We Could be Heroes

Just For One Day
A Review on Lone Survivor (2013)

Lone Survivor is a pretty good movie. Yet, for all of its documentarian aspirations, it never reaches the intensity of Captain Phillips. For all of its artfully executed slamming and banging, it never reaches the heights of Black Hawk Down. It's a movie that does its darnedest to be an important film. Yet, after two hours, a desire to justice to the story, and using many techniques of similar films, Lone Survivor falls far short of its goal as one of the great movies about the War on Terror.

The problem isn't that isn't the best film in a crowded class, it is that it's chosen form is problematic. The central stumbling block of Lone Survivor is that it never gets past its own artifice. For all of its desire to tell the real story (which is a phrase, I fell, should be in quotes), you are ultimately looking at Marky Mark, Into the Wild, the bi-boyfriend from Six Feet Under, and John Carter, he of Mars. But, you know, with beards.

All of these actors are either incredibly talented (with the exception of Taylor Kitsch, the patron saint of unwanted gifts, a man who thinks that the key to tough guy roles like Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood is to do nothing, and the single greatest charisma vacuum since Shia Lebeouf), so it isn't their lack of trying that causes this disconnect. In fact, its the inverse that causes the problem. They're good actors and we know it. And they look like it. And it doesn't work.

As desperately as this movie wants to look like real events-- and claims to be based in reality-- it looks fake. It looks great, but the eye of the movie goer is smarter than all of the movie's efforts and gestures. We know its fakes because it looks fake. To claim to hue so closely to reality and then to look fake is unacceptable. To quote Red Letter Media: "You might not have noticed it, but your brain did."

The fundamental problem is boiled down to a single fact: The only Navy SEAL who very clearly does not belong in this movie is the Navy SEAL the film is is named after. That's a problem.

With that said, Lone Survivor is a movie that is technically proficient at a level that few directors can ever dream of achieving. If youv'e watched The Kingdom this shouldn't come as a surprise. Peter Berg has an excellent sense of how an action scene is supposed to work. His storytelling is also admirable. It's simple. It's unobtrusive. We know these men through minor sketches and little conversations. While they fail to add up to anything greater, we know who these men are with very little effort.

It is also worth noting how the failure of authority and the system fails the film's heroes. It's a minor chord that United 93 revolves around and, while they are very different movies, it's a point that is well worth making, however minor it may be. It's also a point that seems more relevant as time goes on. It's one thing for our servicemen and servicewomen to die in combat, but it's another thing for them to die because of bureaucratic SNAFUs. It's one of the few times the movie moves away from the hagiography its trying so hard to craft.

Lone Survivor is a perfectly capable, action thriller with some very well played realist tones, but it isn't much more than that. In a world where people are coming back from the service in greater numbers than ever (or not coming back), these kinds of stories are not rare. They exist as books, as 60 Minutes interviews, as articles, and as people who are standing next to you at the bar. They're out there and this isn't one of them.

To be good is not enough. What's more is that truly excellent films about the War on Terror (or the Long War or whatever you want to call it) already exist. Paul Greengrass has directed most of them, the rest are directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and the best one was directed by an Italian guy fifty years ago.

The film has other problems. The lives of the Afghans and the motives of the Taliban are played out too simplistically. It relegates the Taliban to a bunch of decapitation hungry goon (which, to be fair, they are). It also paints the Afghans (specifically the Pashtuns) as a noble people driven by a sense of honor. It's Orientalist claptrap and it's also a plot point out of the Soviet-Afghan War movie, The Beast. The movie doesn't have space for these people or that sort of story telling. Which is a shame, because that's one of the most compelling parts of the story and, unfortunately, the movie's last act does lag.

And there's other points, but who cares? If you want to see a compelling movie based around real events, this is it. If you want to see something more substantial, something that has thoughts and feelings on the state of the human species and the complexity of the human soul go see Zero Dark Thirty. Or, better yet, read Black Hawk Down. Or, like, engage with a veteran. You probably aren't going to get a rad story, but you might, you know, learn something.

In the end, Lone Survivor tells its story with skill, empathy, and with no little amount of awe, but it still is not enough. It doesn't do its subjects justice.

Also, its cover of "Heroes" is embarrassingly bad and woefully out of place. Instead listen to the real version.

 

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and has opinions about the War on Terror but saves them for when he's had too much to drink. You can follow him on twitter.

The Vampire Hit the Street Junksick

The Vampire Hit the Street Junksick:

Some thoughts on Only Lovers Left Alive

For some reason the need to watch a movie about people blowing up aliens has gone right out of me.
Instead, I want to see a movie about people. I want to see a movie that somebody actually wanted to make. What I don't want to see is something that was made to pad out a conglomerate's figures on the tertiary market. Over the past few years I have made great strides to avoid being a snob. I have no problem with popular cinema. I'm just tired of it. I want to see movies about emotions and things that I haven't felt or seen before.

So I went and saw a vampire movie.

As far as genres go, it'd be hard to think of a more dessicated one than the vampire movie.

Jim Jarmusch, as you might recall, is a great filmmaker and side steps all of the typical pitfalls of the vampire legend by instead re-framing it within the context of music legend. Instead of Bram Stoker and Anne Rice, we get Link Wray and Iggy Pop. There is a club scene in the film, but it's about as far away from The Hunger or Blade as you could imagine. It looks like a real place inhabited by real people who have real emotions, but a few of them just happen to be vampires.

As much as the movie is a reflection of other works of art (it name checks Byron and Mary Shelly to name but a few), it stands on its own. It's a kind of film that, like Le Samourai, a movie he paid homage to in Ghost Dog, doesn't emulate any sort of scene. It is the invention of a scene. To say that it is a "cool" movie makes it slightly trite. It makes it sound as though it's the kind of movie that people in their early 20's enjoy and no one else. As it is more than a vampire movie, it is more than a cool movie. It's a literate movie about people trying to make sense of their lives. They just happen to be really cool. And vampires.


One of the other aspects that makes Only Lovers Left Alive stand apart from the other genres in its bloodline is that it is proper art. And not because it's good or because it's slow and has some subtitles or that a movie with a flaming crossbow can't be art. This movie is art because it's thoughtful in both an emotional and intellectual sense. It has something to say about human (or vampire) relationships and how they change over time. It has something to say about the state of the world and about the many things we fill our minds with to keep from thinking about death. It's about more than that, as well. It's the kind of movie that you talk to your friend at a party after you've had too much red wine.

Only Lovers Left Alive is, like The Limits of Control and Broken Flowers, a movie for the patient. It takes its sweet time and it doesn't particularly care whether or not you're following along. Like everything that is truly cool (and I think that we can all accept the premise that Jim Jarmusch is a cool man, I mean, just look at him), it doesn't feel the need to help you along. It doesn't need to rush anything. Instead it convinces you that you're right there with it, that you're hip enough to know what's going on at all times. It's a trick of cinema and a testament to Jarmusch's skill that you are convinced right up until the last frame.

