Underrated: Life During Wartime

          Like Kevin Smith, Todd Solondz has created his own universe of characters who interact from one film to the next. These are not sequels as much as they are investigations. For instance, Mark Wiener, the older brother from Welcome To the Dollhouse and the character who most resembles Todd Solondz physically and temperamentally, shows up in three of the five Solondz movies made since his first appearance. Mark never lasts long in the film, and usually says the exact same line, but the context is always dramatically different. In Welcome To the Dollhouse, Mark tries to help his sister deal with her unpopularity in school. In Palindromes, Mark tries to help Aviva realize that human relationships, and human love, are much more complicated than the grace she seeks. And in Life During Wartime, when a young man asks how to forgive and forget, Mark wonders aloud if anybody could ever forget, but not forgive. What makes people feel the need to forget when they've already decided to forgive?

         Life During Wartime is about forgiveness. It is also about how dumb it is to forget what you've forgiven. If you don't remember what you've forgiven, what's the point?

        Solondz's film is a quasi-sequel to 1998's Happiness. I call this particular film a sequel because it is, more or less, a continuation of the story from that film. Of course, the characters of other Solondz films make appearances throughout, but the bulk of the story is still centered around Joy's many problems. Joy, now played by Shirley Henderson (of Moaning Myrtle fame) in an even more pathetic, childish manner than Jane Adams's version of the character in the previous film, is a middle-aged optimist who cannot catch a break. After several failed relationships and losing a job helping imprisoned rapists sort out their lives, Joy decides to visit her sister, Trish, now played by Allison Janney, who lives in Florida. Which brings me to the most written about aspect of the movie.

         Instead of casting the film with the same actors he used for Happiness, Solondz decided to recast all of the characters with new actors who could bring new life to the characters. In some cases, the actors don't resemble the previous ones at all. For example, Dylan Baker's red haired, pasty-faced, boring Bill Maplewood has been replaced by the tall, dark and handsome Ciaran Hinds. Jon Lovitz's Andy has been replaced by Paul Reubens, who plays the role uncharacteristically straight. It is Reubens, strangely enough, who delivers the finest and most powerful performance in the entire film. Other odd choices abound in the film, most notably Ally Sheedy taking Lara Flynn Boyle's spot from the previous film. Sheedy's performance is the hammiest and most underwritten of the film, but I believe that fault lies more with the director not really knowing what to do with her than Sheedy's talent.

     
           Although Solondz's films are classified as comedy, he has become famous for taking dark, disturbing subject matter and looking at it through sympathetic eyes. His characters often harbor dangerous secrets and strange habits that are often considered unforgivable or strange. However, Solondz has never dismissed a character because of their behavior. In fact, the kind of person most often abused in these films are the "normal" people. The people who shop for matching rugs and order incredibly specific salads are the ones under attack in these films. This is because Solondz sees these people as phonies. He believes that everybody has a darkness inside of them, and that those who do the judging are the most guilty of exerting this darkness.

           Solondz often skirts the boundaries of tragedy and dark comedy, usually ending up somewhere in the middle. When Timmy, the son of a pedophile in Life During Wartime, tells his mom that the other kids at school call him a faggot because his father molested boys, his mother tells him that he is "not a faggot. [He] will never be a faggot as long as she is alive." She says this to him in a protective, babying manner. It is like she is protecting him from some evil force that, if he isn't looking, might take over. The scene is all at once funny and horrifying. The shooting style, mixed with the music, is reminiscent of early '90's sitcoms, but the dialogue itself is deeply disturbing.

       Life During Wartime, while definitely a comedy, is by far Solondz's most bleak affair. The characters in the film are exhausted by the world in which they live. They are tired of the war. They are tired of behaving the way their parents expect them to and the way society urges them to be. Joy is exhausted by the world's cynicism and condescension toward her unique brand of optimism. While Happiness was about America's search for happiness in a world full of sickness, Life During Wartime is about the difficulty of living in a country that is all about appearances. It is no longer enough to be happy for these characters. They want to be forgiven for who they are. They want to be accepted for their idiosyncrasies and loved because of them.

      Life During Wartime is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection.

I give the film 10/10 miscast Ally Sheedys.

