January 1-12 Recap

During a short break from the blog I decided I'd rejigger the format a little bit and try to meet my twin desires of both 1) making the upkeep of the blog a little less of a hassle and 2) continuing to record my observations and reactions. In that regard, I'll probably be posting only once a week or so where I recap my viewing and reading for the week. In that way, I can say a lot if I have a lot to say, and just a little if I don't have much to contribute. We'll see if it works.

Films

The Wolf of Wall Street

Director: Martin Scorsese
Genre: Comedy/ Drama
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Georgia Theater Company
Grade: B-

Here's the thing. It's entirely possible to respect and admire a movie for its quality of film-making, acting, and nerve--and even to love a few individual sequences--and still be overall turned off by it. Such was the case of The Wolf of Wall Street. Am I supposed to laugh at a despicable person like Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort? Laugh with him at all the schlubs he's taking advagtage of? Admire the unbelievable level of debauchery with which he is able to live his life?

I can't comfortably do any of those things. Sure, the sequence where he's high on Quaaludes and attempting to make his way to his car, his home, and his friend may be entertaining, but at a certain point (and frankly that point comes early in the movie's too long three-hour running time) his antics, selfishness, and downright dastardliness stop being "fun" and start being just an assault on the eyes and on good taste. DiCaprio is playing him up as a devil-may-care bad boy, and I suppose he is, but I just got tired of him. And then I still had like two hours of movie remaining. Because this sucker is long (3 hours)!

I know I'm in the minority here, because the movie is getting tons of praise. And I get Scorsese is applying his same trademark bad guys you watch rise and fall routine he pulled in Goodfellas and Casino. And maybe my expectations were just too high (this is probably the film I was looking forward to most in 2013). But this mostly just left a bad taste in my mouth. Wouldn't recommend it and have no interest in seeing it again. I don't need to see Belfort live out his selfish, egotistical fantasies in order to realize that's no way to live life.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Director: Adam McKay
Genre: Comedy
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Georgia Theater Company
Grade: C+

Yep, this is why beloved comedies don't need sequels. 

There are some very funny parts to the film here for sure. The lighthouse sequence really did make me laugh several times--and not just because those beach scenes were filmed near where I live. And predictable as the newsman battle was, it still really did crack me up. And there were great jokes here and there.

But then there are many moments when you realize too much of a good thing is . . . too much. Steve Carell's Brick loses his wackiness the more we see of him. Sometimes Will Ferrell yelling is just Will Ferrell yelling. And the commentary here about the dumbing down of the news and the blending of news and entertainment is just a little too spot on. 

In the end, it just made me realize how much I enjoy the first film. This felt like a pale imitation.

Run Lola Run

Director: Tom Tykwer
Genre: Action
Source: Germany (1998)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Blu-Ray
Grade: A

What a great surprise! As a film teacher I'm always looking for movies that will be accessible to my (mostly disinterested) high school students while still teaching some basic film premises. With that in mind I picked up Run Lola Run cheap thinking I'd take a look at it and see if it would work for my students. Foreign? Check. Valuable for key film principles? Check (nonlinear film, editing, sound, etc.). Fun and interesting? Absolutely.

Tykwer's film may feel like a 90s film (from the electronic soundtrack to the styles and so on) but it's also full of vitality, surprise, and adventure that kept me enthralled. I can't wait to dig into it deeper and to share it with my students. I love the sense of play as the story retells itself three times, each time exploring how small changes and choices have big effects.

That screaming though. What's up with that?

The Last Stand

Director: Kim Jee-Woon
Genre: Action
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Watch
Grade: B

This is not a great film, but it is definitely a better film than I was expecting. Kim Jee-Woon might not be working with materials as rich or as philosophical as some of his Korean films, but as a modern update on the Western, this is pretty good work. I mean, in a lot of ways this is High Noon as filtered through Arnold Schwarzenegger and Fast and the Furious, and I found myself entertained and hooked from early on.

Granted, the attempts at comedy here mostly misfire, and I don't mean to imply it has the classic stature of High Noon, but it's doing a solid job hitting those classic cowboy notes, and with fairly intense (and surprisingly bloody) action to boot.

Pretty good background film for folding laundry or kicking back on a Saturday afternoon.

