FilmViews 01: Interview with Jonolobster

The Top 21 Films of 2015

MovieDude Does Music: Bomba Estéreo, 'Amanecer'

I can't help but feel that this challenge is more a journey than anything else. While I have every intention of giving due diligence to the matter, I also believe it is also my job to embrace the possibilities and open myself to new concepts. Just like any good adventure, closing yourself off from where the road might lead you defeats a great deal of the purpose of the venture altogether. The trick in all of this is to both enjoy yet keep an objective eye. As I mentioned before, I'm not a music person. My understanding of music is on par with a third grader's comprehension of algebra.

Then I listened to Bomba Estéreo's "Amanecer".

The MovieDude Does Music: Intro

I enjoy music but I don't love it. I'm a movie dude. I can tell you the cast list of a billion films, tell the title of a flick within 3 random seconds of a scene. I have a listless amount of ideas and thoughts on an endless sea of cinema. Music is a passing thing. I listen to a song I like, I might sing along if I happen to know the lyrics.

I'm best friends with a music guy. He's also a movie guy but for the sake of distinction, let's just say that he's ONLY a  music guy. He loves the pop music, the not so pop and even the obscure. For years he has hounded me of my limited knowledge of music (which I take umbrage in because I know and enjoy a wide variety of music... in certain quantities).  His guide to music is the Top 50 list of best albums of the year from Rolling Stone Magazine. He doesn't always agree, but he swears by it that this list is THE way to know the music of a year.

As a pure exercise, I thought I would step out of my comfort zone and accept a challenge that he laid upon me this year: listen to all 50 albums and give my non-expert yet highly analytical opinion of each album. So I'm going to do so starting immediately. I intend to go through each album and post my reaction. I will be looking at both the songs and the album as a whole but I will rate only the album. As someone who does not believe in reviewing art for anything arbitrary as a score, I'm going to rate each album by a word that best fits my opinion. I'll try to be as objective as I can though as with any art, the first question I always as is "do I like this". 

Let me make this perfectly clear: I have never heard these albums before. I'm coming at all of them from a perspective of a babe in the words. I have a wide variety of musical tastes but I'm still at heart a complete noob. It will be interesting to see how I see music coming out of this. I might post once or twice a week as my time allows.

For those trying to follow, here's the link to the list. This is the list for 2015 and I will be starting at number 50. I'll try to keep up with thoughts and opinions on the comments section and on twitter. I'm not going to compare my opinion with Rolling Stone or by any other writer. This will be entirely my own opinion and nothing but. I'm also going to start writing about movies again as part of my Contemplating series.

It appears that my first assignment is on Bomba Estéreo's Amanecer.

Wish me luck.

Contemplating Lucy

This weekend at the box office, Scarlett Johansson’s star power proved to be bigger than The Rock and her movie, Lucy, took the box office crown. This development, piled onto the revelation that statistics showed that women came out to see this sci-fi actioner, seemed to shock a great many in the mainstream media. Could this mean that there is a market for more films headlining women? While I would try not to take offense on anyone’s behalf from the sheer stupidity of the question, I fear that I must confess to not just disliking this film, but outright finding it offensive.

 If the movie were simply a stupid summer flick, that would be disappointing but unremarkable. The film was aiming for something more ambitious, which is usually something I admire even when it fails spectacularly. The problem is that however grand its ambitions were, there was an even greater amount of laziness put in, mainly from filmmaker Luc Besson. Bear in mind that Besson has never shown quite so much ambition as he does here, though arguably close with his classic film The Fifth Element. Yet the results of the film show that he failed his talented actress on nearly every level. Here are a few places:

(SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON)

1      1) Let’s start with the most obvious: Lucy’s story and plot are absolutely dumb. There is so much to say about the stupidity of this story, I’ll try to stay on the big items. First, the whole Korean mob plot is half-hearted and provides for a false sense of either urgency or action. They don’t explain why the mob would be so wreckless in getting back the drugs that they would risk a war with Paris police, considering that they implied that the bags given to the mules was part of a larger operation. They could just make more, which would be a whole lot safer than exposing themselves to international law enforcement. And how does that effect the end result of the film besides padding out the running time? The game clock isn’t when the mob catches her, but when her body will die due to overexposure to the drug. The mob plot is pointless since we know they can do nothing to harm her. And what exactly did Morgan Freeman do in the entire film besides give crackpot lectures? Why was is so important to get to him in Paris in the first place when she could’ve done what she did at her local school and had him come to her instead? 

