Filmcap: The week of June 5-12

In this weeks post, I go on about how Matthew Vaughn is one of the better hack directors, how J.J. Abrams is talented but ultimately pointless, and another example of why Terrence Malick is one of the best to ever play the game (I did see "The Tree of Life" and that will be in next weeks post. Look forward to that one).

Layer Cake (Matthew Vaughn, 2004): The film is very much in the vein of British crime thrillers such as "Lock Stock and Smoking Barrel," but it also goes a little farther into the gangster genre than those films. Unfortunately the gangster part of the movie is a bit derivative of Martin Scorsese. The best way to describe the film is that it's like a British Tarantino and Scorsese collaboration. and while it sometimes is as good as it sounds, as a whole the film never comes to the same thematic heft as Scorsese films, and the dialogue is never quite as fun as Tarantino films. The movie is not bad, it's very well paced and is solid throughout, but it tries to be something more and at that it does not quite succeed. It's not a bad movie, but it fails at being great, and that's what stands out when you aim high. The best part of the film is at the end, when it all comes together and the film reaches gangster film proportions, and only in the end is when it reaches what I wanted it to get to. Kind of like the first season of a television show, the movie develops, builds, and sets into motion all throughout the first two acts of the movie, and then in the end is when you get the payoff. The problem with this is that there's no second season, in a television show you like the payoff and now that the world is built and developed the next season will be great. Here that doesn't happen. In many great television shows the first two-thirds of the season can be seen again and will seem better than they were. In this film the first two acts build a clever tone, but not much character depth.

This film was made before Daniel Craig got the job playing James Bond, and you can tell why he did with this film. He's suave and everything a Bond should be. The film though, and the rest of Matthew Vaughn's filmography, tries to be special but only succeeds in being kind of entertaining. I haven't seen "Stardust" but his other films "Kick-Ass" and "X-Men: First Class" try very hard to be meaningful and special, but they also try to be entertaining and fun and unfortunately he never gets the meaningful part right. These films are all fun to watch, but a week later you'll forget about them because there's nothing in them that's worthy to think about beyond the film itself. There are plenty of director who have this problem, but the thing with Vaughn, is that he actually tries to do it, but fails every time.
Grade: B

X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn, 2011): If you compared this to other superhero movies, it's very impressive, but compared to all movies in general, it's a slightly above average Hollywood action movie. That distinction is important. It's easy to say, "this movie has way more real world relevancy than things like "Fantastic Four" or "Incredible Hulk"." But in reality, the relevancy is all very surface level and broad. The parallels between civil rights movements is there (especially the gay rights movement), but the exact thing happened in the second X-men. I commend the film for trying to go there, for making the parallel, but I do wish it had something more to say about the movements.

This fits into what I said about director Matthew Vaughn in the review above of "Layer Cake." He tries to make movies that are more than just pulp entertainment, but unfortunately (or fortunately for some) he succeeds at only making pulp entertainment. His ambitions to go further than that are never really realized. He directed this movie very well, it's structured fairly well, it's shot in a nice mechanical style with the exception of a few out-of-place moments. Most of the problems with the movie, like some very bad dialogue and some bad treatments of potentially interesting characters, all lie with the script (not surprising considering SIX people had a hand in it). With many other Hollywood directors, this movie could have been a total failure, but Vaughn does know how to craft movies and because of that he has made a superior than most superhero movie. I came out of this movie in a pleasant mood, but only because of the lower expectations superhero movies bring with them now.

The best thing about this movie though is certainly the two lead actors. James McAvoy and the great Michael Fassbender are great actors who do some stellar work. Their contribution to the film is much more than it should be. Sometimes they're so good that it hurts the movie because they're work makes the flaws of the rest of the movie stand out much more. Because of them and some well-directed action scenes, this is a movie I would watch on television with friends. It's a movie in which you can enjoy the good parts, but also laugh at the bad parts without feeling bad about your enjoyment of the good parts. As a result it is uneven, but it's still an experience that is at least mostly entertaining.
Grade: B-

Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011): This is the movie that puts this whole J.J. Abrams fascination on hold, or at least in perspective. He is a great classic storyteller, meaning he knows how to make stories that work well and are very watchable. Occasionally he can do great story beats and some great moments (the opening shot of  this movie is flawless storytelling). He knows how to make fun character moments in the middle of sprawling stories. He does many things well, but none of them are really exclusive to him. He is very talented, but he is not special in any way. This film in particular is very fun to watch, has some great character moments, and well-executed action scenes. But what transpires in the movie is nothing special. What he did in this movie is something many talented directors can do, especially the monster story.

