Film: eXistenZ

Director: David Cronenberg
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Source: USA (1999)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Streaming
Grade: B

It took me a little while to get over the "look" of this film, as the version I saw seemed poorly transferred, like watching an old VHS copy. I'm not sure why that is, other than the movie was not received well enough to get a crisp HD clean-up. And that's a shame, because Cronenberg has created a fascinating world here--or multiple worlds really--in which the nature of reality is in question, but so is the morality of video games and other digital "escapes."

I've seen a lot of websites where this film is compared to The Matrix, and I guess I can see where that's coming from--both films involve jacking in to digital worlds--but they handle it in such diverse ways that any superficial similarities they have seem irrelevant early on. It's a bit like comparing Blazing Saddles to Unforgiven. Yes they're both westerns, but they're aiming at very different purposes.

Cronenberg, for example, seems fascinated with the melding of the biological and the digital, though not at all in the way The Matrix is. Cronenberg's "sci-fi" elements are fleshy, living game consoles, bred by humans and processed. When his characters "jack in" to their games, they meld with these semi-living electronics, holding them on their laps like kittens while their nervous system is activated. It's far from the cold mechanized chairs and the syringes into the skull that The Matrix presents, and the fetishization of technology and the weirdly sexual nature of Cronenberg's digital systems is fascinating.

And as a gamer I think Cronenberg is trying (though at times really heavy-handedly) to explore both the ways in which video games affect our perceptions of reality and existence and the ways in which our ethical frameworks can be skewed, altered, or diminished by video game immersion. The trade in of the real for the digital comes with a cost, he seems to say, whether social, environmental (enjoying the fake trees of Console Shooter 7 rather than the real trees outside), or moral. And he explores all that in a world in which there are almost no computers, electronics, or television screens shown. Pretty impressive.

Plus there are some great scenes in which the conventions of video games (character loops, poorly written "cut scenes," the discrepancy between true freedom and avatar freedom) are satirized in clever ways.

I thought I would really be bored with the movie, but it ended up sucking me in and intriguing me. I think I'd like to see a little more Cronenberg. 

(Side note: the cover/poster art for this movie is truly terrible. I am not sure if the picture I went with here is official or unofficial, but it was the least ugly of the American posters I found.)

Alternate Film Title: "Tooth Gun: 'Nuff Said"

Book: Gone Girl

Well, this was a disappointment.

I don't know how exactly to grade this, because there were aspects to this story that I really liked, and it's definitely highly "readable." It's the page-turningest book I've read in quite a long time I think I finished it in about three days. I really like the set-up, where Flynn creates two characters describing the same event/thing (a marriage) from two different and conflicting perspectives. It's compelling, and the voice of each character is really strong and unique. The initial question of "What happened" is pressing, because the truth seems so subjective, and the slow revelations from characters are nicely handled. Part of me was distraught and jealous, even, because one of the ideas I've been kicking around for a novel involves a murder viewed from multiple perspectives. I really initially thought Flynn was handling the "plasticity of fact" in an interesting (though heavy-handed) way. However . . .

I can't really talk about my problems with the novel without talking about some major spoilers and identifying some major plot points where it fell apart to me, so be warned: spoilers follow from this point; skip if you still plan on reading the book.

However, once the "truth" is revealed about halfway through the book, the story lost a lot of the momentum for me. The twist seemed predictable by that point (which I guess is why the author had to reveal it), and a lot of that initial intrigue regarding the elasticity of truth dried up. I mean, once their stories diverge far enough, it's clear that at least one of them is lying. 

But even once the "twist" was revealed, I feel like Flynn handled it poorly. Suddenly Amy is directly talking to the reader, but in what context, and why? "I really wanted you to like her" she says at one point, and the illusion created in the first half of the novel fell apart. OK, so the whole diary is a lie. What about this new voice? Who is she telling this story to? Is the use of second person just sloppy, or is there something else going on here regarding the nature of fiction, I wondered. Nope, just sloppy. There's no reason for the sudden appearance of this new narrator other than to make concrete the truth, which makes it inherently less interesting.