Movie Review: Drive

         

           "I used to produce movies. They were violent, sexy little films. The critics called them European," says Albert Brooks's Bernie about halfway through Drive--a violent, sexy film that many critics are also calling European. However, this critic must say this up front, Drive is an excellent, thought-provoking, controversial and violent film that seems to not care about its own hype, and I love it for this reason. But I must also say this, the film does carry hype, and it may not live up to thing you're expecting.

          First off, Drive is not The Transporter, as many people have been saying. Of course, a film containing a good looking man who drives a car and gets in a fight must be a rip off of a Jason Statham film. Because, you know, it's the only other movie that contains such things. Forget Bullitt, Mad Max, Gone in Sixty Seconds (The good one and the crappy one), Vanishing Point, Two-Lane Blacktop, and a whole host of other films, The Transporter is the movie that Drive is totally ripping off. Okay, enough bitter sarcasm.

          One of the first things I read about Drive, after its director, Nicolas Winding Refn, won the best director award at Cannes, was that he had intended the film to be some sort of hybrid between Purple Rain and Blue Velvet--filled with dark, moody atmosphere while simultaneously oozing some sort of pop-rock vibe. After reading that interview, Drive immediately became my most anticipated film of the year. Add that to my admittedly frightening love of Ryan Gosling and my admiration for Refn's previous work, and you're looking at somebody who was fully prepared to love every waking second of Drive. 


         But the movie really is not a hybrid of two strikingly different '80's films whose titles begin with a color. It actually feels a whole lot like American Gigolo. From the font of the opening credits to the synthesized, soundscapey soft-rock soundtrack, to the way in which the main character seems to only exist because of his profession, all I could think about was how similar these two movies are. However, instead of male prostitution gone wrong, Drive is all about a heist gone wrong. Or perhaps it's about more, perhaps it's about a choice gone wrong. Or maybe a lack of choices. Or maybe it's about something totally different, like the violence of American cinema, or the evil of greed. Maybe it isn't about anything. I don't really know. I don't think you do either.

         The main character, played by Ryan Gosling, is named Driver in the credits. In the film, his name is never mentioned. He has no past, no family, no goals, and no real personality. He's a good enough guy. He's loyal to his boss, he's fiercely protective of his girlfriend, Irene, and her son. He is even protective of his girlfriend's husband, who returns from a two-year stint in prison during Driver and Irene's courtship. But who is he really? He loves fixing and driving cars. That's about it. Driver keeps mostly to himself, usually letting those around him do the talking. In this way, the characters who surround Driver are the ones who define him. The ultimate existential protagonist.

         In fact, the only time Driver seems to have some sort of humanity inside of him is when he explodes into a violent rage. Like a switch going off, Driver is able to unleash a violence more intense than anybody in my theater, including me, expected. And the most terrifying part of it is, the people he hurts only deserve so much. When he decides to fight back he goes all the way, whether the audience is rooting for him or not. Sometimes the violence is so shocking and so sudden that it takes a second to even register that it happened.

       Of course, movies today contain violence far more shocking than what can be found in this film. Gore levels have reached an all time high in Hollywood films. Even Refn's previous film, Valhalla Rising, contains far more violence in its first half hour than Drive's entire runtime. But there is a difference. Valhalla Rising lets the audience know what kind of movie it is right away. Drive does the opposite, letting the audience think it is one thing, before changing drastically halfway through the picture.

      The film begins in typical heist movie fashion. We are treated to a scene in which Driver helps two men escape from a crime. Driver is calm, collected, confident, and amazing at his job. The opening chase sequence, hands down, is one of the most riveting sequences I've seen in the theater since The Dark Knight's bank robbery opener.

       We then get to see Driver at his other job, performing dangerous maneuvers as a stunt driver for Hollywood movies. In this job, he also excels because of his amazing talent and seemingly infinite calm. However, after the film gets into a nice rhythm and falls into the formula we've come to expect from movies like this, it goes off and becomes something totally different. Something totally, unbelievably chilling. The film turns into a wrestling match between two ideas: whether or not we like the protagonist. At first, Driver is exactly the kind of action movie star we've paid to see. But then, after some time with the character, we learn to fear him. We begin to question his morals. Who is he exactly? How much do we really know about him?

