Killing Them Softly

2 Stars (out of four)

Brad Pitt's newest movie, Killing Them Softly, is a mystifying movie.  At times, it is one of the best crime films I have seen in recent years.  At other times, it is annoying and confusing.  The movie starts where two half-witted guys stick up a mafia card game and make away with $50,000.  Brad Pitt, a contact killer, is called to kill both of them.  He later calls James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano if you didn't know), a fellow killer to help with the job.  Gandolfini then goes on an alcoholic and whoring binge and then inexplicably disappears from the film.  Brad Pitt kills all the bad guys and demands payment.  The end.

If that seems abrupt, the movie does that a lot.  This being a movie from the Weinstein Company, it has to be arty, and this movie attempts to be just that.  First, I'll get I to what I liked about the movie.  It gets onto the gritty aspects of being in the mob.  It does not gloss over any of the gruesome aspects of being in the criminal element.  Movies like Goodfellas and The Godfather, while excellent, tend to glamorize the criminal life.  In Killing Them Softly, there is absolutely nothing glamorous about any of the characters.  All of them are dim-witted, dull and stupid.  What is even better about it is that most of the actors have played iconic mob roles.  In the vein of not glamorizing anything, the scenes of violence are some of the most visceral I have ever seen.  The violence is gruesome and cruel, nothing cool about it.  I, for one, think cartoonish violence is not a healthy thing.  It should be portrayed as it is, ugly and destructive.  Otherwise, it both loses it's dramatic punch and desensitizes us to its impact.

What I didn't like about the film was, first, it's abruptness.  The movie literally ends when Brad Pitt demands payment for what he has done.  The movie also tries too hard. It is trying to be arty, and it shows.  I have made it a point to say that there should be nothing in a movie for its own sake.  In this case, it is art for art's sake, sacrificing story for sentiment and making some kind of message.  The filmmakers are obviously trying to say something, but it is unclear what.  The movie attempts to be deconstructionist, but it fails miserably at this, as well.  It was done much better in Clint Eastwood's masterpiece, Unforgiven.  Finally, there was a specific element that annoyed me to no end.  Throughout the movie, which takes place during the McCain/Obama election, we keep hearing snippets from the news totally unrelated to the story.  It prattles with Bush speaking on the state of the economy and politicos saying how bad the economy is.  There is also inappropriate music in the soundtrack, using very old and time/subject inappropriate tunes.  The movie ends on a cynical take on the cut-throat business environment of the U.S.  This is probably the point of all the news snippets, but who knows?  Anyway, not a great mob movie, or movie movie for that matter.

Olympus Has Fallen

2.5 Stars (out of four)

Olympus Has Fallen looks like a big, loud and stupid movie, and that is exactly what it is, except that it is a hoot as well.  I wasn't expecting much, and I wasn't disappointed.  The movie is about a group of North Korean terrorists who take over the White House and make various demands.  The only man who stands in their way is Gerard Butler, an ex-special forces secret service agent who somehow gets into the White House after the bad guys get in and gives them all a bad day.  If this is beginning to sound like Die Hard or Air Force One, I'm sure it is a coincidence.

My question is, why does it seem so impossible for an American actor to play an American hero in an American action film?  Batman, Lincoln, The Walking Dead, Thor, Blackhawk Down, Taken, the list goes on.  Did American actors just suddenly become a bunch of sissies?  There is nothing wrong with their performances, it's just where did all the actors go?  Morgan Freeman plays his usual old, father-figure in charge.  I only have two complaints about this film.  First, most movies that have the President as a hostage seem to think the rest of the government would just lie down and capitulate. They seem to forget that we have continuity in command in our government.  While we do not relish the idea of our chief executive as a hostage, we are not a dictatorship or monarchy.  Our society and government will go on.  The terrorists at one point make ridiculous demands and the government just gives in to save the President.  This would never happen.  I realize it is just a movie, but there are limits to my disbelief.  The other is that director Antoine Fuquoi shoots most of the movie in the dark, so it is difficult to see what is going on and therefore the action tends to be confusing.  Also, since it is confusing, it tends to not be very exciting.