Interestingly, I thought a similar idea was handled much better in Side Effects, the Stephen Soderbergh movie from earlier. That film blended noir sensibilities with multiple perspectives in a much more compelling manner.

Plus, I have to admit that the ending to this novel bored me to death. I think Flynn fell in love with both her characters so much that she didn't know what to do with them or how to make one of them "win" without losing the other. But the resolution is inherently unsatisfying. And the whole "return of Amy" relies on a contrived twist so silly I almost dropped the book completely: Surprise! The suspected stalker really is a stalker and a kidnapper! He becomes the surrogate death that Flynn doesn't want to give to her main characters. Silly. His convenient obsession seems to signal a lack of confidence on the author's part that these Nick and Amy could have a confrontation on equal footing, which is what the whole novel seems to be angling toward. It is cheap, and all too convenient. 

In the end the book didn't stand up for me, and the resolution actually lessened what came before. If I do ever write a novel on a similar theme, Flynn's heavy-handed plotting will serve as a good reminder of how it can all fall apart so fast. And if that sounds like petty complaining from the guy who has never actually written a book himself, don't worry. I think my critiques will not even be a blip on her radar as she laughs all the way to the bank.

Grade: D+/C- . . . not sure how much weight I should give my enjoyment of the first half . . .

Book: The Instructions

I'm not entirely sure whether The Instructions is one of the best novels of the 21st century, or the most self-indulgent, or the least edited, or all three. I am sure that it's a fascinating, at times infuriating, at times disheartening, often hilarious, and ultimately ambiguous novel that I will continue to think about for days, if not weeks.

Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee is ten years old, a child prodigy, a disturbed boy, and just might be the Messiah. The Instructions, his book of scripture, spans four days (and a thousand pages), but it also spans years, and centuries, and millennia. In multi-page digressions he expounds on his own history, his family's history, Philip Roth, the Torah, Judaism, love, the nature of God, and more. The degree to which those digressions are enjoyable varies, but it is clear that author Adam Levin wants Gurion's ramblings to mimic (and at times mock) the minutia-loving exactitude of Talmudic scholarship. After all, Gurion thinks he is writing scripture in narrating this explanation of a junior high uprising, so every detail matters to him. At times it works well, and at times I really wish his editor had reined him in a little bit.

Gurion himself is both a fascinating and an exasperating character. The novel--as all works that ask you to take faith seriously do--requires the suspension of disbelief, both for a few seemingly supernatural occurrences and for Gurion's ability to contemplate, analyze, and dissect everything going on around him in incredible detail and in exhausting length. And if one honest-to-God prodigy isn't enough, as the novel goes on more and more of the characters seem to exercise these same tendencies, which is explained through Gurion's impact on those around him, but at times simply becomes an excuse not to filter, cut, or edit anything anyone is thinking. Multiple characters speak in multi-page soliloquies and monologues, and while often these are illuminating and entertaining, just as often they are overly long and weigh down the text. In mixing the junior high mindset of 10 and 12 year olds with the scholarly detail of yeshiva studies, Levin occasionally finds great success and comedy. But he also occasionally allows his characters and their speeches to wear out their welcome. 

Ultimately--as Levin himself points out late in the novel--it is the ambiguity of the work which makes it most memorable: Is Gurion a heroic prophet--even the Messiah--or is he a disturbed young man whose violence, magnetic personalty, and ego all make for a lethal combination? Is he both? Is he more? Is he less? Does it even matter? At what cost salvation? Is (as he asks so often) someone like Gurion "bad for the Jews" or is he fulfilling his potential as a Messiah (or as a potential Messiah) or both? Is the casualness with which Gurion approaches death and violence a metaphor for Israelite strength or of Gurion's lack of affect and psychological damage? Is the control he exudes over those around him a sign of a great man who arises once a generation or is it the makings of a cult leader. Does the Gurionic war mean anything? Is Gurion's scripture accurate? Or is this all a world out of control?

