Chronicle

“Chronicle” puts a twist on the found footage drama and creates a compelling and inventive teen drama of epic proportions.

You’ve found a bottomless pit with a glowing alien object buried deep inside. Interacting with it gives you and two friends telekinetic powers. Do you use it to stop crime, unveil a government conspiracy, battle an alien invasion or turn evil?

Hell no! In “Chronicle,” you use it to fly, pull pranks and lift up girls’ skirts. God knows finding out she’s wearing black panties is more of a mystery than an Area 51 cover up.

“Chronicle” is a clever, fun, intense and at times twisted take on a high school teen drama, and for that this “found footage” film surpasses all the cliché monster or horror movies that typically litter the genre. Continue reading “Chronicle”

Warrior

“Warrior” is an ugly, jittery, annoying and contrived film that never relents in beating you.

“The Fighter” isn’t exactly “Raging Bull,” but it’s a better film than most give it credit for. To call “Warrior” just a Mixed Martial Arts “Fighter” set in Philly however is giving “Warrior” way too much credit.

Watching “Warrior” I realized all the things “The Fighter” actually does not do. It has no split screen montages, no wives telling their husbands fighting is the wrong life for a family man, no shaky cam fight scenes, no unbeatable foreign behemoth, no money problems, no dark pasts conjured out of thin air, no legal issues, no dead mother, no washed up father lamenting his glory days, no fake SportsCenter clips and most of all, no parables.

“Warrior” has all of these things, and yet lacks a minute of the fun in watching Micky Ward’s train wreck of a brother, his posse full of trashy sisters, his tart and sexy girlfriend or his commanding and memorable mother. Continue reading “Warrior”

Rapid Response: The Dirty Dozen

Only in a movie with Lee Marvin (and maybe Henry Fonda) could Charles Bronson look like less of a bad ass.

That’s kind of the appeal of “The Dirty Dozen,” a movie with a ridiculously famous cast of already massive and would-be massive stars (Jim Brown, Donald Sutherland, John Cassavetes) that was not only a shockingly violent war film but one that defined a generation of war films for years to come.

In many ways, “The Dirty Dozen’s” legacy is more interesting than the movie itself. Mark Harris’s book “Pictures at a Revolution” describes how Robert Aldrich’s film became the biggest box office hit of the year by celebrating a black man killing Germans, by appealing to a counter-culture, anti-establishment movement and by being the first war movie to outwardly call attention to the Vietnam War. Harris writes that the film reached an audience of war fans bored with the genre and craving to see some gritty, tough guy action and teens who disliked the war movies their parents did.

“It would have made a very good, very acceptable 1945 war picture. But I don’t think that a good 1945 war picture is a good 1967 war picture,” Aldrich was quoted in Harris’s book. And in that way, it was one of the many films that year that revolutionized filmmaking.

The problem is, the film remains a clumsy, long action movie that doesn’t really get interesting until the two big battles in the last hour. It spends a lot of time developing at least half of the dozen war criminals assigned to Major Reisman’s (Marvin) command, but the writing doesn’t have the sharp tenacity or wit to make it truly compelling.

Exploitation films and similar, even more polarizing fare like Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” merely two years later would surpass it in the violence department, and New Wave Hollywood directors were not far away from making less than oblique statements about the Vietnam War.

Still, it’s influence is obvious. Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is intentionally lifted from this film’s concept, not to mention the copycat Enzo Castellari version only years after “Dirty Dozen.”

But what bugged me was how almost hokey the film felt. I think the whole construction montage for instance is time that could easily be trimmed from the film, and the score really Mickey Mouse’s it in these moments as well. More time should’ve been spent highlighting the film’s theme of authority and power dynamics to make this an outwardly counter cultural film. That would’ve made it more timeless as well.

“Dirty Dozen” does aim to have fun, plain and simple, and that’s its appeal. But there are better ways to spend your time.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

James Dean’s character in “Rebel Without a Cause” is desperately searching for a type of masculinity he can actually relate to. What’s ironic about the film is that James Dean himself, along with Marlon Brando, expressed a new idea of masculinity in Hollywood actors.

And suddenly after Dean’s tragic death, “Rebel Without a Cause” spoke to America’s teenagers in a way Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne were no longer reaching them.

Nicholas Ray’s film tells the story of a teenager struggling to fit in at a new school and being forced to prove himself at every turn. We meet Jim Stark (Dean) as little more than a kid at play, awkwardly and drunkenly playing with a monkey wind up toy until he’s hauled into the police office.

