Owen's Eight Dollar Disappointment

TIM AND ERIC'S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE

In keeping with the precedent set by Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie (trailer) continues the proud tradition of feature-length films based on Adult Swim shows that fail to live up to their pedigree. Now, I'm a fan of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim's often disgusting, usually hilarious, and always bizarre Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (as I am of Aqua Teen Hunger Force), but so many of the things that make the Tim-and-Eric schtick work at eleven-minute intervals on television demonstrate why it doesn't translate to an hour and a half on the silver screen.

For any out there who are unfamiliar, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! ran from 2007 to 2010 as part of Adult Swim, the Cartoon Network's broadcast segment of after-hours, "adult-oriented" animated and live-action comedy shorts, alongside the likes of the aforementioned Aqua Teen, Sealab 2021, Robot Chicken, Frisky Dingo, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Metalocalypse, Childrens Hospital, and a metric assload of anime you couldn't pay me to watch. Each eleven-minute episode consisted of a hodgepodge of tenuously related (if that much) segments usually involving ugly people, disgusting food, and the awkward banality of Western late-capitalist existence, accomplished with all the low budgets, amateurish acting, and sloppy editing of public-access television or old VHS training videos. So obviously it was pretty great. With the help of a veritable cornucopia of regular collaborators (Zach Galifianakis, John C. Reilly, and Weird Al) and guest stars (ranging from Patton Oswalt, David Cross, and Fred Willard to Dave Navarro, Tom Skerritt, and the great Tommy Wiseau), Tim and Eric took pop-cultural tropes and narrative conventions and tore them apart by pushing them to the nth degree. They took the everyday and stretched it to the point of hilarious absurdity.

This was often a tought act to pull off even in its original format of eleven minutes' worth of skits, songs, and animation, so I can't say I'm that surprised that it didn't translate to the feature-length format. As anyone who's seen a representative selection of SNL-based films can tell you, characters and situations that work for a few minutes at a time often fall apart when transplanted into an hour-and-a-half-long, multi-act story. In this film's case, the story opens with the eponymous billion-dollar movie, Diamond Jim, which Tim and Eric have produced with the funding of the Schlaaang Corporation; it's a five-minute piece starring a Johnny Depp impersonator (Ronnie Rodriguez) wearing a diamond-encrusted suit who gives his true love a softball-sized diamond, and the money that didn't go into the film was spent on Tim and Eric's mansions, jewelry, douchey clothes and hair, orange tans, and personal guru, Jim Joe (Zack Galifianakis). The Schlaaang Corporation, represented by Tommy Schlaaang (Robert "shit from a duck's ass" Loggia) and Earle Swinter (William "dickless" Atherton), are understandably furious with their unmarketable product and demand the billion dollars returned or Tim's and Eric's heads on a silver platter. Our two "heroes" think they find a solution when they see an ad by shopping mall manager Damien Weebs (Will Farrell) offering a billion-dollar profit to anyone who can turn his decrepit mall around. They set out for the mall, which they find full of garbage, bizarre stores, equally bizarre denizens, and a man-eating wolf, but, in spite of these obstacles, Tim and Eric are determined to succeed.

This storyline offers a fair amount of potential for Tim and Eric's style of humor (especially the mall, of course, with the opportunity for lots of people and situations that could be funny for a few minutes without necessarily having to fit into a larger storyline). However, when the film got a laugh out of me it was almost never anything having to do with the plot, but rather isolated non-sequiturs of weirdness: the weird looks and terrible acting of their "Johnny Depp"; the announcement before Diamond Jim by "Chef Goldblum" (getting names wrong is a Tim-and-Eric staple going back to their first Adult Swim series, Tom Goes to the Mayor, which asked the question, "How many different ways can you misspell 'Tom Peters'?"); an ad for one of the mall's stores featuring Palmer "Sit on You" Scott; the weird appearances of Schlaaang's silent henchmen (Andy Spencer and Christopher Guckenberger), one of whom looks like God's botched attempt to replicate Mike Myers; and something as simple as the creepy, lingering smile of a delivery man (Harry Elmayan).

I wasn't surprised that Billion Dollar Movie could be funny in brief spurts, since that's exactly how Awesome Show operated, jumping briskly from one skit or interlude to the next and only needing to make them funny individually, without necessarily needing to make them cohere collectively. (Even the bits predicated on the ol' make-something-last-so-long-the-awkwardness-becomes-funny routine rarely overstayed their welcome.) However, the demands of feature-length storytelling, with a developing plot and defined characters, just don't gell with this style of comedy. One major flaw arising from this is the wide shifting from scene to scene of the roles that the Tim and Eric characters play: one minute Tim and Eric play the straight men against a crazy, comical character, the next they play the comical characters against a straight man, the next Tim plays it straight while Eric plays it crazy, the next vice versa. It makes sense to do this based on what each scene requires, but it doesn't based on what the story as a whole requires. Generally, the role of a straight man in a comedy is to be audience surrogate, the relatively normal "base line" through whom the humor is experienced. When the straight man changes unpredictably from scene to scene, it can disrupt how the audience absorbs what they're watching, as opposed to having a good idea where they stand with the characters when their roles are defined more consistently. In Billion Dollar Movie, we're constantly being asked to shift our perspective from Tim to Eric to third parties, and this weakens both the story and the overall humor.