The whimper of the novel's final few pages disheartened me after the bang leading up to it, and in the end I'm not positive how effective the novel is in the end, but the fascinating process of reading the book was one I quite enjoyed (even if it seemed to take forever at times). I would suggest that one's pleasure in this book would in part come from how interested one is in Judaism and how familiar one is with the tropes of Jewish fiction, and I have no doubt that were I more familiar with those tropes I would find much more to comment on here. For now, my casual reading of Roth and Potok and a few other writers will have to stand in for greater knowledge. But after all, I knew far less of whaling when I undertook Moby Dick than I did Judaism, so perhaps that criticism isn't really a criticism at all.

Ultimately, this is a really good 1000 page novel that I think could have been a great 600 page novel. Either way, I'm interested to see what else Levin will produce.

Grade: A-

Book: 14

Though I'm in no way the first person to observe it, as I grow older  I find myself more and more disturbed by something I've taken to calling the King Dilemma. The King Dilemma is simple: for  supernatural mysteries, the more compelling the mystery, the more disappointing the resolution. I first noticed the King Dilemma in the works of (you guessed it) Stephen King. King, to me, has an undeniable gift for setting mood, building tension, creating horrifying mysteries. What he does not do well is resolve them. In my opinion, many of King's books would be better off if he ended them about 2/3 of the way through with everybody dying.

Now, this isn't a hard and fast rule, and it isn't restricted to just King, and even King himself has exceptions: 11/22/63, for example, and Bag of Bones both reach hugely satisfying conclusions for me. But more often (Duma Key, Dreamcatchers, From a Buick Eight, Hearts in Atlantis, even classics like It) King's works fall apart once the answers start to roll in. For some, the King Dilemma completely ruined the tv show Lost, an argument I can't disagree with, though somehow that show worked for me because so many answers were left incomplete.

As someone who really enjoys supernatural fiction and the questions they raise, I do think there are people who can pull it off right: Dan Simmons, Neil Gaiman, even King's own son Joe Hill, are all somehow to maintain the tension they build. And honestly, I'm not sure what the difference is. Maybe it comes down to how silly you find the answers provided.

That was really my problem with 14. The novel begins with a slow and fascinating buildup as the protagonist discovers that his apartment isn't quite normal. Like a mashup of Lost and the stupidly entertaining (though short-lived) 666 Park Avenue, both the location and its inhabitants are unusual enough to make me curious. Clines is a fun writer, but when the "explanation" finally comes, I just couldn't take it seriously enough to maintain the tension or my interest in the novel. And that's disappointing--I mean, I'm a guy who reads vampire novels all day and enjoys them just fine.

In the end, I wanted to like 14 more than I actually did. And though it was a great audiobook (through Audible) to listen to, the last hour or so got monotonous. The King Dilemma once again. I suppose if I ever write a book (which is getting more and more difficult to suppose, given the amount of writing I've been doing lately) it's something I'll have to try and watch out for--though I'd guess that all authors, like King and Clines, believe that the ending works. 

So maybe it just comes down to taste.

Grade: C

Film: Side by Side

Director: Christopher Kenneally
Genre: Documentary
Source: USA (2012)
Rating: NR
Location/Format: Netflix Streaming
Grade: B

Keanu Reeves in charge of a documentary? I know, I was skeptical too. But overall, this look at the transformation of the film industry from film to digital is surprisingly thoughtful and thought-provoking (if you're interested in film production that is) in part because of the quality of the talent that Reeves interviews--directors, producers, cinematographers, and editors at the top of their game. 

I'm not sure how much of this film was financed by the digital film interests, because it definitely takes the approach that the transformation to digital is inevitable and unstoppable, but that's a hard position to argue against given that the major camera corporations have stopped building film cameras. Yet the film does do a nice job exploring multiple sides of the issue--from the ease at which digital film can be edited, to the way it makes everyone an expert (or at least lets everyone think they're an expert) because you can view what you've captured immediately rather than wait for processing, to the way the image quality is still not quite up to film, to the preferences of different filmmakers (Chris Nolan, for example, has been very vocal in his belief that film is a better medium and image than digital, while George Lucas and James Cameron have been vocal proponents of pushing the switch to digital as soon as possible.)

I think I'd like to watch it again to get a better sense of the arguments, but I think when I do I might make up some questions to go along with it and offer it as extra credit to my film students. Clearly this is a transformative moment in film history, not only for the way it changes the film-making process, but also for the democratization of film that digital offers--anyone can make a movie for a relatively low cost now. Side by Side does ask whether that's a good thing: more people able to realize their visions sounds great, but does it just increase the noise more than the quality? In other words, are the diamonds in the rough harder to find when you increase the amount of rough?

