A 'Wolverine' with Dramatic Juice to Spare

by Brett Parker

The Wolverine is perhaps the one film in the X-Men canon that comes closest to being a character drama, maybe even more-so than Bryan Singer’s beginning installment.  Director James Mangold (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma) usually favors subtle displays of slow-burn dramatics and applying that method here helps illuminate deeper ideals hidden within one of America’s favorite bad-ass superheroes.  While the final result isn’t exactly the Solaris of Marvel movies (which would be awesome, by the way), it’s still miles more worthwhile than the sugar-high hokiness of Wolverine’s last stand-alone outing.

The film continues the long-winding adventures of Logan, a.k.a “Wolverine,” the immortal mutant warrior whose skeleton is encased in enhanced metal that supplies him with metal claws hidden between his knuckles.  We catch up with Logan some time after he left behind his fellow X-Men mutants and chose to live as a recluse in the Canadian wilderness.  He is still mourning the loss of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), the mutant love of his life, and is mentally tortured by the prospect of everlasting life.  Tracking him in the wilderness is Yukio (Rila Fukushima), an assassin who works for Yashida (Hiroyuki Sanada), a Japanese billionaire who Logan saved from an atomic blast many years ago.  Yashida has requested that Logan come and visit him on his deathbed in Japan.

Logan travels to meet with Yashida and discovers that the dying billionaire wants to repay him for saving his life by giving him the one thing he can’t have for himself: mortality.  Yashida has invested a fortune in medical technology and claims he can extract the immortal genes from Wolverine’s body, leaving him human and able to die in the process.  While Logan considers this offer, a bloody battle ensues around him as corrupt forces fight for control of Yashida’s fortune.  His granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), is reluctantly at the center of this war, causing Logan to try and fight for her.  But as Wolverine engages in battle, he discovers that his body is growing weaker and not healing like it used to.  Someone or something has infected him and his indestructible nature is slowly dissolving.  Wolverine must struggle to find out what exactly is happening to his body if he hopes to protect Mariko’s life.  

While the uneven X-Men Origins: Wolverine relied on an adolescent comic-book-come-to-life tone, Mangold wisely calls upon Japanese dramas and Western anti-hero tales to craft his Wolverine film.  Not only does this do considerable justice to Chris Claremont and Frank Miller’s original Wolverine comic book work, but it also compliments the finer points of the character we cherish so much.  Japanese dramas tend to bring unique focus on honor, loyalty, and devoting oneself to a cause worth fighting for, and these are conflicts that torment Logan deep down even as his disgruntled shell suggests otherwise.  Of course, the Wolverine character has always held a resemblance to a grizzled lone cowboy myth, with his Clint-Eastwood-on-steroids exterior and his strict adherence to personal morals in an uncertain world.  And that ideal has never felt stronger than here since Wolverine is a stranger riding into a strange land to fight villainous forces and protect the innocent simply because it’s the right thing to do.

The most interesting revelation this outing discovers about Wolverine is that when faced with the choice between mortality and immortality, our hero might just lean more towards the latter.  While he’s undoubtedly haunted by the loss of love and wanders around hopelessly in search of a cause, urgency and desperation energize him once he becomes seriously wounded for the very first time.  Whatever pain haunted him earlier in his lonesome travels holds nothing on his newfound fears of physical annihilation and being completely eradicated from his warrior skills.  Although I wish the dialogue reflected the philosophical implications more, the events in this film force Logan to fully realize how his immortal powers can be used to help the powerless and he seems to fully accept his role as an indestructible ronin who’ll forever protect the innocent when need be.  

Of course none of this would feel as compelling if it weren’t for Hugh Jackman’s seasoned talents and movie star magnetism.  While most aspects of the Wolverine character are inherently ridiculous, Jackman’s pitch-perfect embodiment of the hero’s persona, along with his acute sense of haunted alienation, delivers the hyperbolic grandeur this lone wolf cries out for.  While some steps in the X-Men playbook have proven lumpy and downright silly, Jackman is the beacon of incongruent bad-ass humility that keeps pulling us back again-and-again to this mythic world.  Even though it’s dramatic scenes never transcend its pop narrative and it ends up falling hopelessly into blockbuster pratfalls, the film still honors and deepens everything we dig about the superhero and it proves to be worthy of his pop stature.  

Sam Rockwell Will Show You the 'Way'

by Brett Parker

Picture this: you’ve found yourself attending a party that didn’t turn out to be as much fun as you expected.  The affair could be either mind-numbingly boring, much of a muchness, or filled with guests who are too strange or alienating to engage.  Yet just when you’re about to give up all hope for the situation, in walks a fun-loving buddy of yours.  This friend is an energetic and hilarious life-of-the-party who’s just what the doctor ordered.  He’s the kind of person who can surely transform the proceedings into an absolute blast.  That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling about Sam Rockwell at the movies lately.  There have been numerous films recently that were on shaky ground until Rockwell walked in and upped the ante.  He was the one spirited supporting player who wasn’t hindered by diminished screen time in Iron Man 2 and he elevated the uneasy lunacy of Seven Psychopaths to comic gold.  Now with his latest flick, The Way, Way Back, he’s dished out a jolly good performance in familiar mush that is worth the price of admission alone.  Giving a competent performance that adds to an entertaining movie is the mark of a good actor, but catapulting a movie from mediocre to worthwhile is the sign of a real treasure.

The Way, Way Back tells the story of Duncan (Liam James), an unhappy 14-year-old who is forced to spend his summer vacation in the beach house of his mother’s new boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell).  Duncan’s Mom, Pam (Toni Collette), wants her son to give the new man in her life a chance, but Duncan rightfully suspects that Trent is an untrustworthy creep.  Duncan fits the mold of an awkward teenage loner and he doesn’t fit into his newfound summer environment too easily.  It doesn’t take long before Trent’s local beach friends brand the kid as some kind of weirdo.  

Things start looking up once our hero visits Water Wizz, a local water park.  It’s there that he meets Owen (Sam Rockwell), the goofy manager of the park who senses an ocean of loneliness inside Duncan and decides to take him under his wing.  Owen makes him a fellow employee, and pretty soon this laid-back jokester is teaching the kid how to have fun with life and not take everything so seriously.  It turns out that Water Wizz is filled with outsiders and misfits just like Duncan who help him come out of his shell and be more assertive with himself.  Pretty soon, Owen’s care-free jolliness inspires Duncan to rattle things up within his own family, as Trent grows increasingly mean and Pam grows slowly unhappy.  

The Way, Way Back treads familiar grounds with a coming-of-age-in-the-summertime story mixed with a tale of a teenage outcast trying to fit in.  Writer-Directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (Academy Award Winners for their script work on The Descendants) don’t really add any fresh insights to either ideal, but you can’t say it isn’t all handled with delicacy.  The one major strength this tale has is an acute performance by Liam James, whose embodiment of teenage alienation is miles more convincing than most teen actors in this territory.  James conveys lonesome wallflower anguish with such morose, mopish detachment that you realize he’ll be great in serial killer roles when he grows up.  So that’s why this movie really lights up when Duncan learns to open up and enjoy himself more, which is like watching a zombie indulging in a school playground.  Scenes where local kids teach him how to breakdance and Owen assists him in an epic water slide challenge add peculiar uplift and the small, joyous smile Duncan eventually displays in his Employee-of-the-Month photo conveys a genuine and surprising warmth.

