Filmcap: The week of June 26-July 3

This week I review one way-too-long movie and one "short film." I talk about how Spike Jonze can make fake stuff feel real and I become another one of those Michael Bay haters (also known as "people who hate fun" in some circles).

Scenes from the Suburbs (Spike Jonze, 2011): This is not a feature length movie, and it is not a theatrical film. It's a 30-minute short film that Spike Jonze made with members of the band Arcade Fire as a companion piece to their most recent album, "The Suburbs" (though you don't really need to be all that familiar with the album to get the movie). The movie uses songs from the album, and has the same thematic backdrop of suburban alienation. The film focuses on a few teenagers living in a world slightly different than ours due to the fact that suburbs have closed their borders and have their own armies that fight other suburbs every once in a while. Based on the plot it sounds like it's a sci-fi short film, but it's all about a group of teenagers in one particular suburb and how they deal with teenage life. However different their situation than ours, they still feel the same emotions and feelings as many of us and that is conveyed very well. I'm sure many kids who have lived in the suburbs for a long time and have a close-knit group of friends from the neighborhood will watch these teenagers and feel an empathy or a bond with them. The greatest thing about this film is how well Jonze directs the moments between these kids. There's not a lot of narrative momentum and so the whole film relies on the moments and relationship between these friends, and because Jonze and the actors succeed at making it real, the film works very well.

Jonze is a director with a particular set of sensibilities and skills that go very well each other. His films don't really give me a sense of who he is as a person like some other filmmakers, but his films are always effective in other ways. His last film was also a 30-minute robot love story titled "I'm Here" that was also very sweet and effective. He has a quality of making unreal people and unreal situations feel completely real (another example: "Where the Wild Things Are"). He brings that same quality to "Scenes from the Suburbs" by filming it in such a way that makes the unreal world they live into a real one. His beautiful compositions and use of the Arcade Fire songs makes for sweet yet subtle emotion. Jonze and Arcade Fire do a wonderful job of capturing teenage alienation and friendship. While the narrative is not too effective in doing much at all, the many poignant moments and scenes in the film are good enough to make you feel what the filmmakers want you to feel. The film doesn't leave a real lasting impact, but as you watch it, and right after you watch it you do understand how these kids feel and that's a very good accomplishment for a 30-minute short film.
Grade: B+

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Michael Bay, 2011): You've probably noticed that I rarely give a grade of below a C on this blog. That's because I choose the movies I watch and I know myself pretty well. There's also a lot of great movies out there that I have yet to watch before I get to the less-acclaimed ones. Especially when it comes to movies in theaters, unless I am reviewing a movie for The Daily Evergreen, I will never pay for a movie I know I probably won't like much. But for some reason, I have watched all three "Transformers" movies in theaters.

Because these movies are so big, it's hard to avoid them. And because the concept of "Transformers" appeals so much to the little kid in all of us, you always kind of get a bit curious. I went in to the third film, "Dark of the Moon," with some hope after hearing some positive word about it. After I left the theater I was yet again very disappointed. This film was annoying. The greatest flaw of this film (and also the second one) is that it is two and a half hours long for no damn reason. There is no intricate story that takes that long to manifest itself, it's just a bunch of loose ends that lead up to a giant action scene at the end. The first two hours of this film are filled with characters and story lines that go nowhere and have no reason to be in the film. It's not even that they needed some story backbone to give reason to have some action scenes, there aren't even that many badass action moments in the first two hours, that's all in the last 30 minutes of Chicago destruction. If this film was an hour shorter and if it kept the giant action scene in the end, and had about an hour of storytelling, it still wouldn't be good but it would at least be a much more enjoyable and memorable experience. The two hours of plot that preceded the action in the end added pretty much nothing to that scenes effectiveness.

Many of those who liked this movie point to that last sequence in which Chicago is destroyed in a scene worthy of Roland Emmerich's disaster movies. That scene was a bit fun to watch because you don't see that kind of destruction and action in the movies much and well, Michael Bay is kind of actually good at making that action work well. But ultimately there was no follow through to the action, and the scene is now just an insensitive 30 minutes of destruction and death. The film ends abruptly right after the sequence so there's no weight that's placed on everything that happened. The consequences of what happened are not shown. It is the exact type of scene that people talk about (accurately) when they say Hollywood desensitizes us to violence.

When people talk about how bad Hollywood is for America, they are talking about movies like "Transformers." Not only does it desensitize us to violence, but it also advocates sexist, racist, and homophobic behavior while decreasing our attention spans. Bay has impressive technical skills, there aren't many people who have the skills and the stamina to make three giant $200 million movies in a row like Bay, but he does not have to seem any idea as to what movies can really do. Not only does he not know what art is, or what film, but he doesn't even know what a story is. Cinema was created as another way to tell stories that affect people, not as a way for people to play out 12-year old daydreams.
Grade: F