#49 – Darwin’s Nightmare, #50 – Born into Brothels, #51 – Kick-Ass

One of these things is not like the others.

Obviously I watched Darwin’s Nightmare and Born into Brothels for class. I have almost nothing to say about Darwin’s Nightmare because thinking about it just makes me hate the entire world or at least the capitalist portions of the world. Which, y’know. I’m an American. And I don’t necessarily hate capitalism. But I definitely hate the extent to which, as demonstrated in this movie, people think something’s good as long as it’s making a profit.

Born into Brothels is pretty good if horrifyingly sad.

Look, we all knew I was going to end up talking about Kick-Ass. Because I’m a privileged white American lady so I can contextualize and discuss/bitch about a movie about a bunch of privileged white Americans pretending to be superheroes with a lot more confidence than I can anything with any sort of…global relevance. It’s just who I am.

So Kick-Ass pissed professional robot (too soon?) Roger Ebert and a lot of other people off a whole lot. Largely because of the character of Hit Girl. I don’t want to be one of those people who thinks she knows more about everything than everybody else but: let me tell you why they’re wrong about their opinion of Hit Girl as a character but right to be displeased in general.

Well okay, I want to start by saying: Roger Ebert has his detractors and I am not one of them. I think he’s dead-wrong in his opinions of video games and I disagree with some of his reviews but otherwise I’m generally pro-Ebert.

Anyway. The issue with Hit Girl is she’s 11 but also: the most effective and ruthless killer in the whole movie.

Also she swears a lot which makes for some pretty cheap jokes.

But she also introduced me to this song, which really gets stuck in your head, so all is forgiven:

So Hit Girl is this missing ingredient that made Watchmen fail (as a movie, not as a comic book…obviously the comic is brilliant). As far as I’m concerned, the Watchmen movie never made its sort of…contract with its audience clear. It was tonally iffy. Or at least it was if you’re familiar with the comic, which was pretty clearly a sort of commentary on the superhero genre. The movie basically to me just slipped into being another superhero movie.

Kick-Ass is no more tonally sound and DEFINITELY slips into “another superhero movie” territory and stays there pretty firmly. And Hit Girl isn’t handled perfectly so I’m not willing to say 100% than she’s a successful commentary. But making a young girl the person committing all the horrible, violent, and cinematically awesome acts we love to watch IS something that should actively make you think about the nature of such acts in different contexts, where the person committing them isn’t a tiny child.

It sort of reminds me of the part in Hostel II with the lady in the bathtub enjoying her torturing a little too much–a moment which pretty clearly draws attention to the sort of mixed pleasure we get from horror movies, its connection to sexual pleasure, etc. Again, I’m not saying Hostel II is a pitch-perfect commentary or anything, but I think there’s a definite connection here. And someone needs to come to its defense every once in a while.

But back to Hit Girl. Along with making us question our love of violence, she’s a pretty clear example of what Watchmen (the comic AND the movie) is getting at: what kind of person would actively choose to take vigilante action? Kick-Ass gives us basically two really clear answers: 1) naive idiot kids who want to get laid and 2) sociopaths. Apparently this is different in the book, but this idea is more clear in the character of Big Daddy, Hit Girl’s father whose wife was murdered so he swore Batman-style vengeance. To me, his character is mostly be about how as justified as that vengeance may seem, you’d have to be basically insane to execute it (though of course Batman doesn’t kill people).

Someone pointed out to me that all of the craziness about Hit Girl might not have been brought up (at least to the same degree) if she was a boy.

The only parallel example I can think of involves sexualization and 11-13 year-old actors and not violence, but the hilarious and awesome Bobb’e J. Thompson aka Kid Whose Name I Forgot from Role Models and Tracy Jordan’s super-smart son on 30 Rock came to mind. Role Models features a fair amount of this kid swearing and his character’s whole steez is “I just realized I like girls’ boobs.” Sexuality is definitely different but at the same time, culturally Americans censor sex more than violence. And I don’t distinctly remember a lot of critics complaining about Bobb’e J. Thompson. But I might not have been looking around for them. And Role Models wasn’t half as huge as Kick-Ass is.

Speaking of sexuality: there’s no end to how overjoyed I am that we got a superhero who’s a lady that isn’t basically 100% objectified and sexualized. Too bad in order to do that she had to be 11. But still.

Jezebel had some more thoughts on Hit Girl and sexuality–they think seeing a female superhero who isn’t sexualized is a bit too jarring for American audiences. I’m not sure where I fall on this. It’s definitely an interesting read.

COMING SOON: One day I’ll finish watching You Can Count on Me. Also: Trust Us, This is All Made Up and, with any luck, Hot Tub Time Machine.

#46 – Sherman’s March, #47 – Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, #48 – Date Night

For people who aren’t interested in history: William Tecumseh Sherman was this general in the civil war who basically beat the hell out of the south. Which, y’know…nice. He also had all these “scorched earth” policies which are…pretty iffy and as a result southern racists/southerners who for some reason are still mad about things that happened in the 1800s really hate him. That’s pretty much all I know about that.

The 1986 movie Sherman’s March, however, is about a southern guy who decides to make a documentary about the lasting effects of Sherman’s march to sea in the south but ends up just getting consistently distracted by attractive ladies.

It’s really, really dryly funny. The best exchange, between the documenter/subject, Ross McElwee and his father:

“Today I filmed Didi washing her dog and Steve going to the music company where he used to work.”

“Now how is that going to be useful?”

“In this film?”

“Just…in any film.”

I don’t have anything particularly intelligent about it, but it’s very good and thoughtful and provides an interesting and intimate portrait of McElwee.

It also pairs really interestingly with my second movie for this post, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Maybe a good double feature.

So, this movie is an adaptation of the David Foster Wallace book of the same name–it’s one of my all-time favorite books and he’s one of my all-time favorite authors.

It’s also Jim from The Office aka John Krasinski’s screenwriting/directorial debut. And it’s not exactly stellar, but it is a really, really solid effort.

One of the things that I’ve found I like a lot in a first time director’s movie is an obvious lack of perfection paired with an awareness of that lack. One of the problems I have with, say, Garden State is it doesn’t really feel aware, as a film, of itself as something that is flawed. This is a dumb personal thing–I dislike hubris and like for people to always have a sense of possibility for improvement (a very little-known fact about me: despite owning basically none, I’m obsessed with the concept of self-help books and self-help in general. I’m weirdly into intense self-reflection and self-analysis as a means of finding ways to improve myself as a human being. In other words: I use them to aid my obsessive, crippling self-consciousness).

This movie definitely had that. It felt imperfect because it was, but it felt aware of its imperfections. I didn’t take a ton of stylistic risks. But it was also already taking some sort of…context risks (there’s some rape-as-love talk in this movie, for example. And rape-as-means-of-self-discovery. It’s not meant to be taken at face value either time but obviously those things are pretty challenging and intense). It’s a substance-over-style movie which I think is a pretty good way to go for a new director.

John Krasinski himself has probably the best…not my favorite but probably the most challenging and one of the most interesting of the monologues (the monologues in this movie are basically transcribed whole-cloth from the book, which featured the answer halves of some fictional interviews…100% someone monologuing, no description of scene or anything). Which would be annoying if it weren’t for apparently a sort of great reason–apparently the actor in that role had to drop out at the last minute and Krasinski took his place as a time saving technique. Which I’m fine with.

Ben Gibbard can’t act but that’s not surprising.

Will Forte does a really good job in this movie. Will Forte is–if you’re not aware–a current Saturday Night Live cast member. In my opinion the best current cast member (he’s best known for his MacGruber character. Personally I like The Falconer and Tim Calhoun better) and he’s basically fantastic in general.

Anyway, the movie at hand. It operates under the pretty astute assumption that the key to the actual “Brief Interview” portions of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men have to do with the effect of the feminist movement on heterosexual men and the ways they live their lives in relation to women as a result of this (something that I think is pretty fascinating).

As a result, the moments that utilize other parts of the novel seem really, really out of place. The most notable one being about a man whose father was a bathroom attendant. It’s pretty well-executed and it’s a really fantastic story but it seems lost amongst the other interviews.

It’s a real shame that this movie was so under-seen. It’s accessible in a way that the book isn’t and I think provides a lot of opportunities for rich discussion.

I wonder if it’s too anti-male. There are some incredibly negative portraits–men who attempt to “understand” women as a means of taking advantage of them. Arrogant men who believe themselves to be the world’s greatest lovers. It begins with Ben Shenkman (who is awesome) as a man who compulsively shouts “Victory for the forces of democratic freedom!” at the top of his lungs during sex who claims to reject and even hate the women he is with who are accepting of this quirk–they are “patronizing.”

Then there’s Will Forte’s character (Subject #72, I think). Nervously professing his love for “all women.” Uncomfortably listing things, obviously trying to be positive, slipping accidentally into things like  ”I love how you can never keep them from shopping.” Who feels more like most of the men I know. More honest to me. Not that the others don’t exist. I’m a college student, I’m pretty aware of terrible, disgusting people. But I’m more interested in these Subject #72 types.

And bravo to Will Forte again for just a really great performance.

What a mighty good man:

Date Night was better than I expected but I had low expectations.

I love Tina Fey.

I felt like all the black characters in this movie were pretty much stereotypes. And all the other characters were white.

I’m pretty sure this was filmed entirely on digital, which is sort of great. The future is now, Old Hollywood.

#44 – Bamboozled, #45 – aka Don Bonus

Second new Spike Lee movie of the year! All right!

Apparently a lot of people consider this Lee’s best film. I think that has a lot to do with how you qualify “best.” Because it’s SIGNIFICANTLY less polished in comparison to She’s Gotta Have It. It has some moments that I think are even kind of heavy-handed.

It also seems pretty personal. Like…Do the Right Thing features less consistent, direct address of a specific racial issue. There are other things mixed in there. This is two hours of pure “look at this problem that exists.” It’s clear that it’s a topic that means a lot to him.

By the way, Pierre Delacroix reminds me a bit of Aaron McGruder if Aaron McGruder was an idiot. I think the Boondocks audience definitely has some members who miss the satire. But…Aaron McGruder’s not an idiot and Boondocks didn’t start as something that was meant to be social commentary and turn into…well, offensive though it may be, a phrase Spike Lee used himself seems most appropriate: coonery buffoonery. But of course, he was talking about Tyler Perry:

Uh…obviously also Pierre Delacroix is an asshole from the beginning and Aaron McGruder seems pretty cool.

Anyway, I want to talk about something that has been sort of…recurring in my actual life lately that I think this film comments on to a certain extent.

I would consider most of the people I choose to be friends with funny. Some of them are even interested in comedy as a career (I do not exclude myself from this listing).

I’m also an almost stupidly liberal person with a lot of almost stupidly liberal friends.

So…lately I’ve felt like these two sort of…channels running through some of my friends contradict each other. I’ve mentioned I have a lot of male friends–to be more specific, I have a lot of white, heterosexual male friends. Who are the sort of people who can find humor in anything.

I think that’s a respectable trait. But I also think it’s used as a crutch in a way that we sort of…refuse to acknowledge that we’re possibly coming from a position of societal privilege. Or just acknowledge that we’re possibly hurting one another. It’s a means of distancing yourself emotionally from something.

I guess my point is: a big thing that I got out of the movie that I would never have been able to articulate without its presence is basically a sense of…”yes it’s good to be able to find humor in everything but mocking some things may be possibly socially irresponsible.”

I can’t lie, I barely remember Don Bonus. Cambodian refugee in the Bay Area…films his own life…diary style…sad and sort of moving. But I guess not memorable.

I have a lot of opinions on the next upcoming movie, Sherman’s March most of them positive. And I need to watch You Can Count on Me if only so I can get my next Netflix movie. Sorry I’ve been so lazy, internet.

#43 – Salesman

That sociology class I’m in yielded a movie I was sort of interested in!

This was directed by the Maysles Brothers, which careful reader (I use the singular because I assume there is only one of you, Rich) may remember as the directors of one of my all-time favorite movies, Grey Gardens.

So, Salesman is less fun than Grey Gardens definitely. But it’s a) beautiful to look at and b) really sort of moving.

It’s about these four door-to-door salesmen in the late 60s trying to sell ridiculously fancy bibles to lower-income Catholic families who can’t afford this stupidly expensive bibles.

With all the implications about the commodity of religion that that implies.

It was a little like a real-life version of Glengarry Glen Ross except much sadder. And with bibles and religious institutions in relation to capitalism as a sort of subplot as opposed to real estate.

I have so little to say about these ethnographic films it’s sad. I really wish I had more to discuss without a direct prompt.

#40 – Shutter Island, #41 – The Wackness, and #42 – Alice in Wonderland

It’s time for a little something I like to call BLAST PROCESSING.

Other people probably like to call it that too. But I’m a narcissist who cares only for herself! Or something!

Look, Internet, I’m going to level with you: I’m pretty punch-drunk and I don’t know if I’ll be able to see any more new movies for another week. I’ll see what I can do. But on my way home to Austin for a good ol’ fashioned spring break filled with waiting in line dejectedly hoping I can get into film screenings and not being able to drink at all because I live sort of far from downtown I got in a wreck.

I looked down briefly. When I l0oked back up, a woman was stopped at a light as it was turning from yellow to red. That’s right: someone in Austin STOPPED AT A YELLOW LIGHT. That is really, really uncanny.