To clarify, there are two stories in this movie. The story of some kids trying to make a low-budget movie, and the escape of a creature from government custody. The story with kids works wonderfully. The group of kids have great chemistry and play off each other really well (Elle Fanning in particular does a superb job). If this movie had no monster story in it, I would have easily watched a whole movie dedicated to just them. I might even have preferred it that way. The escaped monster story seems mostly like a forced attempt to have tension and suspense, and when they tie in the monster to the kids, it's just too little too late. This is a movie that wants and needs to build up emotion so it can hold and sustain you in the third act climax, but unfortunately, the final "emotional" climax is not really all that emotional. I wanted this film to be emotional, I wanted an emotional connection between the kid and his father, and some emotional connection with the monster. The worst part, is that the film wanted this too, but it ultimately failed at both. This film is a perfect example of a film you enjoy tremendously while watching the first time, but upon thinking about it later, you find that it's all very average and filled with pretty lame plot points. I predict that if I watch this again, I won't enjoy it nearly as much as I did the first time.

The one point in this movie that did fascinate me a bit is something the film didn't play up at all. I thought about this before the film came out, and it still applies now that I've seen it. What's fascinating is that there's some meta-fiction when it comes to the fact that if these kids in the movie made a movie when they were all grown up, it would be the movie they are in. That aspect makes it autobiographical also for J.J. Abrams I believe. I wish they had played that up a bit more, but that meta aspect is pretty fascinating. The director in the kids movie always wants high production value, and J.J. Abrams has a monster and the longest train crash ever, that's exactly the production value that kid wanted. That connects it back to the nostalgic nature of the film. It attempts to be an Amblin-era Spielberg film, but it's just a 2011 throwback and will never be anything else (unlike the 2009 horror film "The House of the Devil"). The emotion and sense of childlike wonder that are evident in "E.T." and "Close Encounters" are never there in this film. What this is, is solid summer blockbuster entertainment. Unfortunately, that counts as pretty impressive these days.
Grade: B-

Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973): I saw this film for the first time after I saw "Days of Heaven" for the first time. It was my second Terrence Malick film, and after watching the beautiful impressionistic "Days of Heaven" I suppose my expectations for "Badlands" where high. Upon my first viewing I found the film to be a bit underwhelming, and too "normal." It did not have the beauty that Malick was known for (at that point that's all I knew about Malick, was the beauty in his films). Now that I've watched it a second time, after having seen all of Malick's films, I see this film in a completely new light. I now know what to look for a bit better, I know what Malick was going for, and I recognize the Malickian touches. All that said though, it is certainly the most unique of his films, in that it is the most plot-driven and even a bit humorous.

This is also the most effective and complicated movie about serial killers I've ever seen. It is only about 90 minutes, the plot is very simple, the characters don't even say much that's important, but it's such a thoughtful and well-crafted film. Both Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek's character are eery, yet fascinating. The characters in this film are so naive and and detached, that their evolution into one of America's most wanted people seems so natural and easy. Kit, Sheen's character, is a man who seems mostly normal in the beginning, if only a bit off though no more than the rest of us. As the film goes on though you see his sociopathic notions and the many inconsistencies in his personality. Sissy Spacek's character is also very naive and detached. Malick is arguably the best practitioner of narration, and Spacek's narration here is another example. She usually sees the events of the film one way , but we, the audience, see it a bit different. Once they go on the run, we know things have taken a pretty bad turn, yet Spacek's character narrates the story like its a romance. The transition she has from that mentality to the "maybe he's not right for me" mentality is slow and paced extremely well.

The film on the surface seems like such a small and simple film, but it's really very sophisticated. It's subtle poetic filmmaking at its finest (the "subtle" part of that is something Malick would not continue past "Days of Heaven," but that's not to say his more recent movies are worse). While this is Malick's first film and he was still finding his art, there are familiar Malick themes present in "Badlands," most notably the punishment of nature on behalf of humanity. In one particular instance, the girls father shoots her dog as a punishment for going out with Kit. Plants and animals have made major sacrifices for human civilization, and Malick shines a light on that in every one of his films. Every time I watch one of his films it only solidifies his status in my eyes as one of the great filmmakers that has ever lived. "Badlands" is his first film, it's not my favorite of his, but that's all the more impressive considering how impressive this film really is.
Grade: A