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dir: Todd Phillips
Dirty, dirty boys
Second verse? Same as the first.

Anyone who paid good money to see this flick, and complained that it was exactly the same plot as the first obviously doesn’t understand what the purpose of a flick called The Hangover Part II was really meant to be.

I didn’t pay good money to see it, because all of my money is tainted with the blood of the innocent and the guilty alike, and I expected it to be exactly what it was, and thus I enjoyed more than the first flick. It’s not better than its predecessor, nor could it be, really. Honestly, these flicks are less movies than they are long, stretched sketch, with multiple gaglets along the way before a punchline that can’t live up to anything.

It doesn’t have to. The premise is so fucking simple, and so enjoyable, that nothing else matters. Characterisation, believable dialogue, people acting sanely is completely unnecessary and unwanted.

Why? Because it’s about that most awesome of things: getting fucked up and not being able to remember the reprehensible shit you got up to the night before.

There’s no Oscar in that. There’s no longing to peer into the depths of the human condition. There’s no need for some Ingmar Bergman-like exploration of man’s misery in the face of God’s silence. It’s about terrible people doing terrible stuff, not remembering either the fun or the awfulness, and trying to find one of their number who’s gone missing.

They’re not trying to make amends. They’re not seeking redemption. What evil they’ve perpetrated they won’t even get punished for, nor will they learn anything from their experience together. But as long as they find the missing chap, and get to the wedding on time, everything will be forgiven and the world will click back into place.

Of course this flick follows exactly the same template as the first flick. Why would it not? I would argue the very universe would collapse in on itself if they varied the formula one iota. It’s in the performance of exactly the same actions, the same framework that transcendence arises, like a Zen monk making the same perfect circles for decades with his rake in a sand garden, until he just can’t take it any more and shoots up the place with an AK.

dir: Nicolas Winding Refn
Driven Driver Drives, duh
Few films live up to the hype. No films really can. Hype is hype, by its nature an aggravating and ephemeral thing, which complicates how we appreciate films. It complicates the way we come to them, the angle we come at them from.

Drive is one of those deliriously (critically, not commercially) hyped flicks that, of course, can’t live up to the hype. The critical hype obscured, for me, what the flick was actually like, and about, to the point where I expected one thing, and got something completely different.

I thought this was going to be a somewhat more enjoyable or thoughtful action flick to do with some guy who can drive really fast. What it ended up being is more of a standard neo-noir crime flick. That’s not a knock against it or any of the people involved here, because my expectations and assumptions aren’t worth shit.

Really, it’s a very regular, very familiar kind of flick, with a very familiar set of characters, and a very predictable outcome. Along the way, though, it’s well acted, very well directed, and kind of arresting.

The Driver (Ryan Gosling) is a taciturn, competent man, who always wears, even later on when it’s covered in blood, a white jacket with the image of a scorpion. Why? Well, maybe it looks cool to someone back in the 1980s. It’s the kind of thing you can imagine the default leader of an unpopular and weak gang wearing in The Warriors.

Perhaps, though, since this isn’t a particularly subtle film, it’s meant to remind us of the story of the frog and the scorpion, the ultimate message being the punchline of “it’s my nature”. Our driver, and protagonist, has a nature. We’re not entirely made privy to it, but it seems to be a cool, sociopathically violent nature overlayed with a placid, professional demeanour.

The flick opens with a tremendous scene of heart-pumping, compelling action. The driver drives two criminal morons to their break-in job, and does the getaway duties, co-ordinating a hell of a lot of details, and coolly dealing with every eventuality that comes up along the way.

dir: Thomas McCarthy
Oh, Giamatti, you handsome devil, when will your day come?
When you watch a lot of movies, you get so used to the hysterical, overbearing, oversaturated general default setting of cinema, that when a relatively quiet flick comes out that treats (mostly) dramas between people in a sane manner, it seems strange.