I love the movie making process, and this got me thinking even more at how that process works. Do we lose the real when we turn to the digital? Or is it another tool in the artist's toolbag? Or, more likely, is it a little bit of both?

Alternate Film Title: "The Many Haircuts of Keanu Reeves"

Film: Olympus Has Fallen

Director: Antoine Fuqua
Genre: Action
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Glynn Place Stadium Cinemas
Grade: B-

In his review of Olympus Has Fallen, Eric Snider called the movie the best Die Hard movie of the year, and I'm not sure I could get much better than that in describing this film. It's over-the-top, jingoist, unrealistic cinema, and it was a pretty good time at the movies.

In the first role that I've liked him in since 300, Gerard Butler plays a Secret Service agent who, for personal (and dramatic!) reasons was moved off of the president's detail so that, when the White House is assaulted in typical Hollywood fashion (an assault that relied in part on the president breaking protocol, so I'm not sure how they planned that), he is free to single-handedly take back the white house by kicking ass and taking names (when necessary).

This movie won't win any awards, and it will be on FX about two months after it hits DVD, I'd guess, but it's still a fun little action movie that doesn't have any pretensions of being anything other than what it is. Not a bad time (though I will admit a little surprise that Antoine Fuqua is making something this basic. What happened to the sharp filmmaking of Training Day? I guess that was a while ago. Maybe now he's just enjoying making movies like those he loved as a kid. Again, this fits right in that camp of 80s action movies. Die Hard in the White House indeed.

Describing this movie does make me feel a little like Stefan from SNL's Weekend Update: "This month's hottest action movie has it all: secret military weapons, an unexplained traitor, a precocious child, and Melissa Leo! Watch the government risk all out world war to protect one man against a plan that shouldn't possibly work in any way!" And yet, for all that, I did enjoy it. Butler is a pretty good action star when he's not trying to be a romantic comedy lead.

That said, I was slightly unsettled by this movie in that it was extremely bloody and violent. On the one hand, I think that's a good thing from a film-making perspective--in the US we always are afraid of sex and nudity but willing to mow down bad guys by the thousands, with little in the way of realism or blood. Cutting the blood desensitizes us to the nature of violence, so in a weird way I'd rather see blood and be horrified by it than (G.I. Joe-style) pretend that wounds don't bleed or that bullets don't hurt. On the other hand, it's hard to "enjoy" the popcorn style violence of this movie when it all looks so gory, because then the truth--that I'm being entertained by awful bloodshed--is a little too hard to ignore. It's one of those viewer paradoxes that I don't have a good solution to, because I was entertained by the movie, even as I was sickened by the blood. Perhaps I have more of the gladiatorial spectator in me than I typically like to admit. 

Alternate Film Title: "Aaron Eckhart Is Kind of a Crappy President"

Film: Brokeback Mountain

Director: Ang Lee
Genre: Drama
Source: USA (2005)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Streaming
Grade: A-

Brokeback is one of those movies that has been on my radar for ages but that I just never got around to seeing--not because, as my high school students would seem to assume, of some sort of concern over the subject matter, but rather because I have to be in the right mood to sit down and watch a dramatic romance, whether it's gay, straight, or something else. It's just not my typical wheelhouse.

But man, this is a good movie.

I read a piece on Ang Lee once--perhaps around the time Life of Pi came out--where it talked about him as being a filmmaker whose main focus is compassion and empathy for others. That analysis made his filmography click for me in unexpected ways--from the slowness and stillness of The Hulk to the sentimentalism of Crouching Tiger or, more recently, the aforementioned Life of Pi. And I think that's what I tend to enjoy about his films. He has a softness to him, unusual in a filmmaker who can also do action so well, that transcends culture, language, and era in order to try and get at what it means to be human and to recognize the human in others. That's part of what I seek to cultivate in my reading and especially in my teaching, so it makes sense that I would find some sort of connection with Lee's work.