In addition to such structural problems, Billion Dollar Movie also just isn't funny enough, even on a scene-by-scene basis. There are several scenes scattered throughout the film of Schlaaang and Swinter fuming at Tim and Eric's swindle and scheming to get back at them, scenes which seem to have been included less for humor than simply to remind the audience periodically of that element of the story. Awesome Show alums like John C. Reilly, Will Forte, and James Quall have roles of various sizes, but none of them are nearly as funny here as they were on that show. This is a particularly bitter disappointment in Reilly's case, whose Dr. Steve Brule was one of the highlights of Awesome Show; here he plays Taquito, a much put-upon mall denizen whose role is mostly limited to providing exposition and trying to milk a one-note gag of his being a sickly but kind-hearted Tiny Tim character. Perhaps the biggest unwelcome surprise was the difference in pace; while the show was brisk, sometimes to an almost manic degree, the film is often simply boring, with scenes dragging on with little comedic payoff. Having already established my Tim-and-Eric bona fides above as a fan of Awesome Show (and even of the drier, more story-based Tom Goes to the Mayor), I feel secure saying that Billion Dollar Movie just isn't that funny. It's not that I don't get the humor, because there just isn't all that much humor to get.

Trying to translate a piece of entertainment from one format to another is always a dicey proposition; that's especially the case when the new format is almost an order of magnitude longer than the original. Maybe the only way to translate the Tim-and-Eric magic into feature length was to follow the formula of the Jackass franchise and simply show one short skit or segment after another, like an hour-and-a-half-long episode of the show. I'm not saying that it was never possible for Billion Dollar Movie to have worked as a single, coherent narrative rather than a series of segments, I'm just saying that, given the film we got, I would rather have just watched an hour and a half of Awesome Show.

Phil Connors, Zen Sage

GROUNDHOG DAY

— THE GROUNDHOG SEES SPOILERS (though if you haven't already seen it, do yourself a big favor, crawl out from under that rock, and correct that oversight) —

After watching this exemplary product of the Murray-Ramis factory last night, I got to thinking, and I came to the conclusion that Bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, not only becomes a much better person by the end of the film (hardly a tough job, though, considering how he starts out), but in fact becomes, literally, the best person, a feat only possible thanks to the cosmic phenomenon trapping him for most of the story.

Once Phil finds himself cursed to relive February 2 over and over and over and over again, he passes through a number of psychological and emotional phases: he doesn't believe it; upon accepting it, he takes advantage of it for personal gain (robbing the armored car, seducing Nancy, etc.); growing bored of this, he acts dangerously and destructively; later, despair overtakes him, and he commits suicide countless times in hopes of escape, but never ceases waking up at 6 a.m. to Sonny and Cher on the radio. After having gotten everything he possibly could for himself out of this phenomenon, he starts using it for others. At first, of course, this manifests itself rather selfishly as well, in his attempts to win Rita's heart by learning everything he can about her to become her ideal man. (It's also possible that he senses that she might somehow be the key to lifting his curse.) Over time, he learns to say all the right things and make all the right moves, but even after getting her to fall for him his life is always still reset back to the previous morning.

Eventually, Phil begins using his virtually infinite knowledge of that February 2 genuinely to help and better the good people of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He assists those in need and strives to brighten their day. Not only does he do this, but he does it knowing that any good he does will be undone, forgotten, and in need of doing once again the next time he wakes up: the boy will fall out of the tree again, the old women in the car will need their tire changed again, he'll have to buy all those insurance policies from Ned Ryerson again, he'll have to deliver his touching speech for the newscast again (while never coming across like he's saying it for the umpteenth time), his brother will need to be saved from choking again, the homeless man will need a good last meal and a warm place to die again. He knows what he's done—and how many times he's had to do it—but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it's like it never happened.

It's estimated that Phil spends years, decades, possibly even millennia, reliving that same day, with nothing he does ever letting him see another day or letting any of this actions have any consequence for more than a matter of hours. After that long without change, and without any sign that will anything ever will change, I can't help but feel that Phil eventually just gave up trying to get out of his Groundhog Day time loop and accepted that he would live on eternally, stuck on the same day in the same town with the same people, without end. Nevertheless, despite the unimaginable frustration of knowing nothing he did, no matter how good, how selfless, would have any consequence, he continues to do good. The good he does is good in the purest sense: done not to benefit himself, or even to benefit others, but entirely and absolutely for its own sake, because it's good.

Of course, this level of benevolence is possible only because, unlike the rest of us, Phil's actions have been stripped of all but a few hours' consequence. Eventually, his life becomes a working embodiment of that ideal of many of the Indian philosophies, of acting without any desire or expectation, without any thought of outcome. Thus, he has achieved naturally, thanks to his unique circumstances, what the greatest sages could achieve only through the greatest effort and determination, the extinction of all desire and the willingness to do good—and moreover, to do it endlessly—with no consideration other than the good itself. When he finally wakes up beside Rita at the end, he hasn't just reached February 3; he's reached nirvana.

Fast Five: Great Movie or Greatest Movie?

FAST FIVE

Thank you, "Anonymous," for the post title suggestion in your comment to my last post. I guess all those residuals you get from Primary Colors give you enough free time to browse and comment on obscure movie blogs. Well, it's appreciated.

So, in an O&MTM first, I'm going to step aside and give the stage to a guest-poster, "M," who recently made some interesting points in a spirited e-mail exchange with a friend of ours, "C," and myself. The topic was the latest installment in the Fast and the Furious saga, Fast Five.