       He is an action movie star performing action movie stunts, but he is missing that Jason Statham charm. Which makes us wonder, why do we pull for the protagonist of action movies in the first place? Because they are usually the best looking and most charming characters? Surely such grisly acts of violence should be met with shock and horror instead of high fives and laughter. Drive is a film that seems to question the audience's morals. It seems to be constantly asking us if we should trust such a protagonist.

     Drive is superbly directed in a style somewhere between European Art-house and Mumblecore minimalism. The performances are exceptional, especially those from Albert Brooks and Ryan Gosling, and the music (excluding a couple of questionable choices) is perfectly, ironically chosen. If you were a fan of the George Clooney espionage thriller The American, or you are, for some reason, a huge fan of American Gigolo, I recommend you see the movie immediately. If you like action scenes where the camera captures the scene by shaking incoherently, then look elsewhere. I'm sure Paul Greengrass is working on something new.

       As the film finally reaches its dark, violent end, it leaves us with one last joke. Will there be a sequel?


I give Drive 9/10 bloody hammers.

Good Horror: Insidious

I have less than ten minutes of screentime!

          It takes a certain wisdom to make a good horror film. Until now, I never figured director James Wan to be a guy to have this wisdom. His previous films, Saw and Death Sentence, while moderately suspenseful, don't really provide any evidence of good horror. The first Saw film was, obviously, a hugely successful film that became a franchise, but the original film doesn't really constitute as a horror film. The Saw franchise is usually categorized as horror because of its shocking imagery and even more shocking body count, but the first film is actually closer to a police procedural than a full blown horror film. James Wan, however, believes that Saw is a horror film, and this is why I have always believed there to be a crack in his wisdom.

       Death Sentence, like Saw, is a film that James Wan would describe as a horror film. While I understand this categorization a little more (the pointless murder of your family is rather horrifying), Death Sentence is actually filmed like a pretty straight forward revenge thriller. Both of these movies have their charms, and Death Sentence in particular has that spectacular parking garage chase sequence (one shot!), but neither film really shows a horror director understanding the genre with which he works.

    This is why, last summer, I decided to skip Insidious. The film, starring Patrick Wilson (Hard Candy, Little Children) and Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids), was advertised as suspenseful, haunted house fare full of jump scares and creepy children. Who hasn't seen 454352 horror films with creepy children and lousy jump scares? Do we need another one really? So without having seen the movie or read the reviews, I used my anti-lazy-creepy-children-horror-movies-dar and decided to skip out on the fun.

     Fast forward to a month ago. I was reading an article on the best horror films of the last few years, and the writer would not stop gushing about Insidious. However, earlier in the article, he made a remark about torture porn that was less than favorable, torture porn being a genre brought into the mainstream with the help of Saw. This intrigued me. I looked around on other sites and found that Insidious is pretty highly regarded as a horror film. So I decided to give it a go.

     I know what you're thinking--"What a movie snob"

     That's only partly true. It's not that I'm a movie snob, it's that I am a horror movie snob. The horror genre is plagued by derivative crappyness, poor acting, poor funding, cheap scares, cheap gore, and boring formulas. A great horror film needs to understand horror. It needs to understand the audience's experience with horror. Like a good comedy, a good horror relies on surprise, originality, and execution. A poor drama can get away with more mediocrity if it is based on an "important" subject. Case in point-- Crash.

Here are some rules a horror director needs to be aware of:

•     Good horror needs to be believable. We need to relate to the characters, identify with them, fear for them, and fear with them. 
• The scares need to be real. None of this cat jumping out a closet nonsense. 
• The characters need to be smart. If there's something horrifying happening in your house, move out of your house. 
• If you're going to use a creepy kid, use him/her sparingly. However, I prefer you don't use one, because what else is there to do with that dead, dead subgenre?
• If you're going to include demons, ghosts, etc, give them a motivation. If they haven't killed the protagonist yet, there had better be a good reason. Because what's stopping them? They've kind of already been punished.
• We need to know the setting just as much as we know the characters. 
• The characters need dramatic arcs. Static characters do not make for interesting horror. Or fiction for that matter. 

