Wall-E

"Wall-E"
Andrew Stanton, 2008

Pixar's films consistently go far beyond the conventions of most high-budget animation projects, effortlessly meshing memorable characters with impeccable animation, without the need for incessant pop-culture references. Their latest effort, "Wall-E," is a continuation of the studio's ability to craft excellent films, though this time, much of the focus is on more contemporaneous issues.

The film's first shots depict gorgeous images of the galaxy, a nebulous area that does not really serve as a representation of our greatest aspirations - being the "next frontier" and all - but rather as place for humans to flee from Earth's toxicity, which has rendered the planet uninhabitable for over seven-hundred years. It is there, on the surface of this apocalyptic, now-alien world, that we meet our protagonist, Wall-E, a small robot who communicates only through electronic wails and ingeniously-implemented gesticulations of his binocular-like eyes and stubby arms.

We witness Wall-E's daily life, which includes interacting with his only friend, a cockroach that, naturally, lives within a Twinkie bar; compacting the ubiquitous piles of waste into small cubes and piling them into skyscrapers; and watching old romance films on his iPod at night. These first few minutes alone, which have no dialogue, are fascinating in their depiction of this lonely character who, despite being programmed centuries ago by a corporation to labor away for a futile cause, has the capacity to love and to desire companionship. This character's desperation is particularly touching, and so effectively and simply relayed, in a sequence in which he focuses in on two lovers, in his favorite film, holding hands and singing.

Wall-E's wish for companionship comes true - an effeminate, slick-looking, and short-tempered probe named Eve lands on earth, searching for signs of life. Wall-E's obsession with Eve, who wields a formidable gun that seems to fire miniature nuclear explosions, is as strange, awkward, and funny a love story as any I have ever seen; its only equivalent is Adam Sandler and Emily Watson's unconventional romance in "Punch-Drunk Love."

Suddenly, Eve is taken back by the people who sent her, but not without Wall-E desperately clinging on, both to the ship and to his object of desire. We soon discover that all the humans fled Earth long ago and now live on a gigantic ship, living as horrifically obese duds who are unaware of their imprisonment to armchairs, to their television screen, and to their automated lifestyle that has long been maintained by robots. The rest of the film focuses on more lofty themes, particularly on the evils of the corporation and the necessity of people to be individuals who are accountable for maintaining their own lives and environments.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this last part of the film - it is conspicuously preachy about its admittedly banal message. Yet the film, like its portrayal of the unusual love story, proves to be surprisingly effective at making this theme resonate with its audience; after all, the effects of these humans' idleness are apparent from the moment we first witness Earth's barren landscape. "Wall-E"'s success ultimately lies in its incisive and fresh perspectives on aspects of our lives that we often take for granted - for example, a repair area for robots is really just a mental warden for robots who don't functioning "normally."

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 6/29/08
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Book Review: The Road

"The Road"

By Cormac McCarthy

It hasn't been easy for me to delve into Cormac McCarthy's extensive canon. I couldn't get past the odd writing style of "No Country for Old Men" a year ago and, despite the beautiful prose, I didn't find the plot of "All the Pretty Horses" all that compelling. With that said, it's kind of interesting that "The Road," which features a depressing post-apocalyptic plot, is the first Cormac McCarthy novel I've finished reading in its entirety.

This is, at once, the most simple and most ambitious of the McCarthy novels I've read. He focuses exclusively on two characters, a boy and his father, and their journey along "the road" that runs through the former United States years after the apocalypse has occurred. What exactly happened is ambiguous; the novel hints at the possibilities only in several brief flashbacks. All that we know, and all that McCarthy really cares about, is the apocalypse's aftermath and how it affects these two characters.

We know that just about everything is dead - entire forests, all of the fish, and billions of people. All that remains are the ever-ubiquitous clouds of ash, trunks of dead trees, extreme cold, and essentially no food, which begets marauding bands of cannibals who collect stragglers for their own survival.

McCarthy's spare prose is brilliant and elegant; its halting quality perfectly encapsulates the incessantly dour atmosphere and texture of this story. Occasionally, the author pushes the philosophical aspects harder than need be: "Who is it? said the boy. I don't know. Who is anybody?" Aside from those moments, the writing is a joy to read. Here's a prototypical passage that is found near the end of the novel - I love the way it is at once spare and descriptive at the same time.

