A Serious Man: Grade A

A

A Serious Man (2009)

Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolf, Sari Lennick; Writer-Directors Ethan and Joel Cohen.

Larry Gopnik (Stuhlbarg) is a physics professor at a Midwestern university, and a 1960’s Jewish nebbish. He lives in a Levittown-like suburb (sets and costumes are absolutely nailed in this film), with his out-of-control teenage kids and wife who wants a divorce.

The wife and her paramour (Melamed) try to be “adult” about confronting the cuckolded husband by suggesting ever so kindly that he might be “more comfortable” if he moved out to the Jolly Roger Motel. The unctuous pseudo-caring of the lovers' “advice” is squirm-in-your-seat funny and a masterpiece of acting and directing.

Numerous other troubles, large and small, befall the professor, who seeks advice from rabbis and lawyers, each of whom is a brilliant parody. There is no plot, just a documentary of this Job-like man’s pathetic life.

The opening scene, which seems disconnected at first, is in retrospect, the key to this funny but dark satirical essay on Jewish existentialism. The opener says that in “the old days” God was present to us and we knew what things meant and we knew how to act. The rules were simple. Today, God does not seem present in life and nobody knows what anything means. It is a scathing commentary on modern life, not just Jewish life, but in this case, life in the Jewish tradition.

The writing is flawless. The acting is utterly gripping by just about every character, and that’s a tribute also to the directors. I was put off a bit by the main character’s extreme passivity, which was frustratingly unrealistic, but it was designed to highlight the world around him, not him as an individual, so it works. Sixties and seventies rock music (featuring Grace Slick) mixed with some lovely ceremonial cant, was excellent. It is another masterpiece from the Cohen brothers.

What Just Happened: Grade C

C
What Just Happened (2008)
Robert De Niro, Catherine Keener, Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, Michael Wincott. Director Barry Levinson.

De Niro is a Hollywood producer just finishing a movie that the test audience hates, and so does the studio executive (Keener). The crazy, drug-addled director (Wincott) is ordered to recut the ending (which involves Sean Penn). De Niro must get him to do that before the premier at Cannes. Meanwhile, De Niro tries to reconcile with his estranged wife but the Bluetooth phone stuck in his ear makes his attempts seem less than authentic. He is also trying to pull together the next film starring Bruce Willis, who has become fat and grown a beard, which the studio will not accept. All this is funny, in a very inside-Hollywood way. We are supposed to be amused at the outrageous, immature, irresponsible, self-serving characters in the business, but that is a well-worn theme and there is nothing new here. I'm sure it is a scream for industry insiders. On Charlie Rose, well-known producer and director Levinson said that although the movie is fiction, there is nothing in it that hasn’t actually happened. It is good to see De Niro acting well again, after a wasted recent outing in Righteous Kill. But this movie is like an extended sitcom without much overall structure or dramatic tension. In the end, nothing is resolved and no point is drawn. It was mildly interesting to see what might be an approximation to the life of a Hollywood producer. It is worth watching, but not worth remembering.

Hamlet 2: Grade A

A
Hamlet 2 (2008)
Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener, David Arquette, Elisabeth Shue, Amy Poehler; Co-writer & Director Andrew Fleming.

An ex-actor of awful commercials (Coogan) is now a highly emotional high school drama coach on the verge of a nervous breakdown, with a class full of uninterested students, many Latino. He struggles to give them some appreciation of theater and also to please his fed-up wife (Keener, who always delivers). The teacher writes a bizarre play, a hodge-podge of ideas only vaguely related to Hamlet and not at all to Shakespeare. The kids contribute ideas to give it street cred but the school cuts the whole drama department. In the tradition of Stand And Deliver/Dead Poets Society, the students become inspired and the show must go on, in this case to draw the public’s attention to the school’s funding problem. The school tries to cancel the play claiming it is indecent and irreverent but the ACLU (Poehler) defends it. The last act presents the play, which is insanely over the top and very funny in multiple layers of parody and satire.

What makes this film good is the fine comic acting by the principals and the mandatory cute and talented youth. The dialog is very witty, very satirical and mostly subtle. Delicious fun is made of high school drama departments, the whole theater/movie industry (Shue does a fantastic job there), academics in general, inspirational teacher movies, musicals, life in the Southwest, small towns, fertility anxiety, racism, religion, and much else. There are a few pratfalls and body jokes – something for everyone, but generally the dialog is sophisticated and always completely original. On the downside, the story is not original nor are the characters. You can almost tell which of the two writers wrote which parts of the script. Still, the jokes are so good I had tears in my eyes. Amy Poehler (who played Hillary Clinton on SNL) had some show-stopping lines. The lyrics of the play’s songs were even funny. Any movie that makes me laugh that hard gets an A.

An American Carol: Grade D

D
An American Carol (2008)
Kevin P. Farley, Kelsey Grammer, Leslie Nielsen, with appearances by Bill O’Reilly, Dennis Hopper, John Voight. Co-writer and director David Zuckoff.

I rented this movie because I thought it would be a Leslie Nielsen Airplane-esque spoof of left wing politics, especially the Michael Moore variety. Instead, it is a one-theme political diatribe of the form, “Michael Moore hates America!” The assumption is that any criticism of any part of American government makes one a traitor working for the country’s enemies. But the main problem is that the movie is not funny. Maybe funny is not something that the right does.

There are two or three scenes of inspired silliness, such as the opening, when the terrorist leader calls for one of his men, “Mohammed! Come here!” and 15 guys appear from behind rocks and rush to him. They play that joke out for two or three more minutes. That is the real Leslie Nielsen silliness I love. Another inspired segment has Dennis Hopper as a judge blasting his shotgun at ACLU zombies who have invaded his courtroom. Hopper was terrific in that role. Kelsey Grammer was outstanding as General George Patton, a ghost who escorts Farley as Michael Malone across time and space, per “It’s a Wonderful Life,” to see what would have happened if war were banned as left-wing liberals insist. We see that Malone would now be a slaveowner because the Civil War was not fought and “Victoria’s Secret” had become “Victoria’s Burka.” Is that funny? I see only heavy handed didactics.

Liberal politics certainly is ripe for a satire, but this isn’t it.

Tropic Thunder: Grade C

C
Tropic Thunder (2008)
Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., with appearances by Nick Nolte and Tom Cruise. Co-writer and Director Ben Stiller.

This satire of Vietnam war films takes a self-referential, postmodern approach, meaning that its own satire is part of the joke, making it also a satire of Hollywod filmmaking. A patrol of GIs is filming battle scenes (shot in Hawaii, which had to be expensive), but the actors are bickering and one multi-million dollar special effects explosion is ignited when the cameras are not even rolling. In desperation, the director drops the patrol into the jungle to see if they can straighten out their relationships while trying to survive. Somehow they are dropped straight into the Vietnam war and are attacked by guerrillas. But they think they are still making a movie and act accordingly. That goofy premise makes for some delicious inside-Hollywood laughs and some good parodies of well-known scenes from Rambo, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Rescue Dawn, and others.

One of the funniest bits is between RDJ playing a tough, barking black sergeant, and a young, hip black soldier who is perplexed by his stereotypical phrases and attitudes. There is no real plot, just a series of gag scenes, so everything depends on the humor, which is inconsistent. It loses its satiric edge and degenerates into crude, easy laughs as the movie progresses, until finally it becomes flat and boring. Jack Black has his fans, but is too crude and hammy for me. Nolte does a great self-parody. Cruise comes across as creepy; the magic is gone from him. Directing is notably good, and the sets, props, costumes and production values are high quality, but after about 45 minutes, the movie has little content to keep you going.

Sukiyaki Western Django: Grade A

A
Sukiyaki Western Django
Hideaki Ito. Masanobu Ando, Koichi Sato, Kaori Momoi, Quentin Tarantino; Co-writer & Director: Takashi Miike. (Japanese, mostly in English, some dubbed).

This is a tongue-in-cheek remake and homage to the Leone/Eastwood 1964 classic spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars. A nameless gunman bids his services to two rival gangs competing for hidden gold, as in the original. Innumerable fistfights and gunfights ensue. But instead of a dry, dusty town in the American west, these scenes take place in a wet, muddy town in rural Japan. There is a fascinating mix of 19th century Japanese and Southwestern US architecture and culture. Curly-eaved, lacquered classical Japanese buildings sit alongside clapboard saloons and liveries. The Japanese saloon is especially fun. It looks mostly like a ryokan, with shoji windows and wooden barrels for stools but there is a huge set of Texas longhorns mounted over the bar. The swinging saloon doors have Asian scrimshaw instead of louvers. Several times I had to pause the DVD to admire the creativity and wit that went into set design. Costumes are the same way. And above all, the filmmakers got the two things right that you must get right in a spaghetti, the colors and the sound of the gunshots. Both were perfect.

While the story line was very close to complete nonsense, the acting was engaging and the dialog witty. Directing is strong, cinematography exceptional, and the scenery beautiful. Tarantino’s small part at the beginning sets you up for satire, but the film takes itself pretty seriously overall. There are references to the samurai tradition, and visual allusions to Kurosawa. I am probably overrating the film because I am such a fan of satire, the spaghetti genre, Japanese film, and Tarantino, so this was a delight for me.

War, Inc.: Grade A

A
War, Inc. (2008)
John Cusack, Hilary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, Dan Ackroyd, Ben Kingsley. Director Joshua Seftel.

In the “future,” a huge military contractor, a thinly disguised Halliburton, occupies a middle eastern country, Turaqistan (get it?). The CEO, played very vice-presidentially by Ackroyd, hires John Cusack, a professional assassin, to take out a certain oil minister. The assassin’s cover is as the head of the corporation’s enormous trade show, organized by his assistant, sister Joan. Meanwhile, Tomei is a dogged investigative reporter who smells scandal. Kingsley has a small but funny part as some kind of evil bad guy, and Duff has an equally wild part as a bizarre sex-crazed belly dancer. It is all just madcap fun as those hilarious car bombs blow up all around.

The dialog is funny and the satire is often sharp, but this is not laugh-a-minute. Serious issues are raised about violence, torture, the commercialization of war, political corruption, American imperialism, and so on. But nobody wants to see a moralizing anti-war movie, so those serious moments are short and sandwiched between thick slices of silly nonsense, with plenty of crude jokes for the youngsters, sophisticated film allusions, and subtle wordplay. You might take it as a throwaway comedy and you wouldn’t be far wrong, except for the very serious political themes just under the veneer of the satire. Even though it is not a grade A comedy nor a grade A thriller, the artistic value of what this movie attempts to do makes it a must-see.

Both Cusacks are great; can’t get enough of them. John is a good comic actor with just the right tone of pseudo-seriousness. Tomei is fascinating no matter what kind of a role. The politically aware audience will detect a left-leaning bias, but the genuinely funny comedy should overcome political annoyance.

The Onion Movie: Grade B

B
The Onion Movie (2008)
Len Cariou, Scott Klace, Larissa Laskin, others, and Steven Seagal; Directors Tom Kuntz & Mike Maguire.

A long series of satirical sketches is loosely tangled into a story stabilized by a news anchorman (Cariou) who reports bogus news in the style of Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show. He becomes “mad as hell” (as in the movie Network) when advertising intrudes on “hard news”. Just as he is about to give an on-air scathing denouncement, the studio is attacked by terrorists. He is saved when the terrorists are distracted by “Cherry,” a popular singer who does thinly disguised pornographic videos, and that gives Steven Segal, gamely appearing as himself, who is the hero in the blockbuster action movie, Cockpuncher, an opportunity to save the day by doing what you would expect a character with that moniker to do.

The quality of the humor is wide, from stupid, childish and vulgar, to sharply cutting social satire of news reporting, politics, popular music, terrorists, cultural values, social attitudes, and even, preemptively perhaps, film criticism. The sketches are all very well-acted, well-directed; most are well-written, and all are shot with high production values and good attention to detail. Even lazy, prurient sketches like an ad for a gay cruise on the “Queen Nathan II” are produced with fine visual satire of ads of that type, even though the gay jokes are unimaginative and unfunny.

Other jokes, such as the porno-denying sexy pop singer are only slightly less sophomoric, but again, done with spot-on visual satire of the genre. Some sketches are just silly, like the failed automobile safety device, the neck-belt. The writers obviously took lessons from SNL, and Monty Python, and from movies like Idiocracy and the National Lampoon series. The quality varies about as widely as it does on The Onion itself (www.theonion.com). But despite the uneven quality, I spent a lot of time laughing and hooting.

Delirious: Grade D

D
Delirious (2006)
Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt, Alison Lohman, Gina Gershon; Writer-Director Tom DeCillio.

Buscemi is a sleazy, blowhard paparazzo in New York who takes in homeless youth Pitt as his unpaid assistant. Buscemi offends teenage star-of-the-moment Lohman, causing her to reject him and lovestruck Pitt. Pitt then gets an acting role through a chance encounter with casting director Gershon and becomes a successful TV personality. With that status, he is reunited with his lost love. This is supposed to be a satire of the cult of celebrity and of the paparazzi. Buscemi shows no range with his character, doing only the angry, hyper, edge-of-crazy routine reminiscent of his performance in Reservoir Dogs, and while initially interesting, it seems out of place and gets boring real fast. Pitt shows an attractive wide-eyed innocence, as he did in Octopus Eyes, but that’s his one trick. Gershon delivers the best acting, but why did she sign on to this awful project? Her talents are wasted. Sets are good, especially Buscemi’s apartment and his parents’ house. There are numerous errors arising from the filmmakers’ inability to avoid cliché, such as showing circled frames on a contact sheet after a digital shoot. Celebrity glitz is not very glitzy anymore, too easy for cliché humor, so despite a few funny lines and gags, the movie flops from uninspired writing and banal directing. I should have guessed as much from the sophomoric DVD cover with a slack-jawed Buscemi.

The Bothersome Man: Grade B

B
The Bothersome Man (2006)
Trond Fausa Aurvaag, Petronella Barker. Director Jens Lien. (Norwegian, subtitled).

A ragged man (Aurvaag) wanders in the Icelandic desert until he is picked up by a black limo and taken to the city where he is inexplicably given a posh flat and shown to an easy office job at a nice company in the city. That is his transition from the wilderness to civilized society. He adapts quickly to civilized life and begins dating a co-worker (Barker). But is something wrong in paradise? The food is tasteless, the drinks never make you drunk and nothing has any smell. The the city is geometrically interesting but almost colorless; grays, blues, taupe. Even the inside of people’s apartments and houses are minimalist and “inoffensive.” The man moves in with his girl, who is obsessed with interior design. They have mechanical sex. He is unfaithful to her but the new girl won’t commit to anything, finding him only “pleasant.” A crack in the façade of polite society is represented by a crack in a basement wall. Beautiful music seems to be coming out of it. The man attempts to tunnel through the rock and concrete to the music and the light. The idea is not original, (e.g., The Truman Show, The Prisoner), but it is a timeless one, beautifully photographed, subtly presented, and well-played. It is nice to see Oslo and the Icelandic desert and hear an interesting language.

Military Intelligence and You: Grade D

D
Military Intelligence and You (2006)
Patrick Muldoon, Elizabeth Ann Bennet. Writer-Director Dale Kutzera.

Old World War II military training films and war footage are blended with live actors to create a black-and-white film of a WWII story about saving an Allied bomber squadron from German air attack (or something like that), complete with a romance at headquarters between the two principal actors. The story is a satire of old WWII movies, and of military training films, and a commentary on the futility of war in general, and of the Iraq war in particular. On top of all that, there is a voice-over that comes in from time to time, converting the whole project from a satirical war story to a military training film. Whew! The narrator’s comments are often funny, in the style of Mystery Science Theater. The war story itself is humorous too, with brazen stereotypes and soap opera exaggeration. Finally, the old training film snippets are somewhat amusing (they even include one with Ronald Reagan). But after a half hour, the same style, jokes, gestures and clips are just repeated. The writer was caught in an endless loop. A lost opportunity, this could have been a scorching social criticism. Too bad, but the first half hour is worth a look.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: Grade B

B
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)
John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer. Director Jake Kasdan

As a satire of the music biopic genre, this movie is more silly than insightful. It mocks recent pictures such as Ray and Walk Tall, and many individual musical styles, from Dylan to the Beatles. The musical writing itself is even humorous, the way original songs are made to sound like well-known songs without actually copying. Interspersed with unfunny melodramatic exaggeration, there are some very good postmodern digs at individual artists, such as Elvis or the Beatles. The references are “postmodern” because while making fun of the target, the jokes also ironically draw attention to themselves, so the joke itself is part of the joke. It is clever stuff, but only clever, not revealing of anything. The whole movie has the feeling of a somewhat lame SNL sketch, or a series of them. Reilly does his own singing however and that’s quite impressive. Fischer (“Pam” from The Office) really can act. You don’t once think of her as a receptionist. If you’re a fan of goofy, adolescent humor, and of co-writer Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, etc.) then you’ll enjoy this light, throwaway comedy.

Great World of Sound: Grade C

C
Great World of Sound (2007)
Pat Healy, Kene Holliday, John Baker; Director and co-writer Craig Zobel.

Down on their luck but ambitious young men attend a “get rich” seminar in which a couple of smooth con men explain how they can become record producers. The company puts ads in newspapers and the “producers” screen the singing acts that appear, promising to make the dream happen, if only the artist will put up $3000 (a mere 30%) to “participate” in the production. Two of the guys, Healy and Holliday go forth earnestly and do rather well. Much of the movie shows excerpts of the acts they review and the cajoling of the “participation” fee out of the naive, self-obsessed artists. The acts are generally awful, a few show potential, though none are great. This part of the movie was waaaaay too long. I got the idea after the third clip, but over a dozen are shown. Gradually, the “producers” (at least Healy) come to realize that no records are going to be made and they are just ripoff artists. That should be a great dramatic story of conscience, but it doesn’t quite fly here. The climax occurs when even after his self-realization, Healy is forced to cold-heartedly rip off one more innocent just to make plane fare home.

The con men running the company are archetypal, and that part of the movie is terrific satire, reminiscent of Glengarry, Glen Ross. Then the theme changes to a buddy movie as Healy and Holliday learn how to screen and fleece the acts, though at first they are sincere. Holliday might be wise to the con from the beginning; that is not clear. Healy’s epiphany is not very dramatic. It just seems to sneak up on him. More confrontation was needed to dramatize his character change, which is the heart of the movie. The consequences for the victims are not explored, for example. Finally, the guys quit the company and go home as if nothing happened, a thud of an ending. Acting by Holliday and Baker (the company boss), is notably good; less so, the others. Dramatic tension is at the level of wet laundry. The directing and editing are good on the various performing acts, but there is too much of that. Sets are terrific. So it is a watchable movie, not a comedy, but a human drama with a few laughs.

Going Shopping: Grade B

B
Going Shopping (2005)
Victoria Foyt, Lee Grant, Mae Whitman. Cowriter and director: Henry Jaglom.

This extremely low budget indie explores shopping obsession among women. The owner of an upscale clothing store in Beverly Hills (Foyt) discovers she is broke and about to be evicted from the shop. Her boyfriend apparently stole her money, but that topic is not explored. The point is she is broke, so she plans a big Mother’s Day sale to raise money to make rent and postpone eviction. She is also a single mom and her preteen daughter (Whitman) is rebellious, but nevertheless steeped in the culture of fashion, clothing, and lookism. The shopkeeper's mother (Grant) is a California granny determined to look 20 years old forever, who hassles her but eventually helps out in a surprising way that should have been the narrative theme of the movie, but is only a throwaway.

The women shoppers are California youth-worshipping, age-denying, more-money-than-brains stereotypes. Foyt tries to borrow from a very nice but utterly ruthless mobster, in one of the most entertaining scenes, and tries to enlist a capital partner, among many ploys to raise the cash. Liberally interspersed are dozens of 60 second interviews with women who explain various aspects of their shopoholic obsession directly to the camera. These are well acted and the women have interesting faces, but since we know it is all scripted, it is not particularly convincing or revealing. There are pathological shopping obsessions, but there is no reason to believe they look like this. As a psychological exploration, a documentary approach would have been better. As it stands, the social commentary about female shopping verges on misogyny. The movie has no narrative drive so feels much longer than its 106 minutes. The big sale is a success, the shopkeeper pays the rent, but now has no inventory, and still no money, so the McGuffin remains essentially unaddressed. The film thus fails as a narrative and as a social commentary, leaving only good acting, satirical visuals and dialog, attractive actors, and bright sunny California colors, all of which are enjoyable in a mindless sort of way.

Fido: Grade B

B
Fido (2006)
K’Sun Ray, Billy Connolly, Dylan Baker, Carrie Ann Moss; Co-writer and Director Andrew Currie.

The great zombie war is over by the time this movie opens in the 1950’s, in a leafy Pleasantville suburb. An electronic collar renders zombies harmless (though zombie-like) servants and menial workers. Ray is a 10 year old boy ("Timmy") who bonds with his family’s zombie (Connolly), who he names Fido. The anticipated Lassie references are not long in coming. Baker plays Timmy's repressed father, and Moss his gender-role straightjacketed mother. My favorite line is mother to father: "Just because your father tried to eat you, do we all have to be miserable?" Fido’s collar malfunctions one day and unfortunately he eats Mrs. Henderson, the nice lady next door, but after being chastised and having his collar repaired, Fido recovers docility, yet still seems to have more life in him than billy’s parents. This “boy and his zombie” movie is thus a mild satire of suburban life in the 1950’s, not really a parody of zombie movies. It is clever enough to make you chuckle continuously but not guffaw.

Idiocracy: Grade B

B
Idiocracy (2006)
Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Terry Crews. Writer-Director Mike Judge.

Wilson and Rudolph are cryogenically frozen and forgotten. They wake up 500 years in the future when American culture has become so dumbed down that they are the smartest people in the country. Actually, Wilson’s character is declared the smartest man, although it stands to reason that Rudolph would be the smartest woman, but that is overlooked since this is strictly a male POV movie.

In the future, everyone (male) is zombie-like stupid, interested only in TV, sex, fast food, and farts. They no longer even have the intelligence to pick up their own garbage or grow crops, so life is desperate. There still is technology for cars, planes, clothing, television, vending machines, scanners, and weapons, so the story is that evil, greedy corporations have succeeded in purposely dumbing down society to sell more goods. That’s not such a far-fetched idea, judging from contemporary pop culture. It is optimistic to set the action 500 years in the future. A century might have done it. The “President of America” played to the hilt by Terry Crews is a cross between James Brown and one of the more flamboyant wrestling stars. There are genuinely funny situations and lines, and I am an appreciator of silliness, but emphasizing the Jackass/Dumbass genre (which is satirized, but copied anyway), diminished the film for me by going for adolescent gags instead of developing the real satiric potential of the story line. But, something for everyone, I guess. How the filmmakers got away with spoofing brands like Starbuck’s, Costco, Carl’s Junior, and many others, is a mystery. Maybe the whole movie is actually a marketing vehicle for those companies to reach the IQ challenged, and the joke’s on me.

The TV Set: Grade A

A

The TV Set (2006)

David Duchovny, Sigourney Weaver, Ioan Gruffudd, Judy Greer, Fran Kanz, Lindsay Sloane. Writer-director Jake Kasdan.

This satire of the TV business is so sly it is almost a straight documentary. Duchovny is a television writer who creates a pilot for a new TV show. Weaver is the studio executive who "offers” her often absurd-sounding ideas on how to “improve” the show to make it commercially viable. (“What if it were just prison instead of suicide? Suicide is so depressing!”) The nominal tension is between commercialism and artistic integrity. Weaver (and the other “suits”) also suggest different lead actors, the director has different ideas about how to shoot scenes, and the actors are hopeless. Duchovny swallows his pride to get the show on the air. American TV viewing preferences are an easy target for satire, but what makes it work so well here is good acting and great writing. Weaver is a little too much, but we can imagine such an oblivious yet dialed-in executive. Duchovny’s long-suffering sighs are too much, but we do sympathize. The best acting comes from Judy Greer, his effervescent assistant. The dialog has plenty of laugh out loud lines that keep the ball rolling, even though the destination is foreordained in the first 10 minutes. The BS “professional” conversations are hilarious and often cringe-inducing. I think For Your Consideration was a better and funnier movie, as was The Player, but this one was subtle and sophisticated enough to keep my funny bone tickled throughout.