InkTank

Movie Education

There I sat, the computer screen inches away from my face. I stared nervously, unwilling to look away. I kept biting my nails, a fact that I noticed only later when I finally glanced down at my war-torn nail beds. I was watching the movie Taken, a chilling action thriller that had me, at times, pacing pack and forth in my room.

The movie centers on a retired secret agent named Bryan whose seventeen year old daughter has been captured and sold into the slave trade. Although retired, he uses his skills (quite impressively, I might add) to find and save his daughter from a life of pain and torture. I knew very little about human trafficking before watching the movie. I am not quite sure if everything in the film is accurate, but it opened my eyes to a devastating tragedy.

When I crawled into bed that night, the following conversation from the movie played over and over in my head:

Synecdoche, NY (A Criticism)

Caden Cotard is a miserable man. He directs theater that he knows lacks any heart, he is constantly afraid of his own death (and is constantly ill because of it) and he can't seem to keep any kind of relationship with a woman. So he decides to stage a massive play that will capture all the truth and beauty of life in New York City. 

This is Synecdoche, NY, the new film by Charlie Kaufman. Known for writing the comic masterpieces "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," this marks Kaufman's first foray into directing. 

Synecdoche is a film with out a sense of time or context. It is filled with characters who, as time progresses, lose any sense of true identity. It is a murky piece, crammed full of ideas that the audience must wade through to get at its heart.

Slumdog Millionaire (a criticism)

Slumdog Millionaire is one of the best films made by one of the greatest living directors.

Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine) has made a career of exploring various genres and making them into terrific movies. Here he takes on the coming-of-age-in-an-india-slum genre and makes it into one of the most genuinely inspiring films of the year. The last movie I saw that impacted me like Slumdog did was Julian Schnabel's sublime Scaphandre et le papillon, Le (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

There really isn't anything wrong with this film. The acting is fantastic, the cinematography is exciting and dramatic and the plot is delightfully improbable (the same way Dickens is delightfully improbable).

I hoped to keep this review short, so that you can spend less time reading, and more time watching Slumdog Millionaire. If you have a heart, you will love it.

W. (a criticism)

(Minor Spoilers Ahead)

There is a scene at the end of Oliver Stone's "W." in which President Bush struggles to describe what lessons he has learned from the first half of the war in Iraq. He mutters and mumbles. His mispronounces some words. He looks to his cabinet for help, only to find them awkwardly looking at their shoes. This is the President Oliver Stone is showing us. He's not evil or manipulative, just a little thickheaded, and all too willing to be used by others (so long as he is "still in charge").

Oliver Stone's latest film stays away from stirring up any real controversy, but in the process it loses most of its weight. The story hits all the right beats, starting at Bush's drunken Yale days moving all the way through to the post-"mission accomplished" era of the second war in Iraq.

Hollywood Still Trying to Get Religion

It's hard to forget the wild Christian rage of 2004.

We had a double-dose of Jesus in pop-culture that year: The Passion of the Christ released by famous sometimes-glorious-sometimes-fallen star Mel Gibson, and the hip-gnostic fiction book Da Vinci Code. Suddenly, Christianity was on the news, on magazine covers.

Also in November of that year, evangelicals turned out in record numbers to re-elect President George W. Bush. They voted for him in such a dramatic percentage that it literally turned the tide of the election.

I picture the executives in Hollywood scratching their head after the success folks had marketing to what I'll call the God Crowd--perhaps final realizing that more than half of America actually believes that stuff. Since then, there have been marked attempts to tap the God Crowd. Not always just to make more money, but at times, perhaps  to be fair-and-balanced.

As a student of this sort of this, I try to keep up with it. Here are some notable recent attempts:

Glamourizing Bad Behavior, Criticizing Bad Behavior

In the L.A. Times last week, Enid Portuguez presented an interesting piece about the hit show Gossip Girl, in which the show's producer insisted that the show does not "glamorize" teen drinking or sex:

  “When people say the show glamorizes teen drinking and sex, they aren’t really watching the episodes,” said Savage. “Not all the characters drink or have sex, and when they do, it’s always put in a context. Behaviors are rooted in character. There’s decision-making, regret and consequences involved.”

For years, I've heard similar arguments about all kinds of different media and always heard similar language: "there's sex but it's not glamorized "there's drugs but it's not glamorized." I have not seen Gossip Girl nearly enough to judge one way or the other. But I think the phrase "it's not glamorized" can cover a multitude of sins. The larger question this article raises is, what do you specifically have to do to keep bad behavior from being glamourized?

End of an Era: No More Ebert and Roeper

I grew up hearing their names with a sort of awe: Siskel and Ebert. They were the two biggest names in movie critiques. Whenever there was mention of a movie, you were likely to hear "Siskel and Ebert give the movie..." Then you could count on them to either love the movie or pan it on PBS's "Siskel and Ebert and the movies." Their movie critiques, while not always universally agreed upon, were nonetheless appreciated.

Gene Siskel passed away in 1999 and the show became "Ebert and Roper and the movies" in 2001. But news yesterday suggests the end of an era. Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper have stepped down from the show and expressed that they will not return.

But to a certain extent, their influence was gone long before they left.

Why 'The Happening' Is Happening

I've been told by numerous friends that "The Happening," was, in a word, awful. I'm going to tell you why I disagree.

Return of the sequel, Part 2 (of a one-part series)

Star Wars creator George Lucas can't stay away from the box office. After releasing the final three films in his science fiction space hexology, Lucas is utilizing animation to release a new Clone Wars movie this August.

You are either with us or against us

One of the most highly anticipated sequels this year (next to The Dark Knight), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, released its trailer on Thursday of last week.

Being a Harrison Ford fan, I eagerly jumped to YouTube to watch it. However, I was deeply disappointed.