So, overall, it is a fine romp, but it is not exactly a masterpiece.

Twilight

1.5 Stars (Out of four)

"I never gave much thought to how I would die.  But dying for someone you love, that's not such a bad way to go."

So begins the cinematic rendition of the modern tale Twilight, which, if sales are to believed, is the 7th best selling book of all time.  Let's start with my biases straight off when I started this film.  First, I love vampire myths in many forms, particularly Bram Stoker's and Anne Rice's.  Dracula and Lestat rank up there as some of the most interesting literary characters ever created.  When Interview With The Vampire came out and I heard Tom Cruise would be Lestat, I was aghast and dead set against it.  But it surprised me with how good it was, and now I love it.  I have been proved wrong before when I hated an idea.  Now, I have tried to read this book, that so many starry-eyed young (and not so young) girls have swooned over.  I wanted to see what the big deal was about.  I tried, valiantly, to finish the book.  I never got beyond 100 pages, and even that was torture.  The main heroine, Bella, is a whiny, stuck-up little brat who incessantly complains and moans about her situation.  She hates the little town she's in.  She hates the stupid little people who are around her and acts above them, even though she has crippling self-doubt of her own.  This narrative goes on and on for about 70 pages; poor little me, I hate my life.  Then she meets Edward Cullen, an impossibly beautiful boy vampire and his impossibly beautiful vampire family with impossibly beautiful vampiric manners and impossibly beautiful vampire features and impossibly beautiful blah blah blah.  If you think I am exaggerating, Stephanie Meyers comes up with more ways to describe how beautiful Edward is than the great poets have described their greatest and unrequited loves.  That's about as far as I got.  I couldn't take it any more.  I realize I am not the target audience for this book, but it was just too painful.  So before anyone says, and a few have already, that the movie is not a fair representation of the book; well, it is not a good advocate for this picture, either.

Now, that said, how is the movie?  It has remarkable faults, but it is not horrible.  The worst insult that I can honestly throw at it is that it is not a bomb, it it's pretty dumb.  The first half took some slogging through, but it got moderately interesting in the end.  Why it took so long to get good, I'll never know, but there it is.  So what is wrong with it?  Let's start with everything.  Ie neuters the vampire myth.  It is the feel-good, PETA-approved version of vampires.  The good ones don't prey on humans, only animals.  Vegetarians, as Edward says in the movie.  Vampires after all, are not perfect predators who drink blood from humans, the are misunderstood, brooding poets at heart.  After all, don't lions and sharks eat tofu and garden burgers as well?  Even Bella is a vegetarian, which we see multiple times with her diet and constant badgering of the other characters in the movie on their eating habits.  So why shouldn't the perfect killing machines be vegans, too?  This, to me, is an annoying trait behind a lot of these so-called romantic stories.  They pick particularly gruesome subject matter as their backdrops, but conveniently forget the horror around them.  Antony and Cleopatra?  Two slimy schemers who got what they deserved in the midst of a horrible civil war.  Romeo and Juliet?  A fourteen and seventeen year old whose rash affair results in the death of seven people, including their own lives by suicide, and plunge their families to even more none-stop feuding.  And now, Edward and Bella.  But love triumphs over all, no matter how much it affects those around them, right?

Next, for a great love story, I have never seen two protagonists more intent on being uncomfortable around each other than these two.  The movie should have been renamed Twilight: The Awkward Pause.  The whole movie is nothing but one awkward situation after another, punctuated by stale, chick-flick cliches occasionally.  I like a good love story, but these two seem to be constantly uncomfortable in each other's presence.  Now before you all say, wait a minute, this is only the first chapter.  Their love grows and blossoms and matures into this incredible, passionate romance. Well, I say, this is a movie.  Oscar Wilde said brevity is the soul of wit.  In other words, don't waste my damn time.  The movie clocks in at over two hours.  Casablanca, another great love story, tells of a more satisfying relationship in just under an hour and a half.  Get on with it!  And while we are on the subject of the most blasé love affair of all time, let's talk about the leads, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.  There is absolutely no chemistry between them whatsoever.  This is not the actors' fault, i think.  I have seen them in other films and they are both competent actors in some of the other roles they have played.  They just suck (no pun intended), in this one.  They fall in love because the script says so.  Never once did I feel any passion in their performance.  If you want me to believe that an extremely introverted, shy girl is desperately in love with a monster, impossibly beautiful as he may be, it needs to come through.  There is no thunderbolt from the blue.  Just, hey, he's the best looking one here in the cast, he must be my true love.