* * * SPOILERS FOR THE F&F FRANCHISE IN GENERAL AND FAST FIVE IN PARTICULAR—SO BUCKLE UP! (so bad, I know) * * *

It started when "C" posed the following question:

"So.... Does Fast Five take place after 4 (Fast and Furious), but before 3 (Tokyo Drift)?

"4 was a prequel to 3 (right?) - and 5 comes right on the heels of 4 (breaking Dom out of prison). Then, at the end of 5, Han is taking the scenic route (through Europe) to Tokyo... where he eventually dies in a car explosion in 3.

"I guess it could also explain why Brian isn't in Tokyo.... because he's off somewhere raising little beach baby O'Connor.

"Then, Six (with Letty in Berlin) would probably also be pre-Tokyo.

"Does that make sense?"

To which I responded:

"I think you're giving it about an order of magnitude more thought than the filmmakers did."

To which "M" countered:

"Owen, I am going to have to disagree. I think what sets this movie apart is the level of thought that went into it. And Justin Lin, who cut his teeth on F&F:TD (and perfected his craft on my favorite Community episode) was just the man for the job. Drift was precisely the kind of movie you describe in your response - a franchise film that tries to get by on name alone while forsaking the universe it purports to be a part of and giving no thought to making a 'good' film. Lin was a hired gun on Drift - just as much a throw away as the movie itself. However, although the film was a failed money grab, Lin was able to showcase his technical prowess by bring a realistic depiction of extreme drifting to an international audience. Although the plot fell flat, people were awed by the money shots.

"Lin's flair allowed him to get a shot at making a true F&F movie in Fast and Furious. The principals were back and the movie was a success because he had more creative control and was able to consider what fans really wanted from the reunion of the perpetual buster, Paul Walker, and il padre di famiglia, Vinny D. Lin's enthusiasm (and the unabashed childlike wonder of Paul Walker) bled off the screen and was so infectious that it revitalized a franchise that nobody else even knew they wanted or cared about. Drift and FandF were strikingly different in that one existed squarely within the F&F universe and in the other, the producers were content to live on the periphery. Lin made people believe that this was a movie that they had been clamoring for even though, prior to seeing it, most of us were content to let F&F die.

"With Fast Five, Lin was able to immerse himself even further in the F&F universe. He was so deep that he took for granted the familiarity of the audience with his labor of love. If anything, too much thought was put into this movie, to the point that some of the basic premise was presented without much explanation. Lin's love of the characters, the subject matter, and even the audience is apparent throughout the movie. The cohension that this film has with the 4 other films is what made us love it so very much. And to keep that type of cohension across 5 films of various levels of quality and audience acceptance is something that, I would think, takes a great deal of thought.

"['C'] is right - In the end of Fast Five, Han was making his way to Tokyo, a trip that would end in his demise. Chronologically, Drift is the last film."

Man, have I been put in my place. Touché, good sir. Of course, my estimation of how much thought went into the franchise's continuity had no bearing on my enjoyment of Fast Five, which I expect was apparent after we all saw it a couple nights ago. It probably has more to do with the fact that I haven't caught any of the installments between the original and the latest, a knowledge gap of ten years and three films; I just had no appreciation of the intricate universe that had been constructed over the course of the franchise.

As for my own thoughts, it was a mindless summer action flick of the highest caliber. They finally found a worthy adversary for Vin Diesel in the Rock—worthy in the sense of visually seeming like a peer, someone who could go toe to toe with that trunk-necked behemoth, a true yin to his yang, much more so than the relatively puny Walker. (I certainly didn't mean "worthy" in terms of charisma—the true measure of an actor's performance in a film like this, rather than actual acting ability—in which respect the Rock easily runs circles around Diesel. Of course, even Diesel is a veritable Will Smith compared to Walker, who has all the screen presence of a cardboard box that was left out in the rain. Seriously, he, Josh Hartnett, and Channing Tatum need to team up and form some League of Bland Actors; by their powers combined, they might be as entertaining as watching grass grow.) In terms of what I hoped for from a film like this, Fast Five delivered: terrific action, well shot and with great, reverberating sound; a fast-paced storyline with an appropriate tempo between high-energy and lower-energy sequences; and fun, memorable characters who play off one another well. Fast Five is the kind of guns-and-'splosions action movie we can only hope they'd all be like.

In closing, I would like to leave you with a few words that I have no doubt shall echo down through the æons to come whenever man's thoughts turn to the art and craft of the moving picture:

"Did he slap that ass, or did he grab it and hold onto it?"

April is the cruelest month

The authorial output here hasn't exactly been a raging torrent lately, I'll admit. I've been averaging only about two posts per month since New Year's, and two of those were basically just matters of forwarding things I'd read elsewhere. I've written about a few films, sure, but only one released this year; the rest have been older, ranging from one year old to seventy-six. And I haven't even compiled my best-of-2010 list yet, due to a few as-yet-unseen films that I feel would need to be considered before I could do so.

But despite these mea-culpas of mine, I don't think I can be held entirely to blame. This is spring, after all, generally a dead zone when it comes to cinematic releases (as shown here). The Oscar season ends with the previous year, and other than catching up on some of last year's releases that I'd missed and seeing what Netflix has to offer, it's mostly a matter of soldiering through a few lean months before the summer season begins in May.

And what has that month to offer, you may ask? First and foremost, of course, is Malick's The Tree of Life, easily my most anticipated film of the year (funny, I usually have to wait till the fall or winter for those, rather than the kick-off of blockbuster season). May will also feature the second installment in master cinéaste Todd Phillips's Hangover cycle (basically looking like a southeast Asian carbon copy of the first, which may or may not be a good thing), Kenneth Branagh's Thor (it's going to take me a long time to get used to writing that; as for the film itself, it looks like it has the potential to be either merely OK or ridiculously terrible, but in the "pro" category Mr. Branagh finally figured out that what superhero movies have been sorely lacking is giant, evil robots that blow stuff up with lasers), and the intriguing-sounding Hesher starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who turned in some great work in Mysterious Skin, Brick, and The Lookout. (True, the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie is also coming out in May, but since I haven't seen an installment of that particular franchise since the first eight years ago, it's not really on my movie-going radar.)

So here's to May giving me a little more to write about that April did.

Carnival of the Animals

ANIMAL KINGDOM

(Because there's never a bad time or too tenuous an excuse to throw in a little reference to the great Saint-Saëns, hence the post title.)

There are plenty of films out there that center on crime—crime dramas, crime thrillers, even "crime epics." (A very good example of the last category would be last year's terrific two-part biopic Mesrine (trailer) starring Vincent Cassel, epically spanning decades and continents.) This is only natural; the tension and danger simply make for good storytelling, and the transgressiveness of it is exactly what most people would love to experience vicariously. The centerpieces of such films are usually the crimes themselves—the heists, the hits, etc. Rare is the crime movie that doesn't give the audience that adrenaline rush, that payoff, but instead focuses on the criminals when they're past their prime, when the main concern isn't the next score but simply staying out of prison or even staying alive. That's the kind of film Animal Kingdom (trailer) is, an outstanding little downer of a crime film from Australia that's one of the best films of last year.

The film centers around J (James Frecheville), a laconic (indeed, seemingly emotionless) seventeen-year-old boy whose mother OD's on heroin and is taken in by his grandmother and uncles, a band of notorious armed robbers. There's the hyperactive, drug-dealing Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), Darren (Luke Ford), barely older than J and not showing much stomach for the work, and their relatively level-headed friend and parter Baz (Joel Edgerton, very much reminding me of an Australian Prince Colwyn from Krull); rather than playing the "Ma Barker" role, J's grandmother Janine (Oscar-nominated Jacki Weaver), as J puts it, "just wanted to be where the boys were" (though her role changes as matters become more desperate). Rounding out the crew is J's third uncle, the volatile Andrew, called "Pope" (Ben Mendelsohn), who's been in hiding from the Melbourne Police's increasingly ruthless armed-robbery unit. We never really see them in action, but instead watch as growing police pressure causes them to push back as much as they can against the authorities and to lash out against one another.

All this is seen through the eyes of young J, whose initial position as an outsider with relation to his family makes him an ideal window through which the audience can be introduced to them and their way of life. As the story goes on, however, we see him transition from a Nick-Carraway-like passive observer to the story's principal mover.

Though he's been making short films for the past several years, Animal Kingdom is director David Michôd's first feature-length effort, and with that in mind it's extraordinary in its confidence, grace, and expert command of both narrative and performances. (In that respect, I'm reminded of another of the best directorial débuts of the last few years, Tom Ford's A Single Man, reviewed here.) Speaking of performances, while every one is solid, there are a few that particularly stand out for recognition: Frecheville's J, a shell-shocked young man trying just to get along amidst the growing danger in which he finds himself, before being forced to take matters into his own hands; Weaver's Janine, a seamless blend of motherly affection when she can afford it and ruthless determination when she can't; and Guy Pearce's understated performance as Sgt. Leckie, a police detective who's both determined to do his job the right way and is possibly the only person genuinely concerned about J's welfare.

However, a discussion of the film's performances would be incompete without mentioning Mendelsohn as Uncle Pope. He simply steals every scene he's in, with a pervasive air of menace that's a blend of brutal thuggishness and manipulative cunning. His bestial nature (pun intended) is only accentuated by Mendelsohn's almost simian appearance, with his slouched posture, sloping forehead, heavy brow, wide mouth, and weak chin. (I hate to sound like some nineteenth-century criminal phrenologist here—"You have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter!"—but his looks really do add to how sinister and threatening his character seems.) In a film full of terrific performances, Mendelsohn is the acting MVP.

There's a particular scene—what I call "the 'All Out of Love' scene"—that not only showcases the best of Michôd's technique as a filmmaker in a film full of terrific cinematic craft, but also is guaranteed to change the way anyone who watches it feels about Air Supply's classic syrupy ballad. I don't want to give it away by describing it too much, but it's just such an incredibly effective marriage of photography, sound (both the song itself and the low, eerie hum playing over it), editing, and performance, with Uncle Pope at his most terrifying without needing to do more than just sit and stare. It's easily one of last year's most arresting, effective examples of filmmaking technique to be found in a single scene, alongside the crew race from The Social Network (showy, yes; superfluous, no), the dream-dance that begins Black Swan, Aron's severing his arm in 127 Hours, or any one of the food-preparation or -consumption scenes in the foodie porn flick that is I Am Love. (Admittedly, 2010 wasn't a great year, but there were a few memorable moments.)

As a matter of fact, the "All Out of Love" scene reminded me simultaneously of the work of not one but two of the greatest living filmmakers, Scorsese and Lynch. Scorsese is known for his visionary use of popular music, from "Layla" in Goodfellas to "Be My Baby" and "Please Mr. Postman" in Mean Streets, all the way back to the eponymous song in his under-seen début, Who's That Knocking at My Door. Though I'd hesitate to call it Scorsesian, the use of pop music in Animal Kingdom certainly is imaginative and effective, from the aforementioned Air Supply to Jimmy Cliff's "Sitting in Limbo" playing as the family leasurely walks down the sidewalk before being abruptly cut off as the film cuts to the next scene. As for Lynch, Michôd often creates a haunting, threatening, dreamlike atmosphere that could be straight out of Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, or Mulholland Drive; he does this using slow, steady, elegant camerawork, careful use of focus, and a low, ominous soundtrack that gives a great sense of the tension and fear in which J and the others live. While Michôd's obviously not the first to use such filmmaking tools, it's clear that he knows how to use them well, as that scene perfectly demonstrates.

Though Animal Kingdom certainly qualifies as a "crime thriller," someone expecting it to follow the more standard narrative course of that genre will be disappointed (or pleasantly surprised, one would hope). This is no Heat, no The Town. It takes the focus off of the thrilling, fast-paced, often glamorous crimes themselves and puts it on the consequences, as they start to catch up with our "heroes" and push them to do worse, more desperate things to those closest to them. And this story is told with more grace, passion, and tension through its whole running time than most films manage for a scene at a time. If Animal Kingdom is any indication, we can expect David Michôd to become one of the great new directors of the years to come.

(And as a reward for reading this far, here is the sublime "The Swan," from Saint-Saëns's "The Carnival of the Animals," performed by Yo-Yo Ma. Enjoy, you earned it.)

12 Monkeyhog Day

SOURCE CODE

Last week, some colleagues and I got an early look at Source Code (trailers), the sophomore effort from friend of the blog Duncan "Zowie Bowie" Jones, as well as an all-too-brief look at the man himself. First, the Jones appearance. Like a small, English Bigfoot caught in a grainy home movie out in the woods, he seemed to pass in front of our field of vision only long enough for us to wonder if what we were seeing was the real thing before he strode back behind the treeline. During the sighting, he seemed to be trying to lower expectations a bit among the Moon fans like us in the audience (sadly, too few in the free screening), telling us not to expect his second film to be all that similar to his terrific first. (Whether he meant in terms of its subject matter or its quality, he didn't specify.) After maybe forty-five seconds at the mic, Jones hurried off, leaving the lights to fall and his film to speak for itself.

Though Source Code certainly is different from Moon, and not as good, neither it nor Jones has anything to be ashamed of for what it is, which is a gripping, engaging, well-above-average action movie. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) abruptly comes to on a commuter train headed for Chicago, his last memory being piloting an Army helicopter in Afghanistan; he doesn't know where he is, what he's doing there, or why the stranger sitting across from him, Christina (Michelle Monaghan), seems to know him. After eight minutes, an explosion destroys the train, and Colter is now isolated in a small, dark room with few features other than a screen on which a militarily attired woman, Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), anxiously questions him about what he just saw. It's soon revealed to Colter that, using a technology called "the Source Code," his consciousness is being thrown into an alternate reality based on the last eight minutes of the life of one of the train passangers before he, Christina, and the other passangers were killed in a bombing, but an alternate reality that he can fully explore and affect. His involuntary mission is to discover who was behind the bombing in order to prevent other attacks predicted to follow; but he can only do this eight minutes at a time, reliving the last moments of a dead man's life over and over until he finds the truth.

The obvious point of comparison for Source Code is as an action/thriller Groundhog Day, but with our hero forced to relive the same eight minutes in order to prevent terrorist attacks, instead of forced to relive the same minor holiday in order to become a better person and get the girl. However, the film I was most reminded of was 12 Monkeys, in which a man from the near future is forced by a mysterious authority to travel back in time to gain intelligence about a past, seemingly inevitable catastrophe. (Hence the mangled compromise of this post's title.) Though Jones didn't write Source Code, it shares with Moon (which he did write) a ready willingness to borrow what it needs from other films, but with its own spin. (I already noted the influences of Silent Running, Solaris, Blade Runner, and 2001, to name a few, on Moon.) It uses a high-tech narrative device and action-movie setting to examine, like Ramis's and Gilliam's respective films, how inevitable or open-ended life actually is, whether we're in the driver's seat or the future is set in stone. Surprisingly heady stuff for a springtime actioner full of pretty faces.

Jones has openly described Source Code as a "one for them" film. (I believe the term he used was "director for hire.") But really, the only actual negativity I can direct at the film is relative, in comparison to the "one for me" Moon. Sure, Gyllenhaal, Monaghan, or Farmiga doesn't turn in anything like Sam Rockwell's extraordinary performance, possibly the best of his career; but everyone delivers solid work, especially Gyllenhaal with his character's blend of military professionalism and understandable frustration with the situation into which he's been forced. The story doesn't have the same surprises and thematic challenges, but it's still one of the most intelligent and compelling films of its kind that we've gotten in a while, and one that interweaves its intelligence with the action and suspence quite well, in both conception and execution. If this is Jones's "one for them" film, we should be so lucky as to have more like it during the rest of his career.