2      2) Lucy’s character is poorly created. This is by no means Johansson’s fault. She clearly was trying to create a complex character and simply had nothing to work with. Here’s what we know of Lucy prior to the movie: She’s a young American college girl in Korea who lives in a pad with her equally young and naïve roommate who both enjoy partying a little too much. That’s it.  When the drug affects her, the first to go is her humanity, diminishing her personality and turns her into a machine. We don’t even see a fight between her human side and the robot. If this is intentional, then why not allow other characters to react to the strangeness of her behavior in ways that show the widening divide between her and the rest of humanity?  Instead, we’re treated to title cards showing her perceived cerebral capacity. 

          3) Lucy’s powers are not consistent nor do they make much sense. So let’s get this straight, it’s a cool idea to have a character that is in tuned with every cell and atom on the planet, to see data streams (though that was better done in the short lived show Alphas), to be able to finagle frequencies and control others through molecule manipulation. But the movie shows her being able to control and see from halfway around the world. She could tell what was on the French policeman’s desk, but not exactly where all three mules were at that very moment? I can buy a superhero being able to turn a TV into a two-way communication device, but the film wants to treat Lucy’s abilities seriously yet doesn’t communicate clearly how she’s doing the things she does. 

4       4) Let’s talk about Lucy’s science. I’m reminded of the scene in Transformers 2 when Sam proclaimed that Einstein was wrong about FTL travel and how offended I was that a popcorn movie would shrug off scientific thinking just to set up a magical alternative. The science behind Lucy’s mental abilities reeks of a quick Wikipedia write-off to excuse poor setup and payoff. Even with higher mental functions, at what range do her abilities work? If everything is interconnected, how would you be able to manipulate indefinitely? Would there be any consequence to the usage of such energy? Even Morgan Freeman is going off hypotheses or the crackpot variation, yet other scientists never challenge his observations or call him out. But then I guess looking and sounding like Morgan Freeman could be rather intimidating. And this guy has a show that’s all about scientific questioning…

5       

      5) If you take out the Morgan Freeman lecture scenes and the needless Korean mob scenes, the film would be about 20 minutes long. This is why there are so many needless scenes in the film. This was a short film at best and still a bad one at that. Besson needed to put enough action to make it onto the trailer, but none of it is important to the story nor have any stakes. The visual metaphors are redundant because Johansson is doing her job perfectly, so we didn’t need to know how she was feeling with images of lions stalking prey. But again, for it to classify as a feature film, it needed stuffing .

Scarlett Johansson is a truly gifted actor that deserves to be put in films that allow her to shine. Lucy could have been that film if it had created a character for her that she could do something with and then give her situations where she could do something fantastic. She can do action as we’ve seen in her Black Widow role. She can do intimate drama as shown in Lost in Translation and Girl with the Pearl Earring. She can even do comedy as see in Don Jon and Ghost World. And even more exhilarating is that she’s willing to step out of her comfort zones, experiment and even fail. But Lucy is not her fault. No doubt the success of this movie will encourage her to try again and I certainly can’t wait. But next time I hope the material is worthy of her performance.

Contemplating Transformers: Age of Extinction (Spoilers)

“Let them hate. They’re still going to see the movie.” –Michael Bay

“Michael Bay has your penis!” – Doug Walker

It’s been a week since I had seen Transformers: Age of Extinction. In those seven days, I have burned on a rage not felt before about a movie, much less a Transformers movie. And this is on the heels of my most hated film this year, Maleficent. I didn’t think Michael Bay could make me hate his film nearly as much as I hated Angelina Jolie’s travesty, but then I shouldn’t ever be surprised by how far into the barrel he would scrape from.