More than skill, though, one of the admirable aspects on display in Only Lovers Left Alive is Jarmusch's love of making movies. Another line of his that I cary around with me is that he doesn't see himself as a professional, but as a amateur. He doesn't make movies to make money. He makes movies becuase he loves them. Even in his worst film you can see this drive at work. In Only Lovers Left Alive, you not only see it, you feel it. This movie comes from a place of love as much as it is about love.

Towards the end of the film John Hurt, playing the long-since-thought-dead Christopher Marlow, says to his adopted family that "Humility will get you nowhere." It's clearly posed as an ironic statement (and not a spoiler, incidentally). There's a smile at the edges of John Hurt's mouth in a way that only he can that tells you that there is something more to his words. It's a line that encapsulates the depths that the movie possesses. It's melancholy, yet slightly funny. It speaks to a larger world, yet is also about a few people having a moment. It also sums up the man who wrote it.


Unlike the Marlow of this film Jim Jarmusch is in no danger of suffering the same fate. While many other indie directors have changed course or become massive stars or simply faded away, Jarmusch is still there, quietly being the artist that we would all like to be. Humility, it seems, has gotten him somewhere.

This is the coolest vampire movie I've seen since Near Dark. It defines itself in a different manner. Near Dark is about violence and family. Only Lovers Left Alive is about guitars. And it's also about books. And all of the albums you talked about with your first girlfriend. It's about all of the emotions you invest in these things criss-crossing with one another. Most of all, though, it's about love and what that does to people over the long term. It's a movie that you're surprised that no one has made before. It seems to fully formed, so fully thought out, that it seems like it's always been there. It's the kind of movie that only Jim Jarmusch could make.

(Because, at a certain point in this movie, Adam and Eve have a full-blown junkie lean going on. You'll know it when you see it.)

James Kislingbury writes comics and podcasts. You can follow him on Twitter @kislingtwits.

I Guess Jack Reacher is Pretty Good?

Jack Reacher is the type of action movie I can watch and enjoy with my parents.

It's simple, straight-forward and is wrapped around the same kind of familiar, procedural drive that a good Law and Order episode has. All the while it delivers the kind of justified violence that you don't have to think about for longer than the length of the scene. It's good fun and, as Mark Kermode might describe it, is perfectly fine "Tab A into slot B fair."

It's an average movie with some truly excellent moments. The car chase in the middle is excellent, so is the comic turn of most of the film's goons. Then there's Werner Herzog, collecting more money for three days of shooting than he probably has for his last three films combined (and that's a cause worth supporting). There's a lot worth liking in this film. And it's on Instant Watch. What are you doing for two hours that's so important*?

At the end of all of this, beyond whether or not it's actually a good movie or if it contributes anything to the human experience besides a mild distraction against our inevitable oblivion, Jack Reacher is a film that is paying the mortgage of the guy who wrote and directed The Way of the Gun**.



That's a cause worth supporting. The Way of the Gun is one of my favorite, little underseen movies***. I think it made all of fifteen dollars at the box office and thanks to cult heroes like Ryan Philipe and that one teacher from Boston Public (you know, the one that kissed the hot chick who wouldn't wear a bra?) it's never really burned up the midnight movie circuit.

It's a brutal, mean little movie that has the energy of a Tarantino movie and the kind of gritty violence that Sam Peckinpaugh, for all his faults, had perfected. It also has bar-none one of the best gunfights in movie history. As much as the movie might be a bit too clever and a bit too self-aware, it's worth seeing, if only, for the fantastic showdown at the end. It combines all of the realistic geographic intensity of Heat with the fun of an old fashioned Wild West shoot-out. In a perfect world we'd see more of this type of scene, but because less people saw it than populated Andorra, we got berserker editing and slow-mo instead. Because the world is a son of a bitch.

I also spent a New Years Eve watching The Way of the Gun watching this with a girl instead of actually doing anything fun. I'm not saying it wasn't a good choice or a proud one in the long run, but that should be a testament to how much I like that movie. Or how much of a mess my own life is. Maybe both.

By the way, I'm still looking for the jacket Benicio Del Toro wears at the end of the movie, so if anybody has any ideas as to what it is, send them my way.

THE AD BLAST

I do a podcast called White Guys, Square Glasses. . . which will be changing its name to A Quality Interruption very shortly. WGSG/A Quality Interruption is a podcast about movies. Cruz and I focus on a single film for about an hour, picking it apart, and often getting side-tracked by our dopey ideas on narrative theory. It's a good time. Our newest episode is about Near Dark, another little Peckinpaugh-esque blast of darkness and horror.

I wrote some comics. You can pick up the stories I wrote in two anthologies: Old College Comics Presents and The Freshman Fifteen. It's got my stories, along with the entries of a whole lot of other, often more talented, people. It's good fun and you're supporting indie publishing. Buy one today!

I am also on twitter.

FOOTNOTES

*Also, Rosamund Pike is both talented and incredibly attractive! And we're supposed to believe that Richard Jenkins somehow had a hand in producing her!

**Christopher McQuarrie is writing and directing Mission: Impossible 5? Fuck yeah. Good work, Hollywood.

***I even wrote about it way back in 2008 for my college paper. There's a Two Girls, One Cup "joke" on the opposite page. Lord. Were we ever that young?

One of the Good Ones

There. There you go. I finally saw something that I liked. Or, more accurately, I finally saw something that was good. And in the theater, no less! I hope you're happy!

Actually, that isn't strictly true. I saw Redline, Near Dark, and Battle Royale recently, but we're not here for them. Or about Night Watch for that matter.

We're here to talk about The Grand Budapest Hotel.

As easy as Wes Anderson is to poke fun at, he is also a director that is is hard to be snide about. He's an artist who is making the exact kind of art that he wants to make-- and most of the time, it's really quite good. Even if it isn't, he's made some of the best movies of the past fifteen years. And even if that isn't true he made Rushmore, a movie I carry around with me with all of the affection of a childhood blanket. I don't exist as the person that I am without Rushmore. I'm not the movie fan that I am without that movie. I guess The Royal Tenebaums ranks up there as well. It's one of the few moments of lesbianism that I've witnessed with my mother. . .

But anyways. . .

A few years back I described Django Unchained as a Quentin Tarantino movie and I feel safe in repeating that sentiment by saying that The Grand Budapest Hotel is a Wes Anderson movie. It's an intricately constructed film, driven by particular ticks and a kind of subject matter that only Wes Anderson and a bunch of dead people truly loved. His tastes vary in their effectiveness. Sometimes his ticks add up to nothing more than fodder for a parody video and other times he makes Moonrise Kingdom.

His films are consumate works of art, regardless of their quality. Mark Kermode compared The Grand Budapest Hotel compared with a pastry box and to a grandfather clock, but his best works-- and this film-- are more than just a collection of finely oiled gears**.