Gettin' Hitched

THE 39 STEPS

I've been trying the past couple years to broaden my acquaintance with the filmography of Alfred Hitchcock beyond just watching Psycho over and over again. I've seen Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds, and Notorious, and they, along with Psycho, are some of the best films I've ever seen in every respect: storytelling, technique, performances, suspense, and, let's not forget, humor. There's always some kind of comic aspect to be found somewhere in his films, from the matronly patron fretting over humane pesticide in Psycho to the rarely seen newlyweds in Rear Window. Not only does it provide some much-needed lightening of the mood and balancing of the tone, but it goes a long way toward humanizing the characters, making us care about them more, and thus fear for them more. But no film of his that I've seen has showcased Hitchcock's comedic side as much as The 39 Steps.

We're introduced to our dashing young Canadian hero, Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), in a London music hall where patrons test the encyclopedic knowledge of "Mr. Memory" with often absurd questions (including the old man who keeps trying to ask his question even after shots are fired and the audience stampedes). He finds himself with a beautiful spy calling herself "Annabella Smith" (Lucie Mannheim), who claims to be trying to keep aeronautical secrets from being passed to a foreign power. (Structurally the film mirrors itself, beginning with a music hall followed by Hannay in the company of a woman, and ending with Hanny in the company of a woman followed by a music hall.) Annabella is soon murdered, but not before telling Hannay cryptically of "the Thirty-nine Steps" (perhaps the MacGuffiniest of all MacGuffins) and a man whom she was supposed to meet in Scotland. Now wanted for Annabella's murder, Hannay travels to Scotland to try to get to the bottom of the conspiracy and thereby clear his own name.

One great way that Hitchcock maintains the suspense is by constantly shifting Hannay's environment and whom he's with: from the music hall to his apartment, to the train to Scotland, to the cottage of the pious crofter (definitely a Calvinist, he) and his long-suffering young Glaswegian wife—and sorry to nitpick, but it would take a wee bit more than an afternoon's hike to get from the Forth Bridge to what's clearly supposed to be the Highlands—to Ard-na-Shelloch, and so on. He—and the audience with him—remains uncertain where he'll find himself next, and who he can trust there. I also liked how Hitch upset expectations; the foreign-accented femme fatale who freely admits her mercenary outlook is trustworthy, while plenty of respectable-seeming natives turn out to be traitorous foreign agents or their unsuspecting pawns.

There are also some great little filmmaking techniques and tricks sprinkled throughout, like the first shots of Hannay at the music hall where we don't see his face, the scream of the woman discovering Annabella's body blended with the whistle of the train Hannay's riding as he makes his escape, or the camera going from looking in the window of a moving car to suddenly stopping and watching the car drive off. They don't necessarily make the film more suspenseful, but they definitely make it more interesting and fun to watch.

As I mentioned before, The 39 Steps is shot through with humor; in fact, it's easily as much a comedy as a thriller. In that respect, I have to say the film it reminds me of the most is Pineapple Express; Dale and Saul are similarly on the run from a murderous conspiracy, but there are so many laughs that you almost forget the mortal danger they're in. In The 39 Steps, there's the aforementioned scene at the music hall, then Hannay's interaction with the milk man, the "unmentionables" salesmen and the old vicar on the train, and the (comedically ingenious) scene at the election rally. Then, when Hannay meets up (again) with the bizarrely appareled Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), the film becomes a quasi-screwball comedy, with much sexual-tension-infused witty bickering between an attractive young man and woman who can't help but find themselves in one zany situation after another. Though humor and romantic relationships are staples of Hitchcock's thrillers, The 39 Steps is the only one I've seen in which they're so central (except maybe the romantic aspects of Vertigo and Notorious, but there isn't nearly as much comedy in those).

I'm reminded of a story someone (I don't remember who) told about sharing an elevator with Hitchcock. The two of them were alone in the elevator; then, when more people started getting on, Hitchcock started into the middle of describing a gruesome murder scene with great detail and relish. Soon the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and the eavesdropping fellow-passengers hesitated a moment before leaving, not wanting to miss the end of his lurid tale. When Hitchcock and the storyteller were again alone in the elevator, the latter anxiously asked what happened next; but, as Hitch explained, nothing happened next, he just made it up on the spot to amuse himself with everyone else's reactions. Hitchcock clearly saw a natural link between humor and fear, between comedy and tragedy, and so was never afraid to infuse some humor into his thrillers, which only improved them. That's nowhere more evident than in The 39 Steps.

Continuing this blog's steady decline into becoming a movie-news-aggregating site.

Or, if we're being honest, a CHUD-(and-occasionally-Badass-Digest)-news-aggregating site. But I'm sorry, if I see something sufficiently cool at some other movie site, I feel it's my duty to post about it here in order to bring the news to a wider audience. (That's a joke, it case you were wondering.)

Anyway, the helpful movie folks at CHUD recently wrote a piece about the site If We Don't, Remember Me, which features a slew of fantastic-looking film-related .gifs. Their selections range from the intuitive (Lawrence of Arabia, The Royal Tenenbaums, Blade Runner, The Holy Mountain) to the inspired (The Shining, Young Frankenstein, Dr. Strangelove, Eraserhead) to the, well, let's just say "counterintuitive" (Gentlemen Broncos). They're all worth a look, but be forewarned of the hypnotic power of an ever-repeating Jack Torrance, Travis Bickle, or Amélie Poulain.

And if that doesn't satisfy your .gif-grubbing goûts, check out one of the cornerstones of the CHUD Message Board, the thread ".gif it all you've got!" There you'll find a veritable cornucopia of brief, silent, low-resolution video-file goodness to amuse and disturb you, most but not all of it film-related. (Besides, any thread that starts off with an hommage to that underappreciated masterpiece (and, as you can see, kid-kill extravaganza), Postal, is doing something right.) Enjoy.

Blimey, guvna! They's some cracking pictures, they is!

Imagine me saying the line above in my worst attempt at Dick Van Dyke doing his worst attempt at cockney in Mary Poppins, and you'll get what I was going for.

Coming off my recent Powellpalooza, Time Out London has compiled a list of the hundred best British films of all time. (As usual, many thanks to CHUD for bring it to my attention.) This ambitious endeavor was accomplished by polling one hundred fifty people—filmmakers, actors, critics, and others, of many nationalities—on their favorite British films and compiling the list from their choices.

(However, as a side note, what qualifies as a "British film" remains somewhat unclear. The Third Man (number 2) was directed by a Briton and was partially filmed in England, but was mostly filmed on location in Vienna, and its two lead actors were American. The Offence (number 79) had British actors and was filmed in England, but its director, Sidney Lumet, and studio, United Artists, were both American. Stanley Kubrick (Barry Lyndon (number 19), A Clockwork Orange (number 34), and 2001 (number 57)) and Terry Gilliam (Brazil (number 24) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (number 54)) both were born in the United States and moved to Britain in adulthood. (But we Yanks know that you can take the American out of America, but you can't take America out of the American, so they should still count as ours, damn it!) Repulsion (number 45) was directed by a Pole, Roman Polanski, and Blow-Up (number 47) by an Italian, Michelangelo Antonioni, though both were filmed and take place in London. Brazil was filmed in England, but was produced and distributed by American companies. Walkabout (number 61) was filmed entirely in Australia, and The Bridge on the River Kwai (number 86) entirely on Sri Lanka (though the former is a Commonwealth dominion, and the latter was at the time, so maybe that's a gray area). I guess the main criterion they used is whether the director's British. I didn't mean to get as sidetracked as I now have on this question, but it's an important one if we're assigning films a particular nationality. Are The Bourne Supremacy and United 93 "British films" because Greengrass is British? Is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone American and The Prisoner of Azkaban Mexican because of their respective directors' nationalities?)

Still reading? Sorry about the derail. Back to Time Out London's list. Sadly, it's lists like this one, compiled by truly learned and astute filmlovers (as opposed to people whose cinematic memory reaches no further back than Star Wars), that make me realize how far I still have to go as an appreciator and student of film. I've only seen twenty-one of the films on the list (though six more are presently in my Netflix queue, for whatever that's worth), and only three—The Third Man, The Red Shoes (number 5), and Trainspotting (number 10)—among the top ten. I've never even heard of the number-one film (though I just saw another film by the same director). I don't even have the (bad) excuse of not wanting to read subtitles (though I've seen some British films that really could use them). I guess I've still got a lot of cinematic work ahead of me.

Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame!

THE RED SHOES

PEEPING TOM

That's Shakespeare, ya philistines!

So while I was writing my post on Phantasm last night (another wild Friday night for Owen!), it dawned on me that, of the films I'd watched recently, the one I was writing about was a goofy, low-budget, late-'70s supernatural horror movie, rather than, respectively, one of the most beautiful and moving films I've ever seen and a groundbreaking, chilling, thematically complex and brilliant thriller. A profound sense of cinephilic shame came over me, and I knew I must do something to make amends. So here goes.

The Red Shoes (trailer) is a masterpiece in every conceivable way. It tells the story of Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), a beautiful, young ballerina who, as she herself says, lives to dance. She's taken on by Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the imperious head of an esteemed ballet company, who sees her potential to become one of the great dancers in the history of ballet, given the right training and motivation. But she soon meets Julian Craster (Marius Goring), the company's young and ambitious composer, and they fall in love; this enrages Lermontov, who fears that love will distract Page and hold her back creatively. Buffeted by ultimatums from Lermontov and Craster, Page finds herself in a love triangle, forced to choose between her life and her art.

First off, the film is breath-taking visually, Technicolor at its finest and most spectacular. The colors are luminous and crisp, and Shearer's bright red hair looks like it was made to be filmed with that particular process. The whole film is a visual wonder to behold, but this element becomes truly transcendent during the main ballet sequence, the performance of the ballet The Red Shoes, based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale. Much like in Black Swan, the performance breaks the bonds of mere reality, as Page glides, leaps, and (literally) flies through a boundless environment of fantasy and pure emotion. Not to sound hyperbolic, but to me the ballet sequence is one of the greatest sequences committed to film, period.

Of course, the visuals aren't the only respect in which The Red Shoes is a triumph. The performances are uniformly excellent (assuming you don't have a problem with often melodramatic acting in a film about ballet), the drama is dynamic and stirring throughout, and its themes—above all the tragic strain of mutually exclusive but irresistable demands in one's life, in this case artistic creativity and romantic fulfilment—are profound and universal. I simply cannot recommend The Red Shoes enough. If you haven't seen it, see it immediately; if you have seen it, see it again.