Before I begin my analysis of this piece of cinematic garbage, let me give a few caveats. First, I was not always a Michael Bay hater. My hate comes from someone who has seen genuine talent and unique skill warp into something purely dreadful. I enjoyed Bad Boys more than I should. I absolutely love The Rock and still consider it one of the best action films of the 90s, maybe even the best. I even enjoyed his previous film starring Mark Wahlberg, Pain and Gain.

When it comes to Transformers, I enjoyed the first and in some degree even the second film in that way that comes with watching boys playing with their toys (albeit very EXPENSIVE toys). The third film was mehable until the character of Optimus Prime was betrayed (more on that later) and the ending just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. But none of that prepared me for what I was about to see.

Being fair, let me explain what I did enjoy about this film before we get into the litany. First off, Wahlberg is vastly superior to Shia LaBeouf in every way possible, but that is a very low hurdle to clear. Second, reducing the amount of Transformers and giving them more distinctive looks allow us to understand what’s going on much better. The reduction of subplots to under Godzilla also helps. But that’s it. That’s the peak, now let’s dive in. Just so you know, I will be spoiling the hell out of this movie, as much as I can spoil from it. As I’m serious about NO ONE seeing this movie, please read on. I’m saving you money and 3 hours of your life, take it.

Going in, it would be easy to feel that this is a brain-off kind of movie. The last three weren’t exactly Shakespeare either. And even if it were the stupidest film ever made (being fair, it’s not, but not for a lack of trying), you can enjoy a film for being a spectacular mess as long as it’s interesting. But here’s the problem; it’s not interesting! It’s actually REALLY boring. The first Transformer you get is 30 minutes into the film and it’s the destruction of one of my all-time favorite Autobots, Ratchet. This scene is intended to be horrific and sad, setting up the anti-Transformer forces (called Cemetery Wind by the movie) as pure evil as Ratchet nearly begs for his life as he’s being murdered. His death by the hands of Lockdown leads to many questions, the first being that since he’s a sentient Transformer, WHY IS CEMETERY WIND WORKING WITH IT? Sun Tzu should rise from his grave and throttle Ehren Kruger (screenwriter) for not understanding his book. Kelsey Grammer hates all Transformers yet not just works with Lockdown, but TRUSTS this self-proclaimed bounty hunter, a trade that is just one rung more nobler than a pirate.

While we’re on this subject, why is Lockdown working with these extremely ineffectual humans? Any time humans fight an Autobot, they get their asses handed to them and require Lockdown to erect his head cannon (penis pun INTENDED) and finish the job. Killing Ratchet sets this guy (if it makes a penis, it’s a he) as our main baddie, and does so effectively. Too bad what is going to happen later happens.

So while we’re waiting for the story to start proper, let’s meet our humans. Mark Wahlberg’s Cale is a rural Texas inventor whose schemes are bigger than his talent whose “teenage” daughter (seriously Bay, we’re not even going to try anymore?) is the more responsible of the two. She’s dating a race car driver in his 20s who carries a LAMINATED bullshit card that allows him to date teenagers. And does this statutory romance go anywhere? Take three guesses. And then we have TJ Miller as a surfer dude who apparently has $150 for Kale to spend on a semi found in an abandoned movie theater (no one asks how it got in there). When I hear surf bums having $150 in cash, I’d be checking the local 7-11s. By the way, he’s our comedian in this movie. Too bad what’s going to happen later happens.

One of my greatest pet peeves in regards to this film is one that started in Dark of the Moon; the character assassination of Optimus Prime. In its origins, Optimus is the quintessential noble leader, not just concerned about the survival of his team/family, but about doing things in a just and honorable way. That transported over to the first and second films, showing self-sacrifice and concern for the current inhabitants of the planet (we’ll let that “let’s take the cube into a populated area in order that will ensure loss of life” go by). By the end of Dark of the Moon, Optimus, having plainly defeated his enemies (with the help of his enemy, no less), executes a surrendered foe point blank, then rips the skull out of the other. I could plainly hear Bay beating off to the show of power and domination. And if I may say so, would be a very good reason why humanity shouldn’t trust Autobots IF that was really a thing. Because apparently it isn’t, not entirely.

So a major development in the lore is that humans have discovered the element that makes Transformers. They learned this by using Megatron’s severed head and can now make their own Transformers. The element in question, Transformium (patent pending), is most easily found in other Transformers. So it turns out that the hit squads are all about murdering Autobots in order to melt them down. When we see this with the corpse of Ratchet, this should hit hard, we should now REALLY hate humans for breaching the trust of alien allies THEN cannibalizing them! But no, the guy responsible will be considered a hero by the end (and this might be a good time to say that Stanley Tucci is clearly emulating his director in his scenes). So Bay betrays his own protagonists by the end of his film.

Let’s talk about Dinobots, you know, one of the MAJOR selling points of this movie. The ones that only show up in the LAST 15 minutes! The ones that have absolutely no personality! The ones that the once-noble Optimus threatens to kill if they don’t “save his family” (I really wished Grimlock would’ve said “Why be so rude to Grimlock?”) The ones that come in to save the day by tearing apart the newly minted Decepticons even though they have T-1000 shape shifting abilities that they forget they have at the end? And does Lockdown get a memorable fight or death with Optimus? Nope. Hell, Kelsey Grammer gets a more memorable moment (and by that, Optimus blows a hole into him like a bitch).

Yes, it’s stupid, it’s brainless, and it’s pandering to its audience of young boys. We expect that with Transformers. And for the most part, the former Transformer movies deliver on that promise with inventive robots beating the crap out of one another. Michael Bay is also pandering to China for that extra change found in those theaters, but not without putting up enough American flags beforehand to make a drinking game dangerous. These can be endearing annoyances because we expect it (ala JJ Abrams’ affection for lens flares). Where Transformers goes wrong is that it is misleading nearly the entire film. You set up an inventor sidekick for Optimus who never builds anything throughout the film. You establish Transformer interference with Earth’s evolutionary history, yet it never pays off. Hell, you promise Dinobots and make us wait the entire damned film and they come and go, LITERALLY.

Then there’s the lack of interest in the actual Transformers? Did you find it odd I didn’t mention them at all with the exception of Optimus and Lockdown? That’s because they’re a side note. They play very little in the major plot and they say or do little to make themselves memorable. Skids and Mudflap, as annoying as they were, did more than Bumblebee did in this movie. And they were a whole lot memorable than Drift (who was voiced by the incredible Ken Wantanabe. Heresy!!!)

But the worst offense is the first one I mentioned, IT’S BORING! We’re talking about arguably a passable if uninspired 50 minutes of film in a 2 hour, 35 minute running time! And some of the worst of it is so completely pointless! The statutory relationship, hell, the entire Shane character is pointless. The Beijing site could’ve been integrated with the Chicago stuff and then head to Hong Kong. The bounty ship could’ve been reduced. Optimus’ constant threats to kill everything.

But here’s the real problem, Michael Bay simply doesn’t care. Quality has never been a concern of Bay’s when compared to spectacle. The problem is that once spectacle has worn off or doesn’t deliver, what you have underneath isn’t very compelling. Bay’s announcement of his critics still coming to his films is very arrogant and one that isn’t a long-term truth. The fact is that without innovation, these movies are going to age badly and the nostalgia for them is not going hold up. Boys grow older and the new batch will have other options. Bay is not the terrible filmmaker that his critics make him out to be. His style of cinema is just very different and in a way, classic in how it works in broad strokes. But he should not be forgiven for this train wreck and if Bay doesn’t heed warnings that are given to him, his next Transformers might not be met with the $100 Million opening required to keep him at the helm.

Transformers: Age of Extinction is the most cynical Hollywood production ever put out. Does it do the exact same thing as prior films? Yes. Does it use a bigger actor to pull in more audiences? Yes. Does it create new characters for the sole purpose of selling those characters on merchandise? Yes. And did most of the audience come out because it did these particular practices?