As for the supporting players, Faxon and Rash employ the tactic of casting seasoned veterans in smaller roles to help build a sense of realism around their world.  While Allison Janney is able to build a colorful character, the capable Amanda Peet is merely window decoration and the comically gifted Rob Corddry is given no outlet for his humor.  Steve Carell is drummed up simply to be a condescending jerk in the kind of role Greg Kinnear could sleepwalk through, but it’s such a refreshing treat to see Carell playing something other than the self-pitying sad sacks he’s grown an annoying taste for.  It’s just too bad his comic instincts weren’t allowed to chip away at any real depths in his meanie character.

Of course, Rockwell steals the entire show and becomes the main attraction in this enterprise by miles.  Faxon and Rash have stated in interviews that the inspiration for his character came from Bill Murray’s Tripper in Meatballs and it’s a testament to Rockwell that he could go toe-to-toe with Murray on similar comic grounds.  As fast-talking irreverence and zany wisdom pours out of this hipster Yoda, you realize that every word out of his mouth is golden dialogue and the only major laughs in the movie originate from this overgrown frat boy.  Even when it comes time to turn on the sentiment, Rockwell conveys a sneaky sincerity and an inner-weariness that’s touching as he shows just how much affection he actually has for Duncan.  If the rest of the script matched Owen’s manic hilarity and quirky morals, than this movie would’ve been just as dynamite as Rockwell is.

The main lessons we draw from The Way, Way Back tell us to always stand-up for your happiness, even if it doesn’t fit in with the accepted order of things, and how friendship can be the best cure for one’s inner-woes.  These aren’t exactly earth-shattering revelations, nor are they presented in a terribly original package, but they’re very important lessons nonetheless and I welcome being reminded about them on occasion.  The success of this movie is that it earns those lessons, and it’s such a blessing to have Sam Rockwell help deliver them to us.  He’s the shot-of-adrenaline a lot of comedies need these days and I hope his filmography keeps building on his gifts towards something truly awe-inspiring.  

The Loon 'Ranger'

by Brett Parker

It’s pretty obvious that Disney wants to do with The Lone Ranger what it did successfully with Pirates of the Carribean: take a halfway-recognizable brand name attached to a popcorn genre and interject it with an offbeat Johnny Depp performance and all the big-budget blockbuster fixings of our current era.  But while pirate flicks form a B-movie genre no one really thinks too hard about, the western film is one of the most enduring, beloved, and analyzed of all American genres.  So one of the strangest things about this new Lone Ranger is its indecisiveness about whether to honor the innocence of the source material or acknowledge the entire history of true grit westerns that have flourished between then and now.  We can sense the filmmakers trying desperately to bridge the gap between the two opposing ideals, and while the finished film doesn’t reconcile itself into a powerful whole, I must admit that the wild west antics I saw on screen is far more interesting than the typical disposable summer fare that can numb one’s brain.  

In 1869 Texas, we meet John Reid (Armie Hammer), a lawyer who has traveled to the town of Colby to visit his older brother, Dan (James Badge Dale).  Dan is a Texas Ranger who sets out with his comrades to capture the nasty outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Ficthtner) and his gang.  Thinking he can be of assistance, John asks to join the Rangers in tracking down Butch, and Dan deputizes him with a badge and allows him to tagalong on an expedition to find the evil outlaw.  But soon into their journey, Butch ambushes the rangers and all of them die a violent death.  

Soon after this deadly attack, a mysterious Comanche indian named Tonto (Johnny Depp) discovers the bodies of the Rangers and finds that Silver, a white spirit horse thought to be sacred with the Comanche, has revived John back from the dead.  Tonto explains to John that he is now a “spirit walker,” one who has been to the other side and cannot be killed.  Grasping his second chance at existence, John seeks to avenge his brother’s death and enlists Tonto to help him.  The Indian agrees, but only if John wears a mask to prevent his identity so those who think he is dead will continue to do so.  This gives John the new identity of The Lone Ranger, a ghostlike lawman whose thirst for justice leads him not only towards Butch, but a shady railroad tycoon named Latham Cole (Tom Wilkinson) who is conducting a sinister conspiracy that reveals painful trauma from Tonto’s past and threatens the family of John’s deceased brother.

One of the more distinct and unsettling things about The Lone Ranger is its tonal identity crisis which veers between slapstick comedy and dark western grit.  One moment, Tonto will be having a silly moment with a dead bird resting on top of his head, while the next moment finds Butch cutting out the organs of another man and eating them (off-camera, thank God).  I never thought I’d ever see a Hannibal Lecter moment in a Disney movie, and for that matter, I never thought I’d see Disney foot the bill for a shotgun marriage between a Martin-Lewis comedy and a Cormac McCarthy novel, but such are the wonders of life.  Yet if you’ve been watching Gore Verbinski’s movies all along, you’d know that creating uneasy balancing acts between ridiculousness and disparity has always been his M.O.  Just think of how you couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry while watching The Weather Man or the way jarring violence kept bringing the sweeter parts of The Mexican to a standstill.  Hell, even the Pirates of the Caribbean  movies had fearful thoughts about isolation and change lurking beneath the Hollywood busywork.  Absurd silliness and crushing misery co-existing in the same movie sounds like a strange concept until you catch on that life itself can often play out in that same way.

The only reason we’re even looking at a modern day update of The Lone Ranger in the first place is because Johnny Depp wanted to use his box office clout to create a populist western that illuminates the plights of Native Americans across U.S. history.  So the thing I admire most about the movie is how major plot developments bring considerable insight into tragic ordeals that Native Americans actually faced.  While the script lifts from older, better westerns to help get this point across, it’s still good to see these brutal truths given attention in a crowd-pleasing blockbuster tent-pole flick.  Most will probably have an awfully hard time swallowing the irony of the Disney corporation constructing a mass entertainment that frowns down upon big corporations, but I find it pretty damn funny how Johnny Deep used his star power to make a big capitalist entity point out the evils of big capitalism.

It quickly becomes apparent that the idea of Depp willing this movie into existence is far more interesting than his idea of an updated Tonto.  Depp’s objective was to give Tonto more prominence and personality than he’s been given in the past, making him just as heroic and independent as The Lone Ranger himself.  Yet Depp’s knack for exposing an independent character’s inner-weirdness and allowing their freak flag to fly puts a damaging hindrance on this western sidekick’s impact.  By making the Comanche warrior a crackpot misfit with slapstick tendencies, it’s obvious that Depp is trying to inject that old Jack Sparrow outcast appeal into the role, but it doesn’t create a dynamite hero Native Americans can be proud of.  I’m not saying that Native Americans are humorless people, but making Tonto a goofy loon isn’t really liberating the character from the numbskull stereotypes they've been plagued with throughout Hollywood history.  Perhaps if Depp played him straight, making him a proud thinking-man’s warrior, he could’ve honored his ancestors better while delivering one of his electric dramatic performances a’la John Dillinger.  Oddly enough, the straight-arrow Armie Hammer turns out to be the ace here, even as the script tries to damper-down his white-bred heroics.  The joke is that The Lone Ranger isn’t as knowledgable or savvy a western figure as myth would have you believe, but Hammer has a gift for making cracks in a golden boy image work to his advantage.  The way he overcomes shy-guy shakiness and bumbling inadequacies to fully honor the mythic character’s heroic ideals is very impressive.