Anyway, long story short, I slammed on the brakes and rammed into this law-abiding citizen’s car before coming to a halt.

Later I found out she was on her way to work. She works at a hospital. And is a nurse. I rammed into a perfectly good Honda Accord owned by a registered nurse who is the kind of person who stops at yellow lights. I’m definitely going to hell.

So basically I’m stuck at home…I live on a farm just outside of Austin so the only means of getting into town I have are…begging people I have for rides. I could theoretically (and am considering) walk to the first-run theater near my house OR the apparently crumbling Hollywood Video. It would only be like a 30 minute walk. We’ll see how things go.

Anyway, movies.

As a note, in case I haven’t made this clear enough in the past: I am probably going to spoil whatever movie I talk about. These aren’t reviews so…I don’t feel like I have any obligation to not give away the ending. Moving on.

I’m a really big horror fan and, as such, it takes a surprising amount for a movie to really frighten me past “that loud, sudden noise/weird looking face really mad me jump.” I’m not some sort of woman of steel, scare shots effect me, but I don’t really feel like a horror movie has successfully frightened me if the scare is contained to the basic tension-release of the movie.

I thought Shutter Island was going to be really, really dumb and crummy so I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t just good: it scared the crap out of me.

So, I guessed the ending from the trailer which is at the most mildly disappointing. It’s a little like knowing the end of The Shining in advance–knowing that Jack Torrence goes crazy and eventually freezes to death (or even that he’s inexplicably in an old photograph in the hotel) hardly ruins the insanity leading up to that (even if you tell someone outright, there’s no way to make “Shelley Duvall sees a man in an animal suit giving head to an old guy and it’s never explained” not surprising). Shutter Island made for a similarly great ride.

And there aren’t enough words to describe how freaking terrifying some of the images in that movie are (believe the hype!: weird bald lady in the garden during like the first 20 minutes of the movie is inexplicably the most chilling thing in the world).

And Ted Levine. Holy crap, if Ted Levine had a bit part in every movie… By the way, a fun game to play with yourself when you’re bored is to just imagine Ted Levine going about his day to day life. At the drive-through with THAT VOICE ordering…like a Fillet-o-Fish sandwich or something.

Either that or imagining any other character he plays saying his immortal line from Silence of the Lambs. Adrian Monk leaves the office. His boss turns, studies his reflection in a pane of window glass, and says to himself: “Would you fuck me? I’d fuck me. I’d fuck me so hard.”

My favorite thing about The Wackness was that it was a movie that purported to be one of those coming of age movies where the main character reaches his epiphany after finally getting laid (because as we all know SEX FIXES EVERYTHING rather than confusing and muddling things at all) but then subverted that expectation.

I don’t have a lot of in-depth things to say about it, especially not when I’m BLAST PROCESSING. But it was a really solid little movie. Not amazing, but good, funny and it had a really neat, distinctive visual style.

Also after the first time he has sex, Josh Peck just says “word” and it’s the funniest thing in the world.

I love 3D, I love (early, I guess) Tim Burton, I love the story of Alice in Wonderland, I hated Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in 3D.

The 3D was pretty good. But I think this even lacked some of the style that Tim Burton movies usually possess.

I thought it was REALLY strange too that here we have a character in a Tim Burton movie who is picked on, ostracized, made to feel like she doesn’t belong in her own world…and she’s evil. I’m talkin’ Red Queen here, guys. This is someone that Burton’s own version of Ed Wood would have befriended. An unexpectedly kind and loving character in The Nightmare Before Christmas or someone who was finally made to feel beautiful and loved in Edward Scissorhands. I get that the Red Queen is always evil. I just find it odd that, in making her evil, he chose to instill her with the tropes of the sort of…beloved hero characters of his past movies.

But the biggest problem to me was I was just flat-out bored. I know in the actual Alice in Wonderland sort of…nothing happens and it’s just a wandering tale. But it’s damn entertaining. I don’t know how but this thing managed to bore the crap out of me.

Boy I wish I had stuff to add to this.

In the Future: Rockwell Fest will be on hold while I rack up some more Rockwell movies (upcoming will probably include: The Green Mile (no, I haven’t seen it) and Safe Men). Next up on the Netflix Queue we have You Can Count on Me followed swiftly by Fired!

#39 – Paper Heart

I was skeptical going into Paper Heart. I feel like this might be another uncomfortably candid post. So to start off with, some things that are possibly helpful to know about me, Carrie Griffin, as a person as opposed to a fan of movies:

1) I’m from Austin. I grew up their and I find adult-children who consciously tend towards things that they think of as “childlike” or “innocent” obnoxious depending on the circumstances. I hate snobs and assholes despite obviously being one myself. Thus is the way of the Austinite.

