Director: Mary Harron
Genre: Drama
Source: USA (2000)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Watch
Grade: C
As I try to clear a backlog of films that includes literally hundreds if not thousands of movies, I try to strike a balance between movies that are important, movies that I've heard a lot about, and movies that look like fun. This film fits pretty well in the second category, but I found it a pretty unpleasant watch (despite Christian Bale's expansive performance and inherent charisma) and not as important or meaningful as I had expected.
OK, perhaps vanity and our ego camouflage that those who are slaves to capitalism are all monsters, and the film externalizes that by giving us a real monster in Patrick Bateman, and maybe that would be a harsh indictment of Wall Street in the early 2000s, but after the economic meltdown of the last decade and the willingness of bankers and stock brokers and CEOs to cannibalize the country as a whole, Bateman seems a lot less shocking. Yes there is some vicious glee in the way Bale plays up the narcissism and ridiculousness of the protagonist, but the dark comedy was not really enough for me to feel like I was enjoying the rest of what the film was asking me to sit through. Maybe I'm a prude, or maybe it's just a one-joke analogy that wore out its welcome pretty quickly.
Director: Peter Berg
Genre: Action
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Georgia Theater Company
Grade: C+
Is there such a thing as patriotism porn?
This is a well made action movie that does all it can (and is often successful) at pulling at your heart and asking you to be shocked and awed by the sacrifices American soldiers make. At the same time it's (despite some ham-fisted attempts to be otherwise) very xenophobic at best and racist at worse, with a deification of military culture that makes me uncomfortable.
I have family who serves in the military, I have family who died in the military. But soldier worship doesn't sit well with me. And for as visceral and bone-crunching some of those scenes are in depicting the hell of war, Berg can't resist a few Michael Bay-esque glorious slow-motion scenes that blur the line between telling an incredible story and turning tragedy into entertainment in ways I don't like.
I can see why the film is a big hit with my Southern high school students, but I can't fully embrace it.
Director: Stuart Beattie
Genre: Action
Source: USA (2014)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Georgia Theater Company
Grade: D
Sometimes you've had a long week and when given the choice between the Oscar nominated film about AIDS in the 80s and the stupid supernatural action movie that had some sort of connection (you thought) to the Underworld movies--which are dumb but fun in a popcorny way--you decide that you can't handle something heavy right now and so the movie with demons or some sort of weird flying human morphing things wins out.
And then, a few minutes in, you realize that surely, SURELY there would be more joy in the movie about AIDS in the 80s. And that, oh yeah, a big part of why you liked the Underworld movies was Kate Beckinsale in skintight latex, which is just magnitudes more enjoyable to watch than Aaron Eckhart in a hoodie. And that it turns out Bill Nighy really can't save every movie he's in, even if he's fun when he's on screen.
This movie was bad, is what I'm trying to say. Whose idea was it to give the stone gargoyles colored eyes? Bad.
Bad bad bad.
Director: Keanu Reeves
Genre: Action
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Watch
Grade: B-
You know it's a bad movie week when the best movie I've seen is a somewhat-flat-Keanu-Reeves-directed-Street-Fighter-(the-video-game) riff that takes itself entirely too seriously, features Keanu Reeves hungrily chewing scenery in his chiseled maw, and has characters about as deep as a piece of paper.
It's silly, it's cheesy, it's over the top, and it all plays out almost exactly like you would expect, but here's the other thing: it's kind of fun! Pretty good fight choreography is what the film is all about, and while this may not be breaking any new ground in that regard, it's still eminently watchable.
Keanu's not the next John Woo, but at least he's having fun with the material. I won't run to the next thing he directs, but I won't run away from it either. I could see him carving out a little niche for himself with smaller films like this, and I wouldn't be sad about that. More power to him.
(Though, as the movie teaches, it's not about power, it's about control. So more control to him?)
Books
Under the Feet of Jesus (by Helena Maria Viramontes)Ethereal and dreamlike, Under the Feet of Jesus slides its story across your face like gossamer--a swish of love here, a whisper of coming-of-age there, a murmur of tragedy and broken dreams, a flutter of hope. Viramontes is not particularly interested in driving forward a story; she's interested in capturing a mood, a feeling, a piece of life that often slips by the rest of the world as they look the other way. She writes with empathy, she writes with heartbreak, but most of all she writes with beauty.
At its heart the novel is about thirteen-year-old Estrella, the daughter of migrant workers, as she discovers love, delves into her own strength, and starts to work out her identity. But beyond that it is a haunting a lyrical evocation of a life in the borderlands. In one passage Viramontes explores Estrella's experiences at school, with teachers who care little for the migrant families who will be moving through, and so don't teach her the tools she needs, she craves, and so further alienate Estrella and those like her from being able to thrive in this society. This passage is matched later as Estrella translates for her family at a health clinic where they have no money to pay for the services and so Estrella looks for other tools at her disposal. It's a powerful (but fleeting) look at life in a limbo world.
On the other hand, it's so short, it's really more of a novella than a novel, and at times it is not even that. I love the dreamlike lyricism of Viramontes' writing, but at times I wish she'd be willing to give a few more nods towards thing like structure and narrative drive. It's beautiful and haunting, but at times it feels perilously incomplete as well.
Grade: B-
I've been hoping for a while to find a Christopher Moore book that I loved as much as Lamb, and Sacre Bleu comes solidly into second place. Moore aims his typical sense of the absurd at the Impressionist painters gathered in Paris in the late nineteenth century, and the book works in some levels as a fascinating primer on art (if you can sift past all the Moore-ish silliness to find the kernals of reality), topped off by the inclusion of lovely color reproductions of many of the paintings discussed in the text. In addition, Moore does a nice job playing with the insanity and insatiability of some of the artists of the time, from Henri Toulouse-Lautrec to Renoir to Monet to Van Gogh to Pisarro. They are all here, united in a madcap fashion that only Moore could come up with, but as with his best work, the absurdity (donkey in a hat) is matched with a zest for life and an enthusiasm that is just plain fun to read.
I'll admit, I had no clue where he was going with the plot of the story (the ambiguous woman, the Colorman, the donkey with a hat) for a long time, and when he finally revealed what was happening it was a bit of a "Oh, duh" moment, but he had me hooked so early with his characters and his charm that I didn't really care.
It's the kind of book that makes me sad when it's over because I'm enjoying both the world and the author's voice so much. Moore's not for everyone--he has the sense of humor of a well-read thirteen-year-old at times, especially when dealing with a bunch of lustful artists and their penchant for painting nudes--but if he hits your wheelhouse there's not much that's more fun to read.
I can't wait to see what he does next!
Grade: A-
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