Since we're on summer blockbuster territory here, you can bet that this flick ends with the expected pull-out-all-the-stops action finale.  But as far as these things go, it's more efficiently-staged than usual.  Instead of just being a mish-mash of explosions and fury, Verbinski actually puts his Jerry Bruckheimer-meets-Buster Keaton sensibilities to good use like he did in the better parts of Pirates of the Caribbean.  The result makes for plucky action that represents the one moment in the film that connects the strongest with the innocent charms of the older Lone Ranger adventures.  As the movie’s plot chugged along, I considered myself mildly amused by it all, but once the "William Tell Overture" started playing on the soundtrack and Hammer got on his literal high horse to ride off into this action climax, my inner-child actually got pretty damn excited the way he used to for Disney adventures of yesteryear. 

The history of classical pulp heroes points out that The Green Hornet is actually a descendant of The Lone Ranger, with both heroes sharing the surname of "Reid."  So it's worth noting that the modern-day cinematic updates of both those heroes weren't content to just convey the simple pleasures of their modest myths, but basked their adventures in post-modern irony and jazzed-up action adrenaline.  The sad truth is that if these updates stayed ultra-faithful to the classical feel of their heroes' origins, it probably wouldn't grab the attention of most modern moviegoers.  Yet the beauty of molding a pop hero towards the changing times they show up in is how shrewd a marker of culture it can serve as.  Just ponder the contrast between the campiness of the 1960's Batman TV show and the ultra-grittiness of the Dark Knight's recent big-screen outings, and you'd have enough material for endless college essays.  So while many may shake their heads at the dizzying tone and over-the-top action of the 2013 Lone Ranger, you have to keep in mind that it’s a testament to the entertainment era we're living in.  You may be complaining now, but there may come a time in the distant future where you'll look back with a smile and say "now THAT'S how they used to make them!"

A 'War' Between Book and Blockbuster

by Brett Parker

World War Z, the apocalyptic horror novel by Max Brooks, has to be one of the most gripping and intelligent horror tales I’ve ever read.  Inspired by Studs Turkel’s The Good War, Brooks used the gambit of wartime interviews to imagine an account of a devastating zombie war on a global scale.  As people from around the world recounted how their individual countries dealt with a ramped and hostile zombie threat, Brooks shrewdly illuminated allegorical connections between government incompetence, class warfare, and human negligence.  The scary revelation from the work is how the arrogance, carelessness, and cynicism that have hindered our own progress in everyday society would royally screw us over in the face of becoming zombie snack food.  

Considering the grand scope of the novel and the way it packs in more troubling ideas than a muckraking political documentary, it would’ve taken a Herculean act from the cinematic gatekeepers for the book to leap to the screen with its dignity intact.  So it’s not without a certain Klaus Kinski-like frustration to discover that Marc Forster’s big Hollywood adaptation of the novel pretty much just extracts all the blockbuster elements from the book while completely discarding all the brainier elements and uncomfortable allegories.  Yet the fact that the movie turns out to be watchable may be a small miracle in itself.  Vanity Fair reported earlier this year how the making of the film was plagued with on-set drama, a ballooning budget, an incoherent first cut, and an expensive, blood-soak ending that had to be completely discarded.  The good news is that the final product is able to overcome all of those annoyances to present itself as a surprisingly enjoyable popcorn flick.

As the film opens, we meet Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) a former United Nations employee now living in Philadelphia with his wife (Mireille Enos) and two kids (Sterling Jerins and Abigail Hargrove).  As they sit in heavy city traffic one day, a commotion erupts with people running from an unknown threat that soon turns into all-out chaos.  As Gerry tries to make sense of his surroundings, he soon discovers that corpses of people are rising up and turning into hostile zombies.  Gerry tries protecting his family while hordes of fast-moving and demonic-looking zombies begin chomping on every live human in sight, and a helicopter from the U.N. shows up just in the nick of time to rescue them as the City of Brotherly Love falls to the plagued.  

The helicopter flies them off to a U.S. naval fleet off the coast of New York City and it’s there where Gerry learns that a zombie virus is quickly taking over the world.  A relentless zombie infection has been spreading on a worldwide scale and countries are rapidly crumbling under the vast reach of this mysterious sickness.  Because of his expertise as a former U.N. investigator, Gerry is recruited to help discover the origin of the virus to see if a cure can be found.  This journey will take him all over the world to places like South Korea, Jerusalem, and Wales where he’ll meet weary survivors, dodge terrifying zombie attacks, and observe the strange peculiarities of the undead to see if any weaknesses can be spotted.  

Once you accept the fact that this movie wants nothing to do with the novel’s intelligence, you’ll find yourself refreshed by the unfussy way it churns out the blockbuster goods then acquits itself like a mob boss who just had his charges dropped.  Due mostly to a PG-13 rating that hopes to net wider ticket sales, this zombie flick isn’t so much a horror gore-fest as it is an adventure thrill ride.  The big idea is to hop around foreign locales while wheeling out the latest in zombie effects.  Of course, none of these global pitstops really say anything significant about foreign governments or cultural reactions to a crisis situation, but as far as zombie thrills go, this is all more entertaining than usual.  A scene where zombies frantically pile on top of one another like rats to scale a giant wall in Jerusalem is a truly epic sight and a zombie outbreak on an airplane in flight makes for a golden action sequence.  This movie certainly gets brownie points for trying to add creativity and adrenaline to a horror scenario we’ve seen a million times before.

David Fincher once pointed out that Brad Pitt doesn’t really have a towering iconic role such as James Bond or Han Solo to call his own (unless Tyler Durden counts.  The Fight Club leader has his own posters, but does he have his own action figure?).  So it’s pretty obvious that the producers here are hoping to turn his character into the Indiana Jones of zombie flicks.  It’s not a bad sell, really, for Pitt’s weathered calm is a nice balance between the terrified hysteria and nihilistic cynicism we usually get from humans facing the undead.  His performance hints at how Robert Redford probably would’ve handled himself in a zombie movie, and those two opposing temperaments between star and material would’ve proved just as compelling as it does here.  

The film’s ending is so jarringly an open-ended sequel set-up that we don’t even realize the climax is actually the climax until the ending notes that we just witnessed the climax.  There’s definitely a “is that all?” feeling as the end credits approach.  Considering that the film clocks in at just under two hours and doesn’t exactly wear out its welcome, I can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers could’ve tacked on the ultraviolent original ending.  Reportedly, it revolved around an epic, crimson-covered decapitation fest in Russia where Pitt tore through zombies like Rambo tore through the Vietnamese.  Since this is a movie that swings for the popcorn fences, I don’t feel that ending would’ve been terribly frowned upon.  Anyways, it’s a testament to the movie we actually have here that it has me looking forward to future installments.  I just hope, for the love of Romero, that the sequels study up on the source novel and incorporate the more intelligent and philosophical points from the book into the script.  World War Z proves that it’s one of the more fun recent zombie flicks, now it’s time to prove that it can be one of the more thought-provoking ones as well.  