Not bad strange, just not at the fever pitch of melodrama that people expect from their media, or I guess have expected for decades.

Thomas McCarthy specialises in films seemingly devoted to fairly ordinary people living lives of quiet desperation, alleviated only by their interactions with other more interesting people. The films meander along, some conflict seems to arise organically, forcing some kind of crescendo, and then people’s lives continue, hopefully in a slightly better way. Maybe it sounds like I’m being derisive, but it’s not intended.

Though the protagonists of his previous flicks and the settings are all different (The Station Agent, The Visitor and this one), that approach seems to hold as a constant. You know, in case I haven’t made it clear enough, it’s a gentle, meandering, believable, human way to get a film and a premise across.

Perhaps you can guess what the laziest and most obvious criticism of these flicks could be. Something that mimics ‘real’ life in too realistic a manner runs the risk of being like actual life, in other words, tedious and painful. It can sap the will to live.

But that’s not my take on these films, or on this film. I enjoyed it, as much as a flick like this can be enjoyed. The performances are strong and mostly not showy, and it’s always a delight to see Paul Giamatti play another in a long line of shmucks.

dir: David Yates
It's about bloody time
2010 & 2011

I’m going to review both of them together. I don’t think it really matters either way. They don’t work separately, and together they’re just a big old mess of convenient moments, slavish fan service and muggle muddling.

This will not be a good review. This will provide none of the fulfillment that you're looking for. The only thing worse than reading this review would be sitting down and watching both films back to back.

But they are, in their various parts and pieces, the culmination of a bunch of books and the films they were translated into, and an endpoint in a long-running series, and, at least the second part, is the third highest grossing film of all time, at least for another week or so.

And thus it deserves our special attention. It’s impossible to discuss anything that happens in these films without spoiling the events of the previous ones as well, so there’s virtually no point in issuing a spoiler warning. How else could you talk about the seventh (and eighth) instalments in a series?

There are a bunch of admissions I feel compelled to make before launching into all of this that would inform a reader as to where I’m coming from. I’ve never read the books, though I look forward to doing so when my daughter’s old enough, and we can do so together. I have no snobbish opposition towards the books, their fans, or their popularity. I don’t think their adaptation into film form has resulted in particularly great films (except for Order of the Phoenix), but, having seen all of them now, I’ve come to respect the universe J.K. Rowling created and that so many adore.

That being said, my biggest problem with all of the flicks has always been the terribly haphazard plotting, the incredible overuse of multiple deus ex machinas, and the exposition dumping that never felt organic or anything less than strained. In most cases I think the directors did their best (except with the first two, since Chris Columbus is a terribly mediocre director) adapting source material too copious in quantity and broad in scope to do justice in the time allotted. They did their best. And Yates probably did his best here, though there are a few moments that could have been stronger.

dir: Matthew Vaughn
More like X-Men: It Doesn't Suck As Much This Time, Promise!!!
Saying this is one of the best X-Men flicks is sort of like claiming some guy is the richest corpse in the graveyard, or that a particular stripper is the biggest drug addict at her strip club. A better competition that First Class wins is being one of the better, if not the best, of the flicks based on comic book properties that have come out this year thus far.

To be honest, it’s been pretty slim pickings, so it doesn’t mean the flick is that great. Just that it’s okay.

American summers result in the biggest blockbusteriest shitpiles being shat out upon the world, which is why most of the ‘best’ bets, like comic book flicks, come out at this time. Are audiences at their most pliable, most docile, most leotarded? Whatever it is, here we are, and here it is, a gift to those of us who usually have to grit out teeth and endure these types of ‘events’.

It also serves as something of a history lesson for the less well informed. As an example, you thought that the Cuban Missile Crisis (if you thought of it at all, which is unlikely, considering how long ago it was) arose from the US and the USSR waving their dicks at each other, casting long shadows over the happy totalitarian nation of Cuba, and leading the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. What you didn’t realise is that it happened because of a bunch of goddamn mutants.