Brokeback is exactly what you've heard it is: gay cowboy love story. And yet to leave it at that is to minimize what it's about and make it into a punchline, to miss the purpose all together. The film is about the fear of being yourself, about the cost of wearing a mask, and yes about the pain of homophobia and the denial of the heart. With few words, Lee transforms Jack and Ennis from a ready-made cliche to living, breathing individuals with conflicting emotions, desires, responsibilities, and beliefs. They do not understand themselves--at least as the film begins--but they understand what they feel, and in a way that is where we all find ourselves, whether in matters of the heart, or identity, or belief. Their relationship is passionate, but it also has a tenderness they don't allow themselves in any other facet of their lives, and so they put up walls around themselves that not only keep out others who love them but that cut themselves off from other bonds as well. It is a story of pain--the pain of the closeted gay man, the pain of the abandoned wife, the pain of the child of divorce. Their actions--even their justifiable need to love one another--demands a cost from those around them, and eventually the weight of those costs holds them down.

Heath Ledger in this performance is just as much a revelation to me as he was in The Dark Knight, and in fact comparing those two roles could practically be a master class in acting. He makes Ennis smolder--with desire, with desperation--in ways Jake Gyllenhaal can't quite keep up with, though his performance is solid as well. And those final shots--killer. Talk about an emotional knife to the gut.

The film's soundtrack is also excellent, with a haunting main tune that will be stuck in my head for weeks. 

The film isn't perfect. Sometimes time passes too quickly as we jump forward to see the effects of their love story played out over decades. And frankly the age make-up can't quite keep up, especially on a face as boyish as Gyllenhaal's. Even at the two hours and fifteen minutes, I didn't feel like the Anne Hathaway story line got enough time to play out, and there were a few slow passages that could have been kicked up a notch.

Still, overall, what a movie. Really beautiful. Really moving. Really worthwhile.

Alternate Film Title: Not needed. Brokeback Mountain is pretty spot on.

Film: Seven Psychopaths

Director: Martin McDonagh
Genre: Comedy
Source: USA (2012)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Blu-Ray
Grade: B+

Sometimes movies are marketed completely wrong. The previews for Seven Psychopaths did absolutely nothing for me. I thought it looked stupid and unappealing. Yet somehow it ended up at the top of my Netflix queue. And I'm really glad it did.

That said, I'm not sure how you market this movie differently. Perhaps make a bigger deal for fans of In Bruges (which I was not aware was made by the same filmmaker until right before I put the movie in to watch). Perhaps play less of the "psychopaths" and more of the witty dialogue, which seemed to get short shrift in the ads (which were much more concerned with counting up the numbers). Perhaps it's just a terrible title in general, which I would not dispute.

What you actually get with this movie is the same sort of witty, thoughtful, and absurdist violence that you got with the director's first film. There are shades of Tarantino--in the layered storytelling, in the nonlinear timeframe, in the poppy dialogue. I don't think McDonagh is as accomplished as Tarantino at his best, but he's also not nearly as self-congratulating or narcissistic as Tarantino at his worst, so the result is an entertaining and surprisingly touching meditation on violence, its uses, and its abuses. 

It helps that the actors here are all so dang entertaining. Farrell, Walken, and Rockwell seem to genuinely be having fun here, and that goes a long way to making the movie so enjoyable, especially with the witty exchanges that they share. The movie itself is self-critical and reflexive on what violence means in the movies versus real life, even as then it consciously plays out movie violence on an extreme scale. "What if" the characters repeatedly ask, "the movie went this way instead of that way? Or do we want the traditional Hollywood ending?" And while I'm being slightly facetious--this isn't Deadpool-levels of absurdity where the character knows he's in a comic book (or in this case a movie)--but it is close, as one of the characters is a screenwriter writing down these events, or perhaps fictionalizing them, or perhaps not. By the end it even creates a few nice questions about what we want out of art--meaning? Titillation? Illusion?--which I was not expecting as the film opens.

This isn't a perfect film by any stretch. But I was pleased that it was so much more than I expected, and something I wouldn't be disappointed to watch again.

Still, terrible title.

Alternate Film Title: "Pretty Much Anything Would Be Better Than Seven Psychopaths"