An 'Internship' Worth Taking

by Brett Parker

The Internship shows Vince Vaughn playing a man hard-up for decent work who turns to Google, considered one of the best places to work in the world, to help him out of his rut.  Since the credits reveal that Vaughn helped develop this film’s script, it’s not hard to see how this plot could all be a thinly-veiled peak at the current stage of his own career.  For it’s been a while since Vaughn has made a decent comedy (hardly anyone would consider Couples Retreat and The Dilemma to be on the same level as Old School) and perhaps he’s looking to the inherent fascination of the Google company to generate a likable flick.  Along for the ride is his old Wedding Crashers pal Owen Wilson, undoubtedly so the duo can try and recreate the magic from their last bromantic collaboration.  The Internship is nowhere near as funny as that earlier movie, but I appreciate the effort and I find myself strangely drawn to the overwhelming sunshine this Hollywood product blasts through the screen.

The film opens with watch salesmen Billy McMahon (Vaughn) and Nick Campbell (Wilson) being laid off from their job when their employer goes out of business.  Since most watch sales are being transacted online nowadays, the need for face-to-face salesmanship is quickly being diminished.  Realizing that their personal skills won’t net them much in today’s job market, Billy comes up with a plan to score the duo an internship at Google, the company revolved around the popular search engine website.  Google is widely regarded as one of the best companies to work for, due to its increasing popularity, endless perks, and innovative growth.  Billy convinces Nick that mastering an internship would not only get them jobs at one of the happiest organizations on Earth, but might even provide them with technological skills that would give them a leg-up in an ever-changing world.  

Thanks to a goofy yet sincere webcam interview, the pair score an internship and they soon discover that Google truly is a Willy Wonka-like nirvana for techie freaks.  The only problem is that most of the young interns are so intellectually advanced that they make Billy and Nick look like thick-headed dinosaurs.  Billy and Nick try to put their best resources forward, but they keep getting pummeled by the computer geniuses around them.  The only way the duo can hope to keep afloat is to find clever ways to apply their personal skills and charismatic personalities in accomplishing increasingly difficult digital tasks.  

The Internship has been accused of being an overblown product-placement commercial for the Google company.  It more or less is, but so what?  Google is certainly one of the most colorful, innovative, and generous places to work, and it’s been ripe for the Hollywood limelight to show up for quite some time.  Yet the use of Google here isn’t completely vapid, for the script is out to shine light on the ordeal of an older generation completely bewildered by today’s technological landscape.  Vaughn and Wilson clearly belong to a generation that once upon a time didn’t have to rely heavily on smartphones, online social networking, and elaborate computer smarts to function in the real world.  Their oafish fumbling through the Google world not only reflects their own anxieties but also the anxieties of many older Americans.  The comforting revelation here is that the fella’s humanity, which contains down-to-earth charm, bar banter, and warm face-to-face engagements, triumphs infinitely in the face of the digital age.

Vaughn and Wilson have developed such a superb comic wordplay in their own rights that they’ve accumulated a peculiar gift for making deranged dialogue sound like it’s coming from a genuine place.  The Internship relies too heavily on their interplay, putting a strain on it that hinders the Wedding Crashers exuberance it’s gunning for.  Most of the blame can probably be attributed to director Shawn Levy (Date Night, Just Married), who hasn’t exactly proven to be a masterful comic director.  While I enjoyed his Real Steel, I find most of his films to be tame and dimwitted comedies that lack any real bite or edge.  While he may deliver competence, he hardly delivers any real laughs, and that doesn’t exactly make him the ideal candidate to indulge in Vaughn and Wilson’s wildest impulses.  Yet The Internship is one of Levy’s more tolerable comedies, perhaps because he knew enough to sorta stay out of Vaughn and Wilson’s way and even provide a cameo for one of their Frat Pack buddies whose become the patron saint of insane cameos.  This is all really Shawn Levy trying to be Todd Phillips, which is considerably more enjoyable than Shawn Levy being Shawn Levy.

The Internship doesn’t exactly provide a surplus of laughs, but I found myself enjoying the movie anyways because its blind optimism about today’s world is kind of charming.  One of the things we’ve come to expect from studio fluff is positive energy magnified in a heightened, candy-coated reality that suggests backhanded ways everyday moviegoers can deal with life’s problems.  And when that positive energy is being served up by two gifted comic actors in one of the most interesting places in the country, I kind of don’t mind meeting it halfway.  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t leave the theater feeling sunny vibes, and I think sunny vibes are a fair trade-off with today’s ticket prices.

A 'Purge' From Happy Thoughts

by Brett Parker

When horror flicks are on their game, they can pack more unwelcome ideological thoughts than any hotbed political thriller.  That’s why it’s hard not to marvel at The Purge, a simple and economical home invasion thriller that touches on an ocean of decaying morals lurking beneath the American dream.  To be sure, the movie is an assembly of horror movie standards we’ve seen many times before, but the way they evoke disturbing secrets about the world we live in now is rather impressive.  Reflecting on the movie long after the credits have rolled, I’d have to reach back to Funny Games or the original Swedish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to recall a thriller that unnerved me to my core like this one.

The film imagines a future America where once a year, the nation hosts a 12-hour period where all crime is legal.  A random holiday devotes it’s evening hours to allowing every american the chance to rob, steal, rape, break, and murder everything in their path with zero repercussions.  All medical and police personal are suspended during that time, and Americans waste no time in destroying property and blowing their fellow man away with bloody glee.  The next day, the bodies are cleaned up and property is restored and the nation gets back to normal.  Supposedly, this window of release for the citizens has allowed the country to grow into a dream haven where unemployment and crime is at an all-time low, allowing the blissful end to justify the horrifying means.  

We follow an upper-class suburban family during one of these annual purges.  Security expert James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) has made a fortune selling state-of-the-art security systems, allowing himself and his privileged neighbors to lock themselves down extra-tight during the chaotic holiday.  So Sandin plans on spending his purge like he does every year: by locking himself inside his home with his lovely wife, Mary (Lena Headey), and his two children, Charlie (Max Burkholder) and Zoey (Adelaide Kane).  Yet as the annual purge commences, scary violence shows up right on their doorstep when Charlie allows a Bloody Stranger (Edwin Hodge) to seek shelter in their home.  It turns out the Stranger is hiding from a group of upper-class psychopaths who are hungry to kill him.  A Polite Stranger (Rhys Wakefield) who leads the group informs Sandin that if they don’t give up their target, then they will penetrate the security system and murder everyone inside.  This causes the ordinary family to question their morals and strength as they try to wrestle down their bloody houseguest and fend off the bloodthirsty gang gnawing at their front gates.

The Purge is one of those horror flicks that efficiently uses limited, low-budget resources to evoke giant scares with cinematic shrewdness.  Even though the film’s central idea hinges on a deadly event played out on a grand national scale, the film’s action is entirely confined to a suburban home, using dark shadows and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night to get its scares.  Director James DeMonaco gets assists from tons of past flicks, including The Strangers, Last House on the Left, and Funny Games, but the sick ideas about America blasted underneath the familiarities sure do heat things up.  Part of you wonders if a greater movie could be made if the cameras went outside into the night of violence (especially through the eyes of the Bloody Stranger), so it’s a testament to this film’s restrictions that it gets your imagination working overtime.  