Actually, if you want my opinions on Austin, I think Eugene Mirman pretty much nails it:

I think that pretty much sums up my love/hate relationship with my ol’ hometown.

2) I am really, really not a romantic person. I mean, I guess no one’s ever done anything particularly romantic for me specifically, but I definitely feel like…whenever I hear about romantic things happening, even to very good friends of mine, my automatic reaction is to think “that’s cliche bordering on nauseating.” Believing in love or having the capacity to love someone or whatever is a completely different thing–I definitely think love between people exists, I just find romantic expressions of that love to be obnoxious. I guess what I’m saying is: I like subtlety,

3) I’ve never really been in a relationship. I personally don’t see this as something that has a particularly big effect on my opinions of this movie or of romance and love in general, but if nothing else I’ve learned from that movie (and life in general) it’s that other people feel differently about that. Anyway, dates yes, romantic friendships definitely, romantic relationships no. But I’m pretty young so, y’know…give it time.

Anyway, how does this all relate to Paper Heart?

Well first of all, it was definitely a movie that challenged the extent to which I would put up with someone being super-consciously childlike. Because I really liked Charlyne Yi. She seems like the sort of person I’d want to spend time with. But man, at times I felt like I was being tested. “Do you REALLY like this person? Can you overlook certain sort of super-obnoxious behaviors? Well?”

I guess the film’s sort of…overall message is it doesn’t really matter whether or not you feel like you have the capacity to love someone, you have to be open to that as a possibility because…it definitely won’t happen otherwise. Something something subconsciously preventing things from happening.

But I still really would have preferred a less frustratingly happy ending. I don’t think I really “got” what they were trying to do with the whole “Nick is obsessed with completing this film project to the extent that it’s getting in the way of Charlyne’s emotional life” thing.

Speaking of Nick: I think he’s the most interesting character in this movie and I wish there was more of him. AND he’s played by the guy who played Aaron Burr in the first Drunk History video (“Alexander Hamilton HATES…Aaron Burr”). Jake Johnson, I hope to see you around in the future.

I’m not going to lie: this entry has been sitting around in the draft stage for three days now and I’m getting behind. I’ve seen three other movies since this. You’re holding up the line, Paper Heart!

So, some final thoughts:

1) It was cute, if nearly impossible for me to stomach but in no way because it was a bad movie.

and more importantly

2) The DVD has a special feature called “Love Interviews with the Comedians” where Charlyne Yi has some fake interviews with…you guessed it, comedians about…you guessed it, love. And as good as Paper Heart is on its own, I would readily watch two straight hours of those interviews. They were amazing. David Krumholtz stands out…but Paul Scheer, as always, is tops. I’m gonna go ahead and say it: if you have seen Paul Scheer’s comedy and you don’t like him, you’re probably on my shit list.

Up Next Because I’m Super Far Behind: Blast processing with Shutter Island, The Wackness, and Alice in Wonderland. Following/along with that, some news about my personal life and the super-cool car wreck I got in PLUS a possible bonus entry about rewatching some of the movies I saw for the first time this year!

#38 – Jaguar

Jaguar was yet another ethnographic film for class. About three buddies in Africa in the 50s dealing with westernization of their home (somewhere within a days’ walk of Ghana…which I know because they walk to Ghana at one point).

I feel like since I watched this for class I should have something intellectual to say about it, but really the number one thing I took away from it was one of the buddies’ description of what it means to be a “jaguar”:

“Well a jaguar is a keen young man with a nice hairdo.”

This is honestly his response (translated from French). Ho-lee shit I love that.

Also at one point somebody excitedly shouts “I’m the goods! The real goods!” and one guy greets another by saying “Good morning, god damn it.”

It’s awesome.

Jaguar was actually one of the more entertaining ethnographic films. Still pretty boring though, obviously. I mean, come on. It’s an ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM.

I guess the biggest thing I’ve taken from this (other than…being completely disturbed by the amount of footage of dudes hunting and then cutting the heads off things they’ve hunted) is a greater appreciation of movies that make reference to the process of ethnographic filmmaking. This seems like a cheat to me…I’m learning about narrative films through ethnographic films rather than just learning about ethnographic films themselves.

But I definitely think Cannibal Holocaust is a lot smarter now than I did before.

SOON ENOUGH. (THAT’S NOT SOON ENOUGH!): The Wackness, Paper Heart, and if I’m lucky, Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields