Monthly Archives: June 2009

Movie Review: Masculin/Feminin

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They also could have called this “Brief Interviews With a Series of Various French Women about America, ‘Nam, and Socialism.” But, the film is not just about the women. It’s about the men as well. And the battle between the man, the woman, and the world is the central idea inside this peculiar French New Wave movie.
“Masculin/Feminin,” was filmed in the mid 1960s. As mentioned before, the film was an entry of the French New Wave movement. It takes place among hip bars, back allies, and areas outside of upper middle class homes. It centers around a group of young rebellious men and women of the Paris counterculture.
Like any New Wave film, “Masculin/Feminin” is really plotless. It’s connected literally by a string of sentences, thoughts, and ideas. Of the many characters who come in and out, the film mostly centers around the relationship between revolutionary Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud) and Madeleine (Chantal Goya), a Beatles hipster pop singer. The film chronicles the years of their rocky relationship through their many interactions with others. And that’s pretty much it; a concept spread throughout 1 hour and 45 minutes.
“Masculin/Feminin” is directed by Jean-Luc Godard with a sense of utter confusion and curiosity. The French New Wave was really a response to the social and political changes of the time, and Godard embodies this fully. The character’s conversations are aimless, not really discussing plot-changing issues, but rather life. They discuss social issues. They discuss the importance of unions. They discuss the importance of coca cola. They listen to French pop. They talk about the Beatles. The film all in all reflects that Post WWII era, a time of a crisis in French pride and a collision of culture. The world of Europe was meeting the world of America.
The sentences, thoughts, and ideas that connect each strand of the story vary. Some involve characters reading lines of poetry. Others express short narratives and anecdotes. Mainly though, the conversations are caught by Paul asking women questions. As he asks, he’s almost always off screen. This makes it seem a little more objective, a little cold, and a little unfriendly. Maybe it’s the way the characters seem more and more isolated from each other under the confusion of culture.
Like in Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” Godard dares to focus on the stories of those who are rarely heard. In fact, the characters themselves seem to spend their days trying to stray far away from the bourgeois lifestyles they were born into.
Technically, Godard breaks many conventional rules of cinema in this film. The characters directly address the screen (and are fully aware that they are in a film), there is a movie within a movie, and the soundtrack includes pop songs that come directly from the plot itself. Many seem to believe “The Graduate” was the first movie to use a pop soundtrack rather than a traditional one. However, I believe “Masculin/Feminin” broke that ground first.
“Masculin/Feminin” is not as strangely moving and emotional as “The 400 Blows;” the characters (as well as whatever plot there is) seem a little discombobulated. But despite its small flaws, “Masculin/Feminin” is a great film to admire in it’s pure audacity to disobey every rule of cinema. Ultimately, it’s the ability to sometimes disobey the rules that can really determine greatness.

The President Kills A Fly

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This post isn’t really movie related, but it’s about a clip that made it on YouTube. And once you’re on YouTube, you’re fair game.

If you haven’t seen it already, the following clip is of President Obama doing an interview on CNBC. Mid-interview, he is attacked by a pesky fly. I’ll let you see the rest for yourself:

David Lynch: Director, Producer…Songwriter?

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David Lynch has a new project on his hands, and it’s one you might not expect from the man.

Lynch, the director behind such strange psychological masterpieces about the lives of average Americans like “Eraserhead,” “Blue Velvet,” and “Mulholland Drive” hasn’t made a film since 2006′s somewhat mediocre “Inland Empire.” Now, he’s back. But this time instead of a movie, he has an album.
Unfortunately, Lynch does not sing on the album, but has written the lyrics for it. The album is called “Fox Bat Strategy: A Tribute to Dave Jaurequi.” The album is named after Dave Jaurequi, the album’s singer and guitarist who died in 2006.
Lynch has described the album as “modern 50s music.” When listening to Jaurequi sing, I am reminded somewhat of Lou Reed during his finest day.
Lynch is known for being able to take anything and put his quirky, authentic stamp on it; crafting movies that no one else would ever think of making. Can he do the same with music? “Fox Bat Strategy” comes out June 30. You can listen to a sample song below:

Movie Review: Revolutionary Road

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American suburbia has been a subject of fascination for Hollywood for years. Why is that? Is it that the idea, besides being abundant, seems almost mythical at this point? Like it’s the kind of thing that it seems everyone has yet everyone doesn’t really have at the same time.