          Insidious does an excellent job of enforcing these rules. Not only does it follow these general guidelines, it also provides an excellent variation on the haunted house genre. The usual suspects are there from the beginning--an emotionally fragile mother, a distant father, a creepy old house, inexplicable noises coming from the attic, small children being creepy, but all of these factors turn out to be secondary scares. The movie uses our own knowledge of the haunted house movie against us. It expects us to look for figures in the shadows. It knows we expect a cheap, cat from a closet jump scare, so it sets us up for the jump scares without delivering.

        When the audience is met with silence and suspense, instead of a cheap jump scare, they prepare themselves for the fake out scare. This is when the jump scare doesn't occur, only for the character to turn around and notice their husband was standing right beside them, scaring them. Of course, we don't get a fake out scare either. We just get silence, confusion, uneasiness, and thwarted expectations. We know the film is horror because we saw the loud trailer, we know something terrible is going to happen soon, but it always seems just out of reach.

        So when the horror does start to creep in, about a third of the way into the movie, we have been looking for something in the shadows for almost half an hour. The tension has been building. The characters are uneasy. The atmosphere of the film becomes claustrophobic. The horror does not unfold in typical formula fashion. It does not make the audience jump with a loud noise every 5-7 minutes. It explodes at random. The film, in its most brilliant scenes, is ripped from its hinges at the most shocking and unexpected moments possible. The scenes don't startle you, they scare you. There are things in the house, but you can't see them. You can only catch glimpses.

      And when the family is finally, after over thirty minutes of buildup, sent into complete terror, they do what any intelligent person would do. They move out. And that's when the real horror movie starts.

     Insidious is an amazingly competent horror film. It does almost everything right. The scares are genuine, shocking, and original. The performances are naturalistic and engaging. The writing is smart and knowing. The film works. My only problems with it lie in the admittedly left-field third act, but the lead up is so smart, so original, that I can't even fault the film for it.

    I suggest you rent it or buy it as soon as possible. It is very, very worth the watch.

Your Wish is My Command: The Worst Movies I've Ever Seen

Look at those cold, duck eyes.

          You've requested it time and time again, and I've never had the heart to sit down and write it. That is, until now. I promise that this has nothing to do with my recent run in with the total brain fart that is Sucker Punch, and has more to do with my bitterness toward the fact that summer is ending, but let's just say that bad movies everywhere should run for it.

         As usual with my list blogs, I'm going to break this down into three categories. Mind-Numbingly Mediocre, Offensively Bad, and Hilariously Bad. Let's get this over with.

Mind-Numbingly Mediocre:

• 50 First Dates 
• Really, this could have been any movie from Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company. I choose 50 First Dates because I feel like it's the most absurdly mediocre of all of them. Sure, Grown Ups is stale, meandering, weak, and schmaltzy, but at least it doesn't have scenes like the one where Rob Schneider (Fill in the blank) and (Fill in literally any single thing that Rob Schneider does in this movie that wasn't the first thing). There are multiple jokes about a walrus' large penis delivered by pretty much every character, there is a totally thankless Dan Akroyd cameo, there are stupid and out of place steroid jokes, and there are stupidly racist jabs at pretty much every culture. Oh, and the ending is the most absurd cop-out I've seen this side of the O.J. Simpson trial. This movie is formulaic, lazy, boring, and insulting to its demographic. But most of all, it is unbelievably meh. 

• Gran Torino
• Yep, I went there. Gran Torino may be Clint Eastwood's final performance on screen. It is obviously meant to be the stuff of legend. And Eastwood picked a noble topic to leave on, the subject of gang violence and race relations in small town America. Kudos, Clint. But did he really have to hire non-professional actors? Did he really have to continue his trend of doing one or two takes before moving on? The acting by every single supporting cast member in this movie is pathetic. The line delivery is lousy, the body language is stale, and the chemistry on screen is non existent. In the scene where (Spoiler?) Eastwood locks Toad in the basement and Toad begs to be let out, the entire theater burst into laughter. This is not the response you want at the dramatic high point of your movie. Also, there's a bizarre scene around the same time where the police force the Priest to leave with them in their cop car in what must be the most awkwardly staged and poorly executed pieces of acting I've ever seen. The ending is schmaltzy and seems to actually do more harm than good, unless that particular gang only had about 8 members--in which case...that gang wasn't very threatening at all. 