Now, acting.  I know Kristen Stewart can be a good actress.  I've seen it.  She was great as rocker Joan Jett in The Runaways.  But in this film, there is nothing but boredom.  Bella is narrating the picture and she sounds bored.  She starts off with the hackneyed quote above, and it never gets any better.  Harrison Ford famously monotonously read his narration in Blade Runnet, because he thought the tacked-on narration was stupid and redundant and he hoped they wouldn't use it.  So what is Stewart's excuse?  Her face throughout most of the film made me think she was severely constipated. I guess that goes right along with the movie's theme of discomfort.  She doesn't act like a person desperately in love, rather like someone who took three Xanax 20 minutes before she goes to sleep.  Even when she finally does wake up at the end, she is constantly blubbering and can't get a straight thought out.  I don't think this is her fault, but rather that of the dirctor's.  One of the director's biggest jobs in the film is to coax a good performance from their actors.  Remember, this was before Kristen Stewart was a star from these movies.  You think there would have been some incentive to wow us and not to phone it in. She has the capability, unless the movie I spoke of was a fluke.  This is a passionate love story.  I saw neither passion nor love.  There's nothing particularly wrong with Pattinson's performance except that he, too, seems oddly dispassionate to his "particular brand of heroin" as he describes Bella.  Doesn't that just make your heart melt ladies?  I realize he is wrestling with his nature, but I just don't buy he is in love.  He spends more time trying to push her away then going after what he really wants.  That doesn't communicate love to me, but nausea.  I can only conclude that the problem is, like all bad movies fundamentally, that the script is flawed.

Also, what about the supporting characters?  Anyone other than Bella or Edward has the thankless job of propelling our two heroes into the next situation.  There are some interesting possibilities.  Her mother and father divorced, but semi-amicably it seems.  Edward's family, why would vampires hide in a small community year after year after year?  There seems to be an issue with their safety, but they keep coming back.  Edward, who is at least 100 years old, acts like a seventeen-year-old the whole movie.  He does not act like a being who has over 109 years of accumulated knowledge.  What is the point of Jacob, her well-meaninged native-American friend?  Bella's teenaged friends actually have some depth and are not cardboard cutouts.  Yet we know so very little about any of them, almost to the point of frustration.  All of these people have interesting situations and none of them get their fair due.  We are introduced to the bad vampires, a trio of killers.  Again, none of them do anything interesting.  However, the actors who play them fall into the same trap that many actors do who play vampires.  They act like they are Victorian aristocracy with bad British accents and scenery-chewing over-emoting.

But there is some good in this film.  It gets mildly interesting when one of the bad vampires decides to hunt Bella and try to kill her. The Cullen family, who initially distrust her, rise up and defend her.  But in the end, it isn't enough to save this turkey from its own dumbness.  The sad thing is, this could have been a good flick. I love all sorts of vampire stories: Dracula, Interview With The Vampire, The Lost Boys, Near Dark, Underworld.  But this is merely a dumb, love story written by someone who has never contemplated immortality and the curse it would be.

Red Dawn (1984) Vs. Red Dawn (2012)

Red Dawn (1984) - 3 Stars (out of four)

Red Dawn (2012) - 2.5 Stars (out of four)

First off, both Red Dawns are fanciful tales about the USA being invaded by a foreign power.  A group of local high school students led by a former jock from the high school begin an insurgency named the Wolverines, named after the local school mascot.  The insurgency gets more and more successful and gets the attention of the local commander.  The commander begins to crack down on the population.  At some point, one of the group gets a tracker on him/her which results in the death of some members.  Then, a service member from the US armed forces shows up and makes the Wolverines more effective.  An intense battle follows and most of our main characters die.  The end.