The Purge is filled to the brim with so many troubling thoughts about society that I wouldn’t be surprised to see it inspire hundreds of analytical blog posts, or maybe even a few college papers.  Of course, the film’s most immediate and alarming idea is that the American people’s worst impulses would need to be filtered, not eradicated, in order for the country to improve.  And if our darkest recesses were allowed to come out and play for the night, then minorities and the poor would probably be at the top of the casualties list, an observation that’s felt through the Polite Stranger’s obsessive need to kill a homeless black “swine.”  Since rich white people would obviously have the best chances of survival, you would think they would form a community of teamwork and charity to help each other out, but one of The Purge’s more disturbing insights reveals that rich people’s egotism and resentments would cause them to turn on each other, providing a chilling theory on why this country is dealing with so many problems in the first place.  All these collective thoughts make us ponder that keeping the entire movie confined to a house isn’t just a money-saving gambit, but also represents how most of the audience would realistically deal with a purge: by rigorously defending their own turf while turning a blind eye to the chaos outside their door.

As all-American types who contais a reservoir of scrappiness and moral conflict, the main cast acquits themselves rather nicely.  While their increasingly stupid behavior is undoubtedly the worst thing about the movie, both Max Burkholder and Adelaide Kane embody everyday, jittery teenagers convincingly.  Lena Headley takes a seemingly thankless role and proves that she can be one of the most resourceful and sexiest of suburban housewives.  Rhys Wakefield is wonderfully mannered as a white-bread psychopath, making you wonder if he studied The Joker or Patrick Bateman more for his performance.  And of course, it’s always fun to watch Ethan Hawke bring his dedicated thespian skills to a Hollywood product.  Hawke is a pleasure to watch in material like this thanks to his duck-to-water understanding that generic fluff can inspire just as many interesting performances as indie arthouse flicks.  He makes for a fine avatar through this horror ride, especially in a scene where he shows dazzling true grit pounding away on two violent intruders who’ve found their way into his home.  Since Hollywood will eventually remake everything one day, and the Rambo series will undoubtedly be on the menu, Ethan Hawke gets my unapologetic vote to play the super-soldier.  

While it’s typical of horror films to inspire a long, tiresome series of watered-down sequels, I actually think The Purge has enough material here to inspire more thoughtful and epic chapters.  Perhaps for the next go around, the story can go out into the world for a future year’s purge, and we can witness firsthand the vast landscape of massive bloodshed and startling mayhem.  There’s so many ideological sparks in this film alone that the possibilities for future sequels are endless.  For if the filmmakers keep things brainier as opposed to indulgent, then The Purge has quite the potential to grow into one of the most significant and terrifying horror franchises we’ve ever had.  

A Familiar Yet Exciting 'Trek'

by Brett Parker

When it comes to being a Star Trek fan, I’ve considered myself more on the casual side for most of my life.  By that I mean whenever old Star Trek movies came on TV as a kid, I would watch attentively and enjoy them on a simple-minded level.  But ever since I witnessed J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the franchise back in 2009, I’ve considered becoming a Trekkie full time.  Abrams took the beloved original characters and their space adventures and pumped them up to new levels of slickness and emotion.  Every ounce of likeability and excitement lurking beneath the cheesier and lumpier parts of the mythology were drummed up and punched to full throttle.  That tight thrill ride made you willing to follow the crew of the Starship Enterprise anywhere they went and you couldn’t wait to get beamed up for another adventure.

Well Captain Kirk and his crew are back in action once again in Star Trek Into Darkness and there’s no denying that the sequel delivers the roller coaster goods we want from a sci-fi adventure.  But I’m slightly disheartened to realize that this latest installment doesn’t do anything terribly original or provocative with the Star Trek universe.  To be sure, this is one of the best-looking and most adrenaline-fueled films in the canon, but it’s still bound to overly-familiar elements from the series’ past.  Lord knows my love for the newfound electricity Abrams jolted into the franchise hasn’t been diminished, but part of me wonders if this series can ever elevate from a fun pop ride towards transcendent science fiction.

The sequel continues the adventures of the USS Enterprise, a futuristic crew of space explorers who serve on an intergalactic peace-keeping federation known as Starfleet.  At the head of the crew is the cocky Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) who is joined by the logic-minded Vulcan Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto), the cynical Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), the linguistics expert Uhura (Zoe Saldana), whiz kid Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and engineering expert Scotty (Simon Pegg) as they intervene in alien races across the galaxy to maintain a code of order.  But that order is dangerously shaken up with the appearance of an evil terrorist who calls himself John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch).  Harrison terrorizes Starfleet on Earth by bombing one of its buildings in London and then attempting to kill all its leaders in San Francisco.  Escaping to an enemy planet in a forbidden section of the galaxy, Kirk wants to pursue Harrison with his ship and bring him to justice.  But the Enterprise crew soon learn that Harrison is not all he appears to be, and may be more sadistic and deadly then they could possibly imagine.  Their mission to stop this violent madmen will challenge everything they know and push their psychologies to dark places they haven’t gone before.  

Screenwriters Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof do an efficient job of pushing the crew of the Enterprise out of their comfort zone and into a relentless scenario of breakneck danger.  Although most of the action sequences remind us of perils from past Star Trek flicks, Abrams films them with head-spinning velocity and spacious exuberance.  Sequences that especially stick out is one where Kirk and Harrison are rocketing their way towards an enemy craft in speedy spacesuits and one where Kirk and Scotty race to keep their balance in a ship that’s crumbling under massive attack.  You really do get lost in these action scenes and it really does provide the thrill of why seeing a space adventure on the big screen can be so much fun.

Devoted Trekkies and casual sci-fi fans will discover that the script is bound to a prominent chapter in the Star Trek universe that I suppose the new series had to acknowledge in the same way Christopher Nolan’s Batman had to acknowledge The Joker.  Yet I wish Abrams had pushed the sequel towards new ideas and new challenges instead of more or less following a blueprint from the mythology’s past.  This causes the best moments here to play out as homages instead of fresh drama that carves out its own identity.  The best thing to come out of this development is Benedict Cumberbatch, the ace thespian who blasts an Old Vic grandeur into a cartoon villain (his predecessor here pulled off the same feat quite superbly).

If the “Darkness” in the title makes you frown at the idea of yet another beloved franchise being injected with today’s standards of solemn edge and raw grit, then blame the era we’re living in, not the filmmakers.  Gene Roddenberry created the original characters in an era where people felt more optimistic about a future filled with hope, idealism, and prosperity.  But in the present day, it’s hard to deny that such qualities have taken a serious blow in the real world arena.  Brutal terrorism, government duplicity, and corruption among those we trust are flooding our headlines today, so I’m not the least bit surprised to see them show up in this movie’s plot.  We certainly want a bright, shiny Star Trek world for ourselves, but like the crew of the Enterprise, we too have to overcome some very scary demons.  It may be jarring to see a rage-filled Spock here slam a guy’s head into the backside of a metal ship, but let’s face it: pretty much everyone’s human side can relate to such anger these days.  Yet the silver lining here is the same it’s been in perhaps every Star Trek movie ever made: that self-preserved resourcefulness combined with efficient teamwork can overcome any dark opposition.  