• The Fast and the Furious
• The film that launched a truly strange franchise (the casts for each film makes for a fun game of bingo) is actually pretty meh. It follows a typical "machismo motorhead" formula and does just enough to keep the audience from falling asleep. The scene where the tech guy races the main villain, and then loses and escapes in his car, goes pretty much unexplained. Why did he race that guy to begin with? Why was he all of a sudden needing to prove himself? There was no lead-in to this character development. Until, of course, he's killed in a drive-by and the audience realizes he was just a poorly-developed plot device. Hmph. All I remember about this movie is the mean, bearded camo wearing guy who arbitrarily hates Paul Walker's character because the script demands a cathartic bond later in the film. They couldn't even explain a little bit why they hate each other? Sheesh. 

• Honorable Mention:
•  Tenure: look up this bland Luke Wilson comedy on Netflix watch instantly if you feel the need to sit and stare blankly at a screen for 90 minutes. 

Offensively Bad:

• Battlefield Earth
• Do I really have to tell you why? The cinematography is drunk, the plot is ridiculous, the effects are stupid, the ending is silly, and the casting is lame. Barry Pepper? Really? He's the guy you wanted to lead your revolution? How do a bunch of uneducated cavemen learn how to fly the world's most sophisticated jets in less than an hour? Why would a group of aliens place bombs so close to a portal that leads to their planet made of flammable gas? Why would the aliens heavily train one of their prisoners and then give them the ability to talk to their friends in secret? This movie makes no sense. 
• Howard The Duck
• There is a scene in Howard the Duck where Lea Thompson tries to get wit' dat. If that's not enough, look up the budget to this movie. Then look at the movie. Words will never describe its idiocy. 
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• Headaches, headaches, headaches. This movie is long, bloated, loud, racist, sexist, crude, illogical, and pointless. Why would a robot have testicles? Why would two robots want to emulate stereotypes that haven't even been around for over two decades? Why would my beloved John Turturro accept a paycheck for this movie? He's The Jesus! He can afford to not be in the this. The lack of originality and logical thought put into this film's screenplay is offensive to anybody unlucky enough to be deemed this film's demographic. 
• Honorable Mention:
• Rocky V: simply unwatchable. And that's coming from a serious Rocky fan. 

Hilariously Bad:

• The Wicker Man
• Leave it to Nicolas Cage to make a hilariously bad movie. And if you don't believe that a movie can be hilariously bad, check out this wonderfully preposterous medley of clips. I believe it speaks for itself, really. 
• The Room
• Another film, another medley of clips. The Room is astoundingly bad. It is also astoundingly brilliant. No other film has made me laugh harder in my life. And that's a fact. The line delivery is awful, the cast is bottom notch, the cinematography is bland, and the plot is...kind of whimsical in its absurdity. The best part is when Tommy is talking to his friend, and out of nowhere, asks him about his sex life. 
• Batman & Robin
• Whaaa? Bat Credit Card? Nipples on the bat suit? Ahnold delivering a a wonderful medley of puns, George Clooney trying desperately to appear awesome and failing, and Uma Thurman chewing up the scenery like she's going to find Quentin Tarantino in it? This movie is a spectacular failure in the highest degree. And it is flat out hilarious. 

• Honorable Mention
• Plan 9 From Outer Space: Most people know about this one. If you've never seen it, you should definitely check it out. It is a treasure trove of awful. 

What are some of the worst movies you've ever seen? What category does it fall under? Should I have included the Pirates sequels? Let me know the comments section below or on Facebook. 

Underrated: Valhalla Rising

       

          Somebody once described the style of Nicolas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising to me as "What if David Lynch made a Viking movie?" However, I'm not sure if this description is totally fair to either party. For one thing, this implies that the movie is surreal. It isn't. It also implies that the film contains dark humor, it doesn't. It's actually pretty amazing how dissimilar this movie is from any David Lynch film ever made. Amazing only because I can see why people would make a comparison between the stylistic choices of Refn and those of Lynch.

