Summer Film Famine

After several false starts, I finally managed to pry myself away from home on the last day of my vacation and found my way into a movie theater, the first time since DJANGO UNCHAINED. In retrospect, I should have found something else to occupy my time. Like whittling.

As a lifelong cinephile, it pains me to my core to admit my increasing apathy concerning the state of film today. The passion is going out of the romance and it's breaking my heart. My attendance to my local multiplex or any cinema for that matter has dwindled down to rare occasions. While I hesitate to ring the death knell for the movie going experience, the truth of the matter is that I
feel partially responsible for its possible extinction.

Frankly, the lack of desirable product in the marketplace makes it difficult to care. This was no more evident than when I scanned Entertainment Weekly's Summer Movie Preview issue back in April and barely mustered up an audible "Meh".It just seemed more of the same, summer reruns, Hollywood-style with rehashes of all too familiar formulas: remakes, sequels, superheroes and generic sci-fi, giving me an interest rate of nil. Summertime is normally chock full o' fluff at the multiplex, so that isn't a surprise. The 2013 fluff model is more recycled than ever as though it's helping the environment. The lack of counter programming was appalling. A few held a glimmer of promise, but nothing held that Must See Movie factor.

I opted for ELYSIUM, mainly for writer/director Neill Blomkamp whose DISTRICT 9 garnered a deserved Best Picture Oscar nod after its release in 2009. Unfortunately, his new film has that been there/done that look and tone that made it feel like a sequel to his superior debut. It is apparent that Blomkamp is a visionary, but he seems disappointingly short-sighted, tossing in ideas and conceits from films, stories and TV shows into a Cuisinart and slathering it with his own warmed-over gravy. Matt Damon's Everyman persona serves him well as the hero of the piece, though without much distinction. Shartto Copley, so wonderful in DISTRICT 9, is so miserably annoying here. And Jodie Foster wins the Madonna Misguided Accent Award for this, the worst performance of her career. Some action sequences in ELYSIUM delivered necessary punch, enough to fill a movie trailer but not a whole film. By the end credits, Blomkamp's sophomoric sophomore effort was about as nutritious and satisfying as as a leftover Happy Meal.

So I chose badly. Big deal. I let the lauded FRUITVALE STATION slip through my fingers and could have caught BLUE JASMINE instead of ELYSIUM but I missed the showing by a half-hour. Oh, the sluggishness that apathy produces...

There is hope in this upcoming Fall crop of films coming up with new works by favorites of mine like Martin Scorsese, The Coen Brothers, David O. Russell and Alexander Payne, though many nabobs and nitwits will ignorantly label their work Oscar bait. And then there is Mark Cousins' documentary THE STORY OF FILM, an extensive history lesson as soon through fresh eyes and currently showing in weekly installments on TCM through December. It is a celebration of the art of cinema from the esoteric to its most commercial, a reminder of film's power and beauty from its humble beginnings through its finest hours and how, as I've said so myself, in the dark, we can see the light.

The irony that I am watching that particular show on TV doesn't escape me, but it doesn't matter. It helps restore the passion that has waned in the past couple of years. As for my displeasure over this last season, well, maybe I'm just not cut out for summer romances any longer.

The Best of 2009

Overall, 2009 was a decent year for entertainment, but not exactly exemplary. Almost everything that made my list had so many flaws they wouldn't have made it on better years. Still, I managed to come up with quite a few all-time favorites in the process.

Best TV Series: MAD MEN

By focusing on the year 1963, Matthew Weiner's brilliant series charted a pivotal course for his show during this pivotal time in history.

Best moment: a shaken Don Draper coming to grips with the truth in the episode entitled THE GYPSY AND THE HOBO with the haunting tagline "Who are you supposed to be?"

Second best: Office party lawn mower in GUY WALKS INTO AN ADVERTISING AGENCY

Best CD

DIG, LAZARUS, DIG by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

I played the beejus outta this sucker. Favorite cut: Lie Down Here and Be My Girl.

Best Book

PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW HOLLYWOOD by Mark Harris-One of the best books about the movies I've ever read. All about the transitional year of 1967, focusing on the five films nominated for Best Picture Oscars-THE GRADUATE, GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?, BONNIE AND CLYDE, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and best of all DOCTOR DOOLITTLE.

Best Films (many have a 2008 release date, but I saw them in 2009. Don't like it? Lump it.)

10. PONYO-I just had to see a Hayao Miyazaki anime on the big screen and was rewarded handsomely. While PONYO is almost too cute, Miyazaki kept my cynical soul at bay with his brilliant artistic sensibilities.

9. CORALINE-Score one for Portland's Laika Studios. Henry Selick's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's tale ran circles around NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. The bittersweet ending of this victory is that Laika may not be able to follow up, laying off a major chunk of their workforce and the exiting of Selick. Oh well. One's better than none.

8. DISTRICT 9-Neill Blomkamp's Apartheid allegory with aliens in South Africa was the best sci-fi of the year. In a just world, Sharlto Copley would get a Best Actor nod.

7. WATCHMEN-Unfilmable? Probably, but Zack Snyder made a grand stab at Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel (I know it was a comic book mini-series first. Back off, nerds) and succeeded in a very high percentile.

6. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD-Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet hate suburbia. If you don't believe it from AMERICAN BEAUTY and LITTLE MONSTERS, this one clinches it and was unduly snubbed at the Oscars. A fine film, but you'll want to drink afterwards...a lot.

5.THE WRESTLER-Mickey Rourke was robbed! Let's get a rematch with Sean Penn...this time...Hell in a Cell!

4. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS-Quentin Tarantino lives to fight another day. It's a bingo!

3. THE HURT LOCKER-Katherine Bigelow finally has something to stand beside her debut masterwork NEAR DARK. Very possibly the most suspenseful film of the decade...and starring former Palace Showboat Player Jeremy Renner. Who knew?

2. UP-The sweetest damn film of this or any other year.

1. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE-One of the best movie-movies ever. A modern-day fairy tale that has my favorite love story and a parable for the ages.

Why was it the best?

D. It is written.

NEXT:

The Best of the Decade

Summer Has Left the Building

Well, that's the end of that. Labor Day has come and gone. Now is the time to put your white shoes

away for another year 'cuz summer is outta here. The cinema was chock full o' the usual crap, lotsa toys made into disposable garbage for the landfill, but I was able to mine a few nuggets here and there. Among them:


STAR TREK-Totally worth the dollar admission I paid to see it in second-run. This re-booting of another franchise didn't exactly set my phasers on stun. As TREK movies go, it ranks very high, the gold standard (well, gold plated anyway) still being the great WRATH OF KHAN, but I find it hard to get to worked up about yet another TREK movie. It turned out to be a competent, entertaining piece of work that I have trouble recalling anything memorable or significant beyond Zachary Quinto's Spock. The rest of the cast were all adequate enough, but I find it hard to believe Paramount will be able to reassemble this cast intact beyond the next installment. A good effort, but honestly, what's all the hub-bub, bub?

And what the hell is all the backlash against THE NEXT GENERATION all of a sudden? TNG was a better TV show than the original, but the original had better theatrical films. Maybe if Nicholas Meyer directed a TNG film instead of Jonathan Frakes, they would have had something.

DRAG ME TO HELL-Sam Raimi's attempt to recapture his EVIL DEAD credo after spending the last decade in mega-blockbuster film making kind of flounder, albeit with lots of the gory slapstick for which he is most famous. It's too bad he didn't totally commit to the project, relying too much on Hollywood bombast, dragging his picture out about 15 minutes too long. Star Allison Lohman should get the Good Sport of the Year award for what Raimi put her through, but actually the film would have benefited from a female Bruce Campbell, an actress that could go way over the top and back again. Ultimately, a good future rental with plenty of decent sight gags-both literally and figuratively.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS- Once again, Quentin Tarantino proves that there is nothing more he loves than the sound of his own voice, something that worked so much against him on his last work, the wretched DEATH PROOF, that he almost lost all creditability with this one singularly horrible film. This time, however, he returns to form with his crazy-ass combination OF THE DIRTY DOZEN and CINEMA PARADISO. This is almost his bloody valentine to film itself, a geek forever sampling works from the world cinema while trying, sometimes in vain, to maintain his voice. Sometimes, his tributes take me completely out of the film, like much of the Ennio Morricone music, mainly because I know what movies they came from initially. And the theme from the CAT PEOPLE remake...so far out of left field that I was actually enchanted when I should have been sneering. Quentin...you big goof. I wanted more of the Basterds themselves. I think they were short-changed. How about a little scalping tutorial or some kind of training for these guys? I also would have welcomed a battle scene. Tarantino can stage action beautifully, but he's kinda stingy here except for the superb climax. I could have done without the Mike Myers cameo also. Brad Pitt? He's one of the best as far as I'm concerned. When he plays goofy, as BURN AFTER READING or TRUE ROMANCE, he's aces in my book. His reading of "BONE JORNO" had me rolling. The breakout stars have to be Melanie Laurent as Shoshanna/Emmauel Mimieux-beautiful, sad and mighty damn fierce and of course the much-heralded Christoph Waltz as Hans "That's a bingo!" Landa, the best villain of the new millennium. With his giant head, Waltz looks like a real-life Gerry and Sylvia Anderson puppet. Shortcomings aside, 2/12 hours went by like nothing. I actually wanted more. In the end, Quentin got a bingo.

DISTRICT 9- I'll gladly jump on this bandwagon to proclaim Neill Blomcamp's sci-fi film the best movie of the summer and of 2009 thus far. Imagine STARSHIP TROOPERS (satire included)
mashed together with Cronenberg's remake of THE FLY in the framework of a South African version of THE OFFICE and you've got yourself just a fabulous piece of film making, miles above the stench of Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS or GI JOE: THE RISE OF CRAPPY SUMMER FILMS. Sharlto Copley is brilliant as the weaselly little bureaucrat who is unfortunately transformed into an alien, making him more human in the process. An exciting, funny, sometimes gross and finally heart-breaking work, DISTRICT 9 is divine. That's right. I said it.

And once again, I treated myself by watching DISTRICT 9 at the Roseway Theater, the best venue in the Portland area. Beautifully crisp digital projection and superb sound helped push this baby over the top for me. This was a 50 mile round trip from my home that I didn't mind at all.

Sometimes you have to go the extra mile and that's the fact, Jack.