We should consider ourselves lucky that we have such talented actors to bring such a winning intergalactic team to life.  The remarkable thing about this reboot is how the mythic gravity of the character’s personalities have proven to be more exciting than the special effects.  This is especially felt through Kirk and Spock, whose unlikely bromance energize the true heart and soul lying beneath the outer space talk.  Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are given more room here to build on their pitch-perfect embodiments of the legendary figures, and their dance between reckless intuition and cool-headed logic brings a serious emotional charge to this popcorn ride.  What’s especially impressive is the way the duo recreates the most touching moment in the entire Star Trek series (although re-imagined with a wicked, ingenious reversal) and completely own it.

Although there’s a stretch where you suspect the next installment in this series might be called The Search For Kirk, the film’s end finds our beloved heroes looking towards their next mission filled with hope, excitement, and confidence.  And it’s a testament to this movie that you look forward to the next sequel with the same ideals.  You just hope that next time the crew boldly goes where no Star Trek movie has gone before.  And that Abrams stays focused.  Of course the big news with him is that he’s been selected to direct the brand new Star Wars film planning to be rolled out around 2015.  Although I feel indifferent about one man overseeing two opposing sci-fi franchises, a new Star Wars movie really should have extra doses of charisma and heart, and those are two things Abrams dishes out in his Star Trek films with expert glee.  

The Most Entertaining 'Gatsby' Yet

by Brett Parker

Whether or not you’ll get enjoyment out of the latest cinematic adaptation of The Great Gatsby probably hinges on whether or not you find director Baz Luhrmann to be an exhilarating visionary or a deranged lunatic.  His knack for giving old world tales an immediate contemporary energy and over-the-top glamour can either be seen as gloriously romantic or desperately shallow.  As for myself, I’ve always been a big fan of his grand style.  I was fascinated by the startling edge he brought to romantic tragedy in Romeo & Juliet and surprisingly floored by the candy-coated operatic emotions of Moulin Rouge.

Yet deep down, even Luhrmann’s biggest detractors have to concede that a Great Gatsby adaptation in his outsized hands is just what the cinematic doctor ordered for that story.  Past adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary work have either been paralyzed by a scripture-like devotion to the source material (the sluggish 1974 version starring Robert Redford) or laughable in its loose liberties (the 1949 version, which owes more to Al Capone than to Scott Fitzgerald).  Since past versions have proven to be vapid in hindsight, it wouldn’t hurt to see Luhrmann infuse his beautiful decorating and swing-for-the-fences melodrama with the classic.  And I must confess that this is undoubtedly the most entertaining and gripping movie version of the novel we’ve had yet.

For those of you that flunked out of high school English, I’ll offer a brief recap of the plot:  an ambitious Yale graduate named Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) travels from the midwest to New York in the summer of 1922 to seek a prosperous career in bonds.  In the blue-blooded village of West Egg on Long Island, he catches up with his beautiful cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan) who is married to old money millionaire Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton).  While dining in their elegant mansion and accompanying Tom on a booze-soaked rendezvous in the city, Nick starts to get a taste of the rich excesses and loose morals associated with the era now known as the “roaring 20’s.”

But Nick doesn’t get truly up-close-and-personal with the grandness of the Jazz Age until he gets invited to a gargantuan house party thrown by his neighbor, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio).  Gatsby is a mysterious millionaire who throws the wildest parties at his gigantic mansion for the entire New York social scene weekend after noisy weekend.  An articulate gentleman decked out in the most dapper styles, no one can really pin down Gatsby’s backstory, especially where he gets the money to throw such ridiculous parties.  As Nick tries to get acquainted with his new neighbor, it becomes clear that the mystery man holds a curious history with Daisy and has a burning obsession with her that’s fueling a elaborate romantic plot in his head.  As Gatsby tries to reconcile with and romanticize Daisy with Nick’s help, things shockingly careen from care-free exuberance to soul-crushing tragedy.  

There are those that hold Fitzgerald’s novel in holy revere as one of the greatest in all American literature, and I happen to be one of those people.  I went gaga for the book when I discovered it in high school and I’ve read it once a year ever since I was sixteen.  So believe me, no one went to see this movie with a bigger red pen than myself.  But I honestly found very little to object to.  I appreciated the way Luhrmann threw subtlety into the fire and allowed the screen to lose itself in the rabid excitement and overwhelming emotions one feels when reading the novel for the first time.  Luhrmann’s taste for dizzying hyperrealities actually suits the wild, gorgeous energy of the roaring 20’s quite well: the outfits pop with dandified colors, the lavish New York landscape has the beauty of an old world painting, and the party scenes have a reckless abandon that’s as intoxicating as the booze being consumed.  One of the unspoken truths about the novel is that if it weren’t for Fitzgerald’s elegant prose and keen insights, the plot itself would slightly resemble a soap opera.  And since Luhrmann’s calling card is making soap opera stories vibrant and lyrical, you realize he does more to assist Fitzgerald’s ideas than to harm them.  

The only two things I really have to complain about, oddly, have to do with hip-hop and historical atmosphere.  Like Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann anachronistically employs modern day songs to help contemporary audiences feel the thrill that people of a past era felt when listening to their own music.  Songs by Lana Del Rey and Florence & The Machine fit wonderfully into the narrative, and I was surprised by the way an electric dance track by Fergie helped energize a infectious party scene at Gatsby’s mansion.  But tracks featuring Jay-Z prove to be a jarring mistake.  I love Jay-Z’s music, but proclaiming his songs as being in-sync with the Jazz Age is a hell of a stretch.  It sounds as if the New Jack City soundtrack has been played over random scenes in Gone With the Wind.  Such an incongruity makes one also ponder if the atmosphere itself is a tad too cartoonish for its own good.  While the world we see is certainly an enticing fever dream of the 1920’s, it’s not exactly a recognizable part of America’s historical reality.  

But these really are just minor complaints, for whatever lumpiness the film runs into, there are wonderful performances here to guide you through.  DiCaprio is quite honestly the best Gatsby there’s ever been.  He’s polished up his sunny matinee idol looks to superbly heat up Gatsby’s shiny exterior, yet it’s the actor’s experience in playing isolated eccentrics and riled-up obsessives that bring acute urgency to the character’s decidedly disturbing inner-life.  Mulligan makes for a wonderful Daisy by shrewdly allowing her fragility to simultaneously suggest a delicate beauty and spoiled child.  Edgerton displays the correct physical presence and brutish confidence to convey Tom Buchanan’s assured arrogance.  And I was surprised at how much power and feeling an ideally cast Maguire blasts into Nick Carraway.  If the narrator of this tale proved to be too timid and passive in past adaptations, then it’s refreshing to see Maguire exposing the fraught nerves and curious heartache within a man forced to witness the moral decay surrounding him.  

Literary purists can rest easy knowing that Fitzgerald’s novel is too towering to be hindered by the efficiency or incompetence of a filmed adaptation. While Fitzgerald in his lifetime had certain reservations about the art of film, and would undoubtedly shake his head at certain passages in this adaptation, I think he would’ve marveled at the extravagant shrine Luhrmann built to his words and been overall happy to see that his thoughts about modernity are still honored in these modern times.  As a true lover of the novel, it’s rather hard not to get seduced by Luhrmann’s gaga love for the era and material, and as a cinephile, it’s hard not to get caught up in such an outrageous explosion of vintage sights and sounds.  

Distinct Yet Seamless: A Word on M83's 'Oblivion' Score

by Brett Parker

If you have two hours of boredom to kill and movies are typically your go-to activity for that, then there are a lot worse choices you can make than watching Oblivion, a fine product from the recent surge of end-of-the-world flicks.  While you can often catch this futuristic tale swinging for the sci-fi fences, it ultimately ends up being enjoyable on the level of a short story in a pulp magazine, which isn’t a bad thing at all.  While the plot chugs away in splendid ignorance of the fact that movies like Wall-E and Moon exist, you still find yourself marveling at the sleek production design and the vulgarly picturesque evocation of a devastated Earth.  Plus Tom Cruise, a movie star I’ve always admired, proves efficient in a role tailor-made for him: an action figure who reflects on his own nature with great intensity.

Yet for all its visual bells and whistles, the best thing about Oblivion is the musical score.    French rock band M83, known for their distinct electronic sounds, helped develop the score with composer Joseph Trapanese and it’s not hard to hear why the marriage between the band’s music and a sci-fi movie is a perfect match.  Anyone who’s ever heard their stuff knows they churn out the kind of tunes the crew of the USS Enterprise would listen to during their downtime, so it makes sense that their robotic sounds help give a sense of cosmic otherness to a galactic dystopia tale.  Another paradoxical yet beautiful effect of M83’s contributions is the futuristic retro vibe it gives the film.  The band’s spaced-out tunes feel as if they’re straight out of the 80s, a period in which such sounds represented that era’s idea of what the future might sound like.  As a result, Oblivion ends up having the old school sounds of a sci-fi popcorn flick from the 80s, incongruently giving a tale of futuristic despair a glowing vibe of cinematic nostalgia.  

I certainly don’t want to oversell this expert score, however.  It falls more into the category of a competent movie score as opposed to transcendent rock.  Long stretches of the music play like Hans Zimmer hand-me-downs and you really wish M83’s trademark sounds were given more room to breathe.  But the band’s triumph is that they made me want to listen to the entire soundtrack album for pleasure outside of the movie, which certainly isn’t the case with most film scores.  The brutal truth about most movie score albums is that they largely go unsought, for most of the time they consist of bland and unremarkable musical undercurrents that aren’t much fun without viewing the actual film they accompany.  This makes sense, however, for if instrumental scores consisted of mostly killer, stand-alone jams in their own right, then they probably wouldn’t fit too easily into the bedrock of a film narrative.  M83’s Oblivion work respects these two ideals and demonstrates that a perfect film score should be distinct yet seamless.

There’s a school of thought that a film score should almost disappear into the film, helping emotions and plot points move along with little fuss.  In theory, this is a sophisticated idea, but in practice, it can prove to be uninteresting in an area where great power can be added to a film’s aesthetic value.  42, for example, provided a score by Mark Isham that proved to be sentimental and syrupy.  It owed more to Hollywood’s bags of manipulative tricks than to anything organic in the film’s actual story.  Perhaps the score could’ve evoked the music of its time period or even music that the film’s hero, Jackie Robinson, enjoyed in his day.  But the score certainly doesn’t betray the craftsmanship of the film, for it does its job of helping the story along in the most primitive way possible.  For most composers realize that it’s far more damaging to have a score that steals all the attention from everything else on screen.  The biggest perpetrator of a distracting score I can remember is Nobel Son, which employed a heavy techno score by Paul Oakenfold for no coherent reason.  His work on Swordfish fit perfectly into that world of electronic chaos, but in a human con game with greedy double-crosses, you really had no clever idea why his music showed up there.

When it comes to transcendent scores that marry both of these ideals wonderfully, my favorite recent example is composer Cliff Martinez’s ambient work on the Drive soundtrack.  With sublime assistance from a crystal baschet, Martinez produced an unconventional dreamlike sound that shrewdly honored director Nicolas Winding Refn’s fairy tale take on his noir tale.  With great assistance from retro-centric pop songs, the hymnal-like score held such wounded and yearning sounds devoid of any time and place, that it made you realize it fits the hero’s psychology perfectly.  Another exceptional recent score is Jonny Greenwood’s mischievous work on The Master, which took formalities from a classical American melodramatic score and filtered them through a nightmare.  It’s as if the music from Written on the Wind was played through Satan’s record player.  The result is an unsettling score that perfectly reflects the movie’s idea of a picture-perfect America twisted into unease.  And now we have M83’s Oblivion work to add to this growing trend of striking and unique movie music.

If nothing else, Oblivion director Joespeh Kosinski certainly knows the power of a good movie soundtrack.  He employed techno kings Daft Punk to help with the score of his Tron: Legacy, although even a casual Daft Punk listener knows the duo’s sounds were kept on a very tight cinematic leash in that outing.  M83 is certainly used in a more cannily fashion.  But the point is Kosinski’s acute realization that a musical score shouldn’t rot in monotony but should push the creative boundaries to see how unique it can be while still serving its purpose.  And I’m all for this, since music can be one of the most beautiful pieces to a cinematic puzzle.  If directors can put so much emphasis on an actress’s eyes, beautiful lighting, and dapper costumes, then why can’t they also obsess over a killer soundtrack that fires on all cylinders?

Reflections on Roger Ebert

by Brett Parker

When Roger Ebert passed away on April 4th, 2013 after a long and grueling battle with cancer, it was safe to say that we’ve perhaps lost the most recognized and popular movie critic we’ve ever had.  An exuberant and witty critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert first gained face value on At the Movies, a TV show where he faced off with rival critic Gene Siskel over opinions on all the latest releases, giving birth to the trademark seal of cinematic approval: “Two Thumbs Up!”  Yet years after Gene Siskel passed away and the TV Show went through several different incarnations, Ebert began to grow a really inspiring hold on the film community just as he was being tested with the most horrific battle of his life.  He had a battle with thyroid cancer that ended with the removal of his lower jaw, robbing him of his ability to speak.  It was during this period of silence in which Ebert churned out writing like never before, enriching his web site with all kinds of thoughts and essays, mostly on cinematic matters and human observations.  Since writing online became one of the few ways he could still communicate with the world, his personal homepage became a hub of cinematic communication across the world, as film minds from all over contributed their opinions to his page and Roger graciously gave them a platform to speak and converse with them.  Ebert’s enormous output and constant curation of his site makes one realize that perhaps he did more than anyone to alter the face of online film criticism as we now know it.

Yet when he passed away recently, I didn’t immediately feel like we had lost a seminal cinematic figure but more like I had lost one of my most treasured film buddies.  Mind you, I never actually got to meet Roger Ebert.  The closest I ever came to communicating with him was the time I posted a picture on his Facebook page of John Belushi and himself hanging out at a restaurant in Chicago sometime in the late 70s.  He commented back, saying he had fond memories of that restaurant while thanking me for the post.  It was a small exchange of perhaps the lowest communicative facet, but I was still as excited as a teenage 1960s girl who got to talk with one of The Beatles.  It was, however, a testament to his writing style that his good-humored, down to earth musings made one feel like they were hearing off-the-cuff thoughts from one of their closest friends.  His words were breezy and laid-back (which would make him unjustly accused of being dimwitted) yet were packed with overzealous love for the movies you could find in any enthusiastic cinephile.  While he had a scholarly knowledge of film and an intelligent grace for writing, he still made you feel like he was an eager movie nut just like you.

