My favorite film – The Last of the Mohicans

So over at The Guardian’s film blog they’ve been running a series of each staff writer’s favorite movie. I thought that was a great idea, so I thought I would try to start that here with mine: The Last of the Mohicans.

The Last of the Mohicans

Mohicans just barely edges out Die Hard as my favorite, and while I tried to come up with a lengthy paragraph to explain how I could relegate to number two the John McTiernan masterpiece that is the greatest film ever made, I could finally only think of one word: history.

Where does one begin on the sweeping vistas of Dante Spinotti’s cinematography or the sweeping vistas of the language of a script written by Michael Mann and Christopher Crowe, itself an adaptation of an adaptation of a novel, where, simply, to begin with this True American Epic? Where to begin with how much this movie meant and still means to my life? Sure, there are some naysayers, but to them I politely ask (as I ask of those naysayers of the tv series Rome) to keep your love of truly accurate history at the door and revel in a world of detail that few directors but Mann could recreate so completely and immersively.

It was my first year of college. Mansfield University in Mansfield, PA. The only movie theater was about an hour away in Tonawanda, I believe it was called. My then-girlfriend was Nicole Keller. (Side note: Nicole was killed in a rollover accident a couple years later. Pretty sad.) We had decided we wanted to see a movie, and so we drove the distance to the theater and saw The Last of the Mohicans.

It seems that with some movies their greatness is not fully understood the first viewing. A couple of movies have been like that for me, namely any early movie of Takeshi Kitano or Edward Burns (I swear his movies grow in stature with repeated viewings).

However, with Last of the Mohicans, I walked out of that theater holding Nicole’s hand knowing full-well that I had just had the greatest movie-going eperience of my life. I was caught-up in all the sumptuous detail, and I couldn’t extract my mind from the experience, even after it was over. And that belief stands to this day, through any and every movie I’ve ever seen.

Madeleine Stowe is perfectly cast, her strong voice quavering at just the right moments and commanding the attention of colonels the next: “Duncan, you are a man of a few admirable qualities, but taken as a whole, I was wrong to have thought so highly of you.”

There is redemption through sacrifice. Misplaced ideological beliefs that one’s goal to destroy another is right and proper due to two wrongs making a right. There is ultimate sacrifice for love. There is revenge through love. And there is some of the best classical music ever put to film.

In short, there is no more perfectly encapsulated blockbuster-as-art than Michael Mann’s Last of the Mohicans, and I am very proud to call it my favorite movie of all time.

Things I learned in 2010: Part 1

2010. What did I learn?

 

Ricky Gervais / Stephen Merchant

I learned that the anticipation and excitement with which I faced anything done by this duo used to be second only to the anticipation I often feel for any new movie by Michael Mann. However, after the absolutely complete misfire of Cemetery Junction to the complete lack of humor in Gervais’s second American stand-up show, I now look  towards their new projects with both a bit of melancholy and muted anticipation.

 

 

 

Liars

I learned that filmmakers will allow marketing teams to say anything they want about their movies without worrying one bit about whether they’re going to be viewed in any specific way by their audience. CATFISH: Why pretend it’s real. What’s so wrong with having a fictional treatise on our current internet culture? You don’t think people will notice enough? Shame on you for wanting anything more than to make a living, breathing, honest piece of film. And MONSTERS: Gareth Edwards lied about the budget and did nothing to disabuse the world of that lie until people said: “No way.” And then he smirked and said: “Yes, I fell for the Karl Rove school of thought when I realized you can just say something and let the idiots of this ‘now culture’ run with it and so long as you didn’t tell them to say it, let them think it’s true…even if it isn’t.” Shame on you…shame.

This movie was AWFUL

I learned that it wasn’t some bout of misplaced nostalgia or yearning that allowed me to enjoy Transformers. No, it was the totally kickass aspect of giant robots fighting in the streets of Los Angeles. I learned this because though I have a huge soft-spot for the original Tron, no sense of nostalgia, no matter how hard I close my eyes and picture sitting on the back of a station wagon at a Drive-In theater in Pennsylvania, could make me like a movie so completely atrocious on all levels that it has no reason to exist at all. This movie was so, so, so, so bad.

My two favorite things...