          Valhalla Rising is dark, moody, atmospheric, uninterested in linear plotting, and totally committed to its central theme. This theme, of course, is terror. The story is presented as a sort of bad acid trip (the director's intention) that only gets worse. Its protagonist is One-Eye, played by Bond villain extraordinaire Mads Mikkelsen, a blood-thirsty warrior who is seen at the opening of the film as an enslaved gladiatorial piece of property. He fights while chained to a stake for the gambling profit of the elder warriors in a clan of Vikings.

          Of course, One-Eye escapes the clan and seeks retribution. But instead of being able to exact action movie revenge, One-Eye is instead captured by a group of nomadic Christians traveling along the fresh water lakes of what is now Delaware. They are frightened by One-Eye, but they can't resist keeping him around as a sort of insurance policy. He might be extremely violent, but he also only kills those who cross him.

         The audience is then subjected to several strange and disturbing scenes of violence. So disturbing, in fact, that in one scene I actually said "oh my god" uncontrollably. I was by myself when I watched the movie.

         People probably relate this film's style with that of David Lynch because they've never seen a Werner Herzog movie. Valhalla Rising feels a whole lot like Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, and Mikkelson's performance could have easily been captured by the manic Klaus Kinski. But I think what we're really seeing is another new voice in cinema. Nicolas Winding Refn is responsible for the Pusher trilogy, Bronson, and this year's Cannes Film Festival Best Director prize winning Drive (click for trailer), my most anticipated film of 2011.

         Refn is part of a new generation of filmmakers who grew up watching films by Lynch and Herzog and Jodolowsky and has crafted his own synthesis of these visions. He's part of the New Danish Cinema movement fronted by Lars Von Trier, and he's of a similar style and influence.

       The film is beautifully shot and acted well by all of those in involved. Its pacing may be a bit slow for those expecting more action, but I said violence, not action. It is definitely worth a watch if you enjoy films like those collaborations between Herzog and Kinski, or if you enjoy films like El Topo or even, to a lesser extent, Lost Highway and Wild at Heart.

Valhalla Rising is currently available on Netflix's watch instantly. Check it out for yourself.

Movie Review: Sucker Punch, or, "As long as you're self-aware about it, then you're okay!"

No, but she's fierce! 

          Movie news website Film School Rejects interviewed director Zack Snyder about his newest film, Sucker Punch, a couple of weeks after the film hit theaters. They allegedly set out to ask the polarizing director tough questions about the film. Specifically questions regarding the film's sexuality. The interview starts by asking the question on everybody's mind, "Would you say this film is a critique on geek culture's sexism?"
        "It is, absolutely," Synder says.
        Well then. If he claims it's a commentary, let's take a look at it as one. Here's what I thought of Sucker Punch:

         When Snyder's 300 came out, most of my friends went to see it opening night. They kept telling me that it's really awesome, visually stunning, all that. So, I go see it. It's pretty much what I expected, except boring. I just couldn't get into it. There was something about the emptiness of the visuals. It looked pretty, but it wasn't saying anything. It barely had a pulse.
         A couple of years later, Watchmen is released. I see it opening night, and I have the exact same reaction. It is beautifully shot, but I don't feel any connection whatsoever to the characters. It mostly plays out like a slo-mo music video cut to covers of great songs.
        A couple of years after that, I rent the Watchmen director's cut, and something weird happens. I really, really like it. Now, I don't really remember what was cut or added between the versions, but something definitely changed. The characters became more three-dimensional. Something made me care.
       So when I saw the preview for Sucker Punch, I thought,"Hey, I'll give him a chance."
       But then I didn't go see it. And then I forgot about it. And then last night, I watched it.
       And boy was it bad.

      Now let me explain. I get it. I get it, okay? I understand. Snyder is making a point with the film. He's dressing his characters up as school girls and making them dance in front of fat, schlubby men. They're objectified women who decide to stand up for themselves and be freed of their oppression. They use their "fierce" will to conquer those pesky little men.

      I even understand that their outfits are satire. That their names are supposed to be absurd riffs on fanboy culture. I'm savvy with all of it.

