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Moriarty’s One Thing I Love Today! Being Completely Out Of Step On MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS And LEATHERHEADS!
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
I can tell already I’m in a distinct minority on two films, and it’s going to be one of those cases where I’m going to be stubborn and insistent that people are simply wrong about the movies. These are good films. These are films that have a pulse, films that are genuinely worth your time. These are movies that are actively engaged with trying to make you feel something, and they come from genuine places. When people want to shit all over big slick corporate product, I get it. It’s impersonal. There is something vaguely insulting about the way we’re ordered to consume a lot of pop culture, but that’s just the nature of the beast. Hype owns you if you let it. But when someone does offer up something that you feel while you watch it... when you spend some time with a film and you walk away feeling like you were treated with respect by the filmmaker... I sort of value that above anything else.
I’ve gotten some very angry e-mail from fans of SOUTHLAND TALES since I reviewed it. And you know what? If you sat through every minute of that film and you felt like you had a genuine experience... if you were engaged by it and really bought into the aesthetic and the characters and the flights of fancy, then you win. Because I was miserable watching it, and I can’t imagine what it is that a fan of the film is getting from it. But you got your money’s worth... you felt like you were rewarded for the time spent. So you win.
Many of you will detest LEATHERHEADS and MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, I’ll bet. When MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS played at Cannes last summer, it took a beating. People seemed actively angry at it. They didn’t just dismiss it, they seemed like they wanted to kill it. Now it’s a half-hour shorter, and of course people blame Weinstein for taking it away from Wong Kar-Wai. LEATHERHEADS was supposed to come out at Christmas in ’07, but it got pushed back, and now it’s getting unceremoniously dumped, like a sacrificial lamb for the studio, an orphan. Both films are running about 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, certainly indicating a lack of enthusiasm for them.
But I think both of these movies are pretty grand, taken on their own terms. I’m not sure what anyone expects of Wong Kar-Wai because I’m not sure what work of his they’ve seen. AS TEARS GO BY and DAYS OF BEING WILD were the first two films of his I saw, and I saw them both theatrically, first run. I know people who wax rhapsodic about his work, but I’ve always felt like the more you talk about his movies, the more you pick apart the pieces and try to describe or analyze his aesthetic, the more you risk destroying the pleasure of them.
Expectation is death for a filmmaker like Wong Kar-Wai. When you see a film like DAYS OF BEING WILD, it’s so potent because you expect nothing of it. It’s just this raw expression, almost like early Jarmusch. I always saw a connection between the styles they were developing. Not like either one was imitating the other, but like both of them had the same ear for human behavior, the same love of rough edges and elliptical storytelling. When CHUNGKING EXPRESS got a release in the states, it had “Quentin Tarantino Presents” branded on it, and as a result, it came with a certain set of expectations. And there were a lot of people I knew even then who went to see it in the theater and were just baffled what this sort of dreamy drifting yearning character sketch had to do with their expectations of big-dick-cinema-bad-boy Tarantino, who was hot shit that year because of PULP FICTION. Even as Wong Kar-Wai’s craft has gotten sharper and more controlled over the years, expectations have grown for his work from film to film. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE set the bar pretty high for people following his work, and then 2046 became a cause for much heated and angry debate. And I think he’s become somewhat bogged down by the expectations people have of his work, and I also think people expect something from his movies they’re never going to get. He doesn’t make movies that are designed to sledgehammer you or give you the “big moments” that we’re conditioned to expect from something we consider “good.” We are weaned on the idea of certain kinds of payoff, dramatically, and without those things, we reject what we’re watching. When Wong Kar-Wai takes a film to Cannes, the expectations are that the movie’s going to be some transcendent special moment in cinema. There’s a weight on him to knock the audience out, because these are the eyes of the whole world. And when what he delivers turns out to be a very tiny, feather-light story of a girl whose heart gets bruised and who needs a road trip to show her what’s in front of her face.