His high-pitched voice and peculiar mannerisms seem to channel a different kind of masculinity from the get go, and he attracts the attention of two students, the orphan Plato (Sal Mineo) and the popular Judy (Natalie Wood), who is trying to feel closer to her distant father as she blossoms into womanhood. All of them confused by the emotions they’re feeling and the rigid catering and rules of their parents, their actions hinge on reckless but their reasons are hopelessly vague.

“Gotta do something,” Jim’s rival Buzz says to him before their Chicken Run to prove who’s the bigger man. The meaningless social rules of masculinity have turned teenagers against one another and forced them all into becoming rebels.

“Rebel Without a Cause” plays on these paradoxes to the point that the ending outcome comes across as bitter and pointless, even after Jim, Judy and Plato have all briefly lived a touching nuclear family fantasy that gives them a taste of the masculinity they’ve been missing.

The film remains very attentive to the many different angles at which a human being can feel diminished. Almost always is Jim framed at a high angle over his father, looking down at him at how little masculinity he seems to represent.

One of the film’s most powerful scenes takes place on a stairwell with Jim sandwiched between his parents in a canted angle shot. The cinematic technique is obvious, but the pathos provided by Dean’s performance is immense.

It also squanders the characters during a trip to a planetarium. The stars tower over the kids as an old man recites the truth that Earth is a miniscule part of a universe that won’t notice when we’re gone. With education like this, no wonder the kids feel conflicted and unimportant.

Dean only starred in three films in his career, and “Rebel Without a Cause,” his second to be released after Elia Kazan’s “East of Eden,” was also his first posthumous role. “Rebel” became a cult film as the legend of Dean began to blossom, and it wasn’t long before every kid on the block wanted one of Jim Stark’s bright red jackets.

But the film was even loosely intended to be a cult, exploitation film for teens in the same spirit of Brando’s “The Wild One.” The massive CinemaScope aspect ratio and vibrant colors is more suited for a lush Western than a teen drama, but the film even tacks on a couple of extended action set pieces, including a knife fight, a drag race and a shootout, that do little more than make use of the soon outdated technology. Today, some of these sequences, along with a few other light-hearted moments in between, are notoriously dated.

Dean’s mannerisms and presence as a fashion icon cemented him as a pivotal male figure in the early ‘50s, paving the way for the rise of Brando and Method Acting, the French New Wave, Elvis and the abandonment of Old Hollywood altogether. The kids watching “Rebel Without a Cause” in the ‘50s would be the young adults in the ‘60s making counter culture fare like “The Graduate,” and although the two films are drastically different, you can almost see the natural progression from Jim Stark to Benjamin Braddock.

Young people watching “Rebel Without a Cause” may giggle more than they feel the movie resonating with them on a personal level, but this remains a touching and influential American film.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

On the heels of a much-undeserved Best Picture nomination for “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” I began to wonder how it could’ve appealed to so many Academy voters. On paper, Stephen Daldry’s film is total Oscar bait, but in execution it feels more genuinely hurtful than exploitative, melodramatic and weepy.

Much of that has to do with “Extremely Loud’s” extremely unlikeable lead character, the 9-year-old Oskar Schell. Oskar is portrayed brilliantly by the first time actor Thomas Horn, who carries the film and has a strong assertion over this character’s mannerisms, but Oskar’s irritating characterization, either stemming from Jonathan Safran Foer’s popular novel of the same name, or from Eric Roth’s (“Forrest Gump,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) screenplay, does the movie wrong. Continue reading “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”

Haywire

“Haywire” is a no-frills action movie that measures what can be accomplished in a genre film.

Something with as many ass kickings as “Haywire” couldn’t possibly be called an experimental film, can it?

Steven Soderbergh built one around porn star Sasha Grey, so why not for martial arts fighter Gina Carano?

“Haywire” is a no-frills action movie that measures what can be accomplished in a genre film.

It minimizes on sweeping photography or handheld queasy cam effects and produces a stylized, precise and expertly choreographed film. Its simplicity is compelling just in admiring the craft of it all.

Carano plays Mallory Kane, a secret agent betrayed by her private contractor (Ewan McGregor), but the plot too is stripped to its bare bones to the point that the cryptic details are just filler for “Haywire’s” artsy combat set pieces.

Soderbergh gives us full-bodied fights that lovingly make use of space, his rapid editing still delineating clear angles as though he were photographing Carano in the octagon.

The gorgeous Carano makes for an unusual movie star with how at home she is during the film’s many battles.

She’s the key in a film uninterested with her striking sexuality. But Carano demands presence, and although she could serve as a better feminist icon than Fincher’s Lisbeth Salander, Carano is too tough and impressive for anyone to really notice or care.

3 ½ stars

Beating the modern action movie into shape

“Haywire” looks strikingly different from most other modern action movies. What has the action genre become in the 2000s?

There’s something depressing about watching Gina Carano kick ass in “Haywire” and then watch her lose a fight against Cris Cyborg on YouTube.

Both Carano’s movie fights and her actual work as a martial artist are gut-wrenching in their skill and toughness, but the stylized minimalism of “Haywire” is really nothing like something you would see in the Octagon.

It got me thinking how impressed I was by the craft and choreography incorporated by Steven Soderbergh. He described his style in an interview with the A.V. Club. (read the full interview here)

“We had people who could really fight, so I wanted the camera to be stationary, and through editing and movement with the camera on a dolly,” Soderbergh said. “I wanted to use wide lenses and looser shots than you’d typically see when you’re shooting action.”

But the more I thought about it, I thought about how far back I’d have to go to actually find a modern action movie that looks or feels anything like it. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?” “The Matrix?” “Enter the Dragon?”

What is the modern action movie, and is it any good? Here I’ve described a few styles and the movies that influenced them, for better or worse.

Lord of the Rings Return of the King Oiliphants

“Lord of the Rings” and The Action Extravaganza

In the 2000s there was one action movie to rule them all, and that was “The Lord of the Rings.” Peter Jackson combined brutal but fun and bloodless PG-13 action with J.R.R. Tolkien’s sweeping fantasy scope and had an instant hit.

The wars in the last two films specifically raged on endlessly to great effect, but movies as diverse as “Avatar,” “Star Trek” and “District 9” took that to mean an epic battle could substitute for a third act. Even dramas like the much-maligned “Alice in Wonderland” seemed to forget how to write a satisfying conclusion without every character fighting a pointless war.

V for Vendetta

“V for Vendetta” and The Style Junkie

“V for Vendetta” didn’t just attain cult status because of its rebellious message. Its hyper stylized aesthetic, one that borrowed from “The Matrix’s” bullet-time effects and incorporated explosions of light, color, CGI and more explosions, was unlike anything anyone had ever seen.

It wasn’t long before Zack Snyder used the look as a template for all graphic novel movies, and even worse copycats started making completely unnecessary and lame CGI universes in something like the undying “Resident Evil” franchise.

“The Bourne Supremacy” and The Grittily Realistic

The first Bourne movie was fun and all, but the series really became popular when Paul Greengrass took the helm on the second and third sequels. His films made use of a handheld camera as a method of conveying dirty, down-to-Earth visuals and jerky, energetic motion. Jason Bourne’s fights were quick and capitalized more on sound than clear visuals to deal the killing blow.

But the queasy cam has quickly gotten out of hand, resulting in hard to process action sequences without a coherent sense of cinematic space. Even Greengrass overused it in his modern warfare film “Green Zone,” and other Iraqi War movies have followed suit. The style has even migrated over into horror movies like “Cloverfield.”

Transformers Revenge of the Fallen

The Bigger Picture

All three of these styles have come to define the modern action movie in one way or another, and it’s strikingly different from “Die Hard,” “Terminator 2,” many of the Bond movies or countless more.

And some movies share all three traits to varying levels of success. When the styles are all combined well, you can get something like “The Dark Knight” or “Inception.” When they aren’t, “Transformers” is the resulting mess.

Superheroes and their batch of special effects driven action are dominating right now, so filmmakers often make a point to distance themselves from those styles. Quentin Tarantino modeled “Kill Bill” off exploitation and Kung-Fu films, “Fast Five” and the latest “Mission: Impossible” go out of their way to avoid special effects, and thrillers like “Drive” and “The Hurt Locker” are occasionally expressions of minimalism.

While some of these films are invigorating reasons to go to the movies, others can be tiresome, so it’s about time someone beat the action film into shape.

2012 Oscar Nomination Analysis

The Academy really shook up the Awards season with their 2012 Oscar Nominations.

When the Academy introduced the new rule for Best Picture nominees, they wanted an element of surprise added back into the Oscar race.

They got it.

It seemed as if we all knew what was coming as soon as the graphic was flashed on screen such that only eight nominees would make it into the Best Picture race, with “War Horse” and “The Tree of Life” being the surprises.

But as if to slap all the Oscar prognosticators in the face for thinking the Academy was predictable and boring, Academy President Tom Sherak announced “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” last, a movie long thought dead in the minds of critics and bloggers. I in fact picked all eight of the other nominees save for “Extremely Loud,” and to see it pick up not one but two nominations was something of a gut punch.

The film was critically panned, and rightfully so. What shocks me is how of all the performers in that film, Max von Sydow was the one to steal the last spot in the Best Supporting Actor category, effectively robbing Albert Brooks of a nomination for his chilling work in “Drive.”

This is the first time in several years I have not seen all the nominees prior to their announcement, but I quickly saw ‘Extremely Loud” the same afternoon. I left flabbergasted into wondering why this not only irritating and cloying film, but one that often is more literally hurtful and painful than it is melodramatic and soppy, not only has enough people who like the film but have more than five percent of people who feel it is the best movie of the year. Continue reading “2012 Oscar Nomination Analysis”

2012 Oscar Nominations Announced

“Hugo” and “The Artist” lead a field of nine films for the Best Picture Oscar after being announced by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Tuesday morning.

New rules for Best Picture voting indicated that anywhere from five to 10 films could be nominated, leaving the exact number uncertain until this morning when Academy President Tom Sherak and former nominee Jennifer Lawrence announced the full list of nominees.

The other Best Picture nominees included “The Descendants,” “Midnight in Paris,” “The Help,” “Moneyball,” “War Horse,” “The Tree of Life” and the long thought dead in the water “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”

The current Oscar frontrunner, the silent, black and white movie “The Artist,” took home 10 nominations, including for Best Director Michel Hazanivicius, Best Actor Jean Dujardin and Best Supporting Actress Berenice Bejo. Martin Scorsese’s children’s fantasy “Hugo” however made the race interesting by leading the pack with 11 nominations.

George Clooney and Brad Pitt found their long presumed spots in the Best Actor category, but fellow A-lister Leonardo DiCaprio was left out altogether in favor of Jean Dujardin, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s” Gary Oldman and “A Better Life’s” Demian Bichir. DiCaprio’s film “J. Edgar” was forgotten as well.

Also performing strongly was the comedy “Bridesmaids,” scoring a nomination for Melissa McCarthy for Best Supporting Actress and for Best Original Screenplay, despite not receiving a Best Picture nomination.

Meryl Streep received her record 17th Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” and she’ll be up against Michelle Williams, Viola Davis, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s” Rooney Mara and “Albert Nobbs’” Glenn Close.

The Academy surprised in many of the smaller categories as well, only nominating two songs from “The Muppets” and “Rio” for Best Original Song. What’s more, the Academy removed the Oscar powerhouse Pixar from contention by not nominating the poorly reviewed “Cars 2” for Best Animated Feature.

Iran’s “A Separation,” which is not only the front runner in the Best Foreign Language film category, is now also a serious contender in the Best Adapted Screenplay category.

The Academy Awards Ceremony will be held on Sunday February 26.

A full list of nominees is below: Continue reading “2012 Oscar Nominations Announced”

Drew Peterson: Untouchable

In October of 2007 when Drew Peterson’s wife Stacy went missing, we in the Chicagoland area got to hear it first as nothing more than a missing person story. Bolingbrook was a stone’s throw away from my Chicago suburb, and as the story slowly grew into a national media frenzy, it was all the more amusing because it was so close to home.

The Drew Peterson story wasn’t just an amusing media frenzy; it was OUR media frenzy, and the story just kept getting better and better.

It hit a peak when not only was there to be a Lifetime movie about Peterson, Saturday night’s “Drew Peterson: Untouchable,” but the head scratcher Rob Lowe was cast and looked surprisingly good as the former police officer.

Watching “Untouchable” was for me a strange, almost perverse guilty pleasure of feeling closer to this scandal than any other. I did not expect to find deep insight, humanization or answers in of all things a Lifetime movie, but this bland, boring and bullheaded TV movie does little other than dramatize the whole media circus into a condensed, two-hour soap.

Even on a trashy level, it pales in comparison to the ongoing amusement that was, and is, Drew Peterson’s story. Continue reading “Drew Peterson: Untouchable”