Yeah. Mutants. Especially an evil Nazi mutant called Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon). His diabolical plan is to kill all the normal people in the world with radiation or the preceding explosions triggered by a contretemps between the superpowers, allowing the new mutant race to triumph over the boring, tired species known as Homo sapiens.

Oh, Shaw is thoroughly evil, clearly. We know he’s evil because even though he didn’t agree with the Nazi’s Solution Finale (it sounds slightly classier in French), he had no problem, obviously, with torturing and killing Jews for the purposes of Mutant Science.

When he views a young Polish Jew warp the metal concentration camp gates separating him from his beloved parents using some kind of power, he sees in this chap the chance for glory. It’s what every psychopathic mutant longs for. He takes - what would be for other people extreme steps - to motivate this young Erik Lehnsherr into using his power at will.

The problem is, it doesn’t work at will. It only works when he’s really, really upset, or enraged. So what the fuck does Shaw do? He kills Erik’s mother, right in front of him, to compel him to move a goddamn Nazi coin.

Is that all? That’s pretty small beer, isn’t it, Sebastian? And what is it about guys named Sebastian always being depraved, louche individuals, whether it’s Evelyn Waugh novels or X-Men comics? What's with this hatred of guys called Sebastian?

Surprisingly, none of this leaves Erik with any deep admiration for Shaw or for the Nazis. Their epic failure in relation to the war doesn’t cause Erik’s hatred for them to abate, so as an adult, so awesomely played by Michael Fassbender, he turns into a very motivated and very violent Simon Wiesenthal-like Nazihunter.

dir: Miguel Arteta
Employees of the Weak
I have never been to Cedar Rapids. It’s very unlikely that I’m ever going to go to Cedar Rapids. It is in Iowa, in the States, after all. It’s not like anyone should ever go to Cedar Rapids, because it seems to be the city equivalent of the colour beige.

But I very much enjoyed watching this flick called Cedar Rapids.

Deceptive title. It’s not about Cedar Rapids. It’s about a somewhat strange but mostly harmless chap called Tim (Ed Helms), who’s led a very sheltered life thus far. He’s not a manchild like the majority of the manchild arrested development shitbirds who populate the majority of movies these days. But he is someone who has lived a fairly quiet life, who has never travelled and who has never wanted to.

In some ways he’s like the main character from The Truman Show except without thousands of conspiring people and millions of dollars worth of artifice keeping him ground down and in place for ratings and product placement opportunities.

He works as an insurance guy, which, in most flicks of this type, wouldn’t be an issue, but for Tim it defines most of his existence. All he has is his job, his unshakeable faith in Insurance as being a force for good in people’s lives, and his odd sexual relationship with a woman who used to be his teacher when he was a child (Sigourney Weaver). Circumstances at work force him to leave the comfortable rut he’s created for himself, in order to brave the Sodom and Gomorrah that is Cedar Rapids.

dir: Glenn Ficara and John Requa
A surly teenager who passed this poster and muttered, "Uh, that's so gay", would be accurate for once
Gee, I wonder why this flick, which has somehow only now reached Australian cinemas (Cinema Nova in Melbourne), nearly three years after its production, never really got a decent release at the cinemas in the States.

Could it be because of the subject matter: a con artist in love who perpetrates stacks of scams in order to keep himself and the object of his affections in the comfort they have become accustomed to? Is it because it’s based on a true story? Hollywood hates that. Is it because of where much of the flick is set, being prison? Is it because Jim Carrey is the lead actor, and no-one’s heard of this young up-and-comer, or Ewan McGregor in a supporting role, and studios are reluctant to release flicks with such unknowns in the lead?

Or is it because it’s the gayest flick this side of one of those Sex In the City movies?

Brokeback Mountain didn’t really break down that many barriers or walls of prejudice in terms of changing the dynamic that dictates what flicks get out there into the intellectual marketplace or the cinematic marketplace. Sure, a casual stroll through one of those dinosaur DVD stores might grace you with the vision of a section devoted to movies considered to be representatives of the Gay and Lesbian genre (a ghetto that resides next to the world movies and ‘special’ interest documentaries and such.

Now, I’m not talking about those kinds of grotty places where people furtively seek out stroke material whilst glancing nervously about (do they even exist any more, what with cornucopia of plenty that is the magic of the tubes of the internets?). I mean the mainstream movie Blu-ray / DVD places where you can pick up your latest box set of Midsommer Murders, or, if you have no soul, season 4 of Two and a Half Men.

Films like Brokeback, Philadelphia, or ones where the gay character is in a supporting role, and is just there to be bitchy, fabulous and sexless, don’t really represent a new awakening or ‘acceptance’ as far as I’m concerned. They represent, at best, a kind of minstrel show of broad stereotyping and disco music to keep them as the Other whilst crafting comfortable narratives that won’t offend the old biddies AND which make them feel so, so tolerant for not throwing up in outrage.

How noble. The reason no-one wanted to touch this flick with a ten-foot bargepole is because, even though Jim Carrey is a painful ham to behold whether he’s playing a hetero lunatic or a gay lunatic, it’s pretty explicit in its approach to the fact that the main characters are gay. I mean, they’re not actually gay, are they, but they’re constantly simulating man-on-man action.

dir: Jonathan Liebesman
Who'd have thought all it would take is a bit of flung porridge and naughty words to bring it down?
Finally, Shakycam has come of age. It’s been a long, agonising adolescence, but this most painful of weapons in the director’s / cinematographer’s arsenal is now constituting the entire running length of goddamn movies. Even the opening titles get to squiggle and spaz around like a meth addict with no meth, money or people to blow for money.

Eh, it’s not so bad. Depending on the venue, I find that if I sit far enough back from the screen, instead of being actively aggravating, it’s just a mild irritant at worst and a confusing blur at best. Far enough in this context is right up the back against the goddamn wall.

World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles is the full title of the flick, apparently, which seems to imply that if it’s successful enough, an entire series of World Invasion flicks will ensue. World Invasion: Battle Morwell, World Invasion: Battle Ulan Bator and World Invasion: Battle Yackandandah are doubtless on the cards if the right return on investment is achieved. Considering the fact that much of the flick looks like it was filmed on someone’s mobile phone, and that the aliens themselves look like they were created on a Commodore 64 computer, it shouldn’t be too hard for them to break even.

Evil bloody aliens. I was expecting, considering the studio behind it, that there’d be sly implications or allusions to the aliens being stand-ins for people jumping the border and stealing all the landscaping and service industry jobs Americans no longer want to do for less than minimum wage, but apparently not. They’re just your average bipedal species with a head shaped like a muffin top hell bent on destroying all of the peoples of the world for their precious, precious water.

dir: Charles Ferguson
Liars, fibbers and whoremongers, oh my
With documentaries, sometime it’s the content, far more so than the quality of how it’s put together, that’s the defining element deciding whether it works or not. Sure, I am the first person in human history to point out that documentaries tend to veer between polemical and propagandistic, so it’s the most obvious thing to point out ever, but it’s far more true of this ‘genre’ than any of the others. There’s usually far less revelation, and far more letters-to-the-editor aggravation.

Inside Job seeks to illustrate for us what went on and wrong in the lead up to that recent minor economic kerfuffle you might have heard about or lost your job over, charmingly referred to as the Global Financial Crisis. The most important word in that phrase is not the first one, anti-globalisation crusaders, or the last one, catastrophists and doomsayers. It’s the middle one, because, as Matt Damon’s soothing and scolding voiceover articulates for our benefit, it was the goblins of high finance, abetted by cowardly governments that were the ones that did the dirty.

Lots of talking heads ensue, and these people fall into two distinct groups: people champing at the bit to say “Told you so” because they said it was going to happen before it happened, and a couple of people in the other camp denying that anything was wrong even as the sky was falling while they and their compatriots profited from the catastrophe. A long list of a third phantom group exists in the abstract, serious players on the financial sector and government sides, who declined to be interviewed for very good reasons. The brief snippets of these other people talking and lying through their fucking teeth in other interviews or before Congress is enough, is more than enough to engender outrage.

Yes, a driving force of documentaries is to get people to feel outraged. But I don’t want outrage. I crave understanding. I want to grasp how something complicated happened, especially if it’s something that has impacted adversely on millions of lives.

dir: Lisa Cholodenko
Insufferable. Utterly insufferable.
And here is the last of my reviews of the ten flicks of 2010, nine destined to lose the award for Best Picture, and the one that will doubtless win at the upcoming Academy Awards. I've seen and reviewed all the rest (Toy Story 3, True Grit, Social Network, King’s Speech, Winter’s Bone, Inception, Black Swan, 127 Hours, The Fighter), and felt, for some inexplicable reason, that I had to review the one remaining flick if I was ever going to pretend to have an informed and important opinion about the annual filmic circle jerk scheduled to occur on Monday.

Whoopee for me.

So here’s my review of The Kids Are All Right. Enjoy.

If you permit me to enter the American Culture Wars for a moment, and if you’ll grant me the license to pontificate about the aforementioned despite the clear fact that I have absolutely no stake in that polarising political / ideological bullshit by dint of nationality or geographical location, please just let me say the following: This flick reminds me of how utterly insufferable we are.

Look, I say this as someone who either directly or passively accepts that on the Red State / Blue State, conservative / progressive, Monsanto is evil / McDonalds is Great divide, I completely associate and adhere with one side over the other. It’s just that the rudiments of it, the signifiers, the chai lattes, the smug self-righteousness, the precious preciousness of shopping at organic farmer’s markets, locavore, anti-sweatshop, sustainable / ethical clothing made of vintage hessian sacks stuff drives me up the fucking wall. I infinitely prefer it to the other side, which raises getting outraged, selfishness and a lack of giving a damn about the impact of one’s own actions and choices on other people to a high art form, but I still find us insufferable some times.

Thankfully, one of the characters here agrees with me, and goes on a drunken tirade yelling about how sick she is of composting and organic this and biodynamic that.

The only problem was, after that, I felt bad about having thought ‘my’ side insufferable in the first place, because the character going on about it is pretty obnoxious specifically at that moment, and in general, too.

dir: Derek Cianfrance
It'll all end in tears, like everything else
Jesus, what a fucking depressing film.

Maybe it’s not entirely depressing, just mostly depressing. At the very least, it’s wrenching, gutting and very uncomfortable. And sad.

And what’s it about? Well, it’s about two people not in love anymore.

I don’t think I could ever bring myself to watch this flick again. That’s not entirely true: it’s really well made, I guess. And the music is really nice and appropriate, and heartbreaking at certain points. And it’s well filmed and well acted.

But, jeez, does it hurt to think about it.

Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) are a married couple who are clearly not happy. Their marriage is clearly headed towards dissolution. Dean is surly, drunk and hectoring, passive aggressive as well as just outright aggressive, fuelled by his sensing that Cindy is shutting him out.

Cindy clearly cannot stand Dean anymore, and their every remark to each other is brittle, jagged and fraught with peril. Don’t mistake this for some highfalutin Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf retread where sophisticates are tossing martini-enhanced barbs and cutting witticisms at each other. They, being the two leads, play it like real people unwilling to face the reality that they shouldn’t be together anymore.

It seems so simple, and obvious. But then think of how many films are actually about this anymore? Romantic flicks are all about longing, and suffering and ever so artful misunderstandings, all justified in the end by the idea that we are made complete and whole by the right person.