Sound cheesy? Well, it sort of is, in a really sweet, really earnest way. And Norah Jones ends up being the perfect fit for it. She’s a lovely girl, but she’s not a knockout at first glance. She’s the kind of girl who gets prettier the longer you talk to her... the more time you spend around her... the more times you make her smile or laugh. She sneaks up on you. And part of that is her fault. She is a mouse at the start of the film, when she stumbles into a small café owned and operated by Jeremy (Jude Law). There’s a guy who cheated on her, and there’s this set of keys, and what starts as an angry gesture becomes a reminder of this betrayal, then becomes an annoyance, but finally seems to be an excuse to talk to someone, the first hint of the possibility of something new. Elizabeth (Jones) spends her evenings in the café after a while, eating pie and talking and just plain nursing her injuries. And then... she disappears. Jeremy waits for her. Waits for her. Days pass. And then weeks.
Where Elizabeth goes is the meat of the film, a road-trip story about a woman in search of her own definition, and the way the characters she... blah blah blah. It’s a road trip. You get it. Either you buy into the people she meets along the way, or you reject the film, and for me, both Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman acquit themselves nicely here. I like Weisz’s work a lot these days, but I’ve been fairly vocal about my skepticism regarding Portman. Here, she fits the role just right. I have trouble believing her sometimes, but here, she clicks. Special praise has to be reserved for David Strathairn, who makes the most of his role. He’s my favorite thing about the film, hands down, and it’s a reminder of just how great this guy always is. He’s one of the most consistently good character actors working.
I haven’t seen the original cut of this film. I’ve only seen the theatrical release version that will open in the US on Friday. Even so, I personally thought it was really wonderful. I would love to see the longer cut, and I hope that when I do, I like it even more. For now, though, I’d recommend this film, except that might pitch your expectations too high, and you’d miss the gentle, quiet pleasures of a stolen kiss, a stack of promise chips, your own car and the open road, or the pie that no one wants.
In the case of LEATHERHEADS, I think Clooney picked an uphill battle from day one. It’s a period film. It’s a sports comedy. It’s a screwball homage. It’s all the things a studio will tell you they don’t want to do when you take meetings anywhere in town. LEATHERHEADS is like a perfect recipe for box-office death. You know how the Coen Bros comedies make nothing at the box-office? Well, LEATHERHEADS will probably be just as big as THE HUDSUCKER PROXY was, and it’ll be just as well-liked. You can certainly compare some stylistic choices in both films, but I think LEATHERHEADS is a little more rough-and-tumble and Three-Stooges-funny than anything the Coens have made. You can see how Clooney’s leared from them in the way he stages things and in the way he paces his comedy, but I think the sense of humor is his. I think if you don’t like LEATHERHEADS, there’s a pretty good chance that you don’t really like George Clooney. This is just as much a part of how defines himself as GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK was. Clooney is in a position where he can get a film made as a director simply by agreeing to star in it. So he can get some real gambles bankrolled. And here, it feels like he finally made his very own HUDSON HAWK.
And I don’t mean that as a slam. Seriously. I’m one of the people who likes HUDSON HAWK. I think it’s a very compromised and half-finished film, but there’s stuff in that movie that makes me cackle. I like it because it appears that Bruce Willis lost his motherfucking mind and somehow got Tri-Star to pay him a shitload of money to have his nervous breakdown in Italy while things blow up. I like it because I can’t imagine how it got made.
