Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Well, shit. Summer’s over. On the one hand, I’m looking forward to the fall movie season. The few films I’ve already seen seem to indicate that we’re in for a pretty interesting run of pictures between now and 2005.
On the other hand, I love the summer. Maybe it’s a holdover from being a kid and thinking of this as time off. True, I’ve been busy rewriting two scripts all summer, but in a lot of ways, I checked out sometime around May and just let myself enjoy as much free time as possible. When I realized summer was coming to a close, my friends and I decided to plan one last summer moviegoing event where we could all get together, a bookend to our HARRY POTTER trip earlier in the year. And what better place for that than the drive-in?
My buddy Jack helped put this together as well as our friend Tim, both of them thankfully busting ass to organize things, and the result was a great evening out. There’s only one drive-in still open in the immediate area, and we’ve been down there before a few summers ago for EIGHT-LEGGED FREAKS. I figure if you’re going to go to the drive-in, you don’t go for introspective character dramas. No... you go for cheesy giant monster movies, films you and your friends can enjoy as a group and razz when they get lousy. That’s why a group of about 55 cars assembled last Saturday night at The Vineland Drive-In for a showing of ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID.
The Vineland is east of Los Angeles, a straight shot out the 10 freeway, and the weather couldn’t have been any nicer when we all arrived around 7:00 on Saturday night. This is an old-fashioned drive-in, complete with a snack bar that will make you feel like you’ve stepped into a time-warp. One of the great draws in going to a drive-in is the nostalgia factor, and the Vineland will satisfy that urge in spades. We staked out a section of the parking lot in front of the screen, and then everyone got out of their cars and started to socialize. As we watched everyone else arrive and saw families setting up lawn chairs or opening up the backs of station wagons so kids in pajamas could bundle up comfortably and watch, it was obvious that this is a social experience in a way that regular moviegoing can’t be. Sound and projection at a drive-in can’t possibly compare to something like the Arclight on a technical level, but then again, you can’t bring a cooler full of beer and milanesa sandwiches to the Arclight, can you?
ANACONDAS is, as expected, fairly rotten, but it’s a harmless sort of bad movie, totally free of pretension. The biggest complaint I had was that there just isn’t enough giant snake. If I go see a film called ANACONDAS, I’m not interested in corporate intrigue or the race to create new pharmaceuticals. I want giant snakes eating people, and plenty of them. I’ll give director Dwight Little bonus points for his use of the monkey... you can’t go too wrong with a monkey co-starring... but it’s obvious that he was limited by his budget to just a few money shots. The ensemble cast is eminently forgettable with the possible exception of cute-as-a-button Georgia peach Kaydee Strickland. Overall, it was perfect for the evening, and we had exactly the kind of fun we hoped we would have.
The second feature for the evening was another horror film, LITTLE BLACK BOOK, but I don’t think any of it paid it much attention. Instead, we chose to stand around and chat. One of the subjects of conversation was the rest of the summer movie season, sparked by the films we could see playing on the other screens at the Vineland. Looking back at it, 2004 feels like one of the most anemic summers in recent memory with a few big exceptions. There were numerous films I never got around to seeing like TROY or KING ARTHUR or THUNDERBIRDS, titles I’ll probably catch up with on DVD. That means for now, I can’t say how I feel about EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING or MEAN GIRLS or AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. I’ve seen 73 new releases so far this year, well over one a week, and many of them have been smaller arthouse titles. Even so, I missed films I was interested in like HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD or A DOOR IN THE FLOOR or NAPOLEON DYNAMITE.
There were several films I saw this summer that I never quite got around to reviewing for one reason or another, so while we’re saying goodbye to the season, I thought I’d finally weigh in on a few of them. Maybe the most discussed title that I never reviewed was Michael Moore’s FAHRENHEIT 9/11. After seeing how ugly every conversation about the movie got in our TalkBacks, I just didn’t want to add to the divisive mood of the moment. Now a little time’s passed, and I wanted to weigh in on the film without getting into the politics, if that’s even possible. I’ve gone on record before about my problems with Moore as a filmmaker, and they were amplified by his sudden anointment as Liberal Dragonslayer Supreme. I think his faults as a filmmaker, and his strengths, seemed more obvious than ever with this film. Maybe it was the telescoped production schedule or the fact that, more than any high-profile documentary in recent memory, this was a film that set out with a specific agenda, process be damned. The best way to judge the success of the film is seeing how well it accomplishes its goals and how skilled Moore is at making his arguments.