"The days sloughed past uncounted and uncalendared. Along the interstate in the distance long lines of charred and rusting cars. The raw rims of the wheels sitting in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber, in blackened rings of wire. The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats. Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts. They went on. Treading the dead world under like rats on a wheel. The nights dead still and deader black. So cold. They talked hardly at all. He coughed all the time and the boy watched him spitting blood. Slumping along. Filthy, ragged, hopeless. He'd stop and lean on the cart and the boy would go on and then stop and look back and he would raise his weeping eyes and see him standing there in the road looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle." (230)

At the heart of the novel is the relationship between the man and his son. The man, coughing up blood and carrying a pistol with only a couple rounds in it, swears to protect his son, who was born right after the apocalypse, at all costs. The boy, as described in the novel, is a metaphor for our innate, and perhaps foolish, hope that, despite our mistakes, we have the capacity to start over again. The father's pledge becomes especially apparent in a conflict with another man, the first they have seen in over a year, who holds the boy at knife-point; the man shoots him dead immediately. The boy is shocked by his father's occasional brutality - not giving part of their limited food supply to a passerby, for example - which complicates their relationship.

In one flashback, we learn that the man's wife committed suicide, mocking the man for wanting to live through such a nonexistent world. The question does arise on more than one occasion: Why do these two survivors continue on? For the most part, they spend their days traveling down a silent road flanked by the trunks of trees; starving for many days before discovering left-over provisions; and heading towards the south, away from the biting cold that resulted, presumably, from nuclear fallout. In the end, the book is incredibly depressing, and yet, oddly uplifting, as we realize that humans have the capacity both to destroy themselves and to be persistent in the face of incredible adversity. McCarthy even has us believe, for a while at least, that the love between the father and his son can successfully weather the hardships of a now-dead world.

Rating: 9.5

The Goonies

"The Goonies"

Richard Donner, 1985

Steven Spielberg, who produced, wrote, and presented "The Goonies," often hearkens back to the cheesy, old-school adventure films that were prevalent during the 1940s. "The Goonies," a classic film from the 1980s that follows in the footsteps of the "Indiana Jones" series, is a continuation of the director's fascination with this genre.

We have the archetypal group of young friends, who call themselves "the Goonies." There is the unofficial leader of the group, Mikey (a very young Sean Astin, who went on to play Sam in the "Lord of the Rings" series), toting an inhaler for his asthma, who discovers an old map in his family's attic that tells of a long-lost treasure in secret caves underneath their very own town. There is his moody older brother, Brand (a very young Josh Brolin), his requisite love interest, Andy, the suave kid nicknamed "Mouth," the obese and talkative Jewish kid nicknamed "Chunk," and the nerdy, technologically proficient Asian kid nicknamed "Data," played by the same actor who played Short Round in the second "Indiana Jones" installment.

All of these characters, the dialogue they utter, and the environments that they inhabit, are caricatures that hearken back to those old adventure films. I enjoyed a number of the film's aspects, particularly the sets and lighting, which exude a fun, creepy atmosphere, and the appropriately over-theatrical nature of the characters' gestures.


However, this reliance on old-school nostalgia is a double-edged sword; the film is at once fun and irritating at the same time. All of the characters tend to scream over one another, a common occurrence in Spielberg films, which grows tiresome very quickly. There is one sequence, in particular, that feels unnecessarily mean-spirited: Mikey's mom tells Mouth to translate what she says for their new, Spanish-speaking housekeeper, but instead tells her things like "put the coke in the top drawer, weed in the second" or "if you don't do your work, you'll be locked up in the attic!" In response, the actress says lines like "Ay caramba! What a messed-up family." This sequence is representative of the film's ultimate issue; how to have fun with the silly premise without devolving into completely annoying and stupid fare.

Rating: 7

First Viewed: 6/25/08
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Yojimbo

"Yojimbo"
Akira Kurosawa, 1961

"Yojimbo" follows an itinerant samurai warrior named Sanjuro, played by the reliably enthralling Toshiro Mifune, who comes across a village where two bosses, Seibei and Ushitora, are in the midst of a war that is tearing the community apart. The coffin-maker's business is booming, at least until there are "too many deaths" for anyone to care about burial, and families are torn apart due to people's loyalties to either side. Sanjuro is in desperate need of money and takes advantage of both sides' desperation, switching alliances and all the while laughing at the futility of the entire situation.

Kurosawa, I suspect, was aiming to depict how silly this feud is - we are never told what event triggered the war in the first place and only witness its brutal aftermath. His film provides some interesting touches of black humor, such as Sanjuro, upon first entering the town, witnessing a dog trotting away with a severed hand in its mouth. But most of the time, the humor doesn't really work. It is strange and treats the characters in a belittling manner - after a time it grows wearisome, and stops providing a fresh perspective on the conflict. This problem with the humor is compounded by a questionable music motif that consists of a bizarre, out-of-place mish-mash of 60s rock and Japanese music.

I suppose the entire film is a mish-mash of various genres and subjects, including westerns, comedy, and social commentary on a society gone mad. Kurosawa's attention to his mise en scene is impeccable, as always - the scenes are intelligently staged and all of his shots, which feature great use of deep focus and composition, are imaginative and effective. Whether or not all of these aspects comfortably mesh with one another is an entirely different matter. As for me, I much prefer Kurosawa's other films, but perhaps "Sanjuro," the second installment in this series, will prove to be a more enjoyable watch.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 6/22/08
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Mongol

“Mongol”
Sergei Bodrov, 2007

The effects of Genghis Kahn, the man who formed the world's largest empire, before or since, can still be felt to this day. At a recent dinner with some of my family's relatives, who emigrated from Russia, all of them, who are not film buffs by any means, expressed interest in the new film on Genghis' life. I'm not entirely sure what that entails, nor am I an expert on this area of history, but I think that the fact that the Russians had a good deal of knowledge of the man, who did conquer all of Russia, is interesting nonetheless.

“Mongol,” a new film by the Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov, attempts to capture both the epic and personal aspects of Genghis Khan's early life. Most of the film's plot stems from an older Genghis' reflection, from within a prison, on his past experiences, starting with the day he, as the 9-year-old son of a minor khan, or lord, chose a bride. On that same day – the day that “changed my life forever,” says Genghis, who the film refers to as “Temudjin,” which is presumably his original name - they run into a group of enemy clan members. After running through a traditional ritual of exchanging drinks with one another, Temudjin's father falls from his horse, dying from his poisoned drink.

The film concentrates on the power of tradition, and on how these people's implementation of and breaking of these unstated rules could change the distribution of power in the region almost instantaneously. This is certainly an interesting topic, and is by far the film's most fascinating and well-developed. It is unfortunate, and surprising, that many other aspects of “Mongol” are poorly executed.

Bodrov presents his narrative in a fluid manner, yet the sequences feel episodic in nature. The film has to cover a lot of ground, and the entire narrative has a disjointed feel. After the khan's death, a rival within Temudjin's clan takes over and threatens to kill the boy, only to release him when he realizes that he is not big enough to be killed “legitimately.” Much of the film's first hour focuses, to a frustratingly repetitive extent, on how this rival recaptures Temudjin, and then sets him free when the boy still isn't big enough, or when he manages to escape imprisonment. A clan member named Oelen, who is to become one of the most powerful kahns in Mongolia, comes across Temudjin, and they become blood brothers for an unspecified reason. Eventually, Temudjin finds his bride, named Borte, at an encampment and, in a laughably hackneyed sequence, love each other on first sight.

This love story reveals all of the script's major weaknesses. The dialogue is trite and the relationship does not feel genuine – it feels like we are watching actors, not real people, delivering lines from a melodramatic historical reenactment. The battles, an important aspect of Genghis' life, are poorly-staged sequences whose style, through a combination of alternating between slow-motion and fast shutter-speed shots, bares some semblance to last year's “300,” a decision that proves to be just as gimmicky and muddled. And a sequence in which the rival ambushes Temudjin at night is simply amateurish in its choreography and photography.

Worst of all, we never truly come to understand what made Temudjin such a magnetic personality, a charismatic leader who managed to unite all Mongolians into an unstoppable force. Sure, the film shows how he wasn't afraid of lightning in the middle of battle, which inspires his troops, and how he gave his warriors a good deal of loot, but the character's genuine humanity, and our interest in his character, is severely lacking. Hopefully, the reported sequels will address these shortcomings and focus on this aspect of this potentially fascinating man.

Rating: 5

First Viewed: 6/21/08
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Rescue Dawn

"Rescue Dawn" (2007)

Directed by Werner Herzog

"Rescue Dawn" is a raw portrayal of prisoners-of-war trying to survive in North Vietnam. The film follows the true story of the Navy pilot, Dieter (Christian Bale), whose plane is shot down while he is in the middle of a bombing mission. Herzog takes a different approach from a more "cinematic" Vietnam film like "The Deer Hunter," shooting the events in a documentary-like manner in order to convey the feeling that we are right there with Dieter.

After managing to evade capture for a couple of days, Dieter is finally caught by the Vietcong, tortured in a village with fascinated - and visibly angry - onlookers, and then led to a prisoner-of-war camp, where he meets fellow prisoners Duane (a captivating Steve Zahn) and the frenetic, on-the-verge-of-madness Gene (Jeremy Davies). Dieter provides a wave of innovation for the group of prisoners, many of whom have been in captivity for over two years. He manipulates a stolen nail so that the prisoners can be unshackled at night and comes up with an escape plan, much to the chagrin of Gene, who seems to have accepted his fate as a perpetual prisoner.