     However, if anybody tries to use any of those points as a reason to permit this movie to use these images, I have to argue with you. I am compelled to challenge you.
     Sucker Punch is immensely sexist. I don't care if it's a commentary. You know why? Because that thing that is being commented on is a thing that the director is guilty of in every single one of his movies, including Sucker Punch. Every woman who has ever acted in a Zack Snyder film is thin, gorgeous, and scantily clad. Every single one. And here is a movie with characters with names like Babydoll and Sweet Pea who wear school girl outfits and little nurse outfits while they fight on a steampunk battlefield.

      Okay, so when I'm watching Emily Browning in her short skirt defeat giant samurais with her katana sword I'm supposed to...feel guilty about my objectification of her?
      That doesn't sound right. I think when girls in leotards infiltrate a train full of robots and disarm a bomb I'm supposed to be in awe of the great action set pieces. I think that the rockin' soundtrack is engineered to disarm me, to make me surrender to the almighty god of style. Nothing about these scenes of action scream commentary. Absurd? Yes. But absurd does not mean commentary. The very existence of absurdity is not in itself commentary. If that was true, then we can all thank Stalin for showing us how absurd killing poor people is.
     The premise of the film is this: A girl accidentally shoots her sister when she's defending herself from a molesting priest. The priest sends the girl, named Babydoll I must add, to a mental institution where literally every single patient is a beautiful 20 year old girl. The priest pays an orderly to give Babydoll a lobotomy. Babydoll is then introduced to a method of therapy where the girls are forced to use their imaginations and act out their frustrations. We are then subjected to a 90 minute dream sequence, that of course we are aware of, that involves all of the main girls working in a brothel/dance club run by the previously mentioned orderly. In this brothel/dance club, babydoll dances for men. However, when she dances, instead of the audience watching Babydoll on stage, the audience instead sees Babydoll perform amazing physical prowess in the most over-the-top actions scenes possibly ever filmed.
     This means that the majority of the film's visuals are filtered through a 20 year old girl's mind. If we were trying to comment on the geek scene, wouldn't the film really be filtered through an 18 year old boy's mind? Just sayin'.
     Apparently Babydoll doesn't think much of women. Because she believes that all women must be sexy. And by sexy I mean slutty. And by slutty I mean impossibly titillating to that ever-important demographic for box office revenue: 11 to 14 year old boys. Babydoll sees herself, and all of the other girls, as underdressed hookers who also fight in anachronistic steampunk battles.
     When Zack Snyder asked if his message would be lost by all of the clearly sexist dialogue and imagery, he responded with, "As long as you're self-aware about it, then you're okay!"
     Ohhh, I get it. You see, Zack Snyder is aware that he's being sexist, so he's actually not being sexist. He definitely hired these actresses because they are beautiful, chose the costumes because they are small and slutty, and wrote the dialogue to be as unoffensive to a 12 year old as humanly possible, and staged the action scenes to be as ridiculous and stupid as a budget can allow, but it's okay because he knows that those things are stupid.
     That makes me feel better.

     Apart from all of my other problems with the movie, here is a quick note of the basic problem at the fim's core:
    The girls are stealing items from men in order to escape the brothel/dance club. However, whenever the girls do steal an item, we are instead treated to one of Babydoll's dance numbers. Which is, as I said before, actually a stupid action scene. So here's all of the information that is withheld for the sake of cool:
we don't see the mental institution scene that is happening because of the brothel/dance club imaginings of Babydoll, we don't get to see Babydoll actually dance, even though it is implied that she is amazing we never actually get proof, and we never see the girls actually steal anything because we're watching them kill robots on a train. If you're going to make me care about what happens to these girls, stop cutting away to a girl's imagination when the real things that put their lives at stake are happening elsewhere. There is something at stake when the girl is trying to steal a lighter from the man's pocket, but we never see that because we're watching some girl's dream about dragons. WHY? The plot progression relies on the theft that we ARE MISSING.

      In other words, suspense is impossible if we don't get to see the suspenseful scene.

     However, I do have one small praise for the film. It contains an excellent example of a Hammeo.


(Note: A Hammeo is a cameo in any film or television show by Jon Hamm. My favorite is Hamm's appearance as a TV Repairman in The Sarah Silverman Program)

What is the "Magical Music Cue"?

