Cadillac Records

Verbatim from my short Netflix review (except for a change from a 5 star scale to my 4 star one here):

The history of Chicago blues deserves an amazing movie -- Muddy Waters, Etta James, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Howling Wolf, and many others who aren't even mentioned in this movie led the dramatic lives that only bluesmen seem to live, and at the same time changed music, Chicago, and race relations forever.

Unfortunately this movie isn't amazing. It's entertaining enough, and the star-studded cast all have incredible talent, both in acting and in making music (which all the actors do on screen rather than dubbing it in). But the script tries to cram too much in at a time and ends up failing to do justice to these men and women's lives. This movie is too scattershot, with too many characters in the ensemble given too little screen time to explain their presence. If you don't already know who Howling Wolf is, for example, this movie won't really tell you. If you don't already know of him, his character is like an inside reference that you just don't get. At the same time, the movie is too generalized and too historically inaccurate to satisfy real blues fans. And if you know the songs being sung, they are off by just enough to drive you crazy (especially, for me, the Etta James songs, no matter how talented Beyonce is).

I was so ready to adore this movie, because I adore Chicago Blues. Instead, all I can say is that it inspired me to listen to my old CDs with Etta James, Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, and all the rest, and made me want to read a real biography of the Chess family. That's enough to warrant a very solid two stars, but I'm so sad I can't give it more.

Ghost Town

Most of the time, if I say the first twenty minutes of a film were the best, and it all went downhill from there, I mean that the movie was bad. Not so here. Ghost Town started at such a high point that downhill is still pretty good. The first twenty minutes are some of the funniest I have ever seen – somehow even the opening credits of dental equipment were funny to me. (Why are plaster teeth molds funny? Not sure, but they are.) Those first twenty minutes confirm for me that Ricky Gervais may be the funniest man alive. His plays a misanthropic dentist, who seems to like his profession because it means he can stuff people’s mouths with cotton when he’s tired of listening to them. Any introvert will cringe with recognition at his desire to avoid human contact to the point of being rude. (Really, who hasn’t let those elevator doors close so you don’t have to ride with someone?)

Basically, Gervais’s character, Bertram Pincus, can see dead people because he “dies” for seven minutes during a routine colonoscopy. His discovery of this ability, and the reason for it, are truly brilliant, and Kristen Wiig (of SNL) has never been as hilarious as she is playing the surgeon who operated on him. Greg Kinnear plays Frank Herlihy, one of these ghosts, and he somehow hits a perfect note of charming and sleazy. Frank claims to have unfinished business that consists of breaking up his widow’s impending marriage, and annoys Bertram until he agrees to help. Of course, in so doing, Bertram ends up falling in love with the wife (Tea Leoni).

Thus begins the second part of the story, which is slightly less funny than the first part. Pincus cracks jokes with the widow, and Gervais is a genuinely good joke teller. He’s funny, but it’s no longer as heartbreakingly hilarious. Misanthropic avoidance of people was better than cracking jokes about how funny Chinese names are.

The third and last part of the movie is the weakest, but it’s still satisfactory. In the end, you have to get rid of some of these ghosts, which means Bertram Pincus must eventually crack and be a passably good guy. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I actually did want his character to grow, unlike Roger Ebert – the movie just folds and ties up loose ends. This leads to some saccharin moments, and the main “revelation” of the movie about the nature of ghosts isn’t actually that spectacular. But since we do hope for a happy ending, which is a hard note to hit in a story about dead people and misanthropes, the fact that it didn’t come off as totally unpalatable is pretty impressive.

But if you don’t like the sugary ending, and find yourself missing the brilliant acidity of Bertram Pincus before he had a change of heart, I suggest you do what I did: after watching, just go back and watch those first twenty minutes again.

Wallace and Gromit Are Back

So very excited that the boys are back. Official site and less official video

Wanted

This is for John Mark.

Imagine a group of twenty-something men -- men of my generation -- in a room together talking about their favorite things. Video games, a hot chick in leather (but not too much), stuff blowing up.

Then imagine this group of men put all of their favorite things in a movie. Sound of Music, I assure you, it would not be.