We find out that the guards themselves are imprisoned - bombings have ruined the area's food supply, starving the entire population, and making the guards act more cruelly towards the prisoners. At one point, Duane tells Dieter, "Don't you realize? The Jungle is the prison." Dieter realizes this only after he escapes with Duane, having to deal with leeches, starvation, floods, and angry villagers. Bale gives an outstanding performance as the cocky, affable pilot who is also a natural leader. Thanks to the actor, every tiny victory and every disappointment rings all the more resonant, especially in a sequence where Dieter, after setting part of an empty village on fire in order to signal to helicopters, is fired on by his own men.

It is unfortunate that the film ends with an annoyingly saccharine sequence, in which Dieter is welcomed by the entire crew of an aircraft carrier, complete with intrusive, swelling music. After all of the ordeals that Dieter has to endure, it is strange that Herzog ends the film on such a paltry, sentimental note - it is all happiness, when the war, and the rest of Dieter's experience, was anything but.

Rating: 7.5

First Viewed: 6/16/08
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (2008)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

"Raiders of the Lost Arc," as well as the rest of the films in the original "Indiana Jones" trilogy, is the perfect "adventure" film. That film presents a fun hero who is both a professor and a Nazi-killing archaeologist, as well as a number of riveting action sequences, with humor thrown in for good measure.

In his latest adventure, Jones (Harrison Ford), now an aged professor living in the 1950s, faces off against a contingency of Soviet agents working within the United States, who are led by Col. Spalko (Cate Blanchett). Along the way, Jones runs into a young, egotistic biker named Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) who tells him that his mother and their friend, Professor Oxley (John Hurt), who was in the middle of searching for a mysterious Crystal Skull in the ruins of Peru, have been kidnapped by the Soviets.

The new "Indiana Jones" differs from its predecessors in a number of ways, but in the end it does not fare as well compared to those films. There is still a fun, over-the-top nature to many of the sequences, particularly one in which Jones and Mutt fight and run from KGB agents while driving a motorcycle through a city. But the new adventure feels different from that of the other films. We no longer follow Jones as he figures out how to accomplish his challenges - rather, our hero - and we, the audience - seems to be dragged from one setpiece to another with hardly a sense of connectedness between them.

Spielberg and Lucas themselves appear to waver in determining which aspects of the film should be over-the-top and which should not. The computer-generated sequences often vary, even within a shot, from looking very good to very bad; Lucas includes some strange and stupid humor involving poorly-rendered, computer-generated prairie dogs and monkeys; and the adventure itself, insipidly written by David Koepp of "Jurassic Park: The Lost World" ilk, turns out to be a disappointing science-fiction tale that lacks the dark tension of the previous installments.

This has always been a fun, occasionally silly series, yet almost all of the actors give surprisingly understated, and, especially in Ford's case, exceedingly dry and boring performances. Only Cate Blanchett, as the over-theatrical, saber-wielding head villain with a bad accent, interprets the material, correctly, as an excuse to merely provide good fun.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 6/15/08
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More

Directed by Mark Osborne

"More (1998)," an Academy Award-nominated stop action short, is one of the more brilliant films I've seen recently. The short follows a humanoid creature who works at a factory that produces "Get Happy" products, which seems like a useless product save for its bright yellow smiling face that stands out against the dreary, monochromatic urban world that he inhabits. Amidst his days that consist of journeying to and from work, where all the other inhabitants on the public transportation system look identical, our protagonist discovers a glowing power that is literally contained within him and uses this as inspiration to create a new-and-improved "Get Happy" product.

While this theme of an individual inhabiting a dystopian world that is representative of our own isn't particularly original, the short is still immensely powerful and resonant, which is particularly astounding considering that this takes place within a six-minute running time. Osborne makes particularly powerful use of contrasting colors, from the dystopian dullness of the "real" world to the vibrant colors of our protagonist's imagination, and the excellent synthesizer score further enhances this world's menace. I was surprised to discover that Osborne is the director of "Kung Fu Panda," which initially looked like a typical, crappy Dreamworks production. But if that man can make such brilliant work in a short, I'm certainly interested to see what he can do with a feature-length animated film.

Rating: 9.5

(Note: Click on the picture to be linked to a video of the short.)
Second Viewing: 6/13/08
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Hopscotch

"Hopscotch" (1980)

Directed by Ronald Neame

This is a cute movie about an old CIA spy (an amusing Walter Matthau) who decides to play a game and publish his memoirs on the run, as retribution against his younger managers who have decided to have him retire behind a filing cabinet. The film is quietly funny, but the plot is, strangely, not all that compelling, nor is the film half as clever as it thinks it is. "Hopscotch" also features a preachy theme that pushes for accountability and truth in the government, which I suppose makes sense given that the film was released only a few years after Watergate.