This is a fascinating idea. It is one that is continued to be explored, not necessarily in the most original way, in Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road.”
“Revolutionary Road” comes from a novel written by Richard Yates. It is set to the backdrop of 1960s suburban Connecticut. Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a longshoreman looking for more in his life. April (Kate Winslet) is a struggling actress. At a young age, they meet at a Manhattan party and after some talking and dancing, they fall in love.
Flash forward to a few years later, Frank and April are now in their early 30s. They live in a typical, white box of a suburban home with two kids. Frank now has a desk job and April is a housewife.
And if you’ve ever seen any other movie about suburbia, you know the two are unhappy. There’s little love in their marriage, and they realize their suburban life style has turned into nothing but a dull cycle. Sounds very similar to Mendes’ great masterpiece about the suburban nightmare, “American Beauty.” However, this time, the wife has the sort of awakening that prompts her to rebel.
So, her idea of breaking free? Moving the family to Paris where she can work and Frank can find out who he really is. This dream almost seems like a reality, but a few barriers lay in the way.
As mentioned, the film contains eery similarities to “American Beauty,” which can be a good thing, or bad thing. Like “American Beauty,” it plays with the notion that society’s definition of happiness is actually misery. It is possible that the life we all want is not really the path we are destined for. It is those bold few that actually try to follow their real dreams that are really the bravest.
Unlike “American Beauty” though, “Revolutionary Road” lacks some of the deeper symbolic subtlety. Also, it is not as darkly witty, and the characters are nowhere near as fully developed. By the end of “American Beauty,” Lester felt like a real human being and Carolyn could be forgiven for all of her psychotic wrongdoings. In “Revolutionary Road,” the film seems almost entirely in favor of April while at times being unsympathetic to Frank. But maybe that’s because he was horribly tempted by the idea of money.
“Revolutionary Road” lacks subtlety. At times, the dialogue seems to blurt out all of the messages that the viewers should try to figure out on their own. The film ends up being more tell than show, which brings it down to cliches and artificiality. This lack of subtlety is something that unfortunately plagues a lot of the work of Sam Mendes.
“Revolutionary Road” is no doubt bolstered by its many fine young actors, who sometimes help shield the weaker parts of the screenplay. The film marks the first time in over a decade that DiCaprio and Winslet starred in a movie together. The last time of course was “Titanic.” They sizzle with a fine amount of chemistry that makes them seem both in love and absolutely anathema to each other at just the right moments. Their chemistry works best perhaps, in one scene when ironically they have absolutely no love or even like for each other. It is brilliant acting in both the part of DiCaprio and Winslet, but especially for Winslet.
Another great performance in the film comes from Michael Shannon, who plays a man just released from a mental institution. However, being institutionalized has only made him crazier. Or at least, crazy in the eyes of some. Like the movie tries to make you believe, perhaps insanity is the truest form of happiness.
The movie is not fully realized until maybe the last 20 minutes. The aforementioned scene where DiCaprio and Winslet sit at breakfast, engaging in what seems like normal conversation but is actually them totally out of love in each other, is both touching and heartbreaking. It shows that Frank and April have finally become the suburban stereotype that they so hate. This scene puts a new spin on the rest of the movie and makes it seem like everything that happened before was perhaps a very bad dream, or just a glimpse of what will happen when one tries to achieve an impossible fantasy. But then again, is this fantasy really impossible? The film never really seems to decide which way it’s going to go, and that kind of gives it a mirky and unsatisfying feeling.
The film then goes on a little too long. It misses the perfect place to end and then ends in a spot that seems a little strange and irrelevant. Why Mendes did this, I can’t see. In “American Beauty,” we truly saw why Lester and Caroyln wanted to escape their suburban nightmare. In “Revolutionary Road,” it seems at times that Frank and April are just complaining. But I don’t want to watch people complain for two hours. I want to see them actually do something about it.

Movie Review: The Hangover

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As I sit down to start my review of “The Hangover,” I feel like one of the characters from the movie: I’ve got to piece together all of the insanity that just occurred. However, I thoroughly remember everything that just happened and won’t soon forget it.

“The Hangover” begins somewhat mysteriously. It starts with a group of guys stuck somewhere in the middle of the desert. One makes a phone call to a woman telling her that her fiance Doug (Justin Bartha) is missing. They’d find him, but they have no clue where he is or what they even did the night before.
Back track to two days earlier. Doug is about to get married. His friends decide to throw him a bachelor party. Those friends include Phil (Bradley Cooper), the one in the group who considers himself the cool guy; Alan (Zach Galifianakis), Doug’s creepy, aimless brother in law; and Stu (Ed Helms), a nerdy dentist who’s troubled by his controlling girlfriend (Rachael Harris).
The boys plan a road trip to Las Vegas. After a hard night of partying, they wake up hung over and realizing they remember nothing from the previous night. The only clues are a baby, a chicken, a stolen cop car, and a tiger. Stu’s tooth is missing and worse, so is Doug. With only a day before the wedding, Phil, Alan, and Stu strive to put together the puzzle pieces of what happened the night before and then hopefully find Doug. We never see what really happened that night until a surreal photo montage during the film’s credits, but it’s well worth the long wait.
“The Hangover” oddly resembles “Reservoir Dogs” in structure (there’s even a guy in the trunk scene!) more than most of the other films director Todd Phillips is known for (“Road Trip,” “Old School”). This, of course, is a good thing. It is rare for a movie to be both a dirty comedy and a put-the-pieces together mystery at the same time but “The Hangover” balances both of these very different genres with great results.
Part of what makes “The Hangover” work so well is the often over-the-top events that occur in it. But in these events, the characters act the way you’d expect anyone to act. How would you react when you wake up to go to the bathroom and realize you’re peeing next to a tiger? How would you react when a naked Asian gangster holding a crow bar jumps out of the trunk of your car?
The names of the main cast include actors who have yet to reach the achievement of becoming household names, but this movie might just make them all stars. Cooper achieved some level of fame as the villain in “Wedding Crashers,” but in “The Hangover” despite how sleazy his character might be, Cooper in the end makes him likable. Helms’ Stu reminded me of what might happen to Andy Bernard if he went partying in Vegas for a weekend. Although the real scene stealer in the movie is Galifianakis. The stand up comedian’s character looks like Joaquin Phoenix when wearing sunglasses and asks a woman working at the Caesar’s Palace Hotel if Caesar really lived here. You’d think he was just trying to make a joke there but believe me, he sadly wasn’t.
“The Hangover” defines painful comedy. The onslaught of brutal physical humor as well as how-will-they-get-out-of-this-alive situations piles up and makes some genius cringe humor that sometimes tops the most painful levels that Judd Apatow has ever reached.
As I continued to piece the movie back together, I thought of including a sentence in my review that was a play on Vegas’s famous tagline “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” But, I decided to restrain. However, it is very important to mention this saying as it sculpts a large part of the plot. It acts almost as a large deception to the characters; they seem to believe that one night of Vegas will carry no consequences. Obviously, dead wrong. 
They also seem to be living the perception of the magical dream of Vegas. Well, they should probably put down that copy of “Swingers” and instead watch “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” because they of course end up landing in the ultimate Sin City nightmare. Rather than being another comedy living in the cliche of the Vegas bachelor party, “The Hangover” instead is a parody of that too frequently used comedic plot device.
“The Hangover” includes some one-liners I can’t mention on this website and some situations so bizarre that words cannot describe them. And yet despite the significant amount of pain inflicted upon the characters, it doesn’t feel like Phillips is at all making a mockery out of their suffering. Throughout the film, we actually really care about where the groom might be and how he could ever be brought back to his wedding on time. The point when you feel something for characters this ridiculous is the point where you know that a comedy is definitely working. 
I’ve always heard that in most comedies you’ll know from the beginning how it will end but it’s the getting there part that is more important. The getting there part succeeds in its hilarity and unconventionality. This high level of original thinking ought to be applied to every comedy made nowadays.
“The Hangover” is the first great comedy of 2009.  One image of “The Hangover” that remains in my head is Alan, as the boys are on the open road, standing up and screaming “road trip!” which seems like a reference to Vince Vaughn screaming “Vegas baby, Vegas!” in “Swingers.” Well, I’d like to paraphrase “Swingers” in my praise for “The Hangover”: this movie is so money, and it doesn’t even know it.

Martin Scorsese Returns: Shutter Island Trailer

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It’s been three years since Martin Scorsese won his long overdue Best Director Oscar for his return to the gangster drama, “The Departed.” Now, Scorsese’s back. This time, he’s once again abandoning his Little Italy roots for a larger scale mystery entitled “Shutter Island,” opening October 2.