I learned that no matter how much I wanted to enjoy something that I enjoy more than anything, save for playing Medieval II: Total War, I couldn’t forgive all the things that are so wrong with modern movie theater presentations. And yet, I’m not naive enough to know this is exactly what they want to happen. It is a lot cheaper to condition people to watch movies personally, whether at home or on a commute or anywhere they want, than it is to pay for the upkeep, electricity and everything else that it takes to power a movie theater and keep it running. Either way, it’s a depressing, depressing, depressing state of affairs for modern moviegoers who can’t get to the Croisette or to any of the European arthouses or Los Angeles.

This used to be my playground…

I was driving through Easton, Pennsylvania yesterday, just over the Delaware River from New Jersey, and my brother and myself drove past this relic from my past: the old, abandoned 25th Street movie theater. And since this is Christmas, the time of recollection, I thought I’d post a little article on what this movie theater meant to me growing up…

25th Street Abandoned Movie Theater

My first and greatest memory from this theater was in 1983, in what I will always remember as the ‘abortive Return of the Jedi Viewing’. We stood in line on that front cement area for countless numbers of hours. When we were finally let in, I distinctly remember my joy, walking through the front lobby area, towards the long back hallway that led to the door of the screening theater, walking to my seat…and then, I only have a crystal-clear memory of the Super Star Destroyer crashing into the planet and just as it explodes…the projector breaking, watching the  celluloid burning on the lamp as it gets jammed…walking back out through the door, down the long hallway, so sad, looking at my father who said: “There’s another theater down the road, we’ll go there.” All I could think was that this was my favorite theater, and it had let me down so completely, in the worst way possible.

My second most memorable moment came when my father and myself went to a screening of the Brian DePalma film ‘Casualties of War’. (“Would you stop lookin’ at Diaz!”) Now, you may deride us for being somewhat ignorant to the title of the movie, but it had Marty McFly for god’s sake…how searing an emotional drama could it be?! (We soon found out). During the rape scene my father got up and walked out of the theater. I watched a moment more and then stood and followed. I found my father in that long hallway, talking to a manager. ”Do you know what kind of movie you’re showing in there?” The manager looked at me and then my father. “It is called Casualties of War, sir…and it does have an R rating.” “I don’t give a fuck. I want access to another movie and I want it now.” The manager glanced at me again, some vague kind of understanding passing between us, as though this man could peer deeply into what my life with this monster was like. He turned back to the counter as he said: “Very well, sir…if you will follow me.” I forget what movie we walked into then, but I always knew from that moment on that people…just knew what was happening. Whether instinctively or intuitively, I always somehow noticed that they knew.

The third most memorable moment came when I walked through the front doors, so excited for what was to be the next James Cameron film in what, to me, felt like forever. I had convinced my father to take me to see The Abyss. So we went. And when we walked out, I remember feeling ALMOST as dejected as I would later feel watching Medicine Man. It was an awful feeling, compounded by the fact that my father spent the entire rest of the day letting me know just how happy he was that I dragged him to that ‘awful clusterfuck of a faggotty film’. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but this is a family blog…

The last memory involves my brother and myself watching Scrooged one christmas and it being the last time my brother and I did anything together. We laughed and ate popcorn until both things made our stomachs hurt. It was magical and it’s yet another reason why I fell in love with movies and the act of going to see movies.

Long live the celluloid dream. Happy Holidays, everyone. I’m gonna go watch Scrooged again. “Bitch hit me with a toaster!”

filmman’s HAGEBOC banner entry

Sorry, got bored of editing.

Pick this one. I want two points. :-)

Thank you.

HAGEBOC '10 -- Proof that film touches every corner of the world.

I put everyone’s names within the approximation of where they are.

I have no idea where Marco lives, so I just used all of Australia.

Review: Monsters

Well, here it is. Another textbook example of woefully misguided movie marketing. Just the tagline in that poster makes me cringe after seeing the film, a film I was able to see thanks to a distribution model I still don’t quite understand. As with Centurion, the film is available On Demand before it hits theaters. However, Monsters seems to be available a full month before theatrical release.

All I can say is: this is a road movie about a seemingly privileged young woman and a young photojournalist(?) who set out under hazy circumstances to return the girl to America. We don’t know, exactly, because we get little snippets of dialogue here-and-there about backgrounds and relatives and friends and when I say a little dialogue, I mean very little dialogue. Through some hazy plot contrivances-no, wait, the plot machinations are pretty clear and do nothing more than serve, poorly, to push our fated couple towards certain doom inside an area in Mexico called the Infected Zone (or Zona Infectada…which I really like, and would really like to use as my band name),  and along the way we’re supposed to, well, watch two people walk through a zone apparently once infected with, I don’t know, alien sperm or something, because there’s a whole slew of alien baddies waiting to devour our fearless couple.

Why are they fearless, you may ask…(Though you’ll wish you hadn’t)…is due to a painfully long ferry-office scene in Mexico involving plot mechanics so obvious, it was as if you could hear the director speaking to the actors as they did things even they didn’t seem comfortable with.

Spoilers after the jump: (Trust me, they don’t give anything away…that you’ll care about, anyway.)

Review – Soul Kitchen

Ever since Head-On blasted through my cortex by chance one late-night television viewing, I’ve anxiously awaited every subsequent film Fatih Akin has announced. I have yet to see his debut, In July, but I did see his New York, I Love You segment and his segment from Visions of Europe. I found the New York segment serviceable enough even with its well-done if predictable ending but the Europe segment I found somewhat striking (and very European). His Edge of Heaven was the masterpiece Babel aspired to be. So it was with great anticipation that I sat down to watch his latest concoction…Soul Kitchen.

Soul Kitchen Directed by Fatih Akin

The story involves the owner of the Hamburg ‘restaurant’ Soul Kitchen. It’s perhaps not so much the conventional definition of a restaurant as it’s more a warehouse-sized room with a few appliances and a bar tucked away in the corner. The owner, Zinos, has a girlfriend leaving the country and a ne’er do well brother who has been given leave from prison and needs to find a job. He has hurt his back moving an appliance and at the going-away dinner for his girlfriend, he stumbles upon the firing of a manic chef (played brilliantly by Akin stalwart Birol Unel).
This set-up and the subsequent narrative conceit works like aces for the first half of this film. Zinos must juggle all his priorities, deal with a long-distance relationship, help his brother by ‘lying’ on work forms and deal with not having insurance to fix his bad back.
The actors dive completely into their roles and Akin handles it all with the deft hand of someone becoming very comfortable as a writer/director. Halfway through the film, however…something happens. A character who was on the periphery suddenly vaults front-and-center and adds a diabolical spin to the proceedings after a decision is made by Zinos that is a little difficult to believe.
After this character becomes the driving force for our protagonist and his brother to get into various shades of mayhem, we are left with a film that works well enough in spots, but ultimately loses its way and tries to touch every corner of the madcap world it wants to create.
In doing this, it even drops the crazy chef character for long intermittent stretches. Why Akin wanted to focus on a greedy developer and not Unel’s fabulous chef character creation is a question I would love to ask and have answered. The chemistry between Zinos and the Chef when the Chef is teaching him to cook is witty, funny and unpredictable. I would have wished for the chance to see the events in the film driven by the ‘Mad Chef’ and not the developer. (Though a scene where Zinos and his brother attempt to steal back the rights to his restaurant is zany madcap fun.)
And for a movie called Soul Kitchen, there is a glaring lack of anything having to do with food. I could have taken two or three more segments of Unel drinking and cooking and Zinos running back-and-forth to appease and learn from a Chef he believes a brilliant man…but…to no avail. Add a late-session plot twist pitting the two brothers against each other and you’re left with pretty much the whole stew and no ability to recognize any of the key ingredients.
That being said, it’s still a pretty fun movie, if only for the first half performances and pacing and it rewards you with some pretty funny situations and wrap-ups at the end.
I still greatly anticipate his next project, Garbage in the Garden of Eden and would probably even slip in a second viewing of this one, as Unel is that good in even his limited screen time.

A request…

Alright, I promise.
I won’t post anymore for a while after this one.
However, I have a small request, and I invite anyone to respond.

I’ve kinda been caught-up in these two films I’ve been working on for the past year and the year before that I kinda went and got married and moved to Austin, Texas (since annulled) and then came back to Boston via Florida and so needless to say it’s been a pretty busy two years.

That said, I have some more catching-up to do, this time in film.
I am woefully behind in my movie-watching, and since I know many of you keep on top of things film-related much better than I do, I was wondering if you could just give me maybe ten suggestions from the last two years that I should seek out…movies that I know I’ve missed that I shouldn’t have.

Any-and-all suggestions will be taken into consideration and watched and maybe even commented on in a new thread. I am not beholden to any specific genre, director, or country. I want to see them all.

Thanks, everyone, and may the suggestions flow forth!

What is wrong with this poster?

Unstoppable

Review: Centurion

There is a lot to like in the first half of Neil Marshall’s Roman chase movie.

The production design, cinematography, acting, costumes, and…did I mention the acting?