Rating: 6

First Viewed: 6/12/08
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A Woman Under the Influence

"A Woman Under the Influence" (1974)
Directed by John Cassavetes

When I told my parents I was watching a Cassavetes film for the first time, they made a sympathetic gesture, saying that all of his films are simply long and depressing. And to some degree, I suppose this film is. But it is also an intense and often-fascinating depiction of members of a middle-class family who are pushed to their emotional limits.

We catch the housewife, Mabel (Gena Rowlands), who is married to a city worker named Nick (Peter Falk), beginning to undergo a mental and emotional breakdown. We are never directly told why she is extremely unhappy; at one point, towards the end, Mabel herself says she doesn't know why this has happened to her. But the film drops a number of hints as to why this deterioration occurs. Men frequently treat Mabel terribly – one of Nick's coworkers hugs and kisses her in front of a large group of people, and a doctor, a family friend who is sent to help “treat” her, winks at her all the while having a salacious grin on his face when he first sees her. It is this sexual inequality, which the characters fail to realize, that most likely leads to her unhappiness.

Cassavetes' camera rarely cuts away from the intense situations and provides an unflinching perspective of her deterioration, which is painful to witness. Both Rowlands and Falk give brilliant performances - Rowlands crafts a character that ranges from being completely sympathetic to terrifyingly psychotic while Falk's husband is a fascinating and imperfect character, a working-class man who desperately tries to regain a sense of control in the household. Mabel tries to be “good,” but her efforts toward being friendly to the few people she has a chance to interact with in her home ends up scaring them all away. Nick, in the meantime, arguably goes just as insane as she does. Upset at the way his family has turned out, he becomes furious and occasionally violent towards Mabel, who he eventually sends to a mental institution.

All of these characters are fascinating; none of them are all-bad or all-good. Their temperament changes from scene-to-scene. And even if it feels like Cassavetes goes too far on occasion to make his scenes as depressing as possible, the film is a powerful, devastating work of art whose impact can be felt days after a single viewing.

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 6/11/08
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Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (2003)

Directed by Peter Weir

"Master and Commander," which I first watched in the theaters over five years ago, is the movie that really got me interested in film. Perhaps it was the joy of seeing the ocean spread across the huge screen's canvas. Perhaps it was the perfect union of sound and image. Perhaps it was because I had a secret crush on the young Max Pirkis, who plays one of the midshipmen. Whatever it was, this remains, to this day, one of my favorite films and it was wonderful seeing it again this weekend.

From the Books to the Film

I recently finished the 7th book in the Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, on which the film is based. In the books, there is usually a larger mission that takes a backseat to the everyday episodes that occur onboard whatever ship the rising British Post-Captain, “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, commands. Thus, the books can seem, for a while at least, nearly plotless, with descriptions of various episodes whose intensity and level-of-interest to the reader seem to undulate like the ocean Aubrey traverses.



The film follows in much the same manner. Aubrey's mission is to use his ship, the HMS Surprise, to destroy the larger French frigate, the Acheron. Weir does a fantastic job of depicting the creepy and almost ghostly nature of this ship, which often appears spontaneously. This scenario frequently occurs in O'Brian's books, especially in Desolation Island (1978) where the Dutch ship-of-the-line, the Waakzaamheid, appears out of nowhere and chases Aubrey's ship. Unfortunately, the books' episodic quality does not translate as well to the film. A book can be read in parts while a film, which is usually seen in one viewing, needs to have a more fluid quality. "Master and Commander," especially in a sequence that centers almost exclusively on one of the officers being bullied by his shipmates, generally lacks this connectedness between various scenarios. But for the most part, the film succeeds as an overall reflection, rather than direct literary interpretation, of the books on a stylistic and narrative level.

Immersion Through Sound and Image

Weir strives to immerse his viewers into these characters' environs by utilizing, to an unusually meticulous extent, images and sounds. Russel Boyd's cinematography has outstanding lighting that ranges from being very cool (on the deck) to very warm (interior candlelit cabins), beautiful and interesting compositions that provide different perspectives on these sailors' lives, and camera movements that flow with a natural, effortless quality. The cinematography makes it feel like we are watching a theater production, thanks to the stately nature of the photography and Weir's attention to detail with the costume design and sets, yet it also makes us feel like we are there with the characters.

Interesting composition, through the use of a dutch angle:


Warm lighting:


Cool lighting:


But it is Richard King's ("Twister," "Gattaca," "War of the Worlds") meticulous sound design that truly immerses us in the film's atmosphere. This is easily the best-sounding movie I have ever had the pleasure of hearing. The music's fidelity is impeccable and the surround sound is truly immersive – we can hear the creaking of the ship, the crashing of the waves against the hull, and even footsteps running “above” deck at all times. The movie truly shines during the battle scenes, where King, no doubt, had to work with hundreds of channels of sound. These scenes are loud, but they are also intelligently laid out and very detailed; he tends to craft split-second moments of near-silence - as opposed to the typical, now-expected ten seconds of quiet followed by an assault on the senses, which is a common occurrence in "Spiderman 3" - followed by visceral, terrifying-sounding enemy broadsides.

The Battles

I am baffled by those who claim that "Master and Commander" needs more action. Life at sea was boring and crew-members rarely witnessed an action, so it would make sense that the film has only two major engagements. The film immediately throws the viewer into the lives of these sailors, first with a brief tour of the area below deck, then with officers who casually throw around naval jargon, and then with a literal bang when the Acheron ambushes the Surprise in a fogbank. The scene is brilliantly constructed. There is a brief silence on the deck while we see the flashes of canon fire in the fogbank, then hear the ominous rumbling of those guns, followed by the sound and sight of the shrapnel itself ripping through the ship.



The beginning and ending battle sequences are quickly edited and feel claustrophobic; Weir wants us to feel the conditions that these men had to fight in. He doesn't flinch away from the brutality of the engagements, quickly cutting from one area of fighting to another and depicting how wood splinters, jettisoned from the ship itself by high-velocity shrapnel, actually caused the most casualties. Thus, these engagements are two-fold in nature – men can die somewhat indirectly from shrapnel that is fired from half a mile away or in close, very personal, hand-to-hand combat.




"Master and Commander" also succeeds at depicting the aftermath of these engagements and how they scar the ship and its sailors. Immediately after the first engagement, there is a breathtaking shot of the ship, lines and sails all ripped to shreds, appearing from the fogbank and floating helplessly in the water. There are a number of heartbreaking scenes that depict the cost of war on the men – a young midshipman named Lord Blakeney has to have an amputation, which is astoundingly powerful considering all we see is his face contorting in pain and the sound of his whimpering; Blakeney helps to bury his friend after an engagement, and while there is swelling music, King mixes it at a refreshingly quiet, understated level; and finally, the captain reads off the names of those who have died in combat and has to refrain from tearing up in public.

The Doctor and the Captain

The books, and the film itself, center around the relationship between Captain Aubrey, who is played by Russel Crowe, and the physician Stephen Maturin, who is played by Paul Bettany. These two men are on every adventure together and are best friends, even though they disagree from time to time. Aubrey is portrayed as a dignified and extremely talented sailor with a natural talent for leading others. Crowe's performance is good, but I wish that that he had more of the spontaneous levity that Aubrey seems to possess in the books; his Aubrey can feel too scripted on occasion.

Maturin is a skilled physician, which earns him a lot of respect amongst the crew, who usually have to deal with shoddy “medical” care. He is also naturalist – “a fighting naturalist!” as Blakeney calls him – who feels at home exploring land and collecting samples of the strange wildlife he encounters. In the books, Maturin also serves as a spy for England, which is always a blast to read, but the movie sadly drops this aspect of his character. Nonetheless, this character is a fascinating counterpoint to Aubrey, who can barely function on land and feels most at home on the ocean.

Despite their differences, the two characters share one passion – appreciating and playing music. Several times throughout the film, Aubrey and Maturin play music together in the Great Cabin. It is a break from the hard life of sailing (“a damned unfortunate business,” as Aubrey calls it), but it is also a way for them to appreciate the great things that people can create, rather than destroy. Their music is an overarching motif in the film, tying together some of the more disparate parts and giving the film a leisurely flow; it also reflects these characters' unstated hopes that there is perhaps something bigger and better beyond the claustrophobic and terrible confines of a ship.

The Storm

This sequence is an intense amalgamation of many threads in the film. Aubrey's obsession with capturing the Acheron; the midshipman Hollom's failures and the crew's hatred of him flowering; and the crew's elation at having finally gained the upper hand on their rival. Unfortunately, their elatedness deflates when one of the popular members of the crews falls overboard. I credit Weir, Boyd, and King with doing an outstanding job staging the scene in a convincing and terrifying manner. Also, the special effects, which mostly rely on compositing various effects (shots of choppy water in a storm, then models of the ships, then rain and lighting, etc.), have a surprisingly tactile and almost-realistic quality to them.

The Ship's Hierarchy

The film presents a number of interesting characters - the brave midshipmen Lord Blakeney (Max Pirkis) and Calamy (Max Benitz), the loyal first lieutenant Tom Pullings (James D'Arcy), the second lieutenant William Moffit (Edward Woodall), the weak and bullied midshipman Hollom (Lee Ingleby), and the hilarious, mumbling captain's servant, Killick (David Threlfall). All of these men, guided by a system of clear naval tradition and hierarchy that has endured for centuries, rely on the leadership of their captain in order to successfully gel together, which Aubrey, who is nicknamed “Lucky” because of his seeming inability to lose, happily provides. There is one scene in particular (shown below), in which Aubrey provides his men with encouraging words before the film's final battle, that effectively, through a series of simple reaction shots, illustrates the men's respect and devotion to their captain.





One interesting aspect of the film, which may stem from a flaw from the books, is its inability to make this conflict with the french frigate feel like it is of any larger importance than this one-on-one engagement. One line, said by Aubrey, feels a bit out of place: “Though we may be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home... this ship is England.” Weir spends most of the film exploring how these men sacrifice themselves out of necessity, not for their country. He, like O'Brian, seems most intent on exploring human behavior under the most grueling circumstances. Thus, the Surprise, like one of Stephen's petri dishes, really serves as a microcosm of human interaction, rather than as an asset of the British Navy.

Rating: 9

Fifth Viewing: 6/7/08
IMDB Page

A Note About the Blu-ray
The new Blu-ray of the film is okay. It now comes with a lossless (DTS-HD MA) audio track, if your receiver can decode it, but its DTS track can still be played at a lower 1.5 mbps with a normal setup with an optical audio cord, which sounds noticeably better than the 768 kbps DTS track on the DVD. The image looks quite good, very filmlike. There is much more detail in the blacks, the colors – fleshtones in particular – look outstanding, and there is a sense of depth that was lacking on the DVD. But I think that the transfer could be even better. The quality varies from shot-to-shot as a number of shots barely improve the DVD and there are some film artifacts (specks) that crop up on occasion. I think it's a nice upgrade from the DVD, but without much in the way of extras, nor a transfer that is “perfect,” the $30 price tag seems steep.

Being John Malkovich

"Being John Malkovich" (1999)
Directed by Spike Jonze

Here is the film's premise: A professional puppeteer discovers a secret door in his office that leads to a portal-of-sorts into John Malkovich's mind. Needless to say, this is a very strange film about a very strange collection of people.

We follow Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), a dirt-poor, unemployed man whose dream is to become a famous puppeteer. But no one wants to employ someone for this strange "hobby," especially when the guy is an eccentric, long-haired nerd. His even more eccentric wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), supports the "family," which includes a parakeet and two chimpanzees. Craig eventually finds work as a file sorter on the 7 1/2 floor of an office building, which sounds strange, but the way that the director, Spike Jonze, and the excellent writer, Charlie Kauffman, introduce Craig's new work place is visually brilliant and humorous. Craig meets a coworker, Maxine (Catherine Keener), and falls in love with her, even though she is an opportunistic and painfully blunt jerk - in one instance, Craig takes her out for a drink and when he tells her that he is a professional puppeteer, she immediately asks for the check.

And this is all before Craig unwittingly discovers the mysterious passageway that leads him into John Malkovich's mind. It is at this point that the film takes off, as Kauffman's script and Malkovich's performance - we view him, presumably from the point-of-view of Craig, as a normal guy living his everyday life, who is also, in a self-referential joke, an overrated actor - add brilliant, comedic touches to the film. One scene, in which Malkovich travels through the doorway into his own mind, is particularly hysterical while bringing up a number of interesting questions about our place in the world; it is not everyday that you see numerous clones of John Malkovich dressed in drag.


The rest of the film is a postmodern science fiction story. Craig, Maxine, and Lotte all abuse poor Malkovich, compelling him to fulfill their strangest sexual desires without fear of retribution to themselves. Sexual identities change. Alliances shift. These people are not happy with the way they are and Malkovich serves as their safety valve; he is literally their puppet. But in the end of the day, this serves only as a temporary solution to these characters' deep-rooted sense of being unfulfilled. Whether they are entirely successful in learning how to stop running away from themselves is left for us to decide.

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 6/3/08
IMDB Page

The Squirrel Nut Zippers

I just found the album, "The Inevitable Squirrel Nut Zippers," in my dad's CD collection and gave it a spin. They were really pretty awesome, a 90s band that fused elements of Jazz with a "pseudo-mariachi-gypsy sound," as my friend described it. The lyrics are often pretty hilarious and the songs are a blast to listen to.

Here are two of their songs on youtube. A word of caution: They're kind of disturbing and awesome at the same time.

Ghost of Stephen Foster
Hell

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (2007)

Directed by Sidney Lumet

A dysfunctional family. Betrayals. Ugly arguments. All of these unsavory aspects are present and in full force in Sidney Lumet's new film. Two brothers, Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank Hanson (Ethan Hawke), are both in desperate need of money. Andy is a middle manager at a corporation who has an expensive drug habit while the more pathetic Hank, who has recently endured an ugly divorce, spends a lot of money on spoiling his daughter at a private school and drinking at bars.

Andy proposes to have them both rob their own parents' diamond store in a suburban shopping mall - they would suddenly have half a million dollars while their parents' insurance would take care of the rest. Most of all, no one would suspect that the owners' own sons would commit such a robbery. But, as happens in most films like this, the robbery goes wrong and their mother - played by Rosemary Harris of the "Spiderman" trilogy - is murdered.

The two sons are forced to live with the guilt of killing their own mother, as well as still having to deal with their financial problems and the possibility of their complicity in the robbery being discovered. Lumet primarily uses a realist style, in which his edits are mostly seamless and his shots rarely beautiful - his film is a harsh and unflinching examination of how these people behave when they are pushed to their limits. Hoffman plays his character like a volcano that is on the verge of erupting; his middle-aged businessman displays a veneer of calm that, on occasion, turns scarily violent. It is a marvelous performance that would be hard to compete with, yet Hawke manages to be an effective opposite as the wimpy and less intelligent brother.

Despite the intriguing plot and characters, the film has its flaws. One aspect of the film involves Andy's estranged relationship with his father (a dignified Albert Finney), but this is never developed to a satisfactory extent, which is disappointing since a narrative where the father begins to suspect Andy's involvement in the robbery has to rely on the two characters' distrust of one another in order to be effective.

Lumet's decision to split the film up into disjointed narratives that are not presented in chronological order ultimately takes away from the film's power. He is a realist filmmaker who, I think, attempted to present all of the characters' actions at a certain moment uninterrupted. This does not work, though, because his transitions, which feature loud sounds and flashing images overlapped from the next scene, are distracting and feel out of place with the style of the rest of the film. These transitions and the needless switching between narratives take us out of our involvement with these characters, reminding us that this is all, despite the incredible emotional intensity, just a movie.

Rating: 8

Employment Videos - Part Five: Bloodborne Pathogens

Employment Videos, Part Five - Bloodborne Pathogens: Fast Facts for School

Synopsis
A very basic and fleeting look at how to prevent the transmission of bloodborne pathogens.

Educational Value - 6/10
The video runs through a few important aspects of how to prevent transmission, showing how to properly take off gloves and telling us to avoid touching people who are bleeding (they should touch themselves, pun intended). But the video only touches briefly on specific symptoms that result from these pathogens. How are we really supposed to tell if we may be infected? I also wanted to know how to properly clean up a pool of blood, which the video, predictably, never covers.

Aesthetics - 2/10
Based on the poster for Kangaroo Jack that I saw in a long shot of Time Square (don't ask), I'm assuming this video was made around 2003. Even then, the camerawork, the sets, the transitions are all pretty terrible. Are they better than the classic 80s videos? Perhaps, but just barely.

Unintentional Laughs - 5/10
This video tries too hard to be funny. It just doesn't have the spontaneous, unintentionally hilarious charm of the 80s videos. First of all, I hate the narrator, whose name, we learn because she and the video mention it multiple times, is apparently Kelly Davis. I just think it's incredibly arrogant of her and the video to assume she's of any importance and deserves our respect. It doesn't help that her first line goes as follows: "Hi, I'm Kelly Davis. You know back when I was in school..." and proceeds to run through a horrendous, wannabe comedic sequence where she flashes back, apparently to the 50s (she looks remarkably young now!), to her vacuous high school life where she didn't care about bloodborne pathogens, just boys and drama. Blah, and yuck. It sounds kind of funny on paper, but it's just painful to sit through.

Oh, and here's Kelly Davis in all her glory.




There's this sequence in the beginning that goes on far too long that tries to illustrate how large a group 5.6 million infected people really is. A semi-direct quote: "That's 56 filled college football stadiums. That's 2/3rds of NYC. That's 3x the population of the state of Iowa... yee-ha [Cue Kelly Davis in a cowboy hat and obligatory sound of a whip]!" Just. Stop it.

Also, I found the representation of the three major viruses (HIV, HCV, HBV) as bullies at school insulting to my intelligence. The actors suck and the concept is sooo contrived. HBV says in a "tough-guy/woman" voice, after being "insulted" by Kelly Davis, "Hey! She called us viral!" It's stupid, just stupid.




Closing Thoughts
I learned a few things, but the video's constant attempt to be funny totally sucked the life out of the proceedings. A disappointment.

Rating: 1/10