I like LEATHERHEADS because you can feel how much Clooney believes in the past. You can tell he mourns the moment that football became a matter of money instead of a matter of sport. Yes, there’s a lot of nouveau-screwball patter in the film, and yes, it’s got a romantic triangle of sorts in it, but what makes me really love this movie is the way it looks back at professional football when it was just a bunch of coal miners and ex-soldiers beating the shit out of each other in random turnip fields, as someone describes it in the film, with real affection and longing. Clooney romanticizes the guys who played it for pure love of the game, and he manages to get a really likeable, pitch-perfect performance out of John Krasinski. The movie loves drinkin' and fightin' and swearin' and ridin' motorcycles and bulldogs and sharp-talkin' dames and it's not even a little bit ashamed of it. LEATHERHEADS isn't a cartoon because it has too much genuine heart, but it's also never meant to be taken too seriously And Randy Newman's score is one of his best in a long, long, long time. Seriously.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m underestimating the audiences on these movies. I saw MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS at a tiny screening room in Beverly Hills in the middle of the afternoon, pretty much alone, so I have no idea how it would play for an audience. With LEATHERHEADS, I was surprised how vocal the crowd was for the first half-hour or so of the film, and then they just sort of... got quiet. Maybe they enjoyed it and I couldn’t read the room. Maybe not. But every now and then, it feels good to see something and react strongly to it and then realize you’re all alone on it. It makes you really think about why you like it, what it is you’re reacting to. It engages you as a viewer or, in my case, as a critic, and that... well, that’s exactly what I’m looking for in the first place.
MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS opens in limited release on Friday, and LEATHERHEADS opens wider, although I don’t know how many screens Universal wants to have it on a week later, when they open the sure-to-hit FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. In both cases, prepare to disagree with me, but I sure hope you enjoy them the way I did.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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Or second, at least. Eat it, bitches!
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Apr 02, 2008 6:50:25 AM CDT
Seriously, Blueberry Nights is the Kind of Thing . . .
by kevinwillis.net
Rachel Weisz is doing instead of the 3rd Mummy Film? I think she made the wrong choice.
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But I loved the Hudsucker Proxy. And I thought Hudson Hawk was all right. And certainly I was reasonably interested in it at the time it came out. Leatherheads just sounds yawn-inducing to me. But maybe I'm wrong.
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Mori, does the movie still cut to a close-up of vanilla icecream melting into a piece of blueberry pie everytime she kisses Jude Law. An overly obvious (and gross) insert. And, do they still have the scene where Jude Law kisses her after she falls asleep at his pie counter without her knowing. A scene that had the audience groaning in disgust and had everybody cringing in unison because it was like watching some fratboy molest an unconscious drunk chick at a kegger. Then, add the cheesy road-trip philosophy, and this movie stinks like a festering ass.
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thinks crap like "Meet the Spartans" is comedy. After all why go to a movie where you need to pay attention, when you can text, chat with your friends, threaten other patrons, etc and still "get" the plot such as it is? Just saying.....
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Apr 02, 2008 6:59:52 AM CDT
Clooney's best comedy ever still is "Return of the Killer Tomato
by mike_d
period.
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There is no way this will equal Hudsucker.
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Apr 02, 2008 7:09:38 AM CDT
When was the last time you saw a good road trip/screwball film?
by realdoublej
I haven't seen either of the two films above but Mori, you've sold me on both (I'm british, I'm supposed to scoff at AMERICAN football) I like the ideas & willing to give it a go. So in the spirit of heated talkbacks, i propose the above question & get the ball rolling: Screwball Comedy - Scorsese's New York New York (shown to me after enjoying the Coen's Intolerable Cruelty so much). Road Trip - Devil's Rejects (made a 30 year old by-the-numbers horrror plot feel very fresh)
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Mori is quite talented when not consumed with rage.
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That is all.
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And as much as I like George Clooney on screen, if he would decide one day to quit acting and become full time director instead, I would be one happy man.
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on my copy of ChungKing Express, they always comment on how much he looks like a complete douche. You have to have a pretty big ego to put your name in bigger print than the director's. Sure, he was just trying to promote the film, but come on.
I'm a big Wong Kar Wai fan so I'll see Blueberry Nights sooner or later. Leatherheads looks like a good old fashioned throwback to comedies of the forties. I do agree that Hudson Hawk has some moments of pure insane genius. I think that's a good thing. -
Clooney can't have it both ways. On the one hand he wants us to buy into his little Americana comedy. On the other hand, he spends his time in real life bashing America at every turn. Let's face it- the left wing quiche eating soccer playing nun beaters that like Clooney- don't like or watch football.
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non political-this same movie made with Brad Pitt instead of Clooney gets a XMAS release and is a hit. -
makes it a winner. I'm there Friday.
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You know, because an American citizen can't have an opinion about his own country if it doesn't fall in line with your own beliefs. And of course America has never done anything wrong or immoral ever. In fact, I hear America pisses rainbows and craps sunshine.
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Have all the opinions you want. Box office is the voice that matters in the biz. Lions for Lambs, Redacted (or whatever), etc... all major money losers. Just saying you can't bash one side of the culture and then expect them to support you. Happens on the other side too. Mel Gibson comes to mind. Insult Jews and then be stunned than your movies now tank in an industry controlled by them. Duh. Clooney can have his opinion--just not my money. And if enough people don't give him money---So long and good night George--thanks for playing the Hollywood game.
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Just listen to the music in 2046. Watch the beautiful 1950's asthetic style of the film. Listen to the characters go on poetically about their lives and situations. The entire experience is just something I often am sad to see come to a close when the credits start rolling. I imagine Bluberry Nights to be the same and so I think I'll end up sising with you Moriarty on this one. Even if you are wrong about Southland Tales ;)
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Bruce Willis is a conservative in Hollywood, and while I may disagree with his opinions, it won't stop me from going to see his movies. Separate the actor from the art is all I'm saying.
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Fuck Butjac, fuck America.
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This man went from being an ancillary character on the Facts of Life and Rosanne to taking the ER gig (the show was never as good once he left) and spinning that into a pretty damn incredible film career that includes several successful ventures sitting behind the director’s chair. I also really get a kick out of Clooney’s humor and the way he’s able to emulate the physical and absurdist comedy of the golden age while always putting his own little spin on the performance. Leatherheads looks entertaining and at the very least I suspect Clooney will be fun to watch.
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Several years back when Hero hit DVD I was picking my copy up at Target and the checker asked me if the film was good and then told me how he was a big fan of Tarantino's work. I explained to him that Tarantino had absolutely nothing to do with the film and rather they merely used his name as a promotional tool. I really don't get why they continue to do this now that Tarantino is mostly a box office failure but regardless, it's a shitty thing to do to the real talent behind these films.
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Apr 02, 2008 9:29:07 AM CDT
Moriarty’s One Thing I Love Today! - Two Things I Love!
by kid idioteque
Moriarty’s One Thing I Love Today! - One Thing Plus Another Thing Makes Two Things (And I'm Loving a Lot of Things These Days!!!)!!!
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That woman is DEATH in period settings. AH'M GONNA KETCH ME A RA-A-A-A-A-A-A-BIT!
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Unfortunately for you, George Clooney is one of the most respected actors (And directors) in hollywood, by both the people that work in it and the people that go see the movies. He doesn't make crap, and most of his movies are either for fun (The Ocean's trilogy) or about a cause he cares about. In case you haven't noticed, there's real problems with this country, some caused by people that think like you, some not.
Must be horrible being so damn wrong about everything all the time. -
...a week or two ago and I'm afraid I could only get about ten minutes into it before I gave up and turned it off. Norah Jones' acting completely turned me off. I don't think Jude Law has the talent to drive a Wong Kar-Wai film either. I'll give this one another shot at some point, as I love all of WKW's earlier films without equivocation. Unfortunately, this one isn't going to make it easy for me to continue that trend.
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Everyone who gets all bent out of shape whenever they see Quentin Tarantino's name on a box needs to seriously shut the fuck up. I suppose HERO would be better off rotting on a shelf at Miramax next to PEKING OPERA BLUES, merely one of many titles the Weinsteins abandoned when they left Disney and Miramax behind, that gets treated like dirty diapers by the new regime there. I suppose we'd all be better off if Tarantino had decided against picking up CHUNGKING EXPRESS for US distribution because the Weinsteins were going to insist on putting Tarantino's face on the box. It has nothing to do with any sort of like or dislike for Tarantino and/or his films; he's trying to get these films out there so people can see them. I don't give a damn whose picture is on the box. If a picture on the box matters so much to you, perhaps you should collect boxes with nice pictures on them instead of works of cinema. I have to agree with the people saying that MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS looks pretty bad. I'm more interested in ASHES OF TIME REDUX, if it's ever really coming out; Sony Classics still hasn't given it a release date.
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You think this is going to be like one of those great Warner Brothers movies from the 30's-40's, but its not. I like David Lynch, but he's used the same transmorphing of people three times already. Okay, we know the magic trick now, David, its not fun anymore. Let's see a new one. Plus, Clooney's only in the first half of the film, then he disapears, so the audience wanting to see a George Clooney flick will feel cheated. This film has two different storytelling styles and they don't mix with the subject matter. Save your cash.
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Sure it isn't a great movie, but it is a perfectly watchable (if predictable) tale... I enjoyed it for what it was and forgot about it 10 minutes later.
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I heard he did rub Charlie Kaufmann the wrong way when he made CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND. Just thought I'd throw that out there since people were saying Clooney was respected by everyone from the little guy on up. I actually dug CONFESSIONS anyway, but I'm curious how different the end product was compared to Kaufmann's original script.
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Apr 02, 2008 12:03:45 PM CDT
Do you really believe that Tarantino presents these films?
by derlanghaarige
Or don't you think that the Weinsteins just slap Tarantino's name on some movies to make some money.
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...movies that would otherwise never make any money because of their lack of commercial appeal. (which of course doesn't say anything about their quality. Just about "target audiences")
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...only with football and a tad more "look how ignorant men were about women back then". If you think this movie is original and funny, then its probably because you want to BE George Clooney.
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...was not written to be as glamorized as Clooney made it. It's something to which Kaufman is very averse. Jonze and Gondry, on the other hand, tend to keep his stuff very low-rent and therefore a little more pure. At least in Kaufman's opinion.
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It was beautifully shot and had a really fascinating story, but I don't think it was well told. I found most of the stars, even great actors like Rachel Weisz and David Strathairn, to be distracting. I've seen it twice now and I'll admit I found more to like the second time, but it still never came together for me. Here's my original review: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/33068
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would make a successful leap from TV to the big screen? I always had faith in the guy. And, yes, "Return of the Killer Tomatoes" is a lot of fun. Seriously.
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... only someone who hasn't seen LEATHERHEADS would compare it to BULL DURHAM. They're nothing alike in terms of story, tone, style, or even which fucking sport they're playing. Besides... how is that an insult? BULL DURHAM's a damn fine film.
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Apr 02, 2008 3:00:01 PM CDT
Moriarty: Regarding How Blueberry played for an audience.
by bungion boy
I really envy you for seeing it virtually by yourself. The first time I saw it, it was in a packed theatre in New York. They were all very excited to see "a Jude Law/Natalie Portman movie," which was how it was trying to be sold to them. When that first silent kiss on the counter came, the audience was filled with noise, a combination of laughter and groans. After that it just got worse. Nobody took it seriously and kept waiting for a major story arch to come into play. The second time I saw it there were fewer people but they were just as antsy and vocal. If I had seen this at home, alone, I might have enjoyed it more. I think a lot of my reaction was less to the film, and more about wanting to leave the theatre and the people surrounding me.
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I like the way you think. I had an identical reaction. Really wanted to have the experience Moriarty had but it was impossible.
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I saw My Blueberry Nights and while I wasn't blown away, I agree that might not have been the point, it was a straigh up Wong Kar Wai flick that I thoroughly enjoyed.
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...and I love Hudson Hawk. Honestly, I don't consider it unfinished, so much as actively pursuing a kind of rumpled aesthetic - it's a lot like Bruce Willis, in that way. I was looking forward to Leatherheads until I read all the ill humor, and now it's back on my must-see list! Thanks, Drew!
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They play a futuristic sport where they have to put a gourd on a spike.
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Salute of the jugger
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Only Weinstein would have the balls to do that to Wong Kar Wai.
I've heard mixed things about Blueberry Nights but I will wait for the uncut version. -
That is all.
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Look at it this way...Zhang Yimou's Hero is finally released in 2004 with "Quentin Tarantino presents" plastered on the trailers (following his two commercially successful Kill Bill movies), and it grosses $55 million (more than respectable for a subtitled Asian action film). Yimou's two followup wuxia films, House Of Flying Daggers and Curse Of The Golden Flower, sans Tarantino's name, both had a COMBINED gross of less than $20 million. If Tarantino hadn't lent his name to Hero, it'd STILL be rotting on a shelf somewhere.
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For a long time now, I've enjoyed reading Moriarty's thoughts on film and culture. He is far and away the critic I most identify with on this site. He often champions movies that don't get the respect they deserve, and he delves often into challenging and artistic fare.
This article for example, is doing something great..something I agree with completely. But then he goes and makes a broad statement: "I think if you don’t like LEATHERHEADS, there’s a pretty good chance that you don’t really like George Clooney". While I'm glad he qualified it with the "pretty good chance," I still flat-out disagree with thsi conclusion and can only guess that most others will also.
I've liked the vast majority of George Clooney's work as an actor, director, and even Producer (Syriana). I'll give Leatherheads a chance, but the contention that not liking it means I "might not like Clooney" strikes me as needlesly divisive. If I don't like it, I'll still be lining up for whatever he directs and/or stars in next, and I'll still think as highly of him as I ever have.
I know this looks like pointless hair-splitting, and to an extent, it is. It's only one sentence after all, and I pretty much agree with everything else in the review.
But here's the thing, and here's why I had to post soemthing about this: I recently read your review of The Cell...and man, did I ever find it appalling. I know it was written quite a long time ago, and your recent positive notice about Tarsem's new project really gave me hope that you found the review as badly thought-out as I did. But then I read this statement, and I fear this kind of thing will continue.
Basically, the review concludes with you saying something to the effect of "if you liked this movie, you're someone I wouldn't consider a friend".
I understand you objected to the film's moral perspective, and to an extent you were right...but this is a sight that salivates all over the films of Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino...and countless other filmmakers who don't merely dabble, but WALLOW in "objectionable" content. I'm thinking of the stabbing/shoot-out in the skating rink in Switchblade Sisters, or the countless running-down of pedestrians on Death Race 2000, or the dragging to death of a black man (an event recreated in real life) in Coffey.
These films are CELEBRATED on this site (though perhaps not by you), and when I read something like your review of The Cell, my "hypocrisy-alert" buzzer started ringing pretty dam loudly.
Yes the film exhibited "bad psychology", yes some of what was depicted was deplorable, yes you had a right to "campaign aggressively" against it. But in your review you didn't so much aggressively attack the film, as you aggressively attacked the people who liked it.
Personally, I feel absolutely no shame in publicly admitting that I did like it, whatever cost that may have on your opinion of my character. It was flawed and sometimes irresponsibly so, like MANY, MANY other movies of much less visual inventiveness. It also had sequences that have stayed with me since I saw it nearly 10 years ago, and I think that deserves...if not praise...at least the concession that people with the audacity to "
like The Cell" might not be sick bastards, morons, or some combination of the two.
The road to an assessment of cinematic "morality" is a slippery slope, one worth taking, but also one to tread carefully. In that effort, I feel your review of The Cell failed miserably, and your similar "with us or against us" stance on Leatherheads is a bit troubling.
As is the fact that any sort of "forgiveness" of Tarsem for what he created in The Cell would, by the chains of your earlier review, require that you renounce your friendship with yourself.
I think it's safe to say you went a little far in that review, and I hope you're willing to see that. Noone deserves having their character disparaged for liking a single film, unless it's a snuff film or something like that...certainly not a psychologically misguided but visually ambitious (and frequently successful) serial-killer thriller.
Be fair. We all love movies, we all have much more in common than we have differences. Blanket judgements of character, consisting entirely of conjecture, has no place here...this is the place we come to be HONEST about our tastes. Not a place to hide or be "cautious" about our opinions. Please remember that. -
... setting aside the CELL review, all I meant about the Clooney comment is that this is a movie that is a big, direct reflection of his personality. It's possible to like a lot of films he's in and not really dig him as a person or the particular things he loves. I've spent time around him and in his circle of friends, and I think it's a safe bet that this is one of the most personal things he's ever done. There's so much of him in this that if you don't think it's funny, you probably have a very different definition of "funny" than him. That's all. Not trying to be divisive or suggest you're wrong if you don't like it. A film like this is going to either appeal to you, like a HUDSUCKER PROXY, or not at all.
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movie stars. He's often compared to Clark Gable or Cary Grant. I can see the comparison. I realize some get turned off by him speaking out on certain subjects. But they're are penty on the right that do the same thing. i.e. Limbugh, O'Reilly, Man Coulter,Bill Kristol, Hanity, et al.......... If they have the right to spew their tomfoolery then why the beef w/ folks like Clooney? I know that he's on the side of the working men and women of this country and the former people are for the country club folk. But still, the guy cares about what happens to the "regular" folks more than the elite, even though he's one of them.
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...and although I haven't seen the film yet, I have a feeling you're absolutely right about this being a very personal project for Clooney.
I think I probably read too deeply into this recent comment. It was pretty harmless. I was just really surprised to see you take the position you did on The Cell. It seemed really uncharacteristic...like the sort of thing Roger Ebert (still one of my favorite critics by the way) did with regards to Blue Velvet when that film came out. Of course, Blue Velvet is a FAR better film than The Cell...but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that several sequences from The Cellhave an almost visionary quality that is (unfortunately) betrayed by the film's bullshit Freudian psychology.
Interestingly, Roger Ebert came to almost the EXACT same conclusion you did (about The Cell) when he reviewed Wolf Creek...so you're in good company.
From his review: "The theaters are crowded right now with wonderful, thrilling, funny, warm-hearted, dramatic, artistic, inspiring, entertaining movies. If anyone you know says this is the one they want to see, my advice is: Don't know that person no more."
Yes, I "wanted" to see Wolf Creek...but not to see people tortured. I checked it out for John Jarrat's peformance, and I was STILL pretty revolted by the film itself (unlike Hostel, which I thought transcended its "torture porn" trappings as much as the LOATHSOME Hostel II mindlessly adhered to them), but not enough to "not know no more" those who liked the film.
This raises an interesting question for film buffs: when is it acceptable to appreciate a film for its technical proficiency while still abhorring its human perspective? I've long felt that ANYTHING, however morally reprehensible, can be done in a movie...as long as it's done in a way that transcends the basest implications of its content. For me, it was worth sitting through the poorly-conceived, poorly-executed "real world" sequences of The Cell in order to experience the baroque "nightmare-eden" of the killer's inner consciousness. It's really a shame that Tarsem did such a half-assed job of "justifying" the killer's behavior, because if he had spent as much time on the psychological aspects of the film as he did on the visuals...we might be debating whether the film is a masterpiece or not, instead of whether it's flat-out morally reprehensible or simply the somewhat disappointing end product of an inspired director working with a bad screenplay.
One thing we CAN both agree on...that poster for the new Tarsem film looks pretty amazing. I can only hope he's corrected the flaws of his previous work and perfected his unique visual approach.
Now, McG...THERE'S a director to end friendships over!! :)
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