Cloud Atlas

I gave this my best shot.  I really wanted to enjoy this film, a multiple time frame adventure that dealt with life, death, love, hate, and all the other things it was supposed to deal with.  “Cloud Atlas” is lifeless and uninteresting.  The actors appear to be lost in the epic experience of making this movie.  It looks like they were told a line to say, and then they said it, and that was it.  The acting is uninvolved.  The dialog is overwritten and obvious.  There is no subtext.  The makeup is distracting.  Everything looks and feels fake.  When there is a lull in the story, a character is brutally murdered.  I haven’t read the novel.  I’m sure it was better than the film.

Sleepwalk With Me

Written and Directed by Mike Birbiglia

90 minutes, 2012

Was this a vanity project memoir, or a prolonged stand up comedy routine, or a precursor of great things to come?  I don’t know.  It was thoroughly enjoyable at the time of watching and completely forgettable an hour later.  On a second viewing days later, it was irritating.  Not the whole film, just the character of Matt.   Abby was terrific and the only fully developed character.  She had a vibrant presence and Matt was… I don’t what Matt was.

“I’m not saying I want to get married tomorrow, but I think it’s very weird that I spend all my time with someone who can’t even imagine the possibility,” says Abby.

Catalyst:  Matt and Abby move in together.

Turning point: Matt gets first job at some college.

Act II consists pretty much of Matt on the road, developing his career.

He meets a sage, the older comedian who gives him advice that changes his life.  Abbey develops into an object of Matt’s disdain and unhappiness.

Turning point:  Matt sleeps with waitress, realizes he shouldn’t get married but doesn’t tell Abbey.

Matt’s parents are one-dimensional.  Father is always angry.  Mother is always nutty.  They never change.  Matt never changes. Matt’s parents are one-dimensional characters and are the brunt of jokes.  Everyone in Matt’s life turns into punch lines for Matt.

Conclusion:  Matt jumps out of a window in a sleepwalking event and decides he better get some help or something.

Resolution:  “I don’t think we should get married”, says Matt.

                     “You’re right,” says Abby.

                     “How long have you felt like that?”, says Matt.   Abby doesn’t answer.

Fade out, the end.

Looper

Looper

Written and Directed by Rain Johnson

118 minutes, 2012

If you saw “Looper” ask yourself what do you remember about it?  Honestly, what is the singular lasting image in your memory from this film? 

One thing I look for in a good movie is narrative quality.   Are story events presented in some kind of organic and coherent fashion?  Or does the story patched together or held captive to some other agenda?

The only thing that seemed to matter to writer/director Rain Johnson was that he was making a drama set in a near future dystopia that featured as many people as possible being shot to death.  The body count by graphic person-to-person, gunshot was enormous, gross, and unnecessary.  The narrative was held hostage by a desire to show as many people being shot to death as possible justified by time travel.  There were no moral or narrative consequences to killing anyone.  Like they really weren’t dying because they were still alive in the future, or the past, or something like that.

The story was patched together by extensive voice over and on-screen titles.  Even these cheap, dumb-down tricks could not overcome the confusing and plodding storyline.  

Why do so many people like to watch people killing each other with a gun on a movie screen but then get upset when they see on TV news that someone went to work and shot five co-workers?  Or sadly, do those people who like watching gun violence on the movie screen give a shit that their neighbor, or a stranger, was shot to death by a handgun or an assault rifle?

The possibility of death creates drama.  Graphic murder, killing people for the sake of killing people with no dramatic purpose demonstrates an intellectual and artistic failure.  For the people who enjoy watching it, it represents a failure of thoughtful analysis and succumbing to a primitive need to witness violence.  You’re being played by the film industry and you don’t even know it.

Perhaps during development and making of the movie Rain Johnson and the producers realized it was truly a weak story that wouldn’t sustain interest or make any money, so they added as much killing as possible.  I think a better explanation is that they wanted to do this from the beginning and just couched it in science fiction, time travel terms.  Either way, “Looper” is a failure. 

There is a place for death and violence in story telling.  We should all think twice however about supporting and accepting films that demean and devalue human life in such overwhelming terms as the case is for “Looper”. 

If you went to this movie, ask yourself what do you remember about it?  What are the lasting images in your memory from this film?  You will probably answer ‘people being shot to death'.

The Master

The Master

Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson; 137 minutes; 2012.

Every film is an experiment.  No one knows how a film will turn out until the last edit is finished and time passes.  This is one of the wonderful aspects of filmmaking, but the least understood by critics and the public.  When a studio and distributor gets behind a film, hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.  No one on the marketing side is ever going to say, “Hey this was a good try but not a very good film.”

Not every film has to be the runaway hit of the season, or a sure Oscar contender, or the best film ever made in the history of the world.  Films like “The Master” should be judged within the context of a lifetime of work.  Some films turn out to be better than others.  Each film can be understood and appreciated more deeply if seen on a continuum of films made over a career.

