally read) was not obviously to reach an audience or change anyones opinions, but to record my thoughts on film and to facilitate a (hopefully) deeper viewing experience. This blog is more like a journal and a personal mission to try to watch and think about movies in a deeper way, instead of just using them as medication against the boredom of routine.

Sometimes I write pages and pages of notes during the course of a movie. Other times I only jot down several thoughts that form the basis of a little conversation I have with myself on these screens. But by the time Steven Soderbergh's latest The Informant had finished, the notebook page I had reserved for it was completely empty. I had no questions. I had no burning thoughts that I didn't want to forget. The movie just played in front of my eyes for two hours and never penetrated any deeper. I don't know why that is. I don't think its a bad movie. In fact, it might even be a good one. The whole experience of watching it was just... off.

I guess what I'm trying to acknowledge is that movies and art in general are certainly not static things, or more precisely, our perception of them isn't. Your opinion on a piece of art or storytelling is more a comment on that time and place, a summation of your own mood and state of mind. Movies obviously mean different things to different people, but can also mean different things at different times to the same person. I think people more readily accept this idea when it comes to music as opposed to film and narrative storytelling. Many people will say that they didn't "get" jazz or blues until they got older. But when it comes to movies, people tend to talk about them in definitive terms.

With this in mind, my view of The Informant is based on a weird, hazy funk of a viewing. The movie never took hold with me. Even as I write this, I've incorrectly written the title several times and had to correct. I called it The Insider (a Michael Mann film) and The Inside Man (a Spike Lee film). I kept feeling like I was watching a foreign movie badly dubbed or a heavily edited version where key scenes or bits of dialogue had been excised leaving me to play catch-up in a story that was clearly not intended to obfuscate. I mean it's obviously about the deception of it's main character, but it's not a puzzle of a movie meant to deceive audiences. Audiences are meant to cringe as they watch an odd little man with severe personality defects lie and steal his way into a battle with a many-headed governmental beast. For whatever reason, I never became invested enough to cringe. I kept thinking of the movie's poster and the way it defaces it's heartthrob movie star's image with ironic schlubbiness. Since nothing else was sinking in for me, I wondered if the movie existed to give Matt Damon a bad mustache and if that stunt alone is enough to get a movie made these days. I feel crappy about that, I really do. I feel like I failed you, The Informant.

Review // HOUSE OF THE DEVIL - Authentically retro or retro for its own sake?

House of the Devil works as both retro homage and legitimate genre entry for the exact reasons that a movie like Black Dynamite doesn't work as either.

 

House of the Devil sets itself in the early 80's and adopts the bare-bones setup of its forebears: babysitter meets devil worshippers. The clothes, cars, music and even camera work (remember zooms?) are indicative of this era. These elements provide knowing fans with moments of geeky recognition, but they aren't unnecessarily heightened or emphasized for cheap laughs. The gigantic cassette Walkmen that heroine Samantha clings to as her characters most important artifact is of course funny when viewed from the era of the iPod Nano. But writer/director Ti West doesn't feel the need to write jokes around the prop as was most certainly the case with Black Dynamite's Blaxploitation period trappings. West wants his cake and to eat it too and surprisingly he pulls this off. He manages to make both a retro homage and an effective horror movie. The style and self-conscious detail of his reverence doesn't overwhelm its power to frighten. Unfortunately, Black Dynamite wasn't as ambitious, it merely wanted to send up an already fairly ridiculous subject. 

Samantha is a college student who is hard up for the deposit on her dream apartment, a just out-of-reach oasis away from her cramped dorm room shared with a sexed up slob of a roommate. She answers a flyer for a babysitting position as a last ditch effort to scrape together some cash. The couple she babysits for end up being murderous devil worshippers who have prepared a hell night to coincide with a satanically significant lunar eclipse. It's a simple one-line concept "girl babysits for satanists", but unfortunately the movie takes nearly 35 minutes setting it up. Nothing much happens in this extended opening, and Samantha's concerns never run higher than "how do I get some cash?" so I found these establishment sequences a little trying. The pace of the movies West emulates were never so languid, producers always knew enough to cut to some boobs or blood in order to keep bums in seats. I'm all for a slow-burn before an explosion, but so little happens in House of the Devil's build-up and what does has a vaguely student-film quality to it.

The middle section is where House of the Devil really shines and admittedly owes some of its success to the patience it demands of viewers from the outset. When Samantha is driven to her out-of-the-way babysitting gig by her annoying friend (played by indie darling Greta Gerwig) the very sight of the ominous house (which is an amazing location) sets the horror gears in motion. The house is gigantic and terrifying in every way. In reality, anyone pulling into the driveway of such a house would immediately reverse it and get the fuck outta there. And if the sheer creepiness of the house doesn't make them change their mind about babysitting for strangers, meeting the employers certainly would. The couple who own the house are played by veteran character actors and B-movie stalwarts Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov and their sheer towering height and combined creepiness makes them a horror movie pairing made in heaven (or hell). Their every word and mannerism screams "GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!" but they keep upping Samantha's fee in order to get her to stay and babysit an elderly mother. Before she knows it, Samantha has bargained her way into her apartments deposit and then some! 

After some negotiating, the couple leave for the evening and Samantha is finally alone. Much like the opening, nothing eventful really happens in this middle section either, but every step Samantha takes and every camera angle is infused with dread and the anticipation of something awful. As the nosy teen walks through the hallways and opens doors, getting the lay of the creepy land,  the viewer is practically frozen in place, holding their breath. As Samantha carelessly explores the house, West both expertly crafts the journey as well as trades on two decades worth of babysitter horror movie memories. This balance, of craftsmanship and adoption of carefully selected cliches, pays off for the film and creates one of the scariest most atmospheric horror movies in a long time--without resorting to current shocker trends of extreme violence.

  

When the shit finally does hit the fan, it's maybe a little disappointing to find out exactly what's going on, if only because the unknown terror of the middle section is so effective. What's the satanic version of Immaculate Conception? Horrendous Reproduction? Anyway, by the time the credits roll in retro yellow font over a static shot, Samantha has been through a blood-drenched ordeal and director Ti West has proved both his reverence and skill for a genre that has become such a part of our cultural subconscious that it's stories can now be told in shorthand. House of the Devil proves you don't have to necessarily reinvent the wheel to continue to scare audiences, sometimes you just need to give the old one a few fresh spins.

Review // THE PROPOSAL - Anyway...

Alright, this was obviously no good, but I'm not going to kick a lady while she's down.

I will say this though: If anybody has the emotional tools to weather heartbreak, isn't it the woman who has pretended to weather heartbreak like 150 times in various Romantic Comedies? That experience plus her loads and loads of money should probably see her through this rough patch. She's going to be fine everybody.

Review // TWILIGHT: NEW MOON - Team Edward? Team Jacob? I'm for whichever team has pre-marital sex

Finally! Finally a movie that comes along and pleases everyone (12 year old girls, stoners, Harlequin romance readers, junk-hounds, lonely middle-aged women, delusional virgins etc.) and leaves no one behind and no one unsatisfied. Finally a movie that's comfortable in its own skin and unafraid to wear its beating heart on its sleeve no matter how man people are pointing and laughing. Finally a movie that sucks so wholly and completely that it ends up becoming a bizarro world masterpiece. You don't know how long I've waited for this.

I hate movies that are just okay, or just kinda crappy. I want my movies to be 4 stars or no stars. There's no in-between for me. I fucking hate 3 star movies. I hate "it was pretty good". Give me Fucking Awful over Pretty Good any day. Twilight and its wicked-awesome sequel (part 2 of a saga that will hopefully drag out so long that comely Bella will eventually pussy whip all of the creatures in Universal's Monster stable) is most certainly a no-star shitter or a 4 star bad-movie, however you want to look at it. I feel like I've been watching a lot of mediocre movies over the last year and not enough truly awful ones. Twilight: New Moon really hit the spot in that regard. And boy is it funny! The funniest movie of last year. For some reason people thought The Hangover took that crown (does anyone ever enjoy when their friends tell "I was so wasted" stories? The Hangover is 2 hours of that) but these same people likely watched New Moon in a different frame of mind (i.e not stoned) and ended up missing out on comedy gold.

New Moon is hilarious. There's no point in making fun of it or parodying it in an SNL skit or a feature-length Wayans bros. genre mashup. It's already a parody of itself and way funnier than any intentional skewering could ever hope to be. In fact, check out the SNL skit on Youtube where Bella and Frankenstein play pensive lovers in a tree top. It's dead-on, but definitely not funnier than the real thing. Why is this self-serious mope-fest so funny? It's precisely its own humourless, sober approach to such a patently absurd high-concept that ends up creating so many laughs. The Twilight movies and their increasingly insane internal logic leave no room for anything else. You're either a swooning Tween or your laughing you're ass off. There's no way to keep a straight face when doe-eyed newly minted celebrities are uttering awkward platitudes about endless love inside an utterly toothless horror format.

Everything you need to know about Twilight and the brand of romanticism it's selling is contained in the name of its main character. Kristin Stewart (K-Stew if you're down with the Mary Hart lingo) plays Bella Swan. Bella fucking Swan.  Gee, is Bella Swan a middle-aged price-checker at Wal-Mart? No, of course not. Bella Swan is the name of a creature of immeasurable grace and beauty, it's a princess name. Bella Swan is a pale beauty with the power to enchant mythical creatures with her irresistible pouty glumness. Vampires and werewolves gaze into her chestnut eyes and forget to tear her apart with their teeth and claws. This skinny, whiny teenaged girl makes immortals and Manimals fall instantly in love with her. She doesn't illicit lust either, no she inspires endless patience and understanding. It's completely chaste love. Her tumultuous relationships with unstoppable killing machines are not just free of blood, they're free of all bodily fluids. Bella Swan is the flesh and blood embodiment of a Disney Princess ideal of femininity cooked up in the mind of a Mormon author who is either A) a comedy super genius or B) one of those kinds of chicks who sports a fuzzy troll head on the end of her pencil.

For Twilight author Stephanie Meyer, a woman is to be put on a pedestal and ached for, but NEVER touched... in that way. A woman is to be treated not as an equal or as a human being, but as a priceless, highly breakable treasure. Meyer has managed to find a more extreme and silly next level of conservative romanticism for women who don't like the touchy-fucky before marriage: women who fall in love with vampires and can't EVER touchy-fucky lest they be devoured in a bloody gory mess. That's right, in Twilight, Edward the vampire has to behave himself at all times around Bella or else he might get carried away and murder-fuck her with his teeth. Bella's beautiful blood smells so enticing to him that he has to use his super-human restraint to keep from tearing her apart at every moment. And apparently she's worth the effort. It's exactly like Romeo and Juliet if Romeo was constantly fighting the temptation to eat Juliet. The reason the movies are so funny is that they translate these childish scribbles with absolute faithfulness, nary a wink or nod in sight.

The other reason the Twilight films are so funny (and so bad) is that this serious approach to trash brings with it heaps of pretense that make for scene after scene of befuddled confusion. It should simply be a girl-meets-vampire-and-world-doesn't-understand scenario, but instead its girl-meets-vampire-and-audience-doesn't-understand. The screenwriters keep heaping on loads of emotional baggage, presumably transcribed from the books, that you practically need an accompanying flow chart to keep track of all the characters careening mood swings. I was so utterly lost at times during New Moon that I needed an accompanying dvd commentary track with a twelve year old girl explaining what exactly was supposed to be happening. The filmmakers overuse and abuse the screenwriterly tool of "conflict" to the point where the movie is just one long whining lovers spat punctuated with instantly-dated CGI. Virtually every scene in this movie contains a conflict between the characters. It's nearly impossible (for a 30-something man) to keep track of why everybody is so sad or mad at each other, and with the reasons constantly shifting and doubling I finally just gave up trying to follow it and laughed as the morosity and melodrama stacked up.

In fact, the funniest scenes in the movie take place after Bella and Edward have broken up and she becomes plagued by nights of shrieking agony, as if she were a Vietnam vet with PST. The break-up literally causes her to sweat and writhe and shriek at the top of her lungs. It's fucking great. I never really figured out why they broke up in the first place either. It seemed like it was because he was a vampire and she wasn't, but I didn't get why that issue wasn't immediately apparent. Preceding the break-up are a series of push-pull scenes that also made no sense to me. In one scene Edward is telling Bella that he will never leave her side and then two scenes later he's saying they must never see each other again. What? Anyway, Edward leaves for Europe and that's when Bella develops feelings for the impossibly chiseled Jacob who is played by some child who was forced to undergo some likely dangerous exercise routine in order to achieve dreamboat proportions on screen. It's actually kinda creepy. Should pubescent's really be that ripped? So as I mentioned, the first half of the movie is a confusing push-pull with Edward the vampire, but then the filmmakers have the audacity to simply double-down with Jacob the werewolf, repeating the exact same formula with the second half. Jacob tells Bella he will always be there for her and then turns right around and says that she must never speak to him again. It's absolutely nuts. Again, I think it's because he's a werewolf and she isn't.

The other thing that really confuses me about the whole Twilight phenomenon in general is why it relies on horror tropes in the telling of its schmaltzy love story. Stephanie Meyer and the revolving door of filmmakers who adapt her books are completely disinterested in translating any horror elements, seemingly forgetting the fact that the love triangle at the heart of the story contains two-parts monster to one part skinny white girl. Vampires are barely vampires in Twilight. Instead of getting burned to dust when they come into contact with the sunlight, they sparkle like diamonds and become embarrassed. They attend high school for some reason, despite already being geniuses and hundreds of years old. The great vampire pastime is Thunderstorm Baseball (the fucking BEST thing about the first movie). The werewolf side of things doesn't fare much better, with seemingly the only criteria for wolfing-out being the wearing of jean short cut-offs. There is no sense of duty or history when dealing with these horror archetypes, in fact there seems to be disinterest. Meyer is more comfortable churning out Nicolas Sparks-style hokum than with attempting anything resembling chills or cathartic fright. In fact, Twilight is basically just The Notebook with fangs and is so far removed from anything resembling horror as to be unrecognizable. So why bother with vampires and werewolves? I have a theory:

Traditionally, vampires have been portrayed as fanged Lotharios and have always, ALWAYS been made overtly sexual. No woman is immune to the charms of the Dracula-style vampire gentlemen and will give herself over to him with abandon, even when it means that ecstasy will lead to death. In Twilight, it is Bella who seduces Edward the vampire, not the other way around. But she doesn't seduce him for sex, instead desiring domestic obedience, a boyfriend-girlfriend commitment that shall last no shorter than "forever". Twilight (as least from what I've seen in the 2 movies so far) is about de-emphasizing sex in a romantic relationship and returning to a sanitized, old-fashioned view of love that only really existed in fantasy to begin with. To heighten this idea, Meyer has used the vampire, with their addiction to body fluids, to prove that it's possible to change your man, no matter how tough a nut he is to crack (or how bad he wants his nut busted). It's about changing the nature of your boyfriends or at least getting them to ignore theirs until your moral timetable has been observed. I'm certainly not arguing that young girls shouldn't take some of these lessons to heart, and it's probably good counter-programming to the sexualized trash that is usually fed to young girls, but it's no less a useless, potentially damaging message to broadcast. Saving ones virginity until marriage is a bad idea. Waiting until you're in a committed relationship? Well that just sounds reasonable. By avoiding sexual discussion and trying to prove that sex isn't and shouldn't be the focal point of a relationship, Meyer ends up making sex as big a deal as of course it shouldn't be. She builds epic-sized anticipation and trepidation around one of the basic natural functions of animals and uses vampires to communicate the message that sex before marriage is a potentially dangerous bloodletting.

If it sounds like I regard these subtextual elements with scorn, well I don't. They simply add to the head-scratching comedy of the whole thing and I literally can't wait to see where the series goes next. I could of course just run ahead and read the books to find out, but I think that's crossing a line that I can't return from. 

If New Moon has a weakness (for stoners or anyone watching it ironically) it's that it's simply far too long to sustain the laughs. At 2+ hours, the movie wears you down and the laughs become chuckles before trickling off until you're just watching in stunned silence. Again, the length of New Moon speaks to how serious it takes itself and I can only assume that future sequels will only bloat further until the last picture gets released in 3 installments totally 9 hours. And mark my words, once all the Twilight books have been fully mined for tween gold, expect a prequel detailing Edward's tumultuous first love with a teenaged Medusa.  

Review // AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER - Classy Classic

Was the phrase "they just don't make 'em like they used to" invented to describe Hollywood Romantic Comedies?

The Romantic Comedy has long been a staple of any studios production slate. Compared to Oscar-bait epics, war films and action pictures, they are usually cheaper to produce (unless your paying Julia Roberts 20 mil) and seem to have a good chance of hitting the mark with their intended audience. Let's face it, there's more risk involved in tricking-out a Clash of the Titans remake in 3D and opening it in April, then there is in releasing a movie calledValentine's Day on the 12 of February. I'm not suggesting male viewers are more sophisticated than female viewers and therefore more difficult to market an action picture to, not at all. Like, at all! But action pictures for instance are subject to rapid shifts in styles, technology and can be driven by mercurial youth culture. Maybe a studio invests 100 million in a Bruce Willis shoot 'em up, but then 300 beats it to theatres by a month, rendering its car chases and fist fights old-fashioned. But in Romantic Comedies, the more old-fashioned the better. You might hip it up with some gross-out gags or try to modernize it by replacing love letters with emails or a dropped purse with an iPhone, but at the end of the day the formula is the draw. Audiences still want their opposites attracting. That's it.

This allegiance to the formula may explain why audiences for Romantic Comedies (i.e women and their well-behaved dates) are getting served up lazier and lazier offerings. Why bother taking the high road when the cynical alternative is so much easier? Why strive for timeless magic or try to touch people when you can just drop flavourless ingredients into a pot and bring to a boil? The answer to these "why's" is between a screenwriter and their god, but for audiences, the reason to demand the high road is the difference between The Ugly Truth andAn Affair to Remember. It's right there in the titles. The Ugly Truth is just plain ugly and destined to be forgotten, while An Affair to Remember is well, memorable.

I rented golden-age director Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember based on the strength of his other film Make Way for Tomorrow (reviewed here), and I plan on seeing as many more of his films as my local video store will allow. So far he's 2-for-2.

The set-up of An Affair to Remember is famous, having been filmed once before in McCarey's own Love Affair (1939) and inspiring countless other films, including a direct homage in the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks estrogen juggernaut Sleepless in Seattle. Carey Grant plays legendary playboy Nicky Ferrante, but really he's just playing legendary grey-suited charming-man Carey Grant. In fact, anytime Grant dons a grey flannel suit in a movie he's practically transformed into a super hero--Charming Man. Grant is settling down with a high-profile heiress, and he's taking a sea cruise to New York to meet up with her and the media circus surrounding their union. Also on the cruise ship is Deborah Kerr playing Terry McKay, a luminous nightclub singer who is about to become the wife of a wealthy business man. As soon as they lay eyes on each other in passing, the sparks begin to fly and Grant reverts to his natural state: relentless flirting. Kerr is a fiery redhead and while she doesn't allow herself to be easily swept away, Grant's charm eventually wears down her witty, sarcastic defenses.

The fun of the first hour is in watching the cracking repartee between the two leads play out against a backdrop of comedic chicanery. As soon as Grant and Kerr are seen together in the common areas of the ship, all the boat's passengers becomes atwitter over the assumed romance. After all, Grant's Ferrante is a famous playboy, so what possible interest could he have in the attractive fiancee of another man? The gossip-page-reading passengers watch the couples hopeless subterfuge as if attending live theatre, laughing out loud at the funny parts. Their clandestine meetings, usually on the ships deck under cover of night, leads to one of the best first-kisses in the movies. The couple walk up an exposed staircase until just their legs are visible and then they come together, denying the viewer the voyeurism that the boat passengers are amusing themselves with. They mystery and privacy of the kiss takes it out of the realm of soapy melodrama and makes it something special.

And that is something that distinguishes An Affair to Remember from it's Rom-Com offspring: the love-falling is not horrendous, it doesn't insult your intelligence or make your stomach churn. Frankly, I consider this a huge achievement since I usually wanna see the romantic leads mauled by bears by about the half-way point in most romance films. The other interesting thing it does is play against your expectations, setting up Grant's notorious playboy as the stumbling block on the path to endless love, but then subverting that assumption in a way that makes your heart soar unexpectedly.

As New York Harbour comes into sight, reality sets in for the two lovers. They can't simply step off the boat hand-in-hand and start a life together, there are too many things to consider, not least of which is if the love their both feeling can survive the transition to dry land. They make a pledge to each other: if they still feel the same way in 6 months, they will meet at the top of the Empire State building. The scenes following the couples departure from the ship provide the giddy high of new love and also show how "high-concept" doesn't have to leave you feeling dirty. With their respective fiancees waving from the docks the couple must adopt their expected roles and silently part, leaving the audience to wonder if the force of reality will crush the romance, revealing it to be the flight of fancy of two duty-bound dreamers. The way that McCarey confirms the romance and reaffirms the pledge is a classic heart-soaring scene where Grant is suddenly thrust into a TV interview with his fiancee and manages to use the reporters questions to send a message to Kerr.

Until this point, An Affair to Remember mixes comedy and romance in a shaker and pours out a bubbly concoction that pleases a taste for escape and old-school Hollywood glamour. But then the movie takes a very serious left turn into tragedy, setting up a last half that barely resembles what has come before it. It's a risky move that pays off due to the talents of all involved, but it's something that few other Rom-Com's would dare to attempt. Picture Hugh Grant getting hit by a bus as he rushes to the chapel to marry Sandra Bullock. You can't, can you? While tragic third acts are not par for the course in Rom-Com's, they have been adopted in manipulative ways in the Nicolas Sparks romance formula. And some have certainly argued that An Affair to Remember is itself sentimental and manipulative. After all, just because it was made 50 years ago doesn't change the fact that it was the Hollywood fluff of its time. Or does it? They didn't call it the Golden Age for nothing and I think there's a big difference between Carey Grant romancing Deborah Kerr and this:

Grant waits atop the Empire State Building on the agreed upon day, but Kerr never shows, leading him to believe that she has changed her mind. Despite the fact that this is a classic movie that's had its plot dissected in other movies like Sleepless in Seattle, I won't ruin the tragic twist. But like I said, it represents a complete tonal 180 that manages to not suck. Maybe its because it deepens both the characters and provides a grounding for the romance that has been built upon an airy foundation. Or maybe it's simply because it allows the audience to spend more time with characters we've grown close to. When the final tear-jerking moment comes along, a moment where all misunderstandings are understood and all pain of the heart looks to be healed, I was marveling at the craftsmanship and crying right on cue, right where McCarey wanted me to. Part of this is due to the fantastic coreography and shooting of this last scene (Grants reflection in the mirror as he opens the door to Kerr's bedroom) and part of it is the subtle abilities of Grant himself (I had always thought of him as more movie star than actor), carrying the weight of realization in his face and delivering the films final emotional blow.

Classic shit.