(Updated 2/23/11)

First of all, I had somewhat mixed feelings about the movie going into it.  It’s no secret that M. Night Shyamalan has done much to whittle away all of the cache he had with such movies as Signs, Unbreakable, and most notably The Sixth Sense.  This downward spiral has culminated for me with The Happening, a movie so utterly ridiculous that I can never take Mark Wahlberg seriously as an actor again.  Like many people I viewed the attachment of Shyamalan’s name to the movie as a negative rather than a positive.  On other hand, I knew that the movie was only conceived and produced by him, with the screenplay and directing done by others; thus, I also thought that, given an interesting premise, the movie would be worth seeing.

Overall, I enjoyed Devil; it certainly has its issues, but I came away from the movie with more positive feelings.  I thought the major theme of the movie was well presented and executed, and it also worked (for the most part) as a horror film, keeping the suspense up throughout.  Some of the imagery was interesting as well, although I have to admit that I’m a sucker to creepy things flashed quickly on a screen.

There were several missteps in the film, however, that keep it from being really good.  The narration by the security guard Ramirez, for instance, is completely unnecessary and more of a distraction than anything; everything he says in the narration could have been said by his character in actual dialogue or was not that important.  The movie also has one glaring example of “horror-movie idiot syndrome” where a character breaks one of the cardinal safety rules that I learned as a kid, and it’s so obviously a bad idea that it almost throws the movie.  I will admit, however, that one negative I had against the movie actually turned into an almost positive.  To avoid spoiling too much, I’ll just say that a character does something early on that struck me as a false move but that makes sense once I thought about it.

On the whole, I think Devil is worth a rental (especially if you’re only paying a buck to see it); I was well entertained.  It prompted some good, interesting conversation as well, which I always think is a positive, at least when it’s not making fun of the movie we’ve just watched. ]]> http://rosenguild.com/2011/01/21/red-box-rental-review-devil/feed/ 0 http://rosenguild.com/2010/10/03/brick-high-school-noir/ http://rosenguild.com/2010/10/03/brick-high-school-noir/#comments Sun, 03 Oct 2010 17:27:59 +0000 duane http://rosenguild.com/?p=309 Jen and I recently had a bit of a Netflix movie marathon which included Donnie Darko (starring Jake Gyllenhaal), Neverwas (starring Andrew Eckhart, Britney Murphy, and Ian McKellan) and Killer Klowns From Outer Space (starring almost no one of note). Of each of these movies, Brick (with Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was the most interesting because I didn’t know what to expect.

Essentially, the film exposes the inherent absurdity of teenage cliques by using the motifs of film noir.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, Brendon, is a loner existing outside of the cliques of high school (shown by his eating lunch by himself behind a building).  His old girlfriend, Emily, contacts him after two months stating that she’s in trouble and needs his help, and thus Brendan is drawn into the underground world of high school as he tracks down where Emily has gone.

Many movies that deal with high school cliques and drugs approach the subject seriously, but there is also a tradition of movies that take a more surreal and ironic view, such as Heathers.  The humor in Brick works on a different level than that in other teen movies, such as Mean Girls. While funny, movies like Mean Girls stay firmly in mainstream Hollywood.  A big part of what makes Brick work for me is that it couches everything in film noir tropes.

Film noir is perhaps the best example of adult taking everything super seriously.  Even when it presents you with something that would be ridiculous in real life, film noir doesn’t blink.  In many ways it’s similar to melodrama.  For melodrama to work, the creators have to go all the way with it, and the same is true with film noir.  If at any point the creators let up, if reality intrudes too much in the story, the suspension of disbelief is broken everything else the film does is discredited.  I’m not an expert of film noir, Brick maintains its film noir trappings all the way to the end.  While I laughed often throughout the film (Lukas Haas’s character, the Pin, was often the subject of my laughter), the film never laughs at itself.

In this way, translating this genre to high school was perfect.  High schoolers are notorious for taking everything so seriously; the littlest thing can be “the end of the world.”  Sometimes this does result in real-life tragedy, but the majority of the time we make it through all of the world-ending cataclysms to become adults.

That’s not to say that serious things don’t happen in this film.  At the beginning of the film, Brendan is staring at Emily’s dead body (much of the film is told in flashback, utilizing another film noir trope), and just like in any film noir story, other people die; the actions of the characters always have consequences.  But the point is not a morality tale, and in many ways that’s why Brick works.  The film deals with its issues, exposes the absurdity of high-school relationships and the dangers of drugs, while not preaching at the audience.  I’m not saying this would be an effective deterrent, that showing this film to teenagers would somehow give them the realization that doing drugs and treating each like crap is a bad idea, but that’s not (and shouldn’t be) its purpose.  Only real relationships, not movies, video games, tv, or music, can do that.  And maybe that’s the point.  While I know that anyone familiar with film noir will get something out of this, for those of us that deal with teenagers all day, this film resonates in weird and interesting ways that make it very good.

Neither of us had any idea what to expect going into this film, and I think that helped.  Normally, this is a movie that I would pass on in the theaters, since on th surface it’s a collection of cliches.  First, it’s another exorcism horror movie, which has probably not been done better than The Exorcist back in 1973.  Second, it’s another fake documentary horror movie ala The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. And to a certain extent it doesn’t rise above these cliches.  Much of what you see are things you would expect to see, such as the possessed girl vomiting (although non-projectile) and running around in the dark with a camera.  But I think that the filmmakers took their audience’s familiarity with the tropes of these genres into account, and it is here that this film becomes interesting.

The central character of the movie is Cotton Marcus, an evangelical preacher well known for rousing (if superficial) sermons, a theatrical flair, and performing exorcisms.  He began preaching as a kid under the tutelage of his preacher father, and performed his first exorcism at ten.  He no longer believes in God, however, and has just been going through the motions for years.  Even though the exorcisms he performs are elaborate hoaxes, the news story of the death of an autistic boy during a botched exorcism has convinced him to give up exorcisms and expose them as  hoaxes with the hope of dissuading others.  To this end he hires a documentary crew to film his last exorcism.

The suspension of disbelief is a necessity for the audience in any movie, and when The Last Exorcism keeps its main theme (belief) in the foreground, it’s at its best.  Throughout most of the movie, Marcus, his film crew and the audience struggle with what they believe is happening.  Is the girl actually possessed?  Is her father somehow involved or responsible?  These questions are raised constantly during the movie, and I thought this was a good way to play with the cliches and include the audience in the movie.

Unfortunately it is just in that suspension of disbelief that the movie falls flat.  After raising so many questions about the existence of the supernatural, something that is done very slowly and deliberately, the ending felt like it came out of nowhere.  For just that reason, I just didn’t believe it at the time.  I do think that some of the plot holes can be filled in after thinking about them for a bit, and both Jen and I found it interesting enough to talk about all through lunch and later.  But I also think that the movie still didn’t do enough to convince me that the ending is what should have (or even could have) happened.

When I heard that Coraline was going to be made into a feature film, I was very excited, and I enjoyed seeing the first trailer for it in the theater. I was, to be sure, annoyed that Gaiman’s name was not giving top or second billing in that trailer; in fact, he wasn’t even mentioned. Instead, the chief name was that of Henry Sellick.

If the name Henry Sellick is not familiar to you, that’s primarily because one of his best works is usually ascribed to Tim Burton: The Nightmare Before Christmas. While Burton was involved in the creation and production, much of the work, including the direction, was done by Sellick. That film is a perfect example of what I mentioned above: a clever, quirky children’s story that appeals to adults as well, and giving the tone of Nightmare, Selllick was a good choice for the creator and director of Coraline as a film.

However, after having finally watched it, I have to admit that I am, to a certain extent, disappointed.

And, I kinda feel bad about that.

See, I think Coraline is, independent of the source material, a good film. Henry Sellick makes fine, living, colorful worlds with interesting characters. I enjoyed the performances of all the voice actors: Teri Hatcher is great as the mother and other mother, John Hodgman’s father is, although not British (a small quibble I won’t mention again) spot on, and Keith David’s cat is appropriately smug. Dakota Fanning’s Coraline fits very well, and the others are great.  The film is also beautiful to look at. I haven’t researched how they achieved all of the animation effects, but there’s a wonderful dichotomy between what looks like computer animation and real world textures. Everything has a depth to it, and it’s wonderful to look at. There are scenes that are obviously meant to appeal to those watching the 3D version, but these work appropriately in 2D, and I didn’t feel pulled out of the film because of them.

Given how well everything works, it remains to find a reason for my disappointment. A part of it definitely comes from plot and character differences between the movie and the book, and this is one of those conundrums that fans of any book often find themselves in when it’s adapted to a movie. We want the movie to be exactly like the book, but we understand it cannot be. However, although we understand that it cannot be, we still (however slightly) resent the movie for not being the book. Admittedly, it’s not fair at all, but it’s just the way it is. No matter how much I try, I cannot approach this movie as someone who hasn’t read the book.  So take the following criticisms with a grain (or even a shaker) of salt.

First, I felt the character of Wybie to be completely unnecessary. That’s not to say I don’t understand why Sellick wrote him in (which I suppose to be to give boys a character to identify with and to give Coraline someone her own age to interact with), but I think it was not needed. What he did do was to take screen time away from Coraline’s interactions with the other characters, and I think this was a mistake. Wybie’s presence necessitates that some really great moments (especially between Coraline and the cat) had to be left out for time’s sake, which is, I think, always a problem.

Second, I didn’t care for the reordering of parts of the plot, specifically the number of times Coraline goes to and from the other world. Sellick adds one extra to-and-fro, and I feel this alters the dramatic tension. I think this might be one instance where the 3D imposed itself on the story; perhaps Sellick added one more journey to utilize the tunnel between worlds for the 3D version. Also, Coraline gets locked up with the ghost children earlier here, whereas in the book her parents are already missing and she has gone back to retrieve them. The separation of these events (her going back to get her parents and meeting the ghost children) weakens the story from a dramatic and thematic perspective.

My last criticism is really the reason that I think I was disappointed by Sellick’s Coraline. Although parts of the movie maintain some of the tone of the book, overall the book has a darker tone; the other world is not quite as happy, and there is more of a sense of danger even from the beginning. I suppose some people (perhaps Sellick himself) felt that making the other world lighter made it more appealing to Coraline, but I think this misses a key point of Coraline’s character. She is bored with the real world and craves something more interesting, even if it’s a little dangerous. And this is, for me, a completely believable character trait in a kid. For example, in the movie, Coraline is lured to the door in the drawing room by Mr. Bobo’s jumping mice. Certainly, this makes sense; the jumping mice are very cute. But in the book, Coraline is drawn to the door by hearing it creak open and by seeing a small dark shadow flit out from her room and into the drawing room. While this is much more creepy than Sellick’s version, the fact that Coraline is interested in the shadow and the creaking door fits with her character, and I think it makes her a more interesting and stronger character than just some girl chasing something cute.

Interestingly enough, there is one change in the movie that I think works. I like the way the other mother was portrayed as more like Coraline’s real mother. The reason I think this works is that this accentuates the weirdness of her button eyes, and in this way she comes across more disturbing than if the eyes were just one of many differences.

Given all of that, I did enjoy Sellick’s Coraline. It was fun to watch and continues the tradition of children’s entertainment that adults can enjoy as well.

UPDATE: Having watched the film again, I wanted to comment that I definitely appreciate it more the second time.  I think watching Coraline the first time worked out any disappointments/expectations that I had going in.  Now that all that’s worked out, I can enjoy the film on its own merits.

“We’re excluding the young, minorities, environmentalists, pro-choice – the list goes on. Ideological purity is not the ticket to the promise land.”

Problems with this quote:

1) Snowe commits one of the greatest offenses of the left: group everybody up instead of treating them as individuals. As a writer, I’m personally offended by her grouping of unlike things, but it is also an ideological problem. First, the young and minorities are two “groups” that have things in common that have little to do with beliefs and ideas. There are conservative young people, liberal young people, and moderate young people. There are conservative minorities, liberal minorities, and moderate minorities. Environmentalism and pro-choice are ideological positions, and they lead us to point two:

2) What is the point of having a political party if there isn’t a common ideology? People that believe and think as the majority of Democrats do should be Democrats. Perhaps Senator Snowe could explain why she’s a Republican? You see, a party cannot represent everyone; if it could, there would only be one political party. Certainly there will be disagreements in a party, but in general those disagreements are not over fundamental ideological principals; otherwise, the party should split, just as the Democratic-Republicans did in the early 1800s.

A large part of point number two is that different people have different priorities. For example, I am pro-life, but that is not my number one consideration in voting for a political candidate. The issue may make a difference in choosing between two candidates who are otherwise very similar, but I am not going to vote for a socialist who happens to be pro-life. If the abortion issue is your primary issue, then you have a clear choice: pro-lifers vote Republican, pro-choicers vote Democrat. Let’s say, however, that someone is more concerned with limiting government spending, lower taxes, greater economic freedom, and national security than they are abortion, but they happen to be, if pressed, pro-choice. This person should (and usually does) vote Republican also because their priorities.

None of this requires that the Republican party change its ideology; it simply needs to know how to get its message out there.

So Arlen Specter has finally taken off his elephant suit.  It was probably about time; he could never be reliably counted on to actually stop a lot of President Obama and the Democrat’s measures to transform American society.  On many issues, there was often the possibility that he (and a couple other North Eastern Republicans) could go along with the Democrats.  It is no consolation that sometimes he’ll vote with his former party.

This is the second time that a member of the national legislature has switched parties soon after an election.  The last time, Senator Jefferies became an independent rather than totally joining the Democrats, but Jefferies defection had a more immediate impact, changing the way things were done in the Senate.  This time, at least, the defection doesn’t significantly weaken the Republicans.

The above article from the Economist misses a crucial point in its analysis of Specter’s defection.  In such a defection, and in Republican defeats in the North East (for example, there are no longer any Republicans from New England in the House), all the Economist can see is party.  Such an analysis misses out on the ideological aspects of the issue.  In the Republican defeats, all the Economist can see is the weakening of a party.  What it misses, however, is that the Republicans who lost in the North East were all of Specter’s ilk: what Rush Limbaugh and others often call “Democrat Lite.”  They are Republicans who try to win elections by being more like Democrats, rather than Republicans actually running as Republicans.  From a typical voter’s perspective, why would I vote for a Democrat-Lite Republican when I can vote for the real thing?

In the North East and other parts of the country where Democrats have been dominating, the Republican party needs to actually provide an alternative to the Democratic party line.  They need to explain to the American people why they should be elected over Democrats, what they’re going to do differently, and why their ideas will actually work.

The Economist suggests that it is the Republican party moving right that caused Specter’s separation from his state party and subsequent defection.  This, however, has the cause and effect backwards.  It is the Republican party elite’s insistance on moving the party to the left that has caused the loss of North Eastern states: many Conservatives would rather stay home than vote for a liberal Republican, and Democrats aren’t going to vote for a Republican at all.

It is because of this reality that Specter has to change parties: he will no longer be able to win as a Republican, since he was basically a Democrat anyways.

I became aware of the above story while listening to Mark Levin’s radio show today; I haven’t decided if I like his show (although Liberty and Tyranny is an excellent read), mainly because he yells a little too much for my tastes.  Anyway, he played a clip on his April 17th show from Keith Olberman’s show on MSNBC, in which Olberman was interviewing Janeane Garafalo about the Tax Day Tea Parties.

Exactly why Garafalo was on the show I’m not sure, and it should be evident from the clip and transcript linked to above that she had no idea what she was talking about.  The main gist of her argument was that the Tea Parties were all about hating a black president.  While it may be true that some of the criticisms of the president often take a personal tone (I’m not a big fan of signs stating One Big-Ass Mistake America, for example), very little of that criticism reaches anywhere near the level of mean-spiritedness that was displayed by much of the Left during the Bush Administration.

What I found interesting is that in all the hours of footage MSNBC no doubt had of the tea-parties, at no point could they actually air an example of the kind of racism Garafalo denounced.  Surely if such footage existed, it would have been broadcast all over, but the closest they can come to it are people holding signs with a hammer and sickle in the blue field of the American flag.

Without any sort of actual proof, Garafalo’s statements must be interepreted thus: any criticism of President Obama must be racially motivated.  Whether Garafalo means this sincerely or not is not really important; if she does, she’s an idiot, and if she doesn’t, she’s a liar and an idiot.  I’ll let you decide which one you like better.  However, this is just the sort of mindless “Agree with us or else” mentality the Left is famous for, all the while accusing their opponents of the same thing.

In all of this, one of the most insulting things Garafalo said in this rant is that the Tea Party attendees had no concept of history, that they don’t understand what the Boston Tea Party was about.  Let’s examine that for a moment, however, and see what the Boston Tea Party was  about.

A quick perusal of the Wikipeida article on the Boston Tea Party gives us what we need.  There were two major issues that the Boston Tea Party was about.  The first and most well known is “Taxation without representation,” the famous slogan of the American Revolution.  Garafalo is correct that we do not (ostensibly) have “Taxation without representation” in the United States.  However, the second issue is the one that is most applicable today.  The protestors were also protesting that their taxes were going to subsidize the government-sponsored monopoly of the British East India Company.

The relevance of this should be obvious: government taxation going to a private company and the subversion the open market (“smuggling”).  The Boston Tea Party is a perfect example of a protest against government interferrence in the open market and unfair taxation.  Perhaps Garafalo should reexamine the history for herself.