The best parts of the film are the portions where we forget about the machinery and see something else beneath the surface. These moments are so fleeting they almost seem like mistakes.But we're looking at a Wes Anderson movie so we know that these moments are anything but mistakes. In the moment, though, we aren't thinking of what was meant to be there or what wasn't. Instead we see that these fast talking, quirky characters aren't just "characters." We see that they're people suffering from the same kind of loneliness and alienation that people like Max Fischer or Royal Tenebaum suffer from. Hell, that's what defines them.

It's the light at the edge of the frames that elevate this movie. His movies aren't machines, they only have the appearance of machinery. Behind all of the exacting camera work and the chapter titles and the oh-so-specific dialogue is a beating heart, there is affection. It's something that his worst movies forget about and it is something that his best movies have right out in the open.*** The Grand Budapest Hotel reconciles these two aspects. It doesn't quite have the melancholy of his best works, yet it does manage to remain interesting without losing sight of the human beings on screen.


I wish that instead of honing his craft down to one particular style to the point where he (hones it down to a diamond) he would expand in his artistry. That, like Martin Scorcese, his style would change and evolve and he would try his hand at new things.

Though, that's silly.Wes Anderson isn't interested in making different movies, nor should he. He is interested in making Wes Anderson movies. Going off of The Grand Budapest Hotel, that is a perfectly fine way to go.

ENTER THE AD DRAGON:

I do more than write bad movie reviews. I also write bad comics. At Old College Comics we're selling two volumes of anthology comics, where I am but one writer amongst a collection of some very talented friends of mine. We're also now on iTunes and Kindle, if you're over the whole physical medium thing.

I also do a cruddy little podcast called White Guys, Square Glasses. My friend Cruz and I talk about films there. These week we talked about Battle Royale. There's also a blog for the show if you're interested in checking that out. I just started updating that thing again. Because I guess I care again.

And, what the hell, here's my portfolio. The thing is ancient, but I figured why not link all of the blogs I'm in possession of? Right?

FOOTNOTES:

*Mark Kermode is an intelligent man.

 **Maybe it might be more accurate-- if completely insane-- to describe his movies as "well oiled books." Maybe.

***Best: Rushmore, Royal Tenebaums, Moonrise Kingdom. Worst: Fantastic Mr. Fox.

"In Space Life is Impossible"

"In Space Life is Impossible:" 

A review of Gravity.

From the first moments to the very last shot, Gravity doesn't let up for a single second.As I write this, my stomach is in knots, my heart rate has only gone down just now, and I think I almost tore my handkerchief in half. If my sweaty palms are any indication, Gravity is a very accomplished film. If you want a movie that feels like a 90 minute panic attack while hand-cuffed to a rollercoaster, this is the movie to see.

It's kind of hard to believe that Gravity is the only film Alfonso Cuaron has made since Children of Men. Considering how Children of Men combined a pulp adventure story with a Biblical allegory, while at the same time quietly redefining cinema, a gap of seven years isn't just conspicuous, it's depressing.We have an answer in Gravity. Apparently this is what he was saving it up for.

The anxiousness and thrills that Gravity delivers are entirely down to how impeccably well constructed it is. We saw how well he could wield a camera and construct a scene in Children of Men and with Gravity we see that same talent turned towards a film that is much more sparse, yet somehow bigger. Children of Men is a film about a particular kind of world, while Gravity is a film about the vastness of the universe and just how large a human being can feel.

It's a film that is so consummately constructed that not only does the 3D work, it actually adds to the tone of the film. The use of 3D gives the film a sense of dimension and space that a 2D film doesn't have, while at the same time only calling attention to the 3D for a greater effect. Maybe I'm saying this because I was so impressed with the movie that I didn't let the 3D get in the way, but I'll be damned if I didn't feel that it made the movie somehow bigger. If stereoscopy is a gimmick, then I can live with that gimmick if it means we get more movies like Gravity.

The 3D seems as cinematically important as Cinerama is to 2001: A Space Odyssey.* The Cinerama simply makes 2001 bigger. It doesn't change the film, yet it transforms it into a greater film. The same is true in Gravity's case. The sense of scale and space that this movie uses to tell a story isn't possible 2D. The greater triumph, though is, even if that isn't true, it feels like it's true.

I mentioned 2001: A Space Odyssey, not because they're both movies about space (though, that helps), but because Alfonso Cuaron's cinematic eye is no less dynamic or exacting than Stanley Kubrick's was in his own epic. These are men who understand how to use the movie in its most basic, primitive sense. That is why both of these stories exist primarily without words. They can hold our attention without having to talk to us or tell us what is happening. While they each include simple, yet important character interactions, their triumph is the use of film's most primitive tools-- sound, colors, motion-- to tell us things that, in many cases, simple words cannot. This strong, directorial hand is why 2001 is still studied and debated today. This is why Gravity carries so much weight with so few words**.

Cuaron gives you an ending and a sense of awe that you can only earn after ninety minutes of fear and trembling. He doesn't ever need to tell you what you're supposed to feel. You simply know. You know, because that is what movies are supposed to do. As much fun as Gravity is, it also feels like arriving at some sort of fundamental truth. In that sense, it is the complete opposite of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It is in these grand strokes that the movie shows its brilliance. There is nothing complicated or difficult to understand, yet this is deceptive in a way that makes movies so great. For all of the craftsmanship that went into this movie, it all disguises itself in service of this story. It's a magic trick. You don't see the years of work that went into it, the failures leading up to it, or the simple slight of hand that makes it all possible.All you see is the trick and all you feel is a sense of wonder, the knowledge that you just saw something that is impossible.

All of this is in service of telling a story, one about a person's desire to live. It isn't about the physical facts of the matter, it is about emotional reality of these characters. What they feel is no less real than the laws of physics that this movie is so (seemingly) concerned about. It is as simple and as profound as all of that. In that sense, it is like 2001: A Space Odyssey, because they're both about the wordless wonder that a great movie provides. There is a symphonic, wordless well beneath all of this that I cannot quite put into words, nor would I want to if I could. But I think I love this movie.

I'm still shaking and maybe that isn't the most objective way to review a film. I don't really care, because this is how I feel about Gravity. For as much fun as I had watching the movie, what I know is true about this movie is what I felt walking home from the theater, wide eyed and rubbing my head with both hands amazed at what I just saw. That experience is something that I cannot write here. What I can write, in whatever meager way, is that this movie has made me feel in a way and with a strength that I have not felt in a long, long time. Movies are great. Being alive is great and all I want to do write now is to sit here a while. I want to sit here and take deep breaths and try to take in what I just saw.

I am going to sit here a long while.



HERE COMES THE AD ZONE:

My friends and I are working on a follow-up to our first comic book anthology. Naturally, that means we have a  Kickstarter going. Any little bit helps and, hey, if you're actually interested in the project, that's even better. I'm really looking forward to getting this thing out in the world, but, yes, we do need your help. 

FOOTNOTES:

 *Which is to say that you have not actually seen 2001: A Space Odyssey until you've seen it in Cinerama. It's like when you take off your sunglasses after wearing them for a long time and wondering if colors were always this bright).

**There, I fixed the worst sentence I've ever written! Happy now!?

Back on the horse. . .

If there's anybody out there that reads this thing: I am sorry for not updating more. I'd like to say that it was a busy couple of weeks, but. . . that'd be a lie. I just got lazy. Sorry.

But I did see The World's End and. . . man, I cannot say that it is a very good movie.

I wish that was a good movie. I wish that it didn't remind me of how brilliant Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead are. I wish it didn't make me want to watch a good Twilight Zone episode. I almost even wish it was a bad movie, because then I could feel something besides disappointment.

I'm not even angry, because it isn't a though it's bad. It does have some pretty good jokes and even if it might not be the best directed movie in the world, it certainly has a lot of directing. It's also nice to see Eddie Marsan play something other than "goonish" or "menacing." Many people seemed to enjoy the hell out of it. I wish I was one of them. It'd be nice, because, man, what a bummer. It's a strange thing to say knowing I

Thinking about it now, I don't think I went into it with any real expectations. I know I like Edgar Wright and I certainly enjoy Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The ad blitz and fanboy orgy that preceded the release of Scott Pilgrim left a bad taste in my mouth. If anything the odds were in this movie's favor. Somehow this movie managed to nail my lowered expectations. It's a weird feeling to have.

Maybe not getting drunk and watching movies has taken some of the sport out of it. Or it could be that I'm just tired of watching movies about random sci-fi junk. Maybe I just suck now. Like, suck real hard. Suck in a bad way, you know? It can't be that simple, though.

I don't think it's either of those, but I do know that I'm a different guy than when I saw Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The difference with those movies and with this movie is that I didn't care what happened in The World's End. Shaun of the Dead sets up its stakes very well. You know these characters, you know this situation and, getting away from the bare minimum stuff, it has a spark and a life that I can't quite put to words. Hot Fuzz doesn't have the same impact, because the creative team is a known quantity at this point, but it still manages to craft a funny world where even if you don't buy into the antagonists, you do buy into the characters. The World's End doesn't have that. It isn't a very good buddy movie and it isn't a very good science fiction movie. There are some pretty good laughs tucked into the film, though. That helps. That helps quite a bit.

But, man, I don't know. I don't want to complain about this movie, because, again, it isn't terrible. There is nothing wholly objectionable in this film. Yet, having it sit with me, I can't help but feel that it is a movie that is merely okay. Knowing who made it and what went into it, isn't that so much worse than it being out and out terrible?



SIDE NOTE: I'm hoping this is one of those movies that I realize years later that I was wrong about. Probably not. But it's nice to be wrong some times, isn't it?

SIDE SIDE NOTE: And on another note, since we're all cool here, can we all just admit that "The World's End" is a bad title?

"More fuck-up than shoot out" sound about right. . .

I rented Savages because I was really in the mood to see some good, old fashioned brutal violence. I wasn't looking for intellectual stimulaiton or anything that would risk stirring my emotions. I just wanted to see some cartels-- OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH JON TRAVOLTA'S HEAD

Savages is a movie that doesn't know what it is supposed to be. On the one hand it seems to want to position itself as a kind of light, poppy caper and on the other hand it wants to be a movie about doing business with professional decapitators. These are two completely different tones and in this case the film makers have failed to mix them together properly. It's not pulpy enough to be fun and it isn't serious enough to hit you where it hurts. This is made worse by the fact that the high school, drug culture jerk-off fantasy works about as well as the gritty level narco-drama.

Traffic this ain't.

This poster is by far and away the coolest thing about the movie.

If there's a line that universally measures the tone and pitch of a movie, on the one end it would have The Hudsucker Proxy and on the other hand there is No Country for Old Men. If Savages had to fall somewhere near No Country for Old Men. Then it would do a pump fake, make a run for Hudsucker, then trip right before it got to comedy, but then doubled-back, lost its nerve ten yards short of the goal line, and then have a seizure. At that point you wouldn't be able to figure out if this is serious and you should get help or if it's just part of the movie or if you should care at all.

Anyways, the point is that the Coen Brothers are very good at directing different kinds of movies and they're very good at mixing things together in a way that feels both new and, somehow, classic. They have a wide range of interests and skills and even when they stumble with a movie like Burn After Reading, at least it's interesting. At least they're swinging for the fences.  At least they have a clue what they're doing.

Other movies I should have watched instead include: Days of Heaven, The Sand Pebbles, and Lolita.

Then the movie references the ultimate version of this film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which is a reference that only serves to remind you of a much better film.Envoke a superior film at ye peril. I mean, Prometheus does this, a movie with some profound problems, but it only illicits the memory of Lawrence of Arabia, a movie that is so completely different from Prometheus that it almost (almost) doesn't matter. Then again maybe Oliver Stone thinks that kids today don't know what Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is and he thinks he's showing off. He seems to think that's the case with Iraq.

Butch Cassidy et al. is the exact sort of film that you shouldn't bring up in your film. Ever. Especially when what you're doing is a lesser version of the film you're quoting. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is the movie that Savages wishes it was. We all know and love that movie.  It's a movie with an incredible lightness of touch. With the exception of the bicycle scene, it never brings you out of the world it has set-up. It is one of the great pieces of cinema and even forty years later, it still feels and fresh and original as it ever did.

The problem is that Oliver Stone has the lightness of touch of a gorilla that has recently discovered needle drugs. He can't combine comedy and action or grit and froth. It's not what he does. Subtlety is not one of his strong suits. He's a director that goes loud and in one direction. For better or for worse that is what he does. Except that with Savages, the direction he has gone in is a grandpa trying to understand what Justin Bieber is and why she has a Twitter.

Besides Stone's disconnect with classic films, he doesn't seem to understand the modern world, either.
There's just something that uncompelling and sad about a famous leftist filmmaker trying to a movie about contemporary issues, especially when you consider the things he seems to be commenting on were old news five years ago. I mean, for fuck's sake, he's got a scene that involves Mexican gangsters watching The Hills.

Then the movie also throws in a rape for no reason and it has an ending that revolves around multiple suicides (that really isn't a spoiler). For those keeping track at home, rape and suicide are just about the laziest thing a writer can do to give a story weight. Then there's the fact that it is just plain leery.

If you want to write about rape and/or suicide, let me give you some advice: Don't. Please.

BEHOLD! The face of evil!

The most compelling thing about the movie is its view on evil. It doesn't exist as a preening Scarface-type. Instead, evil presents itself as either in a workman-like manner (as in Benecio Del Toro's character) or in the form of Salam Hayak's evil Anna Wintour. The movies view is that despite all of the drugs and the exoticism still bases its villains in a world that is incredibly mundane. They worry about their family and getting their job done and keeping their world together. They aren't out to hit the city with Joker gas or make a Bond villain speech in the war room. Sure it's a real world three or four steps removed from the realities of Mexico's current war on drugs, but it is one familiar to Americans.

It's odd, because Del Toro's character seems like he might exist somewhere on the planet Earth, which is something that cannot be said about anyone or anything else in this movie.

Then again, it goes out of its way to set our white boy drug dealers as real nice guys. They're positioned as a combination of Robin Hood and Bob Marley. Sure, they're drug dealers, but they're good guys, so it's okay to like them! I don't want to like them. What I want is to see a good movie. Do you ever think that Billy Wilder ever worried about whether somebody was going to like one of his charaters? Or John Huston? Or anyone who knows what they're doing? What a waste of energy. If they're worth liking, the audience will like them, they don't need to be told that they're good guys first. The same goes for the bad guys. That's what works the best in the movie: The bad things.

Over a thousand words and I didn't mention these fucking dreads once.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS:

*Blake Lively is a great set of skin and hair and not much else.

*"No, waiter, I'm sorry, I ordered the Hollywood Movie Star, this is Taylor Kitsch. Please send it back."

*I really want to watch Way of the Gun right now. Wash the taste of this Savages out of my mouth. Also, that is another movie that quotes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that isn't completely overshadowed by it.

*The word isn't "IED," the word is "bomb." All bombs are improvised. We've been using that word for a long time and nobody ever got confused as to what a bomb was. We were doing just fine without a goofy acronym. Further more, what kind of a fucking Navy SEAL says "We'll set up a few IEDs?" No Navy SEAL, that's who. Actually, no human. Even terrorists or insurgents wouldn't use the phrase "IED" while planting an IED.

*Nobody seems to live in any of the houses in this movie. I have never seen 20-something stoner's love den that well kept. I've seen model houses that are bigger messes than the places in this movie.

*A coked up lawyer making sushi at home? Does Oliver Stone think it's still 1985? Does he have that thing Liz Lemon's brother has?

*"There's a reason it's called a highjacking." Fuck you.

*"I get orgasms, he gets wargasms." Fuck you.

*"Every business has an origin story." Fuck you. EVERYTHING has an origin story. That is a nothing statement.

*"Just because I'm telling you this story, that I'm alive at the end. Yeah. It's that kind of a story." Fuck you. What does that even mean? Alright. I'm calm. Now imagine an alternate world where William Holden was forced to say that and now feel bad for everything in the world.

*"My ex-wife used to call me 'Sushi.' Cold fish." Fuck y-- Oh, wait, wrong monologue.

*"Savages." Fuck you to Hell.

"START WITH AN EARTHQUAKE AND END WITH A CLIMAX"

THEY MADE A MOVIE FOR ALL OF THE 12 YEAR OLDS IN THE WORLD
A review of Pacific Rim (2013)

Back in the day, around about 1940-something the term “blockbuster” was invented. As the Royal Air Force wasn't super concerned with film at the time, the word was attached to the biggest bombs they had. These things weighed at least two tons and, as you can imagine, were believed to be powerful enough to destroy an entire city block. Bad news for Jerry, but what a turn of phrase!

Pacific Rim is a blockbuster in the best way possible. It's a loud, monstrous thing that does exactly what it is intended to do and does exactly what we want it to. In a summer loaded with stillborn star vehicles and limp re-boots and a sequel that I guess only I liked, it's good to see that a blockbuster doesn't have to choose between being big and being good.

Pacific Rim works because it launches into its ideas with such sincerity that you never for a second pause to laugh at it or wonder about the feasibility of an intergalactic robot war. It isn't cynical or ironic in a way that you don't see in special effects movies very often any more. It doesn't apologize for being a movie about pretty people in giant robots duking it out with intergalactic monsters. You're worried about other things than how realistic this all is by the time the narrator finishes his first sentence.

It's Robot Jox* mashed up with Neon Genesis Evangelion through the lens a man who has clearly watched way too many WWII movies. In short, it's everything a twelve year old ever wanted to see in a movie It isn't what people think a 12 year old wants to see. It isn't what they are told that they want to see. It isn't what they end up seeing because nothing else looks good. This is the movie that every 12 year old ever wanted.

It's a film wrapped in a love and a care of a subject matter, but it also wants to make a good movie. It moves beyond tribute and pastiche and actually manages to become a movie that is fantastic on its own merits. It makes me want to go watch more movies, because it's a film that reminds you just how wonderful this medium can be. I think I should feel very silly saying this about a giant monster movie and yet I still feel like an idiot. I realize this is a problem with me. This clearly isn't a problem with Guillermo Del Toro, who seems to be about a confident of a hand behind the camera as there ever could be.

This is a movie that is as good as you remember Godzilla versus Biollante being.

OH WAIT, GROSS

Ugh. I just remembered that Jobs was one of the trailers before the movie. Jeezus does that looks like it's going to be a shit show.

The trailer contains the whole arc of the movie. The reveal of the iPad is meant to look like this epic, spellbinding moment, an event of human triumph over conformity expect that it's a multi-millionaire revealing a fucking gadget.

I blame The Social Network for this.

Not pictured: The dog's name.

THE SPIRIT OF THE BLITZ

On the very same flagship film program that Del Toro was interviewed in Simon Mayo mentioned that this film gave him the vibe of an old WWII flight movie and in a general sense it reminded him of the feeling the people of England had during the Blitz. Del Toro copped to as much. He said that he was obsessed with that era, but you don't need his quote on this, all you have to do is look at his filmography.

This idea is embedded in the very design of the movie.When describing the jaegars, he said that Cherno-Alpha was a walking T-Series tank. Now, that's like saying that he's a walking Sherman tank or a walking Spitfire or, I don't know, a walking M1 helmet. For those who don't know what any of that means, it means that Cherno Alpha is a kinetic icon. It's a walking monument.

The T-series tanks are one of the biggest factors leading to the USSR winning against the Nazis. While the German were busy having guys like Porsche mold and design their tanks, the Soviets were busy slapping together tanks in converted tractor factories. Besides the fact that the USSR had an unparalleled labor pool and a ruthless despot that was willing to smash them against whatever obstacle necessary, it was pieces of engineering like the T-34 that turned the tide against the Germans. Plus, a tank makes a much better icon than a commissar shooting deserters and their family because they fled the Hun.

The other big Soviet icon that stands out to me is the “Wall of Life” mentioned in the beginning of the film. This is a direct reference to the “Road of Life” that ran over Lake Ladoga during the Siege of Leningrad.

Truckers (and sailors and pilots) ran all day and night, braving thin ice and German defenses to relieve the besieged people of Leningrad during their nine-hundred days of Nazi encirclement.

