So below I will present five inspiring films treading the line between brilliant and awful.
I Am Legend
I love me some Will Smith and what better than a whole two-hour epic featuring essentially Will Smith alone for us to oogle at. The sad thing about this film is that the first two-thirds of the film is a brilliant and tense journey following a man’s deteriorating sanity. Once the third act kicks in it shits all over the film and basically reduces the film to a brainless schlocky action picture with cheap special effects and a protagonist that unlearns everything they have known up until that point.
There has never been a turn so disappointing and disheartening. This could have been a new classic.
I Am Legend on IMDB
Revolutionary Road
Essentially this film is a pseudo-sequel to Titanic, if Jack had lived. It is a cynical and bleak film that puts Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio back together again. They basically scream at each other and yell despicable things for two hours and work with loads of clunky dialogue, but it works for me.
A wonderful score by Thomas Newman, excellent production design and the sheer visceral feel of two top actors redeem Sam Mendes's lack of direction and the terribly structured script. A feel good movie this is not, but when you feel like those characters do, it’s bliss.
Revolutionary Road on IMDB
my review of the film
The Fourth Kind
Fresh from viewing this, I found it perfectly in line with these inspiring, but faltering films. That it tries way too hard to sell its premise as fact is the biggest misstep here. My crush Milla Jovivich does a serviceable job, but is horribly miscast. The “real” Dr. Tyler in the film and many of the “real” footage elements are more thoroughly convincing than any of the reenactments.
The interplay between the “real” footage and the reenactment is the most fascinating element, using various mediums (tape recordings, session videos, environmental time-lapse) and editing them together in a frenetic and thrilling way. I hope filmmakers take note of that element and expand upon it.
The Fourth Kind
Cloverfield
The biggest flaw in this film is the discord between the content and the form. Telling a traditional dramatic story cannot work if viewing it is based on your annoying best friend holding a video camera. Why would your bud keep the camera on as your friends are dying and people are crying, etc. etc.?
The film completely fails as a narrative, but visually, it shines. The integration of such wonderful special effects with handheld cameras is a feast to behold. And the plotting of seeds into a potential Cloverfield-universe works well because they aren’t clues forced onto the audience. They are merely hidden in the background for us to discover. Not even the characters know.
Cloverfield on IMDB
Southland Tales
This is the granddaddy of all trainwrecks. It fails on every level as a satire, a piece of entertainment and as a narrative. What should have been a three-hour epic mind-bender with comics, viral campaigns and political bite, this film was reedited so many times it is literally incomprehensible.
I find it inspiring because I know what Richard Kelly was aiming for, and it was supposed to be fucking epic. It was supposed to be Dr. Strangelove with a sci-fi setting. The Apocalypse (with a capitol “A”), Nuclear Bombs, cloning, conspiracy theories, Neo-Marxists played by SNL cast members, Sarah Michelle Geller and Justin Timberlake giving fantastically delicious performances, references to T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost, music by The Pixies, the list goes on and on of all the wonderful things contained in this film. It is confounding that the film is nearly unwatchable, but at the same time one of the most ambitious films made in the last twenty years.
Southland Tales on IMDB
It is easy to play it safe and do what you know, but as Godard apparently said (I can’t find the quote anymore), “Do what you don’t know.”
So as much as some of these films fall flat on their face, I find this imperfectness refreshing, inspiring and real.
There is nothing flawed about Cloverfield. I think the form of the film is extremely apt for the content of the narrative, as the film is far from a "traditional dramatic story." That version of the film would have heads of state concocting elaborate plans, or a heroic fighter pilot or aliens or something (sounds like "Independence Day"). This movie is brilliant for creating a narrative centered around characters who throughout the history of giant monster movies have been largely marginalized; the people on the ground who usually serve no other purpose than to be stepped on.
ReplyDeleteFor me Cloverfield operates on a totally unconscious, visceral level; when I left the theater the first time I saw it I felt like the little kid who had just seen, well, Independence Day. The years have rendered me more jaded than that kid, so moviegoing rarely gives me that pure thrill anymore, but Cloverfield provided that purely cinematic stimulation in spades. Mr. Abrams, I implore you, serve me up some more!
"This movie is brilliant for creating a narrative centered around characters who throughout the history of giant monster movies have been largely marginalized; the people on the ground who usually serve no other purpose than to be stepped on."
ReplyDeleteI never thought of it that way before, but largely I feel their story was uninteresting and felt like any other group of 20-somethings on a CW TV show.
That said, again visually, what a feast. It was a thrilling ride, albeit a flawed one.
I hope they get another crack at it because it has a lot of potential.