On that level, I think the film’s about half successful. The first half of the film, the direct character attack on George W. Bush, hits just as many targets as it misses, and it plays sloppy overall. I’ve read most of the same sources he seems to have drawn on in constructing his portrait of cowardice and corruption, and most of it managed to make the same points better. Overall, Moore makes tenuous connections that he never quite manages to support, and he makes the cardinal mistke of getting emotional about the subject matter when he should be dealing in cold hard fact. Oddly, that’s why the second half of the film works better. Moore personalizes the war in Iraq through the story of Lila Lipscomb, a long-time conservative supporter of war and the military who has her belief system rocked when she loses her son. There’s some real power to this material, and Moore wisely dedicates a fair amount of screen time to her. In the end, though, I’m betting this film just won’t have much of a shelf life. It very much feels like a movie designed for a particular moment, and in the future, its primary value will be as a record of just how angry and betrayed a section of our culture felt in the wake of one of our darkest national moments.
And, no, I don’t mean ALIEN VS. PREDATOR.
What mystifies me most about the complete and utter failure of Paul W.S. Anderson’s seprequel is just how easy the film should have been. For anyone. I’m not going to lambast the guy personally or pick on him to belabor the point. Why bother? He managed to take two of the greatest SF franchises of all time and produce a film that doesn’t introduce a single fresh idea or add anything to the mythology around either iconic character. Even the weakest of the previous ALIEN movies managed to twist the series in new directions, and PREDATOR 2 may not be great, but it certainly wasn’t a simple rehash of the original. Even more incredibly, AVP actually manages to contradict what we already know about these movie monsters with an almost geelful disregard. Everything about the movie feels lowball, from the casting to the production design to the visual effects to Lance Henriksen’s “I have a mortgage payment” cameo. There’s one shot in the whole film that I thought was genuinely thrilling and inventive, but it was pointed out to me as we were leaving the theater that it is a direct lift from JURASSIC PARK, the exact same composition as the T-Rex chasing the Jeep. I’ve never been convinced that this head-to-head team-up was anything more than a desperate cash grab, a way of squeezing a little more cash out of each series, but I never expected to be so completely and utterly bored by the results.
Lowered expectations may have actually enhanced my experience with Fox’s other big SF summer film. I heard months of horror stories about I, ROBOT. I heard rumors about Alex Proyas being locked out of the editing room. I heard that the script ignored the work of Isaac Asimov. So when I walked into the theater having heard all of that and having seen the disappointing trailers, I hardly expected anything. I was surprised, then, to enjoy the picture as a decent SF thriller/mystery with a sharp visual style. I have no idea if Proyas lost control of this film during post-production or not, but he certainly left his signature on the movie. He’s inventive and smart and manages to gloss over the goofiest moments in the serviceable script by Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman with remarkable aplomb.
In the meantime, what can you say about the problem that is Will Smith? Somewhere along the way, he made the choice that he is more comfortable as a movie star than as an actor. When he chooses to immerse himself in character work, as in ALI, he’s impressive, no question about it. But for the most part, he coasts on one-note performances, letting his Big Willie persona do all the work. He doesn’t stink in I, ROBOT, but he also doesn’t distinguish himself in any way. It’s just more of the same. That’s also true of Bruce Greenwood, a damn fine character actor who can be boring as shit when playing generic bad guy roles. Ultimately, there’s only one truly interesting performance in the film. Alan Tudyk, who gave one of the year’s most painfully miscalculated performances as the pirate guy in DODGEBALL, does wonderful work here as Sonny, the main robot character in the film. Production designer Patrick Tatopoulos may have seen Bjork’s “All Is Full Of Love” video a few too many times, but Weta Digital and Digital Domain brought Sonny to life, giving completely convincing form to the work by Tudyk. Like with Gollum, this is a major step forward in terms of motion-capture performing, and the combination of actor and artists managed to give this ROBOT a soul.
Will Smith’s ALI co-star and director, as well as his real-life wife, gave us the summer’s most soulful big-studio picture, and perhaps that’s because it feels more like an indie, a personal picture that just happens to feature the biggest movie star on the planet. I read an early draft by Stuart Beattie of COLLATERAL a few years ago, and at that point, it seemed like a perfectly acceptable little thriller with a great hook. A hired killer forces a cab driver to accompany him on his rounds one evening. Easy enough. What director Michael Mann and uncredited script doctor Frank Darabont brought to the picture is a beating heart, a real sense of life. Jamie Foxx is flat-out great in the lead, and one of my favorite scenes in the film is the quiet cab ride at the beginning. I don’t think I’ve ever liked Jada-Pinkett Smith so much in any film, but she and Foxx get their flirt on in such a real, adult, honest way that it left me completely invested for the rest of the film. Tom Cruise also seemed energized here, connected to the rest of the cast, fully invested in his role as the ruthless hit man. It’s a simple propulsive premise, and Michael Mann wrings every bit of potential suspense out of the set-up.