In one scene, in our hero (I just realized that I don't know his name. You know the one, he was in Undeclared), has a wall of photos in his room. There is his brother and kaiju and whatever else that makes up his past but, my eye went to the one I know, the one I knew was the point of the scene: The Motherland Calls. The statue was built as a memorial to the defense of Stalingrad, one of the bloodiest, longest battles in history. It's an icon to the spirit of the USSR and to anyone else who had their back up against the wall because of an incredible evil.

These seemingly little touches are what makes the film greater than the sum of its parts. It's the little references like this that show that Del Toro knows what he's doing and that he has an affection for it, and that he doesn't need to cram it down your throat. It's all there on film, all you need to do is look for it. But you can also just look at the alien dinosaurs gets punched and that's cool too.

Oh, also it's probably named after a nuclear disaster and has a cooling tower for a head. So, you know, subtext.

I WISH EBERT WAS ALIVE

Part of me has come to accept genre movies, to legitimately accept stupid, silly things. As much as I love “serious” movies, that doesn't mean that I have to then dislike something else. This is not a zero sum game and Roger Ebert was the expert balancing fine art with fine froth.

I watched the Seventh Seal probably because of him. I love The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as much as I do now because he loved it so much. I watched The Proposition and read Blood Meridian because of him. And I love explosions because he said that's okay. And I also hate explosions in equal measure because he said that's okay, too. It's all okay. I don't have to choose.

He has a list on Criterion of some of his Great Movie and on the other hand he actually enjoyed Speed 2: Cruise Control. He wasn't ever a rube, though. Some of his most enjoyable work was when he used his Pulitzer as a blugeon to shame sod-bustingly stupid films like they were paying for it. Quietly, though, Ebert's strength to me was how well he could sell you on his opinion, no matter how much you actually disagreed with it, you'd read his review and go "Well, I can see that."

Mark Kermode, my favorite living film critic, is your excitable friend at a party talking to you about HOW HAVE YOU NEVER LISTENED TO JESUS OF COOL, whereas Ebert was a guy just talking to you across two cups of coffee at a diner. By the end of the conversation, which he would be leading the whole time, despite your best efforts, you'd walk out either agreeing with him or having been coached into knowing better than you once did. He had an underlying decency in him that a lot of people just cannot muster. That goes for everyone, not just film critics.

I honestly wish he could have seen this movie. I honestly wish I could have read what he said about this. Whether I agreed with him or not, I know he would have been right in his own way. Really, though, as much as I used him as a recommendation guide or a taste maker or anything else, I really want to hear that I am right. I love this movie. And I wish that he could have loved this movie too.

I don't know if that's incredibly sappy or incredibly self-centered or just plain dumb. All I know is that considering how so much of this week has gone, I think we could use more of the good people and Roger Ebert was most certainly one of them.

I MADE THIS ROBOT WAR FOR YOU

Pacific Rim works on its own as a film and one of the main reasons it does so is that it is pulling from a much larger body of works than the mere monster movie. World War II as a genre and as a moment in history obviously weighs heavy in this movie's influences, but so does Japanese anime and the Japanese monster movie (I mean, it takes the word "kaiju" from the eponymous genre. So,yeah, duh).

There's something slightly odd about that because the original animes and giant robot movies that this movie is inspired by comes out of the consequences of World War II.

The Japanese were living in the shadow of some existential terror that they couldn't exactly put a name to. Nobody wanted to make a movie about how their new friends the Americans bombed the shit out of them. I'm also sure that nobody wanted to watch that sort of movie. I mean, we did the same thing, but we had the pleasure of having won, at least.

So what did they do? Atomic monsters. Giant robots. These things were meant to be entertainment, first and foremost, but they were also a way to tell a story about a time that no one really wanted to talk about, at least not directly. And they're not alone. We made The Day the Earth Stood still. Jack Finney made Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In that way Pacific Rim carries on the allegorical energy of those works, as well as the aesthetic energy. It carries on in the tradition not only of Japanese science fiction, but big idea science fiction in general. In that way, it's more of a traditional science fiction film than is Star Trek No Colon Into Darkness.

Beyond Gigantor, the particular anime that I am reminded of is "Cannon Fodder," one of the shorts in the film Memories.The world of "Cannon Fodder" is very basic: The life of every citizen is geared towards producing, servicing, and firing shells. That is it. Go to sleep. Wake up. Work on the cannons. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. There is nothing else. There isn't even an enemy that we know of, there's just this Gormanghast/Airstrip-One-like city-state that solely exists to maintain a tradition for the sake of itself.

When I saw a bunch of dudes in jumpsuits flying down ladders I figured out that I was watching Cannon Town realized in live action. And I'm not sure if that's intentional or not. I'm sure it is intentional. Guillermo Del Toro is a pretty sharp guy, I'll give him at least partial credit.

Pacific Rim, notably, is not a dystopia and it's not an allegory. It's a messed up world with a lot of serious, horrible problems, but it isn't a world that has given up on itself. It isn't a place that hates its people. It is still a place worth fighting for and a place in which you can invest your emotions. The world of Pacific Rim, its Wall of Life and its high death toll and all is a place worth calling home. It's a place that is worth fighting for.

SPOILER: THE REAL MONSTER IS MAN

The title of this entry is taken from something I heard listening to Mark Kermode. He was quoting Mark Robinson speaking on his movie Earthquake. I can't think of a better way to describe the pacing and tone of Pacific Rim than that.So, good work, Dr. Kermode. Thanks for taking that away from me.

For whatever flaws Pacific Rim may have, you can't fault it for its ambitions. It is an attempt to do something new, even if it is heavily based on the works of the past and as far as world building goes, Del Toro might be on par with Ridley Scott. Besides all of the set dressing and the references directed at a time and place that only jerks like me are that interested, what remains is what a blockbuster should be (besides, of course, the massive financial success. You know. That ol' thing).

If I had written this a few months ago, I think I would have tried to position this film as a genre movie that delivered. And it is that. Saying that "I got what I wanted out of it" makes it sound like it's a whore or something. It makes it sound like it is a trifle. It's more than that, though, because the more I think about it and the more I look around, I realize that making a good genre film is fucking hard. It takes a lot of time, talent, and energy to spin something like robots and monsters into a worthwhile feature and Del Toro certainly has that.

Top to bottom, from stratosphere to oceanic trench, Pacific Rim is a delight. Go see it in the theaters. Go see it now. This is the kind of city destroying spectacle that should be encouraged.
 

*I watched Robot Jox on TV way back in 1994 and again on a rented video, so I'm not mentioning it solely because Red Letter Media had a go at it, but I am definitely mentioning it because Red Letter Media had a go at it and that's what I like to do. I was into Robo Jox before it was uncool.

SIDE NOTE: Here's another perspective worth reading on. As much as criticism is about rolling around in your own words and feeling satisfied, I think this bit of writing gets to something we (I) forget about sometimes, which is that movies are meant to be watched. Film is a visual medium and as much as I think I could wax on about that for a really long time, I'd be missing the point. What the above article points out is that Pacific Rim, and film in a broader sense, is as much about conveying story and information on a visual and kinetic level as it is about telling you things through language. The best example of this that I can think of (especially when it comes to sci-fi) is 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is as primal of film story telling as you can get, as well as probably being one of the most sophisticated pieces of art in this particular visual medium. Go read that thing.

  James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and an enemy pilot. You can follow him on twitter.

Let's Rap About Fast Five

Thanks to my friend Rachel (and about a dozen other caring people) I was made aware of one of Criterion's 50 Percent Off Sales. After deliberation that's probably lasted a year or so, I decided to purchase one of Stanley Kubrick's lesser known masterpieces Paths of Glory. It arrived this week so, naturally come Saturday night I watched Fast Five.

And let me tell you that Fast Five is quite a movie.
 

"PROTECT PRESIDENT CAR! HE'S THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS THE CODES!"

There has been a lot dedicated to this particular moving picture, from How Did This Get Made to Jordan, Jesse Go! to Giant Bomb as well as quite a few others (like my friend who shall remain anonymous who works in the JET program who showed it in his class to, I don't know, teach kids about American euphemisms). Knowing that I am not going to waste your time blathering on just how good or bad it is. It is. It's pretty bad and it's pretty good and in the end it has some of the craziest car sequences that you will ever damn see.

So, anyways, Fast Five, what is it? Who is it? What make car go? Who is rock? Why make crime? These are all good questions and I hope to answer them in turn.

This movie stars a bunch of people, only one of them is Vin Diesel (Boiler Room, Saving Private Ryan) and only another one of them is The Rock (The Rundown, DOOM), but most of them are pretty and at least one of them is Paul Walker (Flags of Our Fathers, That Movie Where the Guy Gets Shot With a Shotgun in the Trailer and Flies like a Million Feet).

Nothing about what this movie is makes sense to me and that's sort of the magic. This all starts with the cast. You've got one of the leads,Vin Diesel, who was once known for being something of an indy breakout actor in the late ninties and early two-thousands who then ended up in the Riddick films-- excuse me-- the Riddick Saga and then finally scoring his much sought after yacht fund with the Fast-cum-Furious flicks.

In Fast Five he play a fat guy who everyone in this world is too polite to call "chubby and kind of old and sad," which naturally means that he's a deadly criminal who is really good at cars and, like everyone else, really good at showing up or having people show up at the exact right moment to save the day. Also, he's really good at cars.

Then there's Sir Paul Walker. In this movie he plays a white guy with a t-shirt with a hot girlfriend/baby-mamma (SPOILER!!!). Despite common belief Paul Walker is not the same person Stephen Dorf. In this movie he plays the white guy that doesn't seem to offend anybody by appearing on screen. He's also important because he's the one guy in this movie that we're 100% sure is full-blooded honky.

Then there's the Asian Guy (Better Luck Tomorrow, Fast and Furious 6). His purpose is to bone Tall Natalie Portman. His job in the crew is supposed to be to blend in and be an everyman, which he proves by being Asian man in Fast Five that drives a car super well and is inserted into this film with the specific purpose of boning Tall Natalie Portman. You know, a real everyman. He also, like, looks at a thing once and maybe understands what they are once, which I guess makes him a super-valuable heist team member or a guy with Asperger's. Not exactly justifying his placement on the crew, but then again he does get up in Tall Queen Amadala, so I can see why one would fly two thousand miles on such short notice.

Tall Natalie Portman is their "muscle," whatever the fuck that means. I mean a good half of their crew is yoked to the point of being a poster on the wall of a confused male teenager's wall, but she's their muscle, because I guess they said so. She is notable for not providing muscle at any point in the entire picture. But she does manage to pull the palm print of a criminal off of her ass. Like Asian Guy, she is just kind of there. And that's well enough because the men are just sort of there, as well. Everyone is just sort of there. Black. White. Asian. Latino. Miscellaneous. We are the United Colors of Pointlessness.

Because someone has to make those cars go.

Two dudes just chilling straightly.

The LGBT community is completely unrepresented in this movie except in subtext-- but I'll get to that in a second here-- because gay people require a level of complexity that is simply beyond this movie. The proof of this is that straight people are barely even there. Unless you can do something with a car in this movie (getting married, passing, or whatever else), it doesn't appear as anything more complex than something that could fit on a Post-it.

Then again, I complain a lot about how movies go out of their way to say what's going on. It's why I think Downton Abbey is such a big hit, because nobody ever says what they want or what they're thinking and that simple technique is drama. So, with that said I don't know that we need to establish any homosexual characters when one of the big draws of this film is two sweaty, bald men grappling with each other.

GET IT!?

The Fastiverse is a sexless, hateless universe that exists to drive machines with no feelings about your hormone treatment, the president's birth certificate, police brutality, or anything else. In many ways it's as old fashioned of a movie as there is, yet it is rife with Hispanics, the ethnically ambiguous, black people, the casually bilingual, and Asians and dead people and everyone else and none of that matters because they're all here to drive cars real quick like.

To me that is amazing. Fast Five, like the guy in Shine, has somehow managed to allow both some of the most secretly progressive ideas into the film and, yet, manages to make none of them an issue by making their ability to make cars go fast more important. Can you make a car drift? Go get married. Can you make this car jump this ramp? You qualify for a tax deduction. Can you make this car go real, real, real fast? Good. Because I'd be proud to have you as my neighbor.

It works because the film has no idea what it's doing. Hell, for that matter, it isn't just post-racial, it's post-human.

Don't worry they're fine. They landed on some poor people.

It's a thing that is everywhere. It's what society is built around. It's what we got in our hearts. It's what pirates hide and children giggle about. What I'm talking about is butts.

We like butts. We love butts. Some people-- often boring people-- want to look at butts. We were bred to do this.

More than that, it's what we want to see in movies right next to nice beaches, gothic manors, gothic manners, space, and sweet rides. As much as that is what we want to see and as much as that can go south, Fast Five is rather demur. Like James Bond movies, though, this movie can be shocking just how quaint it can be about the human body.

While it does have the obligitory ass shots and bikini clad babes that come from shooting a movie Rio de Janero it is a movie that is, importantly, shot in Rio de Janero. That's how people dress over there. It's a beach town in a hot and humid location and it's Brazil, I'm pretty sure even the president wears a bikini. There's a certain amount of casual half-nudity that comes with the territory.

So, in a movie in which Riddick and Paul Walker swing a bank vault into roughly a thousand cops and where Americans can storm into a former colony and shoot everyone that can be shot, this movie still has some sense of semblance of decency about showing a woman's breasts. Or, yeah that ass. Or, God help us, front cleavage.

Is it there, yeah? It's kind of weird when you see it, yet it doesn't ever treat any of the female characters as a nice ass except in the case of one very silly plot point. Women in this film are mothers, sisters, wives baby mommas, drag racers, cops, commandos, and, yes, damnit, career women. There is a franchise in which women are having it all and it isn't directed by Tina Faye.

As bad or as good as it is it could have been so much worse and it isn't and when you consider pornographic bilge like Transfomers 3, you should realize that this is a pretty good case that our society might not completely and utterly hate women. It might be that we like them and we want them to hang out with us and help us, and, yeah, it isn't exactly Waitress, but, then again, what is?

It is meathead cinema at its pinnacle and it still doesn't treat women like pieces of meat. Sure, they're still hot and super capable "professionals" with nothing to do in their lives but rob banks, but they aren't these objects of desire or points of leverage for the plot. They're women. They get shit done. In that sense they're just like the men. There's no equivocation, there's no discussion, there's just chicks in cars moving the plot along.

And they make the cars go vroom real good, so what other qualifications do you want?

In 2011 you will believe man can walk. . . real slow while looking into the middle distance.

People in this movie are cogs to movie the plot along to the next bit of fetishism. I was trying to describe this feeling to my friend Kevin and the best parallel I could come up with was a body builder talking about his hobbies. He says he's into French cooking or gardening or going to the movies, but we all know what his real passion is: It's body building. We all know where the heart of Fast Five is and it isn't in what people feel about fatherhood.

Because as much as Transformers is about selling toys to people or Pirates of the Caribbean is about selling illeteracy, this movie is just about cars. These cars do things.They get results. More importantly cars are really kind of rad.



Fast 6 has come and gone and it's basically a preconceived notion that this series will go on, hopefully, forever. I just want to put my foot in the door now with what I think Fast 8 (AKA Hard Eight With Cars This Time) should be--

VIN DIESEL
Looks like we've got to bring in another driver, the best there is. One I've been trying to forget about. . . UNTIL NOW.

PAUL WALKER
Who's that?

VIN RIDDICK
A ghost.

A SHELBY VIPER drives TOWARD THE CAMERA and drifts a few inches from the camera. A driver emerges from the driver's side door. He is wearing a helmet. He removes his helmet to reveal:

CGI STEVE MCQUEEN (as played by Army Hammer).

STEVE MCQUEEN
I heard you guys needed a driver.

BOOM.

FAST EIGHT.

BOOM.

IN 3D IMAX.

BOOM.

DUBSTEP.

WUB.

SUMMER.

BOOM.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

Come on! You know you want it!

I could apologize forever about this dumb, dumb, DUMB piece of cinema (and I do that a lot), but you know what? I don't care.

For once I'm free of all of the shame and irony and anything else you could make me feel about liking something this colossally stupid. I could talk about how cars are in America's DNA as deep as guns or unsolicited flag waving (I saw several American flags waving during a report of the announcement of the new Pope, so there you go), but in the end the reason I am talking about this movie is simple: I had fun.

You should have fun, too. That's why we watch movies. Maybe that fun is different sometimes and maybe we all have different ideas of fun, but we movies don't move us because we hate them. That's fun sometimes, yeah, I'll admit. That isn't what keeps us coming back. Sometimes it's a great piece of storytelling, something emotionally effecting, or great acting or all three. Sometimes its dumb people driving cars. Sometimes that is all that it has to be.

Fast Five did what it wanted to do. It made me have fun watching cars go over, under, and around things that cars should try their hardest to avoid for insurance reasons. It's why I watched Bullitt, it's one of the primary reasons why I love Ronin, it's why French Connection is burned to brightly in my mind, it's a dozen other films that made me remember them. It's the fact that Fast Five, for all of its many blindingly obvious faults, is a movie that uses machinery in novel ways to make something worth seeing.

You don't need me to tell you that that is a pretty good movie.

Adventures of Imperial Glory!

A Quick Thought About the Lives of a Bengal Lancer--

This movie isn't a great one. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer in terms of Imperial Adventure moves falls below GungaDin, but above The Northwest Frontier (and probably well above Carryon Up the Khyber if the You Tube clips are accurate). There are certain kind of movies that I am drawn to though, and regardless of the quality I have to watch them. I've been over this before, but besides the obvious choice of WWII movies, movies about Imperial adventure are high on the list. It's a problem I have.

Outside of my own ridiculous solipism, movies like The Lives of a Bengal Lancer meet a larger need. They're the grease that keeps movie studios going between bouts of costumed affair dramas and biopics about dead jerks. Like the Western or the War movie or the screwball comedy, it meets a certain need, it stars a certain kind of actor, and it gets in and out without you having to think too hard. It's old fashioned film making and for better or worse it represents the kind of movie they don't make anymore.

And considering that it comes on a dual-disc with the movie Beau Geste,, I think that means that this isn't the most popular Gary Cooper film of all time. . . except maybe with Adolf Hitler, apparently (then again A Matter of Life and Death comes similar packaging and that movie is just about perfect). This movie is no A Matter of Life and Death, though, what it is is the perfect B-picture. It meets every need that it is expected to meet and it does it without you really ever having to pause and be embarrassed by the fact that this movie has a dramatic use of brown face.

(To be fair the brown face scenes are awesome. Hear that, liberal elite? Awesome. Also: It is totally grounded in historical fact. Chew on that, hippies.)

What I like is its expedience in storytelling. It's the kind of thing movies like it (or their distant relatives) should take note on. There are no B-plots that don't get resolved or flow into the main story. There aren't any ruminations on what this all means or the impact of their mission unless it directly

This film has no fat. A butcher would be proud.

It seems that movies forgot what they were. Nowadays everything is getting longer and longer. I suppose it is as a response to television and video games being what they are (3d is also a symptom of this fear). They want cinema to be more cinematic and one thing TV can't do is make something that's three hours long.

Looking at this movie (and many more like it), I think that they're missing the point. You don't need a one-hundred forty minute running time to make a movie cinematic. Since the birth of cinema they've made good films that are good partially because they're short and to the point. Making them longer, to me, is an attempt to treat the wrong symptoms.

There's also the old adage of quality over quantity, but I'm being a hypocrite here, so let's just move quietly along, shall we?

Another reason this movie benefits from its percieved brevity is that we don't get much of a chance to mull on the fact that this movie tacitly supports the subjugation of about a fifth of the world's population. That tends to put the damper on enjoyment, as a rule. Its storyline is also about as pat as a movie like this can get. There's no surprises, there's no real insight, it's just a story that follows three men (a jaded veteran, a cocky upstart, and an unproven rookie) as they take on an Afghan warlord (I should make a list of that stock character's apperances. . .) and then the movie ends as soon as they've accomplished that.

It's a frolic. There's no substance, there's no real philosophy, there's just men doing their jobs and then a big bad guy with an accent dies at the end. In between there's some horse riding, aome costumes, a some outdoors, a dragon lady, and dialogue that ranges from glib irony to cloying sincerity. In short: It's an old fashioned adventure film. What more could a man want?