          People tend to geek about the scene in The Royal Tenenbaums where Gwyneth Paltrow exits a bus to the tune of Nico's "These Days." I enjoy it too. The image of Margot Tenenbaum moving in dream-like slow motion toward the audience is supplemented perfectly by the song, and it is usually one of the three musical moments of recent films that people my age cite as being their introduction to the power of music in cinema. The other two moments include, inevitably, Requiem for a Dream's "Lux Aterna" sequence composed by Clint Mansell and Fight Club's "Where is My Mind" Pixies finisher.

         This fact has actually turned into something of a game. I've gotten into the habit of asking fellow movie-lovers their favorite movie-music moments. 9 times out of 10, if the person is under 25 and over 18, it is one of the three scenes mentioned above.

         Of course, there are exceptions. Some people might mention one of the many worthy sections of I'm Not There, or perhaps the Urge Overkill "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" lip-synch in Pulp Fiction. Or maybe even the Walter Carlos Moog-fest of a Clockwork Orange score (most notably the opening shot). All perfectly good examples, I must say.

         But examples of what? Well, obviously, music in cinema. But something more, too. They're not just examples of music in movies, but they're examples of "Magical Music Cues". "Magical Music Cues", as they're sometimes called by film historians, present themselves as totally emotional, tonal, and supplemental moments that detach themselves from the film in order to stir the audience in a specific direction.

Magic?

        If this definition is difficult to wrap your mind around, and you haven't, for some reason or another, seen any of the previous examples, try checking out this perfect example from Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66, a film I more-or-less shrug about.

       As you can see, once the music is placed into the aural foreground, all hope for plot progression is thrown out the window, and the audience is just left with a stylistically jarring and emotionally compelling image. There is a marriage. The visual and audio artistry is merged into a sort of dance, each piece perfectly supplementing the other.

      Some films try to have these moments but fail to make the marriage a faithful one, with the music sometimes cheating on the image with the actors, or perhaps a special effect.

      You may think this sounds crazy, but try to remember one of these shocking infidelities: the painful use of any song at any point in Peter Jackson's horrendously clumsy The Lovely Bones (specifically the use of The Hollies' "Long Cool Woman" in what is supposed to be a heart-wrenchingly dramatic sequence where Susie's brother almost dies), the poor man's golden era singing of Liza Minnelli in Martin Scorsese's unfortunate New York, New York, and of course the nauseating display of sentimentality at the end of Pay It Forward with "Calling All Angels" by Jane Siberry.

      All of these examples of lousy attempts at "Magical Movie Cues" are by filmmakers who may have felt their films were lacking some sort of emotional punch. The good cues are designed to jump-start audiences emotionally and inspire them. I mean, basically the entirety of Baraka is one long musical cue. People tend to dig that movie. They get emotionally attached to it. Why? Because that marriage is admirably healthy.

      A recent example of a successful cue (I'm going to keep mentioning this film forever, so you'd better not get tired of it) is the use of Zbigniew Preisner's "Lacrimosa" in Terrence Malick's mesmerizing creation of the universe segment of The Tree Of Life. The perfect combination of sound and sight. A totally overwhelming piece of cinema.
   
     In addition to The Tree of Life, some more examples of my favorite cues include, in no particular order:

• The "Wise Up" scene in Magnolia
• The Ry Cooder "Cancion Mixteca" piece during the super 8 sequence in Paris, Texas
• The Nick Cave "O' Children" sequence in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
• Club Silencio, all of Club Silencio, in Mulholland Drive
• "In Heaven" in Eraserhead
• Raging Bull's Intermezzo
• Leonard Cohen's "Stranger Song" opening sequence in McCabe & Mrs. Miller
• Daft Punk's "The Grid" in Tron: Legacy
• Glen Hansard's "Say it To Me Now" in Once
• Michael Brook's "Best Unsaid" in Into The Wild
• Nick Cave's "Song for Bob" in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• James Rado's "Aquarius" in The 40 Year Old Virgin

What are some of your favorite "Magical Music Cues"? What are some of your least favorite? Let me know in the comments section or on Facebook.