What makes COLLATERAL important, and more than just another summer thriller, is the spectacular cinematography, most of which is digital instead of film. Ten years from now, when studio pictures are routinely shot in hi-def, this is going to be the landmark people point at, the moment where it became possible. Both credited directors of photography were instrumental in pulling it off, but there’s no mistaking the work of Michael Mann here. He pushed this particular envelope with his short-lived network series ROBBERY HOMICIDE DIVISION, also shot in hi-def. It’s obviously a preoccupation of his. The way he’s captured Los Angeles is incredible. Finally, here’s a film that eschews all the clichés about wet streets and palm trees in favor of the peculiar hypnotic beauty you see when you’re really here. The film’s next-to-last set piece, the gunfight in the darkened office, would be impossible to realize on film. It’s the kind of imagery that you might not even realize is revolutionary when you’re looking at it. But it is. COLLATERAL may not be the best film of the year, but it’s on the short list for most significant.
OPEN WATER, on the other hand, is exactly what most people are still afraid of when they hear that a film’s been shot using video. The first ten minutes of the movie look like it could erupt into a porno at any time. It’s not particularly well-written or well-crafted by writer/director Chris Kentis, but it was well-cast. Blanchard Ryan, in particular, deserves to move on to bigger and better things. Essentially, this is a two-person picture, and her co-star Daniel Travis does solid work as well. As with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, your tolerance for this film will largely depend on how interested you are in these characters as they deal with their horrible situation, and since they weren’t written very deep, it’s up to the actors to make them as likeable as possible. Once Susan and Daniel are stranded in the middle of the ocean, there’s a certain amount of repetition that sets in. There are some moments of undeniable tension that work on a primal level, and any nightmare you’ve ever had about what might be lurking below the waves will be tapped into by certain scenes. I’ll give the film credit for staying bleak right up to its jet-black final joke. I just wish the film was more than a collection of occasionally effective bits and pieces.
By contrast, GARDEN STATE is an episodic film that somehow adds up to a cohesive and satisfying whole. I’m not sure why I waited as long as I did to see Zach Braff’s debut as a writer/director. I liked the trailers, thought they were striking. I guess I just expected a vanity piece.
Instead, Braff’s created something that manages to be hyperstylized and honest in equal measures, quirky yet emotionally direct. Braff plays Andrew Largeman, an actor in Los Angeles who’s had a couple of minor successes, but who now finds himself working as a waiter at a Vietnamese-themed restaurant. He spends most of his time comfortably numb thanks to dozens of mood-controlling drugs prescribed by his father (Ian Holm). His routine is disrupted when he gets a call to come home to New Jersey. His mother has died. Andrew’s time at home becomes more about reconnecting with himself than with his emotionally distant father. He stops taking his drugs, hoping for some catharsis about his mother. What ultimately opens his heart, though, is his chance meeting with an adorable eccentric named Sam, played by Natalie Portman. If you’ve ever wanted proof about the fickle nature of her talent, this would be it. When she seems passionate about a film, she is able to summon all the charm and vitality that her early work promised. Peter Sarsgaard continues his winning streak as one of Andrew’s small-town friends, now employed as a gravedigger. Is Braff deeply in love with THE GRADUATE and HAROLD & MAUDE? Obviously. Is that a bad thing? Not at all. He’s got his own original comic sensibility that feels fresh and unforced, and when the sentiment finally comes, it feels earned. Also, anyone who can put together a soundtrack this effortlessly dreamy gets bonus points. I walked straight out of the Arclight and into Amoeba Records, and the CD stayed in my car’s player for a week straight. If you’re looking for something to hold you over until the serious fall season gets underway, a trip to GARDEN STATE might be exactly what you need.
So that’s it. Goodbye, Summer 2004. Based on how well our trip went last week, I may actually look into organizing some official AICN events at the Vineland Drive-In. It would be a great way to enjoy an evening with local readers. For now, it’s time to start thinking about what’s coming out for the rest of the year. Look for reports soon about KINSEY, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, ALFIE, and a quartet of micro-budget marvels. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