Like most people, I first became aware of Ebert when he became the co-host of At the Movies which would later go on to become known as Siskel & Ebert.  The show was not only the dawn of movie review blurbs on television, but some theorize it was the program that launched a thousand adults fighting like school children on talk show settings.  As a very young cinephile, I was curious to see the men behind the “Two Thumbs Up” seal that graced the many VHS boxes I had encountered in my life.  So I used to sneakily stay up late on Sundays to catch their show, and I was quickly hooked.  The sight of two grown men who looked like college literary professors arguing ferociously over their opinions of movies was, and still is, a hypnotically awesome sight.  Their thoughtful praise of good films and cynical nitpicking at bad films was nirvana for film nerds and a delightful education for unsuspecting civilians.  But of course there was nothing quite like their heated on-air arguments, which made most divorced couples look like Care Bears by comparison.  In fact, the most unpleasant antidotes in Ebert’s life story outside of his cancer are the nasty acts of sabotage and relentless bickering between the pair that allegedly happened behind-the-scenes of their show, according to eye witness accounts.  YouTubing “Siskel and Ebert Outtakes” will quickly give you an idea of what I’m referring to.

Once the internet eventually came about, I was excited to learn that every Friday, Ebert would have his print reviews released on the Chicago Sun-Times website (and later on his own home page, rogerebert.com).  I recall that the very first review I ever read of his was Charlie’s Angels, a film he rated with 1/2 a star, alerting me to the notion that it was theoretically possible to rate a film with 1/2 a star.  While I’ve always been entertained by Charlie’s Angels in the same way most people are entertained by train wrecks, Ebert was having none of that.  “Charlie’s Angels is eye candy for the blind,” he wrote, “this film is a dead zone in [the starring actresses’] lives, and mine.”  From this first review, I noticed qualities in his writing that would keep me coming back to him time and time again for his opinion: his sense of humor and his ability to see past a film’s surface to just what the hell is really going on.  Since the Chicago-Sun Times website and his own home page archived his reviews from his early days of being a critic, a ritual formed where every time I watched a movie, I would immediately seek out Roger’s opinion of the movie online.  He was great at getting to the essence of what a movie was trying to do and hinting at the unconscious ways it could effect your mindset.  The uncanny thing about him was that I would love a specific movie, he would hate that same film, yet I would agree with every single thing he wrote about the film.  I think the biggest gulf between our opinions ever was when I had absolute love for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village upon first viewing only to discover that Ebert couldn’t have hated it more.  Still, he wasn’t necessarily wrongheaded in his reasons for hating the film.  Besides, I would soon go on to discover that defending The Village as a really good movie is something of an uphill battle in the cinephile community.  

I spent my college years studying cinema at Purchase College in New York, and it was amongst my film professors and fellow classmates in which I discovered that there are, in fact, a number of people who have very little respect for Roger Ebert as a film critic.  The main problems his detractors have with him is that they find his writing style and opinions of movies to be too simple-minded, they feel he champions frivolous flicks too often, and that he’s too hyperbolic in his praise and too condescending in his put-downs.  While there are film writers out there who hold a more academic vocabulary and scholarly thought process than Roger, it’s still a sin to mistake his simpleness for stupidness.  His achievement is to make the idea of intelligent film criticism accessible and readable to people of any age, creed, or education, allowing everyday people to form their own intelligent thoughts about movies.  And he wasn’t above showing the public that he could have fun with silly flicks, too.  As Pauline Kael once wrote, “movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them.”  So I admire Roger greatly for favoring trash when he saw fit, while the pretentious idea would be to snobbishly frown down upon them.  You can say what you want about the man, but he stuck to his true opinions no matter what.  I’ll admit that I’ve gone on in life to find better film writers than him.  Pauline Kael, amidst all her cynicism and curious celebrity encounters, took my understanding of movies into a whole new stratosphere and, for my money, Tom Carson  gets my vote for the best film critic I’ve ever read, for most critics couldn’t match his wit and perceptions at gunpoint.  But still, I’m eternally grateful for Ebert pointing my understanding of movies into the right direction.  If he was indeed a gateway towards a grander academic understanding of cinema, I couldn’t have asked for a better entry portal.

No matter what you think about his movie opinions, you still have to admit that his online efforts during his period of physical silence was quite an achievement.  I can’t think of a film critic who has used online social media more shrewdly than he has.  I remember he used his Facebook and Twitter accounts wonderfully to dish out awesome links and articles regarding all things cinema and also found clever ways to make his older reviews relevant in the present (“Today would’ve been Humphrey Bogart’s birthday?  Why not check out my essay on Casablanca!”)  Since the loss of his voice gave him a more burning need to communicate, he started to go beyond cinema and began writing about matters of human nature and spiritual philosophy.  No matter what subject he wrote about, his words were always deeply heartfelt and surprisingly illuminating.  I remember his article about his battle with alcoholism, “My Name is Roger, and I’m an Alcoholic,” brought invaluable clarity to the horrors of the disease.  I sat down recently to read Life Itself, Ebert’s memoirs covering the entire scope of his life, and I have to admit that I was initially frustrated on first reading.  Usually when I read an autobiography, I urgently wish that the author would dive headfirst into the nitty gritty of why the subject is famous in the first place instead of lumbering endlessly through their early childhood and formative years.  And Life Itself displays Ebert so in love with every minute aspect on his life that he romantically rambles on over what seems to be every damn thing that ever happened to him.  If you want to read about his trips to Cannes, his fights with Siskel, and his ordeal with cancer, you must first read him go on and on about the books he loved as a kid,  what his catholic school looked like, his high school newspaper experiences, etc.  But once I stopped acting like a lunkhead towards the book did I truly see the beauty in what he was doing.  He undoubtedly knew he was facing the final years of his life, and he couldn’t help but be thankful and loving towards every single aspect of his entire life, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The book revealed that Roger could spot all that is special and holy in every moment he every experienced and his touching perceptions of both the boring and exciting things are truly inspiring.  We should all be so lucky to recall our lives with such warmth and appreciation when we reach the end.

Once the full realization of Ebert’s passing began to sink in, I became filled with sadness knowing that I would never again get to read his opinions on all the new releases.  There would be no more eager rush to his website every Friday morning to find out all his latest thoughts.  And there would never again be any more of his treasured Great Movies essays, in which his re-evaluations of cherished classics would not only deepen your appreciation of said films but make you re-watch them with a rejuvenated enthusiastic glee.  I usually try to avoid hyperbole when writing about a famous person’s passing, but I truly do feel a void with Ebert’s loss.  As a devoted cinephile, I often wonder if they have movies in the afterlife.  Heaven just won’t be heaven without a movie theater that churns out all the new releases and beloved classics.  For Ebert’s sake, I hope such a theater really does exist.  It’s wonderful to ponder that perhaps he could use that big heavenly screen to help share his warm views and wonderful jokes with all the other movie-loving souls surrounding him in the other realm.