The marketing campaign for “The Master” wants this film to be declared an American classic.  By any honest evaluation it is not a classic nor is it even an excellent film.  

I want to examine the female characters in “The Master” to help understand one aspect of this film.  Peggy, Lancaster’s wife, currently pregnant, is strong and determined.  However, she is not an independent fully realized character.  She functions only in relationship to Lancaster.  She is bearing his child.  She protects him and what he is interested in.  She pleasures and demeans Lancaster at the same time by giving him a hand job to lessen his sexual desire so her won’t wander from the marriage.

Lancaster’s daughter, Elizabeth, serves no function at all in the story.  She makes a play for Freddie that comes out of nowhere and is unbelievable.

There are two more nameless women that fall under Freddie’s spell and end up in bed with him.  These are two more anonymous objects of desire.  Their purpose in the narrative is to show that Freddie is quite a ladies man and can bed anyone when he looks at.  These women are powerless objects.

Then of course there is an object of desire that is the replica of a naked woman with legs spread out and giant breasts made out of sand.  It turns out this is Freddie’s only true love.

Doris is Freddie’s supposed real love.  She is about seven years younger and is a sophomore in high school when Freddie joins the navy and goes off to World War II.  Doris is portrayed as the major reason that makes Freddie so unhappy.  There is no substance or narrative reality to their relationship so it has no emotional impact.  We see Freddie visit Doris in flashbacks throughout the film in meaningless scenes.  Finally Freddie takes a job on a freighter and tells Doris he’s leaving, doesn’t know when he’ll be back, and doesn’t know where he’s going.  Freddie is quite a catch.  He proves that he doesn’t give a damn about Doris.

The Freddie/Doris relationship illustrates one of the main faults of “The Master”.  Just because Paul Thomas Anderson, or one of the characters says something is true, doesn’t mean it is true.  The film suggests that one of the main reason why Freddie is so unhappy is the failed love affair with Doris.  This is a hollow reason and it doesn’t resonate.  The movie actually shows that Freddie does not care at all about Doris. The whole film tries to force a narrative truth on the viewer that just isn’t there.

It was originally Lancaster’s story and it should have stayed Lancaster’s story.  During early rehearsals it was changed to Freddie’s story.  It wasn’t Freddie’s story and to film it that way weakened the narrative truth.

“The Master” is like an incoherent but well orated sermon.  It’s supposed to be important so we listen really hard and try to make sense of it.  Half way through we realize there is no theme, it’s impossible to follow the logic, it clings to abstract references from the past, and the director is just making things up as he goes along.  Not every film is a good film, even if it is dressed up like something meaningful. 

My First Matinee at the New Uptown. September 18, 2012

So I go to the Uptown this afternoon.  Who picked those colors?  I mean I like orange and lime when I mix my slushy's together at the SA, but I don’t like to see those colors in the lobby of my favorite movie theater.

I say to the cashier, one please.  She says do I want to sit in the auditorium or the balcony?  Wow, what a choice.  I say what the heck is the auditorium.  You know, main floor.  $8 for the auditorium bargain matinee and $10 for the balcony.  I select the $8 main floor and she flips over a display monitor screen thing.  It looks like a giant bingo card. She tells me to select a seat on the touch screen.    

Now I’m supposed to touch the seat on the screen I want to sit in?  Gross.  What if someone else had touched the seat that I wanted to touch, someone with dirty fingers.  I point and she touches it.  Seven people behind me in line wonder why this is taking so long. So why is the balcony $10 and the main floor $8 I ask?  She says it’s 18 plus and we want to, you know,  keep the riff raff out.  What a concept.  Does that mean I’m riff raff because I chose the auditorium?  No, not you, she says.  I don’t mind being riff raff.  Riff raff.  It sounds cool.  I’m going to start a Riff Raff club, and sell tee shirts with Riff Raff on it and then all the riff raff will sit in the balcony with our tee shirts on.  Then what?  I don't know.  

Okay so I get inside the auditorium, trailers in progress, kind of dark, and it seems all designed pretty nice, and someone with a small flashlight wants to see my ticket.  Wait what?  I say I went through security already.  I’ll show you to your seat but you have to give me your ticket she says.  Fine.  

She didn’t show me to my seat she just pointed in a general direction, like they do at Home Depot.  I stumble over to an open area and sit down.  Then this so-called usher stood at the back of the theater for the entire film, at her security post, lording over the riff raff that had to sit in the auditorium.  It made me nervous.  I don’t like someone standing behind me, in a uniform, with a small flashlight, acting like a lunchtime monitor while I watch a movie.  I paid $8 for this?  What happened to the Uptown?

Oh yeah, the movie.  I saw “Sleepwalk With Me”.  It was kind of funny if you like to listen to a semi-depressed character talk in a monotone for 82 minutes and be in every single shot.  Couldn't he take one shot off?   It was enjoyable at the time of watching.  I laughed.  The other riff raff laughed as only riff raff can.