“Shutter Island” takes place in the 1950s and tells the story of Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), a U.S. Marshal who’s been sent to investigate the disappearance of a murderous woman from an isolated mental hospital called “Shutter Island.” There is more to this Island than it seems, and a great conspiracy unfolds, one that everyone in the mental hospital seems to be in.
Scrosese is one of the best actor’s directors, that is, the director who knows actors best and how to work with them, therefore usually compiling the best ensembles. Besides Leo, the cast of “Shutter Island” includes Ben Kingsley (“Schindler’s List”), Mark Ruffalo (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”), Emily Mortimer (“Match Point”), Michelle Williams (“Brokeback Mountain”), and Max von Sydow (“The Seventh Seal”). Leo is not a bad edition either. His fine acting talents are sometimes overlooked by his “pretty boy” reputation. This will mark the fourth compilation between Scorsese and DiCaprio, a pair that seems to work well together every time (just maybe not on the same level as Scorsese and De Niro once did).
Based on the trailer, I can’t really formulate a true stance on whether or not this movie will be good or bad. So far, all I’m really seeing are some cheap thrills and a plot that resembles “Hot Fuzz.” Hopefully, this is just because the trailer is focusing more on the mystery aspect of the film, and a deeper, more complex message lies within.
Over the past few years, Scorsese has begun to abandon smaller budget films for big budget blockbusters. “The Aviator” was an extremely entertaining, if not somewhat cliche, look at the life of Howard Hughes. “The Departed” worked so well because despite the non-stop action and violence, it felt like Scorsese was returning to the kind of characters he brought to life in “Mean Streets” and “Goodfellas”: the low lifes who’s story is never told. The people you never thought you’d want to hear about but by the end, you’re totally mesmerized. 
I hope Scorsese hasn’t forgotten this, and that he’ll bring a little bit of this old genius into every shot of “Shutter Island.”

Stephen Colbert’s Trip to Iraq: "A Country So Nice We Invaded It Twice"

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These past two weeks have included two landmark events in late night television. The first being Conan O’Brien’s debut on the “The Tonight Show” (as well as the short time I can enjoy without Jay Leno on television). The second being “The Colbert Report”‘s four day special taking place in Iraq for our troops fighting overseas. What makes it so special is that it’s the first time a full-length, non-news show has been shot, edited, and broadcast in a combat zone. Stephen Colbert can’t seem to do anything these days without breaking new ground. 

The one real dilemma faced by Colbert for this overseas trip is how to control his character. Would his angry, ignorant, Bill O’Reillyesque character be a little too tasteless for a war zone. Well, as the first episode last night showed, he could still bring along his character and entertain the troops. Instead, Colbert used the more egotistic and childlike side of his character as he declared victory in Iraq and then said he thought the war had ended because the news media wasn’t talking about it much anymore.
The show began with a throwback to old USO shows, as Colbert stood in front of a 50s style mic and did a stand up routine, throwing out some great zingers about Saddam Hussein and North Korea. The show continued with Colbert’s famous “The Word” sequence, but then he decided  to break away from his show’s typical format and showed a digital short. This short involved Stephen going through some basic training for the army, and his spoiled self was certainly no match. It was a hilariously delightful sequence, one that felt like a throwback to Colbert’s days as a correspondent on “The Daily Show.” He’s certainly come a long way since then.
The most talked about part of this episode will most likely be the cameo by President Obama (via satellite). In a very funny and self-deprecating cameo, he ordered General Ordierno to shave Stephen’s head so as to complete his basic training. And yes, he did it. This was just another reminder that just a few laughs can truly go a long way. And in this case, all the way to Baghdad.
Here’s the video of Stephen in basic training:


The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen Strong: Army of Me – Basic Training
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Movie Review: The King of Comedy

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“Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime.”

-Rupert Pupkin
Comedy. That word doesn’t often come to mind when thinking of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. But after seeing “The King of Comedy,” the next time you think of De Niro or Scorsese, the word comedy will never quite feel the same again.
“The King of Comedy,” like almost every other Scorsese movie, takes place in New York City. Rupert Pupkin (De Niro) is a loser beyond even the typical standard of a Scorsese movie loser. Pupkin is in his late 20s and still lives with his mother. He might not even have a job, but he certainly has ambition. Pupkin idolizes comedian Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis), who has his own late night talk show.
Pupkin dreams of being just like Langford, to a creepy, obsessive point. He begins to stalk Langford, in hopes that Langford will listen to one tape of his stand up material and feature him on his show. Langford ignores him, and Pupkin won’t take any of it. I don’t want to reveal how exactly Rupert finally gets Jerry to let him on the show, but lets just say, as the movie puts it, he got a little “tied up.” You’ll see.
I might not want to call “The King of Comedy” a comedy. It’s more about comedy than an actual comedy itself. Nevertheless, the movie is filled of many humorous moments. It could best be defined as a dark comedy, a very dark comedy. It’s the kind of dark comedy that might make a film by Todd Solondz or the Coen Brothers movie look more like an Adam Sandler comedy.
The humor sometimes lies in funny dialogue, but it mainly lies in the directing and editing. Scorsese, who usually uses these things to make his movies as dark as possible, has found a way to use them to make his movie as funny as possible. Editor Thelma Schoonmaker does a particularly great job tricking the audience, especially in one scene which involves a seemingly real exchange between Langdon and Pupkin. We cut to reality to find it’s all in Pupkin’s imagination and now he’s reciting everything he’d say in that particular situation. We get a great laugh out of the scene but in it filmmaker has succeeded in tricking the audience and filmmaker now has the audience under his control. By this point, the movie could go anywhere and you wouldn’t be able to predict it.
This movie is a Scorsese movie. Even if it’s a comedy, you’ll see Scorsese from the very first frame. In fact, Pupkin is not to different from most other Scorsese characters. I saw him as a less thuggish Johnny Boy and a slightly more obsessive Travis Bickle. Pupkin remains more like Bickle though, very much an outsider to society who seems to have no problem showing his insecurities yet somehow makes himself out to be a human being who is more important than anybody else on the planet.
As usual, De Niro gives an amazing performance, proving that it is possible for one guy to portray a wife beater, a murderous gangster, and a standup comic all in one career. But De Niro is no ordinary actor, he is one of the great method actors of all time. I don’t know what he did to prepare for this role, but whatever deep character study he did certainly worked. As with every character he has ever played, De Niro truly embodies Pupkin and everything about him. No matter how pathetic he is, you almost feel bad for the guy and don’t want to laugh at him; maybe with him.
Providing another great performance is the legendary Jerry Lewis. Lewis isn’t his normal, crazed comic self. His performance as Langford carries much restraint. It is almost more of a straight man performance, yet that straight man performance somehow manages to be endearingly funny. Lewis’s performance reminded me something of the funny straight man Jason Bateman embodied as Michael Bluth in “Arrested Development.” It’s the kind of character that is funny not because he is trying to make you laugh, but because he has such a feeling of superiority above everyone else that he almost takes himself way too seriously in such ridiculous situations.
In the end, despite being something of a comedy, “The King of Comedy” becomes a dark meditation on modern society on the same level as “Taxi Driver.” Like “Taxi Driver,” it is, in an ironic way, mocking the people society turns into heroes by praising them at the same time. It shows someone’s rise to fame and then asks, “how could someone like this ever become so famous?”
The simple answer is a mocking look at modern day celebrity worship, a tale that still holds up almost 30 years later. The likes of Paris Hilton could learn something from this cautionary tale of both the people who become famous just for the attention and those who obsessively follow celebrities like they are gods when, in reality, they are no more human than you or I.
I once saw Scorsese as something of a God amongst directors, but despite his great talents, he is human too.
Overall, “The King of Comedy” is one giant self-reflexive punch line that wraps around itself in a punchline in its final moments. And the joke’s on you.
Recommended For Fans Of: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, Dog Day Afternoon, Mean Streets, Fargo, Reservoir Dogs, Network 

David Carradine: Actor, Kung Fu Legend, Dead at 72

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I first encountered David Carradine when I had my first encounter with a true moviegoing experience: in 2004 after viewing the “Kill Bill” saga. In “Vol. 1,” Carradine appeared as just a voice without a face, yet still remained a dominating force. It was not until “Vol. 2″ that he showed a performance worthy of Brando and Bogart in their finest days.

On Wednesday June 3, David Carradine was found dead in his Bangkok hotel room. He was in Thailand shooting a movie; the actor was found hanging naked with a rope around his neck. He was 72.
Carradine’s legacy hits both the movie and TV screen. He was a Golden Globe and Emmy nominated actor. He appeared in highly acclaimed films such as “Bound for Glory” and less acclaimed films like “Children of the Corn V.” He made small appearances here and there (such as a very memorable cameo in “Mean Streets”), but his career would be defined by his role in the TV series “Kung Fu.”
I consider Carradine as one of the finest actors out there, even though I’ve seen so little of his work. His role as the sadistic yet sometimes reasonable Bill in “Kill Bill” represented everything that set him apart from other actors: that he could make someone as sadistic as Bill seem reasonable and even sensitive.
Rather than make Bill a one dimensional villain, he was a complex character. He smiles and yells “Gotcha!” after shooting a bullet at Beatrix. By the end, Bill is still a villain and his actions horrible, yet we see why he did what he did. It was not so much out of sadism but rather out of heartbreak.
And it breaks my heart to see Carradine go. His death might’ve been suicide. It might’ve been murder. But, that’s not for me to judge. What I am to judge is his legacy, and his legacy is certainly a fine one, one that will remain even as time goes by.
Below is Carradine’s monologue about superhero mythology from “Kill Bill.” It’s one of the best monologues ever put on film: