Author Archives: matterspamer

REVIEW: MacGruber

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MacGruber
Directed by: Jorma Taccone
Written by: Will Forte and John Solomon
Starring: Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe and Val Kilmer

It’s important to know the context a movie was made in before you begin examining it.  Some films are made to provoke thought, others to send a message.  There are many (many!) movies made today, though, that were made purely as an entertainment and nothing else.  When you look at MacGruber that way (and only that way), it’s decent.

The star of this show is not it’s director, in fact quite the opposite.  This 90 minute feature based on a recurring 90 second sketch on Saturday Night Live is all about the script and the actors.  In fact, director Jorma Taccone over compensates immensely with what should have been a cut-and-dry directing job.  This movie is supposed to be a send-up of all things bad in 80’s action movies, and he’s given it a visual style that unintentionally mocks itself at times.  A movie such as this needs a director who can back off and let his actors fly with a script, not use artsy lighting techniques that destroy the mood.

That complaint aside, the ensemble cast is by far the highlight of this film.  I was skeptical of Will Forte’s ability to hold the screen for longer than the length of the original sketch, but he does a decent job.  There are times when you will be sitting there going “Should I laugh?” and others where you won’t be able to stop doing so.  It’s a roller coaster with a few jerks, but a welcome break from the latest Will Ferrell disaster.

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If they were in television… Woody Allen

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Director: Woody Allen

Notable Films: Annie Hall, Manhattan, Match Point, Husbands and Wives, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Hannah and Her Sisters

Famous for: Screwball sex comedies, over-thinking relationships, neurotic versions of himself, biting one-liners.

Hypothetical premise: A New York couple, recently broken up, both decide separately to travel to Europe to evaluate what went wrong with their relationship.  The man, a successful writer of Jewish literature, wants more stability in the relationship to ease his many phobias and quirks.  The woman, a semi-famous painter, wants more adventure and chaos to propel her creative energy.  He travels to Britain, while she travels to Spain.  Along the way they both find love in neurotic partners suffering from Anhedonia.  Midway through the season they both flee the insane, joyless relationships and go back to New York with a newly-found sense of place in the world.  They rekindle their relationship, but before the season is over the relationship is again too.

Cross Between: Annie Hall, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Match Point.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: Being John Malkovich

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Being John Malkovich
Directed by: Spike Jonze
Written by: Charlie Kaufman
Starring: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and John Malkovich

For fans of the work of Charlie Kaufman, a predisposition to a realm of absurdity is often acquired after watching one of his screenplays unfold.  Approach any of his works with the intention that you will be taken somewhere new, and that that place will be filled with wonder, terror, and more honesty than reality could ever contain.

In Being John Malkovich, Kaufman has crafted his magnum opus.  Inside the expansive confines of his world lie countless punchlines, absurdities and insights, most of which deal with the nature of identity.  This is a world filled only with people who go for what they want, because those who don’t don’t matter.  It’s extremes like these that guide the often childish characters through the narrative and ultimately to a conclusion that offers no simple answers.

It begins with a puppeteer named Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) realizing his dream is impossible in his own body.  He decides to apply this childish pastime onto something in the corporate world.  He gets hired as a file clerk (because of his fast fingers) on the 7 1/2 floor of a gigantic office building.  While working there, he falls immediately in love with Maxine (Catherine Keener), an attractive, manipulative, and greedy woman who leads him on, and then ultimately cuts him loose.  This is until he discovers the portal.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: In the Loop

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In the Loop
Directed by: Armando Iannucci
Written by: Jesse Armstrong & Simon Blackwell (screenplay)
Starring: Peter Capaldi, Chris Addison, Mimi Kennedy, and James Gandolfini

Britain has always been a step ahead of the United States when it comes to comedy.  More recently, Ricky Gervais bestowed The Office upon the U.K., and we made a spinoff show to great success.  We borrow their premises and develop them into our own context, sometimes losing the laughs along the way.

With In the Loop, though, we find a distinctly British sense of humor unleashed upon the idiots that run both their government and ours.  It’s probably unintentional black irony that this blazing, brilliant political satire is in the vein of the distinctly American Dr. Strangelove. That’s the highest praise that could be awarded to satire, and this movie earns it.

With one of the most brilliant, hilarious screenplays in recent memory, director Armando Iannucci crafts a documentary-like comedy about how we got into the mess in the Persian Gulf.  No real names are named.  In fact, some smart creative liberties were taken, and the film is all the better for it.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

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Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Directed by: Woody Allen
Written by: Woody Allen
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, and Penélope Cruz

Woody Allen, in the earlier portion of his career, was always synonymous with the city of New York.  Like an ever-changing artist, lately he has been working to unravel that image, at least partway.  Allen’s European renaissance has given his work room to breath, and be more expressive.  Vicky Cristina Barcelona along with Match Point are two of his finest films, and the two best to come out of this overseas excursion.

While it may not be as revelatory as his iconic Annie Hall or as suspenseful and unique as Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona has its own wily charm, and contains more swooning eroticism than either of the other two.  The film begins with two friends (Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson, both excellent) traveling to Spain for the summer.  The plot synopsis reads that they are both to fall in love with the same painter (Javier Bardem), which is true, but misleading.  It is worded in the most cliche of ways, but is anything but.  The love affair that Johansson’s Cristina shares with Bardem’s Juan Antonio is the defining element of the film, while Vicky’s is more of an afterthought.  The two differing personalities of the characters do not allow them to engage on love’s battlefield.  Vicky lusts in silence, and Cristina goes on a gender-bending sexual escapade.

Like many Allen films, a narrator offers biting commentary on the events.  Sometimes that voice is that of the main protagonist talking directly to the camera, here he simply does a Morgan Freeman interpretation.  Although it fills in many of the unspoken emotions of the characters, the film may have been more interesting without it.  This is only because the cast is so superb.

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Five movies to watch with a group

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As the summer months begin for college students across the country, one of the movies’ prime profit seasons is upon us.  People go out in droves to see the latest Hollywood blockbusters with their friends.  Those art-house films of the fall stay on the shelves, as people enjoy big-budget entertainments with their friends and family.  Here then are my five picks for 5 movies that are enhanced with entertainment when you watch them with other people. Whether they make you laugh, cry or drop your jaw in amazement, you will either enjoy these movies better with a group or be able to endure them better because you are with other people.

1.  Superbad- Perhaps the most defining comedy of this generation, the outrageously explicit comedy from director Greg Montolla stars a teen comedy ensemble on rank with that of The Breakfast Club.  The laughs are constant as three friends try to score booze for a party in order to get laid.  That may turn off many sophisticated, stuffy types, but more honesty is fleshed out over the course of these two hours about the modern teen condition than almost any other movie made for that audience.  Add in the iconic McLovin’, and you have a non-stop laugh riot that will endure for years to come.

2. Kill Bill Vol. 1- Though it’s hard to put this movie on a list without its equally excellent Vol. 2, you cannot deny the crowd-pleasing intensity of Quentin Tarantino’s genre-blended bloodbath.  From the beginning, you get one of the most well constructed action films of the past 20 years as well as a story simple enough to keep track of while still chatting with those around you.  If the gory showdown at the House of Blue Leaves doesn’t have everyone’s jaw dropped by the end of it, you’re probably hanging with the wrong crowd.

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REVIEW: Iron Man 2

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Iron Man 2
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Written by: Justin Theroux (screenplay), Stan Lee (comic book)
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwenyth Paltrow, Mickey Rourke, and Scarlett Johansson

The thing that made the first Iron Man film such a hit in the summer of 2008 was how much of a fresh breath of air it was.  Here you had Roberty Downey Jr., a washed-up ex-convict of a small-time actor stepping into the iron-clad suit of a summer blockbuster.  Mixing that with a unique screenplay, a dynamic cast and the action-ready direction of Jon Favreau, and you had yourself an offbeat charmer of a superhero movie.  Sadly, that charm was overshadowed by the brilliance of technique and ultimate reinvention of the superhero movie in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

With the inevitable sequel, we find no genre contenders to the pathos-driven narcissism of Tony Stark this summer.  Downey is now a bona fide superstar, thanks in no part to the revitalization his career received from the first film in this now-franchise.  Now that everything was done in the first one, as is the problem with most unique first installments, not much of it feels new in the sequel, Downey included.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: Antichrist

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Antichrist
Directed by: Lars von Trier
Written by: Lars von Trier
Starring: Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg

Much has been made of this visually striking, grotesquely dark film from Danish auteur Lars von Trier.  The rumors are true, almost all of them.  There is a talking fox.  There is a gruesome climax filled with not one, but two, genital mutilations.  If the latter doesn’t draw in today’s torture porn crowd, it’s only because the barbarity doesn’t fall within the tight moral coding and sugar-coated bloodbath of the Saw franchise.

Von Trier likes to think of himself as above mere mutilation for the sake of it, but viewing this film as a tale with morals when the content is so morally reprehensible creates kind of a paradox.  His film is at times visually striking, and at times brutally unwatchable.

It begins with a beautifully filmed yet tragic slow-motion black and white sequence of a couple (William Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) making love while their son sneaks out of his crib and plummets out a window to his death.  Mr. von Trier is not above starting out his film with the most cliche form of tragedy: kill the kid.

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Ten New Movie Icons

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As you learn more and more about the movies in America, a few faces stand synonymous with the silver screen.  Darth Vader, James Bond, Dorothy Gale, Dirty Harry- there are countless others I could name, but that’s not the point of this post.  What are the new screen icons, the characters that will join the ranks of those immortal celluloid figures 50 years down the road?  Here are my choices for 10 movie characters who burned their towering images into the silver screen.

1. Gollum- I choose this endearing figure from the Lord of the Rings trilogy not only because of the beguiling performance of Andy Serkis, but because Gollum also marks a transition in filmmaking.  If this is the digital age, it’s only because Serkis and Peter Jackson proved you could do it without sacrificing emotional intensity or credibility.  When Gollum talks to himself as his alter ego Smeagle, you believe in the new power of special effects.

2. The Bride- The blood-splattered angel of Quentin Tarantino’s gory genre exploitations is portrayed by Uma Thurman with both the suave of a genuine action star and the grit of a truly great actress.  The yellow jumpsuit-wearing, samurai sword-wielding incarnation will remain in movie watchers’ minds for years to come.

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If they were in television… Darren Aronofsky

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Director: Darren Aronofsky

Notable Films: Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Pi, and The Fountain.

Famous for: Unbearable honesty, emotionally destroyed and hopeless people, gritty surrealism, and intentionally ambiguous endings.

Hypothetical Premise: A cocaine-addicted woman is divorced by her extremely wealthy tycoon husband.  Since there was a pre-nup and she came from a poor and abusive family, she has nothing.  Over the course of the season, she goes from having everything to being a lonely, drug-ridden bum on the streets of Seattle.  Her husband makes sure she never gets a job or has any way to lift herself out of the disparity she’s in.  Then she meets a bouncer at a club, falls in love with him, but he can’t allow himself to love a crack addict.  If there is a second season, she would descend into madness and half of the series would appear to take place in the middle ages.

Cross Between: Requiem for a Dream, Breaking Bad, and The Wrestler.

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