Instead, you'd get what is called a summer blockbuster movie. And if one of the men in that hypothetical room vaguely remembers Greek mythology from high school, you'd get the movie Wanted. The only way to describe it is an excess -- and I do mean excess -- of all things a post-adolescent boy would consider "badass." It's got Angelina Jolie shooting things, Morgan Freeman being the wise godlike figure, and a Fight Club set-up with the main character (played by James McAvoy, who really can do better) living a zombie-like existence until he is rescued to a group of elite fighters who spend about as much screen time beating each other up as training as killing targets. Plus, most of the shots work perfectly as a video game set up. What more could a boy want? A Rocky reference or two? Oh, they are there, too (mmm . . . meat on hooks . . .). Oh, and throw in a little bit of the Matrix for good measure -- those special effects were cool, right? And everyone's mind was blown by the whole existential "There is no spoon" discussion. Might as well throw in some fate/pre-determination stuff here, too.

It is a movie that revels in excess, and this can be entertaining, but only if you've already got a high tolerance for that sort of thing. The combination of influences was a merry jumble, if somewhat overwhelming, and I must admit I enjoyed the unselfconscious stupidity of throwing all those movie and pseudo-philosophical references into a grab bag of ideas and visuals. However, if you, like me, are not used to playing Grand Theft Auto for hours on end, sitting through so many fight scenes with frenetic editing and pounding hard rock soundtrack becomes a little numbing to the senses. I'd say I liked about half of the movie and for the rest worried about an impending headache.

My friend's favorite part of the movie was when our "hero" -- I really hate calling him that -- hits someone with a keyboard. Keys fly off (as well as a tooth), and they magically align into two angry words I won't type here, but suffice it to say that the second one was "you."

This effect was clever, and somewhat funny, but I think it works a lot better in its original comic book (or is it "graphic novel"?) form. I haven't read any of the original source, but I suspect a form that uses the written word doesn't have as much trouble having to explain if the words spelled out in a picture are actually spelled out in that picture's world. When a superhero hits the villain with a POW! written in a starburst, I've never thought about where that starburst came from. But when a bullet said the word "Goodbye" in this movie, I was distracted from the moment by the nagging question, "Is that actually written there? Does it appear magically, or was it already on the bullet when it was loaded, therefore not having any specific significance in this situation?" Some parts of the comic book medium just don't work as well in a movie.

I suppose I could summarize the plot a bit, but it doesn't really matter. James McAvoy is a sadsack temp who discovers his father was part of an elite group of assassins called the Fraternity. He gets recruited, nominally to kill the man who killed his father, and quickly learns how to fight, get bloody, and curve bullets. Apparently the Fraternity has a couple of magical items in its possession. First, a magical loom's threads tell the Fraternity who should be killed (imagine the Fraternity to the be the Three Fates with guns). Second, magical paraffin wax baths serve the useful plot device of helping the assassins recover from their rough-and-tumble ways.

James McAvoy's character quickly becomes as badass as the rest of the gang, and then surpasses them in badassness when he discovers a secret of the Fraternity and decides to Do What Is Right -- which involves a lot of blowing stuff up. In fact, one of his old jackass friends, after being beaten up by him, intones in an awed voice that the friend he once took advantage of is now "the man." You can almost hear the voices of those young men writing the script bowing down to the awesomeness of the character they have just created.

Unfortunately no one has told those young writers that trying really hard to be badass doesn't actually make someone badass. You have to be a little cooler, a little more sleek, a little more aloof. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but give me Keanu and the half-baked mysticism of the Matrix any day.

1.5 stars

Smart People

Smart People fits into the mass-audience pseudo-indie film category that some of the most popular movies of the past few years (Juno, Napoleon Dynamite) come from. But with over-exposure comes being over-done. This is a passably enjoyable film, exhibiting both the best and the worst of the genre.
On one hand, all the actors (except SJP, who mostly just looks like she's mixing Family Stone with SATC and hoping that'll pass as acting) inhabit their characters incredibly, revealing their fear and vulnerability under the hard exteriors that come with being "smart" and "successful." I really loved the poignancy of Ellen Page's character -- a high school girl whose desire to live up to her father has sapped her of her childhood. Dennis Quaid, as lonely, over-compensating misanthropic professor, is also amazing.
Unfortunately, the great performing suffered from a script at times too obvious ("We're smart people; we'll figure it out" is a bit of a 2x4, no?) and direction too blatant (a brilliant bit with Thomas Haden Church's character posting signs on telephone poles is almost ruined by calling too much attention to the gag). And, the story has too many haphazard events unnecessary to the resolution of the film (I'm thinking mostly of the son's girlfriend, the recommendation letter, and the pregnancy).
In the end, though I enjoyed it, I wish the movie had lived up to its name and been a little more, well, smart.

2.5 stars.