Once I'd decompressed a bit from my viewing of The Red Shoes, I saw that the night was still young and thought I'd see what else Netflix Watch Instantly had to offer. I decided on Peeping Tom (trailer), having heard about it somewhere recently, but not realizing until it started that it's actually by the same director as The Red Shoes, Michael Powell. Turns out Powell and his frequent collaborator, Emeric Pressburger, were more or less the twin titans of 1940s British cinema, turning in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, A Matter of Life and Death, and Black Narcissus, in addition to The Red Shoes. However, Powell was working solo by the time he made Peeping Tom, a film starkly different from The Red Shoes in virtually every respect but their quality and their theme of irresistable, tragic compulsion.

Mark (Carl Boehm) is a shy young film technician who always carries a hand-held camera and has an extensive filmmaking lab, screening apparatus, and collection of reels in his home. He's also a serial killer. His M.O. is murdering women with a blade attached to his camera's tripod leg, filming them while he does so and watching the films later. He becomes attached to Helen (Anna Massey), the young lady who lodges in Mark's house with her blind mother (Maxine Audley), but their budding relationship doesn't lessen his desperate need for voyeuristic violence, nor does the growing danger posed by the police investigation into his murders. (In fact, Mark displays the now-cliché behavior of the killer taking greater and greater risks out of apparent desire to be caught.)

While The Red Shoes revels in uplifting beauty and passion, Peeping Tom is sordid, unpleasant, and disturbing, especially for its time. (It apparently showed the first bare breast in mainstream British cinema.) Speaking of its time, it was released the same year, 1960, as another film by a British director about a psychologically disturbed but sympathetic serial killer of women, Psycho. While Psycho is more suspenseful and a greater overall filmmaking achievement than Peeping Tom is, the latter film is considerably more daring in how it depicts its killer. In Psycho, we think Norman is merely a dutiful son protecting his murderous mother until the climactic reveal, and the focus is usually on characters other than him (Marion, Sam, Lila, Arbogast). In Peeping Tom, however, we know from the beginning that Mark is the murderer, and he's in all but one or two scenes; the audience spends virtually the entire film following someone they know to be a serial killer.

Thematically, Peeping Tom obviously has a lot to say, beginning with Mark's symbolically loaded, if cumbersome, murder weapon. (No simple kitchen knife for Mark!) In addition to filming his victims, Mark mounts a mirror on his camera so that they see their own reflections as he kills them. So, in the darkened, quiet seclusion of his home theater (very much like a public theater), he watches these women watching themselves being murdered. And, of course, we both watch him watching them (adding another layer to the onion) and join him in watching them ourselves as though we're sitting there with him (making the audience an accomplice in his voyeurism, if not his violence directly). The role of Mark's camera is a pretty straightforward embodiment of the guilty thrill of witnessing violence (mediated and thereby dissociated from either danger to the viewer or real sympathy for the victim; "It's not real, it's just a movie"), but the role of the mirror is more complex and problematic. Mark explains that he's trying to capture the most perfect fear, the fear not of the violence itself but of their own fear, of the fear they see in their own reflections. Perhaps this is a comment on the filmmaker's manipulation of his audience in order to provoke emotional response and involvement, or on the audience's identification with what and who they see on film, or perhaps is a reiteration of the theme of the audience's reflexive involvement in, and thus partial responsibility for, what they see. (Probably all three, and even more that I didn't think of.) I think Scorsese was onto something when he said that the two essential films about filmmaking are 8 1/2 and Peeping Tom, Fellini exploring the exhuberant, life-affirming aspects of the art and Powell the sinister, transgressive, invasive aspects.

Another major element of Peeping Tom, and another it shares with Psycho, is male violence against women. Ever since these two "proto-slashers," women have been the primary victims of cinematic serial killers, and sex has been a major component. In Psycho, "Mrs. Bates" kills women to whom "Norman" is sexually attracted (attraction evidenced by his own "peeping tom" scene watching Marion throught a peep hole); in Peeping Tom, not only are all of Mark's victims women, but in the first scene he murders a prostitute, and in addition to his film-crew job he moonlights as a pornographic photographer. In one respect, this is just a reflection of the history, as old as humanity itself, of sexually motivated violence by men against women. Even relatively normal and sympathetic killers (in comparison to the more monstrous likes of Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Leatherface) like Mark and Norman are depicted as socially isolated and emotionally stunted, with little romantic or sexual experience; desire becomes mingled with frustration and shame, and finds an outlet in violence against the objects of desire. Indeed, in Peeping Tom the themes of the dark sides of filmmaking and sexuality are both expressed in the word "object": Just as the camera creates a distance between filmer (and audience) and filmed, between subject and object, a distance and detachment necessary to kill a helpless, pleading victim, so too can sexual desire on the part of an emotionally immature (essentially adolescent) desirer result in seeing the desired simply as a thing to be selfishly enjoyed rather than as a fellow-person with her own life, wants, and fears. Both violence and pure sexual desire (that is, divorced from emotional involvement or empathy) involve a great deal of objectification, an effect essential to the mediating role of the camera.

Whew. I told you there was a lot going on in that film. I'll wrap this up by simply saying that I'd honestly never heard or been aware of Michael Powell prior to watching these two films, but that they were more than enough definitely to spur me to check out more of his and Pressburger's work in the future.