That pretty much sums up the plot for both of the movies.  The reason for the different ratings is that the 1984 version is much more coherent and dramatic.  Apparently, the new version sat on the shelf for a couple years, and it shows.  I have a feeling it suffers from post-production tinkering.  The problem is that the story doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  There are jumps in time periods and events that give the movie a very disjointed feel.  It's almost like you have to watch the first one to keep up with the second one.  Also, the director just isn't that good.  His action choreography just doesn't allow us to follow the action well.  The action, though, is much flashier and bombastic in the second one, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense.  Also, crucial plot points are not explained, they just happen.  For example, there is some new technology that is used in order to track our group by the bad guys that makes no sense and we are left scratching our heads.  We also don't see the final fate of the trackee.  The movie just looks like a hodge-podge of shots that sort of make a story.

But for me, and more crucially, is the tone of the films.  The first villains were the Soviets and Cubans at the height of the Cold War.  The newer ones are the North Koreans at a time when we are not particularly snarling at each other.  There is no feeling of urgency or reality to the newer version. We never really come out of the illusion that we are watching a movie.  Now, maybe it was because I was a lot younger in a more politically charged time against a hated enemy.  But I just didn't feel as angry in this film.  Also, the former film is a lot more brutal and vicious.  The newer version's violence is much more sterile and comic book-like.  In the original, we see several executions and murders, for lack of a better term.  The violence and emotion is much rawer, and feral, and more real.  Now, I wonder if that is just the age I grew up in.  After all, I am a child of movies like The Terminator, Aliens, The Untouchables, Jaws, Romancing the Stone.  The movies just seemed to be tougher and meaner.  Maybe because today, since movies are so expensive, they have to appeal to as many as possible, and thus are more vanilla.  The newer version reflects that.  So, in conclusion, they are both fun, but I prefer the original.

Emperor

2.5 Stars (out of four)

Emperor is confusing. By that, I don't mean that the story is confusing. I mean that I am shocked by how stupid and desperate Hollywood can become when they are trying to promote a movie. When you see the advertisements, Emperor appears to be a great, rousing biopic ala Patton, with a bombastic performance by Tommy Lee Jones as General Douglas MacArthur.  The ads show just about every MacArthur part in the entire movie in just under 30 seconds.  Considering Gregory Peck's turn in MacArthur in the 70s was just as interesting as watching paint dry, I was really looking forward to a rousing new attempt to portray MacArthur with an actor who I think would have been perfect to play him.  Instead, I got a procedural starring Matthew Fox (of Party of Five and Lost fame), playing General Fellers, the man who was tapped by MacArthur to determine whether the US should put Emperor Hirohiti of Japan on trial for war crimes at the end of WWII.  (SPOILER ALERT! We don't)

At the same time, the movie meanders down a path where at the same time Fellers is conducting his investigation, he is secretly trying to locate a Japanese woman he fell in love with in the States in 1938.  We get an extensive backstory on their relationship through flashbacks at different times throughout the movie.  Now, I have NO problem with movie romances.  I love a few of them (Crazy Stupid Love, Sweet Home Alabama, Gone With The Wind, Casablanca, and Something's Gotta Give jump immediately to mind).  I don't mind procedurals, especially when they are about true events, like Emperor.  The underlying events in Emperor are fascinating, especially in the emphasis that everyone in the US at the time wanted Hirohito to hang and the political pressure to do so was palpable; but also that the generals knew that doing so would would be the spark on a powder keg that would erupt Japan into a full scale revolt.  This is interesting and compelling stuff.  The search for a long-lost lover is also compelling against this backdrop.  But, curiously, the movie falls flat on both. Neither story is portrayed in any particularly interesting way.  In fact, the whole point of the love affair flashbacks seem to be to demonstrate that General Fellers has an insight to the Japanese psyche and love for the culture of Japan that makes him uniquely qualified for the job.  I'm pretty sure some of the side plots of MacArthur checking up on Fellers and the political pressure back home were meant to build tension, but they really don't.  In the end, the movie feels like a dispassionate reading of an encyclopedia entry of the events, not a dramatic rendering of them.  This is a movie after all, not a documentary.  It's supposed to be exciting.

And here's where I'm going to get back to my original paragraph.  The movie's ads make it seem like it will be about MacArthur, but instead it's about Fellers.  It's almost a bit-and-switch.  I guess the reason the studio presented it as such is that they, like us, don't really know what the movie is about.  If they portray it as a historical romance, no one would go.  So in order to get butts in the seats, they portray it as a rip-snorting retelling of MacArthur's life, hoping to get history-minded men into the seats, like modern day PT Barnums.  The most egregious example of this in recent times was that cinematic stinkbomb Pearl Harbor.  These are the two reasons I gave it 2.5 stars.  The real story is actually very interesting, and I would like to have seen more.  The actions undertaken in the movie had enormous geopolitical ramifications for the United States, Japan and Asia, even today.  But instead, we get an uneven and bland retelling of very important events, which, ultimately, come off as   dull in the end.

Oz The Great And Powerful

2.5 Stars (out of four)

First, is Oz, The Great and Powerful, a bad movie?  No, it is not.  Next, is it great, a worthy successor (or in his case, predecessor) to The Wizard of Oz?  Well, no, it's not that, either.  But let's be honest, what would a worthy successor to The Wizard of Oz be?  We are speaking of one of the greatest movies ever made by any yardstick, a cultural milestone that one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who has not seen it.  Any attempt to outdo it will be severely criticized.  It is one of those movies, that because of our shared childhood experience with it, has made it even bigger than it actually is.  Similar movies include It's A Wonderful Life, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Star Wars.  Now, with that said, just how good/bad is Oz, The Great and Powerful?

The answer is pretty good.  When one goes into this film, they have to put aside any expectations and just enjoy it for what it is, a good, fun romp in the land of Oz.  Not particularly deep (this is a children's movie, after all), but filled with a lot a spectacle and eye-popping imagery.  Incidentally, if you are wondering whether the 3D serves the movie, it really doesn't.  You could watch the 2D version and still be wowed.  The basic plotline without spoilers is that James Franco plays Oscar (Oz) Diggs, a two-bit carny magician and con man who is swept away in a tornado to the magical Land of Oz.  When he arrives, he finds the land is under the heel of the cruel wicked witch, who killed the last king.  But there is a prophesy that says a wizard named Oz will fall from the sky and deliver the land from its suffering be defeating the witch.  Oz thinks this is his golden opportunity to hustle a huge amount of gold and goes along with it.  Along the way, he sees the result of his con is that people actually do believe in him, causing the good in him to come out and fight against the wicked witch.

If I had any real criticism of the film, it's that it reflects the cynical age and sensibility in which it was made.  While the truth about Oz is the big reveal in the first film, the constant theme throughout this one is that Oz (Oscar), is a fraud and a con.  Worse yet, Glinda, the good witch, whose father was killed by the wicked witch, realizes this and yet pushes Oz to fill the role of savior anyway because that is what the people need.  While I realize this is the real world, must we introduce kids to this cynicism so soon?  Machiavelli via Dr. Seuss?  Why can't there be a few years where kids can just be kids?  They will learn the horrors of this world soon enough.  What's even more insidious is this very tactic has been used by most dictators in history.  Josef Goebbels once said that if a lie is big enough, everyone will believe it.  This is exactly what the film practices, lie to bring about the greater good.  While there is also a strong line of redemption through it as well, I just can't help but see the jaded heart that beats underneath.  And that makes me sad.  That this is the message we feel we must pass on to children, the ends always justify the means.  A lesser criticism, mostly to the writing, is that there is a lot of very modern turns of phrase.  This immediately dates the film and takes away from its timeless appeal.

So, if you put your expectations on hold and watch the film in and of itself, you may find yourself entertained.  I know I was.

The Gatekeepers

3.5 Stars (out of 4)

The Gatekeepers is a fascinating documentary on the recent history of the Israeli/Palestinian issue.  The movie covers interviews from Yuval Diskin, Avraham Shalom, Avi Dichtner, Yaavoc Peri, Carmi Gillon, and Ami Ayalon, the six surviving retired Directors of Israel's internal security organization, Shin Bet.  Director Dror Moreh spoke to all six at length, and candidly, about their tenures as head of Shin Bet, and the events and controversies that surrounded each one.  According to the film, none of them have ever before spoken in public about their experiences.  The core issue of the entire documentary is all the different facets of the Israeli/Palestinian question and Israel's handling of the situation since the 1968 Six-Days War.  The only reason I gave this film 3.5 stars instead of four is that it requires the viewer to have more than a superficial knowledge of the issue's history.

What is fascinating, is that all of the interviewees, to a one, agree that the situation has been mishandled.  In separate interviews, every one not only agrees that not only should peace talks with the Palestinians go further, but that the Palestinian state should become a reality.  Each argues, from his vantage point in his former job, that brutal crackdowns have only resulted in more sophisticated terrorists and more and more violent incidents, culminating in the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin over the Oslo Accords and the two intifadas.  They also address how this complex, and very emotional question is not as black-and-white as most politicians make it out to be. There are legitimate complaints on both sides, and elements equally as extreme and viscous as the other in order to achieve their desired goals.  Nothing is ignored or glossed over.  The allegations of Shin Bet abuses to their prisoners, the intelligence failures that led to Rabin's assassination and the Jewish Underground's role in it, to the killing of 15 people during a targeted assassination of Salah Shihada, leader and founder of Hamas' military wing, when a one-ton bomb was dropped on his house.  All of them are looked at and addressed with a surprising amount of candor.

What is important to remember in this film is that the interviewees are not political scientists or armchair policy wonks speaking from uninformed academic ivory towers.  These are the men who were directly responsible for Israel's internal security from 1984-2012.  There were no buffers between them and the actual decision-makers.  They all give strikingly similar narratives and opinions on Shin Bet's overall success.  It can be boiled down thusly:  Politicians expect binary solutions to incredibly complex issues.  When something goes wrong, blame get distributed away from them (ie they are not to be trusted to have your back when the chips are down).  Policy failures become intelligence failures because those communities cannot defend themselves because of the nature of information they possess.  Harder responses to terrorist attacks, without addressing the real underlying solutions produce more vicious terrorists.  Violence begets violence.  And most importantly and coincidentally, the hardest to do, reconciliation must occur if there is ever to be forward progress and an end to hostility.  And this is where the movie can resonate with us in America.

George Santayana once said that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  The film does not suggest that one simply roll over for your enemy, but does suggest that violence will continue if you don't try to at least understand your enemy and work to a common solution.  This involves, to a degree, forgiveness; not an easy thing to do when innocent blood has been spilled.  We cannot just kill them all.  The Nazis tried that once and it didn't work too well for them.  We can take a warning from the Israeli experience and use it to our advantage.  Always be vigilant, ever ready to respond should an attack be coming from the left hand, but always be ready with the right hand to try to reach common understanding and peace.  This is anathema to human nature, but it is necessary if we are all to survive the evil demons of ourselves.

Jagged Edge (1985)

3 Stars (Out of four)

Jagged Edge is one of those movies called Neo-Noir, a genre of movies that channel the film noir films of the 30s-50s. These movies were usually based on subjects of the criminal underworld and usually had a private eye, a femme fatale and had fairly sleazy subjects. These movies made a comeback in the 70s to today starting with films like Dirty Harry, Death Wish to Body Heat and Basic Instinct. Jagged Edge was also one of the first films written by Joe Esterhaz, who also wrote Robocop, Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, Showgirls and The Music Box. It stars Glenn Close, not long before her iconic performance in Fatal Attraction, plays a lawyer who must defend a rich client, Jeff Bridges, from a murder trial. The problem is that he may or may not have done it, and she falls in love with him during the trial.

Without giving away the ending, it is a fairly by-the-numbers murder and trial story until an interesting twist with a t at the end that makes for a nice little twist at the end. Glenn Close's performance is stunning, as usual. Really worth a watch if you want to see a good yarn with a neat little twist at the end. However, I think the end wraps it up a little too neatly, but if you're looking for a fairly good whodunit, check it out.