So to commiserate the summer's end, I've written a eulogy for it. In the form of a stupid, disorganized list that I'm too lazy too edit.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
After I saw Up (which I regrettably did not review on this blog, although I may get the chance to when it comes out on DVD in November), I was certain that would be my favorite film of the summer, and probably the year. I knew anything that wanted to beat it would have to work very hard, and Quentin Tarantino's epic masterpiece was so strange, so brilliantly mad-cap, but most importantly, through all those things so functional, that I can't resist giving it the #1 spot. The deal is only sweetened by how popular the film already is. Between that and District 9, I have a lot of faith in America's taste again, even if it is immediately crushed by the success of Transformers.
Honorable mentions: Up, Star Trek, 500 Days of Summer, The Hurt Locker, Drag Me to Hell.
CHRISTOPH WALTZ as HANS LANDA in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Again, I totally thought this would go to Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker, and I still hope that Mr. Renner is recognized by the Academy at the end of the year, but Christoph Waltz is so good that I have a hard time putting it into words. No actor has sunk his teeth this far into Tarantino's dialogue before, and it is an awe-inspiring thing to watch. Many characters have been written like Hans Landa, but none of them have been this well-realized.
Honorable mentions: Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker, Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 500 Days of Summer, Eric Bana in Star Trek
PUBLIC ENEMIES
The two-fisted beauty of those muzzle flares, caught by Michael Mann's digital cameras was the chief glory of this otherwise disappointing film.
Honorable mentions: Star Trek, The Hurt Locker.
ERIC BANA as CAPTAIN NERO in STAR TREK
Okay, okay. He's a touch underdeveloped, his motivations are whatever, but it's Eric fucking Bana as a badass space pirate who has a twisted vendetta against Spock. His speech patterns are strange and awesome. He flies around a kick-ass space ship, is about ten feet of pure, unadulterated intimidation and sits on a throne, holding a giant scepter in a dark, cavernous bridge where he has one of his underlings speak for him. If that's not the makings of an awesome villain, I don't know what is (and that's a distinct possibility).
STAR TREK
If the fact that I'm doing a Star Trek retrospective as an apology for getting my review wrong, and my verbal blowjob for Eric Bana's performance/character, I should get this out of the way. Star Trek is very well-tuned to my own wavelength. It's exactly the sort of movie I would love to make. It's visually exciting, kinetic, funny, and it's the sort of film you walked out of smiling and ready to see again. Its exciting and gorgeous for every second of its running time.
Honorable mention: Drag Me to Hell
Filthy, putrid, commodity filmmaking. This is the sort of thing that people point to when they want to bring down commercial filmmaking, and it's hard to blame them. It's an insult to the medium and a violation of the moviegoer's trust. If I sound unfairly harsh, it's because this film is extra-awful. It isn't a mediocrity, it's an offensively bad heap.I like to think that people flocked to this and Transformers based on a sort of morbid curiosity, but I really don't think so. I can't seem to get a bead on public taste. The unfortunate truth may very well be that they go see what the commercials tell them to. If it's got big explosions, it'll probably be diverting enough for two hours, but it'll have no lasting impact on them and they will probably not even pay attention to the film. My stupider detractors tell me that I'm missing out on the joys of filmgoing by being too critical. I counter with you missing out on the joys of filmgoing because you can go see GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra and then have no opinion about it whatsoever afterwards. That's called living passively.
Honorable mention: Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, The Time Traveler's Wife
ERIC BANA as HENRY DeTAMBLE in THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE
So bad it sounds like the entire film was a dub job. I can't figure out a reason that this would sound so fucking bad, but it really does just sound that bad. Everything he does is off, like he's an alien that's come to Earth and is trying to blend in. If anyone acted like this around me, I'd probably accuse them of being an alien.
Honorable mentions: Channing Tatum in GI Joe: Rise of Cobra, Shia LaBeouf in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
THE DESERT CLIMAX in TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
I had nice things to say about the opening fight and the forest fight scene, but the end fight went on for fucking months before grinding to a halt and sending Shia LeBeouf to robot heaven. Then we went back to the endless fight. I remember spending that entire time trying to decide what I wanted to eat when I got home. I decided pretty quickly, but to keep myself entertained I tried to remember everything that was in my refrigerator.
Honorable mentions: Three Mile Climax in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Foundry Finale in Terminator: Salvation
TERMINATOR SALVATION
With Wolverine I figured there was a distinct possibility it would blow, but I was pretty damn sure Terminator Salvation would rock. In fact, the problems with this film were so obvious that the only way the script could be so bad would be if they were rewriting it constantly during production OH WAIT.
Honorable mentions: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
MY TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE REVIEW
Positively soul-crushing. I have no better word for it. Thinking about that film puts me to sleep, I swear.
And that's it. Did you expect something more? Don't you have a job to be going to or something?
5 comments:
Performances that give Christoph Waltz a run for his money:
Sharlto Copley in District 9
Sam Rockwell in Moon
I thought that the list might be longer...
I've already gone in and edited this once, don't make me do it again.
And I feel like the only reason I left District 9 off the list was I saw it a second time, and it was a miserable experience. Not because of the movie, but because of the circumstances. I don't have a good reason for not including Sam Rockwell outside of my own forgetfulness.
Underlying the culture of cruelty that reached its apogee during the Bush administration, is the legalization of state violence, such that human suffering is now sanctioned by the law, which no longer served as a summons to justice.
But if a legal culture emerged that made violence and human suffering socially acceptable, popular culture rendered such violence pleasurable by commodifying, aestheticizing and spectacularizing it. Rather than being unspoken and unseen, violence in American life has become both visible in its pervasiveness and normalized as a central feature of dominant and popular culture.
Americans have grown accustomed to luxuriating in a warm bath of cinematic blood, as young people and adults alike are seduced with commercial and military video games such as "Grand Theft Auto" and "America's Army," the television series "24" and its ongoing Bacchanalian fête of torture, the crude violence on display in World Wrestling Entertainment and Ultimate Fighting Championship, and an endless series of vigilante films such as "The Brave One" (2007) and "Death Sentence" (2007), in which the rule of law is suspended by the viscerally satisfying images of men and women seeking revenge as laudable killing machines - a nod to the permanent state of emergency and war in the United States.
Symptomatically, there is the mindless glorification and aestheticization of brutal violence in the most celebrated Hollywood films, including many of Quentin Tarantino's films, especially the recent "Death Proof" (2007), "Kill Bill" 1 & 2 (2003, 2004), and "Inglorious Bastards" (2009). With the release of Tarantino's 2009 bloody war film, in fact, the press reported that Dianne Kruger, the co-star of "Inglorious Bastards," claimed that she "loved being tortured by Brad Pitt".
This is more than the aestheticization of violence, it is the normalization and glorification of torture itself.
Sadism is as much a part of popular culture as it is of corporate culture. It dominates pornography, runs through reality television and trash-talk programs and is at the core of the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice. And it has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our lack of compassion for the homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed and the sick.
We need, as a society, to educate students and others to be literate in multiple ways, to reclaim the high ground of civic courage, and to be able to name, engage and transform those forms of public pedagogy that produce hate and cruelty as part of the discourse of common sense. Otherwise, democracy will lose the supportive institutions, social relations and culture that make it not only possible but even thinkable.
This makes me want to write a piece on violence in cinema, which I may very well do after I've not stayed up for 36 hours.
Where did the random stuff about violence in movies come from...
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