Review: Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop

“Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop” lacks drama or insight into the most likeable man in comedy because it assumes we haven’t heard of him.

The documentary “Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop” seems to be intended for people who have never heard of Conan O’Brien and would like to learn why he’s such a likeable person.

The problem is, everyone knows who Conan is. Everyone certainly knows who Conan is after the entire NBC Late Night fiasco dubbed “Lenogate.” He came out of that mess a kicked down champion, and the world loves Conan the man, even if not everyone adores his show.

So why do I need to watch a documentary without drama or insight only to affirm that Conan is in fact one of the nicest people in show business? Continue reading “Review: Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop”

Rapid Response: Sweet Smell of Success

 

There’s a jazz quintet featured in the credits before “Sweet Smell of Success” that makes a few appearances throughout this journalistic and cerebral noir. It’s fitting because the film’s dialogue is executed in such a devilishly playful dance as though it were trading off jazz riffs and improvisation, offering hints of beauty and sultry sex appeal the way any good jazz number should.

“Sweet Smell of Success” is a contender for best film dialogue ever written. Everything that’s said is punched out with such speed, vigor, bite and wit. No one ever says precisely what they mean and they all speak in clever and cynical analogies, metaphors and snarky back talk. The whole thing is so modern, so harsh and so intellectually biting. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Sweet Smell of Success”

The Netflix and Qwikster debacle

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It’s not because I myself potentially jeopardized and certainly embarrassed a media entity that single-handedly revolutionized the way people in the 21st Century watch movies and TV.

It’s because I didn’t write about this mess sooner.

The opening statement comes verbatim from an email that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sent to all subscribers apologizing for first raising Netflix’s prices, sweeping this news under the radar until it hit everyone by surprise, and then spin it in press releases that this was actually a good thing.

That was a mistake Netflix made, and now they’re back in the news again two months later with Phase 2 of their “frustrate everyone who has already sold their souls to us” campaign.

They’ve announced that the two components of Netflix that has made the company what it is is now splitting into two separate entities. The site that manages the streaming will still be called Netflix, and the completely different site that handles only DVD streaming will be called Qwikster. Continue reading “The Netflix and Qwikster debacle”

Drive

Samurai don’t wear a robe or carry a sword anymore, but they still exist. They wear driving gloves and carry a hammer to nail a bullet into a thug’s forehead.

“Drive”’s nameless anti-hero possesses the same focus, patience and loyalty of his feudal Japanese ancestors, and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn shares the same pacing and cinematic flourish as his Asian, French and Italian counterparts. Continue reading “Drive”

Rapid Response: Gates of Heaven

Errol Morris’s debute documentary “Gates of Heaven” remains a beguiling and fascinating movie.

I may have just watched one of the most controversial, intensely debated and best movies ever made without even knowing it. That is the enigma of Errol Morris, who’s legendary mystique started with this film in 1978, “Gates of Heaven.”

The film is a documentary about a man who starts a pet cemetery, fails, has over 450 pets displaced to yet another cemetery, and then about the people who work there and take their job very seriously.

It is a damned peculiar documentary. It is not a documentary that advocates political or social change or provides a thorough historical document of people’s lives. It tells a story of these people who live in California and does not offer any commentary or internal narration as to what it thinks about them.

The same is true of Morris’s great new film “Tabloid,” in which we can’t quite believe it all to be true, yet Morris never tells what to believe nor give us any reason to doubt any of it. But watching “Tabloid,” there’s no question that watching much of it is intended to be outrageous and shockingly hilarious, even if he does wholeheartedly sympathize with the woman who raped a Mormon (don’t ask).

“Gates of Heaven” is much more subtle. The film’s ironic, sardonic twists are not necessarily intended for comic relief. But Roger Ebert’s Great Movies review of the film, one in which he refers to the time he called “Gates of Heaven” one of the 10 best movies ever made, gives me the sense that I am not alone in this feeling. “The film they made has become an underground legend, a litmus test for audiences, who cannot decide if it is serious or satirical, funny or sad, sympathetic or mocking,” he writes. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Gates of Heaven”

Rapid Response: Airplane!

 

I watched “Airplane!” an embarrassing number of times as a teenager. I had seen it so many times that I convinced myself it was one of my favorite movies that I would never put on any “Best Of” list ever and that I would be sick of it were I to watch it again.

It’s been several years and I finally watched it again. I can say that it is notoriously stupid and goofy but oh so hilarious. If there was ever a movie you would feel sillier, more childish and immature for loving after watching it, it would be this one.

It is so completely goofy and random and gets a way with murder. There isn’t a moment of “Airplane!” that can be taken seriously. Sight gag after sight gag goes by unchallenged, the movie finds ways to be racist and sexist in more ways than one, it liberally parodies iconic films without any reason for doing so, it is crude, sexual, violent and offensive to an extreme, and its now famous dialogue is not so much clever as it is convenient set ups based on literal translations of common movie cliches and expressions.

In that way, the film shares less in common with the random, ridiculous comedies of its day like Monty Python or Mel Brooks films, but more in common with the movies that all use BIG RED TEXT in their titles today, “films” like “Scary Movie,” “Epic Movie,” “Superhero Movie” or “Meet the Spartans.” Continue reading “Rapid Response: Airplane!”

Waste Land

Modern artist Vik Muniz describes art as a thing of transformation, the ability to take something ugly or plain and mold it into something beautiful or socially poignant.

In its humble beginnings just profiling Muniz, the documentary “Waste Land” goes through such a transformation when it travels to Rio de Janiero and finds a thriving, happy and environmentally crucial community of garbage pickers in the world’s largest landfill.

Following the norm of many of the best documentaries ever made, “Waste Land” completely changes focuses mid-filming when Muniz sets out to make a difference at Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill on the planet, and does not discover a city of drug addict, wastoid scavengers but a group of intellectuals who have established a comfortable living for themselves. Continue reading “Waste Land”

Review: Contagion

Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is a precise, engaging and squeamish thriller about living in the modern age.

In a modern age of Twitter, text messaging and round the clock news, information can spread like wildfire. In the epidemic thriller “Contagion,” it merely takes one blog post to incite riots and one text to put a life in danger. And you wonder why these things are called “viral.”

Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is a precise thriller that charts the rapid spread of a highly contagious and lethal virus, one that jumps from Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) as she returns from Hong Kong to quickly spreading across the globe.

It’s an engaging and squeamish thriller that makes you anxious to touch your face or move your foot on the sticky movie theater floor. And it’s because this is the sort of mass panic that would happen today. Continue reading “Review: Contagion”

Star Wars (1977)

“Star Wars” remains a thoroughly fun, exciting, inventive, colorful, imaginative and in fact masterful film. George Lucas’s saga is one of the most influential films of all time.

I have seen “Star Wars” a billion times. In fact, even if you’ve never actually watched the original “Star Wars,” you’ve seen it.

I physically sat down and watched “Star Wars” from start to finish for the first time since probably the prequels, and I watched it with a friend who had never seen the film. His reaction was without surprise, because every plot point, image, line of dialogue, sound effect and more has been done to death in parodies, fan fiction, what have you.

For instance, seeing the Mos Eisley Cantina scene did little for him in terms of visual wonder because all the characters, however unique they once were, are all too familiar today, even if no film has ever modeled anything like it since. The same will go for when he sees Episode V and learns that Darth Vader is Luke’s father, or when he sees Episode VI and learns Luke and Leia are siblings.

The reason people are today introduced to “Star Wars” at a young age is not because the film is dated (which in a way, it horribly is) but because only with the most innocent, naïve minds can you recreate the thrill and fantasy audiences felt watching the film in 1977.

But enjoying it has nothing to do with age or time period. “Star Wars” remains a thoroughly fun, exciting, inventive, colorful, imaginative and in fact masterful film. George Lucas’s saga is the pinnacle of space opera, one of the most influential films of all time and arguably where modern film begins. Continue reading “Star Wars (1977)”

9/11 (Documentary)

There’s a sense that with the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 it would be of very bad taste to say anything even remotely negative or critical. There’s also the sense that such a national tragedy could not possibly be emotionally manipulative, and yet I wonder if “9/11” crosses the line ever so slightly.

Let me preface this review by saying that “9/11,” a documentary shot the day of the attacks in New York, has its impressive moments and a worthy place in history. What’s more, this film sets out to commemorate the efforts of the firefighters who lost their lives that day trying to save others and honors them in spades.

Two amateur French filmmakers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, direct the documentary, and they were lucky enough, or unlucky enough more accurately, to be in New York on 9/11 as they were filming another documentary about a young probationary firefighter. Their story changed dramatically in the course of filming, as is typical of many great documentaries.

And their made for TV documentary includes the only known footage of a plane hitting the first tower, and further the only known footage from inside the tower as it was burning, under attack and collapsing.

This is remarkable yes, and many news outlets used this exact footage when compiling their coverage of the terrorist attacks.

The difference I’d like to point out is that much of the footage is remarkable merely because it exists. Errol Morris was not the documentarian trapped amidst all the rubble and chaos, and it shows. The footage, about all of it captured on low quality handheld cams, is about as great as an amateur filmmaker could hope for. Continue reading “9/11 (Documentary)”