If you want a particularly funny and frantic take on Michael Bay and Transformers, check out Doug Walker (The Nostalgia Critic). He’s right about Bay’s penis snatching. http://blip.tv/nostalgiacritic/nostalgia-critic-talks-transformers-4-6970825

Billy Wilder & Me

The first Billy Wilder film I ever saw was Sabrina starring Audrey Hepburn, William Holden and Humphrey Bogart. It wasn’t the most eye-opening film I had seen at the time (Apocalypse Now would do that a couple of years prior), but it was one of the first that subverted my expectations and start my lifelong love of well-made romantic comedies. Sadly, this film didn’t really make much of an impression of me when concerning its director at the time. But going back to it, I realize how much care and concern that he had with those characters, how Sabrina was the light and the anchor in this film. Wilder loved his female characters as much as his males, even when some of the actresses made it very difficult for him in reality.

When I watched Sunset Boulevard for the first time, I was speechless. I was amazed by the narrative twists and turns, the performances, the setting, the direction. Billy Wilder had once again crossed my path, but this time I saw him for his accomplishment in this film. The way that Gloria Swanson’s character seemed to lure the camera to her like a moth to flame, how the framing around the card table both seemed intimate yet illuminated the star-studded cast around that table. And that final glorious shot, the one that could be argued as one of the best final shots ever filmed.

After seeing that, I had to see more. Stalag 17, The Apartment, The Lost Weekend, The Fortune Cookie. These films felt so different from one another that it nearly seemed intimidating going from one film to the other. Then I had seen a film that didn’t just hit me like a boulder, but knocked me out: Ace in the Hole. The irony is that what could be considered his finest work was the one that was least appreciated. In fact, it was long considered lost until 2005 when the Criterion Collection got their mitts on it.

So why does Billy Wilder have such a strong hold over me as a film lover? Why would I dedicate an entire month to discussing his work? If you talk to any film snob or hardcore film lover, Billy Wilder isn’t merely known, but seems to be outright mainstream. Yet you talk to any modern movie goer, this name is lost entirely on people who have never tried his work. We could debate on why older movies aren’t appreciated more, but there’s more to it. Wilder’s films weren’t simply crowd-pleasers, they were statements about modern life as he saw it, the trials by fire and the constant desire to be seen as the heroes of our own story, even when the prevailing evidence goes against that being the case. Wilder wasn’t afraid to do things differently or to play in territories that might be considered risky. His protagonists were usually misfits trying to survive fates worse than death (or at least in their own mind). As a misfit that had seen myself both as hero and villain in my own story, such complexity in characters were a breath of fresh air from white hat/black hat mentality that was prevalent during Wilder’s time and that has not yet gone away even now.

Take Ray Milland’s character in The Lost Weekend; He’s a drunk who knows that he has a serious problem but can’t seem to know how to conquer it over a horrible weekend. One of the finest and most horrific depictions of alcoholism ever filmed during a time where such topics were frowned upon by audiences and the censors. Billy Wilder, along with Milland, understood that in order to understand the plight of this character, you needed not to feel pity but to feel empathy for a character that is pathetic but also slimy.

Even in characters that he wanted to show nothing but contempt for, he was able to show glimpses of humanity. Take the Nazi officer in Stalag 17 who showed respect and straightforwardness with the Allied prisoners of his war camp, though his own feelings were clouded by loss and the pain of exile at their hands.

All of this is visible even without knowing the backstories or the rumors. Wilder’s films are transparent enough to give you enough to know how he feels without it becoming self-congratulatory or vain. In fact, the humility of his films are a trademark towards his craft, the sense that he’s not trying to pull one over on the audience, but let them into to character conflict without obfuscation. In Ace in the Hole, we know Kirk Douglas is a horrible person from the first moment we see him, but we also know he doesn’t want someone’s death on his hands and not merely for the selfish reasons. Yet Wilder doesn’t stop trying to show how horrible the character is. This is probably how he can manage to pull off beginning the film with the narrator’s dead body and still pull off the tension it does through flashback.

More people should know Billy Wilder’s work and should go down in pop culture the same way that Alfred Hitchcock or Steven Spielberg had. His accomplishments towards cinematic history are vital in ways that are as subtle as his films are. I want my contemporaries and newer generations of movie lovers to see that Wilder’s work is timeless and fascinating as any newer film coming out. That these films are as good if not more amazing than the imitators were. In short, Billy Wilder isn’t important enough for just one day, his importance requires a month.

Let #BillyWilderMonth commence.

*This essay can also be found here.