Her

Director: Spike Jonze
Genre: Drama
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Georgia Theater Company
Grade: A

While Wolf of Wall Street left me cold, I had the complete opposite reaction to Her. I loved it. Perhaps it is because I am a 30-something male who struggles (at times) to open up to others--even the people who he truly loves--and how relies far too much on technology, I identified with this film much more than I expected to. My wife and I had a long conversation (she didn't connect with the film) about what it was that worked for me, and I think that a lot of it has to do with the way in which some of the central ideas resonated with me: the risk we take on really opening up and letting others in; the damage we do to others in relationships by not accepting them for who they are and by holding our ideas of them against them; the importance of letting yourself experience joy. The movie was full of beautiful ideas to me, and ultimately was incredibly optimistic--despite the pain.

It was beautiful visually too. Jonze's world is candy and pastel colored, a future that looks not so impossible and ultimately optimistic, though at the same time the heart of the film addresses whether our reliance on technology is healthy or not. Still, those scientific questions are really in the background. Really it's a film about how we grow, how we touch others and allow ourselves to be touched be them, how true intimacy is hard to come by. It's about how we sometimes are afraid to be authentic--and how sometimes then we blame our lack of connection on others. It is no coincidence that Theodore Twombly (played with care and subtlety by an excellent Joaquin Phoenix, who may give Chiwetel Ejiofor a run for his money in the Best Actor category at the Oscars) works at "Beautiful Handwritten Letters"--a company that is hired out to write love letters, thank you notes, and so on for other people. His letters are beautiful--perhaps more than what the customers could write themselves--and yet at their heart is an unwillingness of the customer to open up and  say for him or herself what they are thinking and feeling. We risk by loving, the film tells us, and though that risk can result in heart, it can also bring joy and life and fulfillment. Jonze brought that message to life. So did Phoenix. So did Scarlett Johansson and Amy Adams.

It was warm-hearted and hopeful, and if I had watched it in 2013 it most certainly would be vying for one of the top positions on my Best Of list. It was lovely.

Books

Nos4a2 (by Joe Hill)

At this point, it's really not too much of a stretch to say that I think I prefer Joe Hill's writing to that of his better known father, Stephen King. In a lot of ways, Nos4a2 is Hill's most King-like book, but he still writes with a vitality and sense of propulsion that King seems to lose sight of, as many of his books meander and dawdle at times with ideas that King latches onto but that don't actually propel narrative forward. (I'll have a chance to compare soon; Doctor Sleep, King's long awaited sequel to The Shining, is sitting in my to-read stack right now).

But I don't want to spend my review of Nos4a2 talking about Stephen King. Here Joe Hill introduces a concept that loosely connects at least one of his earlier works (I don't remember his short stories enough to know if there were references to them the way there was a passing allusion to his first novel, Heart Shaped Box) in a wonderful way: the connection between fantasy and reality (and, in Hill's writing, the way that some people can cross between and blend together the two worlds): The Inscape. It's a concept that he clearly loves--it's at the heart of his excellent comic series, Locke & Key--and it works beautifully here as well. Victoria McQueen has a bike that lets her find lost things--she just crosses over a bridge that shouldn't exist, and boom, she's where those lost items can be found--but when she runs into trouble one day, her life will forever be altered. Because trouble takes the form of Charlie Manx, a twisted old man who bleeds the innocence from the young in exchange for a trip to Christmasland, the imaginary world in his head in which everyday is Christmas and children can forever eat candy, open presents, and play games like scissors-for-the-drifter. Manx bends reality to suit his desires, and those desires come at a price. When Victoria escapes from Manx's custody (avoiding being caught in his 1938 Rolls Royce Wraith), she is forever scarred by it, and the two seem destined to meet again for another confrontation.

Hill's story flies along, full of little allusions, gags, shocks, and surprises, and it bleeds on every page with a great degree of humanity. Hill, like his father, is more than willing to put his characters through and into hellacious situations, but he also sees his stories through to satisfying conclusions (and note that satisfying doesn't necessarily mean happy or that every character you like will live)--something else King always struggles with to me. This may be popcorn lit, but it's popcorn lit that leaves me content and satisfied and ready for more. And it's horror that kept me up at night--not in fear, but unable to put down the novel. And that's a good thing. Because I have a feeling Hill isn't done with his concept of the Inscape. I believe it will show up again in some form or other. And when it does, I'll be there, ready to read again. 

Grade: A