Neil Marshall's Centurion

If Marshall had maybe cast lesser actors in this, I could have enjoyed it a bit more. But he didn’t and instead he has some of the strongest actors together on-screen that I’ve seen in quite a while in what ultimately becomes an empty genre exercise. And that really is a shame, because what could have developed into a really bangin’ take on one of the great mysteries of Roman History (the unknown fate of the Ninth Legion) really just becomes Neil Marshall’s own bid at making a lesser Apocalypto.

Michael Fassbender is Centurion Quintus Dias, who survives a raid on his lone outpost and is taken prisoner by the Picts.

Somehow (if editing is to be believed), a messenger (even though he was apparently shot in the back with an arrow), is able to notify the Romans of the Ninth Legion of the fate of the outpost (without an arrow in his back).

Needless to say, the legion is dispatched in all haste to counter the enemies who attacked the outpost, the Picts. Now, if this all already seems convoluted and rushed, that’s because it is. It seems as though there were large chunks of this movie taken out and we’re meant to understand that Dias escaped capture and that some messenger got free and that General Titus Virilus (excellently played by Domenic West) can just be approached by a messenger who doesn’t realize he’s a commander, and really, none of that matters, as the first half of this movie is a sumptuous headfirst dive into period Roman-ness and no amount of detail is laid to rest in bringing the world of the Romans onto the screen.

My Most Important Year in Film

I was sitting behind the computer the other day, dumping footage into Adobe Premiere, completely bored out of my mind and I started thinking…what was the most important year in film for me? By that I mean: What year contained the most movies, the instances that affected me the most…what year impacted me the most in terms of film?

And in this instance I don’t mean quality. As I am sure, you are all going to destroy most of the reasoning behind why most of the films I point out have affected me, but it’s a question I hope most of you address in the comments, and as we’re all of different ages, I’m interested to see what years are chosen.

So, to start, My Most Important Year in Film was…(drumroll please)…1989.

New Takeshi Kitano trailer for Outrage triggers memories…

Please, guys, don’t be angry with me, but I honestly feel this trailer deserves a post of its own.

I remember very well the first time I saw a Takeshi Kitano movie. I was walking through, I believe, the Ikebukuro section of Tokyo with my then-wife Yumiko. (I can picture the train station and the buildings around it, and I’m pretty sure it was that section, but time is…to say the least…rough on memory.)

We walked past a movie theater and I saw a poster with three men, Kitano in front and this wacky font saying BROTHER in English. I was instantly intrigued and I turned to my wife and said: ”Hey…isn’t that that guy who…” She somehow always knew what I was going to ask and she glanced at the poster and said: “Yup.”

Predators Preview at SXSW

I’m sorry for making this a post, and I originally posted this in the random thread for March, but Predator means too much to me in my life of film love and lore to let this pass.

Now, I’m going to warn Brian ahead of time: I am going to go all fanboy on this. UNABASHEDLY fanboy.

Predators Directed by Nimrod Antal

So…apparently, after perusing a post by Jeff Wells, there was an article by Eric Kohn in the Wall Street Journal(?) stating that Predators stole the show from Kick-Ass at last nights opening of the SXSW film festival. This article also states it’s pretty clear that this project is Rodriguez’s baby and that he has tight control of what happens. And seeing the poster accompanying the article, I believe it. More on that in a moment. First, however, a question:

Just how un-biased can these previews be? I mean, Rodriguez is an Austin god and these festivals always have accommodating audiences and screeners…so…its reception last night is, can I say, a tad bit suspect. However, that is not to infer that the reviewer is in cahoots with anyone at all…just saying…festival audiences can be…seductive in their enthusiasm.

Second is this rather blatant example of Rodriguez, well, as Wells points out, showcasing his rather strong  ”B-movie aesthetic”. I mean…the very first thing is that poster and the…wait, let me clarify this first by saying this:

Review: Brooklyn’s Finest

Alright, first things first: Richard Gere is a revelation. Unfortunately, his story is a great large movie stuck in a film of large movies cut down to small movies to fit into one large movie.

Brooklyn's Finest Directed by Antoine Fuqua

The entire time I was watching this, I kept hearing in my mind the meetings with Fuqua and the executives: “This will be my Heat. This will be my Epic (capitalized) NYC Gangster-and-Cops Flick that people will remember for years.”

Unfortunately, not everyone is able to achieve what Michael Mann can achieve and what aspires to be epic is really only an episodic film whose parts create a whole that doesn’t even really rise above basic-cable melodrama. But not for the filmmakers not trying.

Heat, at least to me, kept the focus mostly on DeNiro’s character and watched what happened to those who were affected by his actions. Here, Fuqua tries to cram at least 4 separate movies into one 2-hour slog that never finds its footing or through-line. Even when Wesley Snipes shows up as the high-level gang lord just out of prison, it feels as though the director tries too hard to give Wesley his own movie, rather than have Wesley simply be a foil for Don Cheadle’s undercover cop.

But back to Gere: his scenes were sublime and staggering and what a pleasure it would be to see his character and his arc made into its own movie.

Gere plays Eddie, a cop just 7 days away from retirement. That old cliche is well-worn, but watching Gere take numerous rookies through the paces while trying to ensure he gets through to retirement makes for some tense and satisfying viewing. Add to that his complicated relationship with a hooker who sleeps with, it seems, everyone on the force, and which leads to a great scene of no dialogue that Gere plays masterfully simply by sitting on a staircase in an apartment building and his final foray into finally ‘doing something with his time on the force’, (even if those actions come just a day after his retirement) and you have a storyline that works…in aces. Again, unfortunately, it’s built around and within a larger movie that tries so stridently to do what The Wire did so much better before it. (Kudos to Fuqua for making the final fight scene between Gere and a random bad guy believable and exciting, and giving it one of the more satisfying fight endings in quite a while.)

One more note on the movie: Wow…never have I seen such heavy-handed and clunky song usage as I have with this movie. “The Great Pretender” playing underneath a tense dialogue scene between an undercover cop and his lieutenant? An unknown song about “finding and getting my money” while Hawke looks and searches for the money he went to a random drop-house to find? Uggh. Come on, Fuqua…let the scenes speak for themselves, please.

I would love to recommend this, and I will, but only if someone promises to make the movie they should have with Richard Gere as the main protagonist.

Major Directors’ Early Works Vol. 5: James Cameron

In this installment of Major Directors’ Early Works, we’re going to look at the 1978 first film of James Cameron named “Xenogenesis”.

This is a quite staggering early work, if only because Cameron completely self-taught himself special effects by going to the USC film library and photocopying every thesis paper he could find and absorbing all there was to know about how to make fantastic worlds appear on-screen. The man truly is a genius.

I’m reading the most recent biography on Cameron right now, entitled ‘The Futurist’, and the slight bit that they discuss his early life reveals a man who can not only do it all, but can imagine it all and then create it all. And this early film shows just how much he wanted to achieve.

He is quoted in that biography as saying that after a viewing of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, he realized there was something he needed to understand about what Kubrick did with special effects and that there was something he wanted to achieve in that same realm. He didn’t view 2001 and say there was something he wished he had done. No, he said he now knew there was something he wanted to achieve, to show people that same type of feeling Kubrick left him with and he wanted to dissect and learn how to create those effects so he could achieve that also. *Filmman shakes his head in awe*. That level of inquisitiveness is breathtaking.

As is this short film. There are robots fighting! There are lasers and a robot throwdown and I have to say, I was more giddy watching this than at any time during the Los Angeles street sequence in Transformers, and that scene made me pretty goddamn giddy.

The tank is an obvious precursor of the hunter-killers in Terminator and the other machine is an obvious precursor of the amp suits in Avatar. They even composited the cockpit onto the good machine and then show an awesome angle from behind the bad robot to show off that level of effects talent. *Filmman shakes his head in awe*.

And the ending, while leaving it wide open for a sequel, is still, you have to admit, pretty thrilling for what it is.

This is the birth of a miraculous filmmaker who would go on to make some of the greatest action films ever. How I wish he would get back to even effects like this, and leave the CG to George Lucas. Cameron is a master with CG, but please get back to real-world effects. The world misses things like this. And Michael Bay needs to learn how to film a robot fight sequence.

Review: Avatar or Please bring back the ’90′s Cameron, when he made good movies

Let’s be completely clear on something here: Avatar misses on just about every level. Yes, you will believe, (especially at the end, when Avatar and human meet in a pretty effective embrace and the real and the cg blend seamlessly into a remarkably affecting scene), yes, James Cameron is a master of his craft and he’s been given a rather amazing toybox to play in, but oh, boy…is it ruined on a bloated, epic slog through the ‘Eden’ of Pandora, a beautiful, fully-realized world ruined, yes, ruined by not only the gimmick that is 3D but especially by the glasses you’re forced to wear, glasses that all but ruin the movie-going experience set before you.