I’ve been thinking a lot about socially conscious movies as of late.
I recently had the chance to watch THE YES MEN, a very good, but not great, movie about some guys trying to effect change on a global scale with regard to showing how World Trade Organization policies really only help rich companies get richer while other, less capitally infused countries, are getting the same kind of treatment that child molesters receive after being put into general population.
The idea that you have a movie which is supposed to deal with a very large, global issue, is a good one. It should have been a great documentary about how a few men were really making waves on a high level to show how wrong this organization, which purports to strive in making commerce fair to all, really is in its actions and policies. I know some of you could give a rat’s ass and instead pop in 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS if given the choice but I think the documentary genre is one that should be a part of people’s balanced filmic diet.
When done correctly, flicks like these should grab people by the short and curlies. Regardless of the left-wing politics of SUPER SIZE ME and FARENHEIT 9/11 the portions and the way the story was served made it very palpable. With color graphics and modern animation that really helped to couch a complex social situation into USA Today-type nuggets. I, for one, am more than happy to sit through a sticky documentary that may not have the greatest production values but when you’re dealing with the issue of trying to make a hot-button problem like globalization, as in YES MEN, understandable you’ve got to come at things like an organ grinder with a pet monkey.
I don’t think that movies that have serious subject matter at its epicenter, like CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS, need to be stale like week-old French bread. I believe, and I know there might some contention with this idea, that someone needs to come at things with a storyteller’s passion. A filmmaker should want to entice me, seduce me, with the premise that drove them to explain why I should even care what they’re talking about in the first place.
THE YES MEN failed in this regard.
Again, I’m not looking for anyone to give a care about any of this but I just wanted to express the idea that even though the documentary, as a genre, lends itself to the exploration of reality it does not mean that it gives license to any yahoo to bore me endlessly with their presentation of facts and figures. I have high regard for the reality-based segment of the film market and it was really only after watching THE YES MEN when I felt passionate enough, myself, to re-think what’s needed in order to make a documentary that is at the same time informs my experience in this society with my need for some bread and circuses. It’s not often that I am driven to pontificate on some subject that seems obvious enough to the rest of the world but it didn’t really crystalize until I was left wanting more out of a movie that should have driven me to action. This film should have made me angry of the injustices that are being perpetrated on a global basis, again, SUPER SIZE ME did that quite well, but I was more consumed with trying to figure out why every point they were making was falling on my deaf ears that were trying to listen for something, anything, that could explain why I lost interest in the whole scheme by the end of the film.
Say what you will but I am looking forward to Michael Moore’s SICKO just because I know he’s going to take a complex idea, the healthcare system of America, and is going to make it relevant enough so I feel a bolt of electricity in my brain about what’s happening in my world.
It’s what a documentary should do.
Special thanks to many of you this week who entered the free Halloween -themed DVDs contest from last week. I will be notifying the big wiener this week and no one more than I could have been more suprised by the sheer number of you on the lookout for a chance at obtaining gratis schwag.
DEJA VU (2006)
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer, Paula Patton, Bruce Greenwood, Adam Goldberg, Jim Caviezel
Release: November 22, 2006
Synopsis: Everyone has experienced the unsettling mystery of déjà vu – that flash of memory when you meet someone new you feel you’ve known all your life or recognize a place even though you’ve never been there before. But what if the feelings were actually warnings sent from the past or clues to the future? In the captivating new action-thriller from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott, written by Terry Rossio & Bill Marsilii, it is déjà vu that unexpectedly guides ATF agent Doug Carlin (Washington) through an investigation into a shattering crime. Called in to recover evidence after a bomb sets off a cataclysmic explosion on a New Orleans Ferry, Carlin is about to discover that what most people believe is only in their heads is actually something far more powerful – and will lead him on a mind-bending race to save hundreds of innocent people.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Negative. Have your Dramamine ready, kids.
I know I am a fan of quick cutting in my movie trailers. Sometimes expediency is the greatest part of an action movie trailer as it kind of gets the vibe of what a movie where spectacle is the order of the day.
I do not like it, however, when quick cutting results in me feeling queasy just so it can make a vague point. The point here is that…um…déjà vu is somehow relative to the plot here.
We get the voiceover guy telling us the Webster’s definition of what vu is all about as we are yanked like a tilt-a-whirl across images of sepia-colored scenes of people with bags over their heads, pistols, cops, crime scenes, lingering looks at 5 x 7’s and of some chick taking a header into a car’s windshield.
“Have me met?â€
We take a moment to have some Lisa Bonet replicant tell Denzel that, yeah, the two of them have met once and I think it’s all over, the cutting. Oh no, friends, we are just getting started.
The camera yanks back to show Denzel as, I think, a part of the po-pos in some capacity, ATF maybe, who knows because it’s flashing right by and I don’t feel like rewinding and slo-moing for myself, and at one point we see him driving a big humvee with some kind of electronic equipment strapped to his head. I don’t know what it’s there for or why I should even care but I do like that we’re allowed to linger and watch some ferry go up in a massive explosion. Sweet.
And then, we get the same Lisa Bonet stand-in emoting about some bullcrap of what if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world but that no one would believe….blah…blah…blah. I realize that this whole deja vu thing is supposed to be all sorts of serious but this is a thriller after all and this moment is like having to wait behind some ass who wants to pay a forty cent road toll with pennies from their ash tray; it’s just slowing things down.
This is when things get a little weird.
There isn’t any music, just the eerie and pedantic clicka-clicka-clicka of a sparse arrangement, as we quick clip through a lot of unrelated imagery, I think in an effort to make us feel that this movie is really really hardcore and we should be freaked out just by watching these things flash before our eyes.
“Brace yourselves…I think you’re about to witness a murder.â€
Now, where the hell was this line before we’re nearly 2/3rds of a way through this thing? If you’re going to have a confusing movie, have yourselves a confusing movie. I can relate to that. However, if you’re trying to establish that this movie is going to be a mind fuck don’t make it so that I am racking my one brain cell I have left trying to decipher why I would want to spend money on a movie I am confused by even before I come see it. Get it?
“U Can save herâ€
It’s not until the end when we get some great information: Denzel says that some killer is going to whack some chick off in twelve hours. In opposition to this information we get some dude telling us that said chick was murdered four days prior. Now that’s a reason for me to pull up my Jockeys and pay attention. Sadly, we don’t get this information until the very end of the movie while voiceover guy tells us that this movie is going to lead me on a journey “unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.â€
Now, I have heard all sorts of hyperbole in this business but never before have I categorically been told that I’ve never experienced a movie like this before. I’ll give the movie props for actually stepping away from what would be expected of a Denzel/Thanksgiving/Tony Scott movie that would, ostensibly, be looking for paying consumers to patronize the flick but I need more than just clever wordsmithing.
Let’s hope we get a clearer, less muddled, advertisement in the weeks to come. Something that will compel me to spend my money.
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS (2006)
Director: Gabriele Muccino
Cast: Will Smith, Thandie Newton, Jaden Smith
Release: December 15, 2006
Synopsis: A struggling salesman (Will Smith) takes custody of his son (Jaden Smith) as he’s poised to begin a life-changing professional endeavor.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Negative. I am loaded for bear on this one.
Sometimes you wonder how people are able to rise to such prominence when it should be evident to everyone else how ill-equipped and devoid of actual skill they actually are. Will Smith, for the better part of the mid-90s, was this person to me. I couldn’t grasp how the man went from being a favorite on my mix tapes in middle school, to being on my television, to his eventual rise in motion pictures.
I think it was jealousy.
To Will’s credit, though, and you have to give it up to him, he has parlayed every success into something bigger and better. However, the one arena that he still hasn’t yet allowed himself to enter is the realm of small, intimate pictures. Has he flexed his acting might in a small indie? A production that didn’t have a blockbuster price tag attached to it? He’s flirted with a few things but, I would posit, he hasn’t. Now, while this isn’t it, and this is an obvious grab at a movie that is filled with so much saccharine you’re gonna need a few viewings of FACES OF DEATH to flush it all out of your system, there are hints this will be something you can tolerate with the rest of the family come the holidays.
“I met my father when I was 28 years old…When I had children, my children, were going to know who their father was.â€
Not wanting to waste any time in the opening we’re blasted by the soft sounds of tender pop rock with Will Smith handling the voiceover duties by essentially laying it all out before us and, like it or hate it, he sets up the story pretty well. The fawning and “awwâ€ing at Will playing a little ball with his young ward is sweet and is meant to be nothing more than the emotional buy-in that it is.
The next scene sets up nicely the rigors of life this man has to endure. He’s a salesman, that much we’re shown, and while there’s nothing really Arthur Millar about the man’s plight as a door-to-door salesperson everything about these little moments about his sales moxie and our poor pitying when we gander at his car being towed right in front of him, a real Ed Rooney moment, is manipulative. We’re immediately supposed to feel sorry for this hard working fool.
The transition to the next real moment in this trailer has our hero approaching some nameless dude who is getting out of his Ferrari in front of the Pacific Mercantile Exchange to talk about what made him successful enough to afford a car like that. Alright, bullshit. Who just happens to park their ride in front of a building like that? I get towed from 10 minute parking in front of my dry cleaners while we’re supposed to believe some wanker who deals in stocks gets front door privileges and would leave his Ferrari outside without any top, cover or protection? Ah, yes, convenient characters who deliver clever dialogue do.
I like the tonal shift, however, when we see Will get tossed from his apartment, the close-up shot of the guy’s wallet to show he really doesn’t have any cash being rather obnoxious, and somehow still has enough of that fictional movie courage to press on. It’s false, yes, I know, but the story really takes a sharp twist and the trailer is adept enough to make it all feel seamless.
From an internship he didn’t realize doesn’t pay anything to the moment that Will and his son are getting tossed from another one of their living quarters only to take refuge in a locked public toilet, the tears are a nice touch to show Will’s despondency, as Smith makes a go at a real job.
I have to punish this trailer for the moment Will has with his boss, who just happens to be working on a Rubik’s Cube in the back of the cab, and, golly, Will takes it out of his boss’ hands and shows how smart he is by solving the Cube right there. Yeah, bullshit.
I’m not one to really rain down on some flick that was “Inspired by a true story†but, come on, was this dude renowned for solving Rubik’s Cubes in the back of cabs? I’m impressed by the overall slickness of this trailer, the effortlessness with which we are taken from story point to story point, the music providing a good enough atmosphere and for making a great piece of marketing that should sell well to Middle America.
I have to admit that while researching this trailer I came across a posting on the IMDB message board that read “Can we say ‘Trolling for Oscar’?†and felt that, yes, that is something that I wrap my head around.
Director: Bob Odenkirk
Cast: Dax Shepard, Will Arnett, Chi McBride
Release: November 22, 2006
Synopsis: Felon John Lyshitski (Shepard) has figured out the best way to get revenge on the now-dead judge who sent him to jail: watch the official’s obnoxious son, Nelson Biederman IV (Arnett), survive the clink. John strikes gold when Nelson is wrongly convicted of a crime and sent to the pen he used to call home. He gleefully gets sent back to become Nelson’s cellmate and to ensure that his new buddy gets the “full treatment.” Let the games begin.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Negative. I’m exhausted with fighting it.
Yes, it stems from his smarmy tour of duty in “Punk’dâ€, his two day flat RC Cola performance in ZATHURA and even his now excised bits in EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH are nearly reason enough to have me avoid that flick too. And don’t get me started However, I’m an even-handed viewer and every so often I am given to bouts of redemption for even the worst offending offenders.
This actually looks enjoyable. I’m not saying it looks funny but it didn’t completely turn me off so that’s a big red star in Dax Shepard’s column for today’s activities. Add to this my own personal interest in seeing how Will Arnett is able to flex his film muscle, an admiration for Bob Odenkirk as a guy who has some great sense of what makes good comedy and you have yourselves some potential.
Now, in execution, the trailer actually starts uniquely. I say uniquely because we’re not even introduced to our protagonists until we’re well into this thing and we are, instead, given a comedic situation. It almost feels like a comedian’s stand-up routine on the ignorance of how a trial by jury isn’t really all it’s supposed to be due to the circumstances of how you can get a dozen people together in a room without anyone figuring out a way to get out of doing it. I found the foreman’s obvious lack of intelligence, his forced mispronunciations feel 3rd grade with kids who realized “I read good†is something funny to tell their parents but it still flies here, along with announcing Will as “quilty†instead of the obvious “guilty†an inducement for smiles. As basic as it was I get the idea of who this is supposed to appeal to.
Dax’s back story of how he’s arrived to the prison where he currently presides made me laugh, I’ll admit it. Through a rather clever camera angling we get an almost 3rd person viewing of how Dax stole the Publisher’s Clearing House prize patrol van and then gets busted for trying to cash the oversized check at the bank with the surveillance video providing an additional layer of comedic goodness.
“From the studio that brought you Brokeback Mountainâ€
Further, I’m amused that the trailer makers just remove the blocks from underneath this bus that’s sitting on a hill and let every gay joke fly like whizzing bottle rockets. From the audio drops of the words “penetrating†and the allusions to prison rape, the punch line cutting off just as soon as we get that Gob is going to get it in the ass, we get that what we’re in for in this movie is just an everyman who experiences life behind bars with a childish sense of ignorance.
However, as we progress we seem to just regress. The trailer just unloads everything in its comedic arsenal and I start to feel disappointed as we get one gag after another that seems to be possessed of nothing but easy jabs that we’ve all seen before. From Dax dressing like a woman that I am assuming is supposed to be funny to Will playing the part of the idiot who says to one inmate, who proclaims that he killed his own father, that he didn’t kill him with kindness I am at a loss to try and find a reason why I would pay money to see a movie that’s gong to challenge my sensibilities like this.
The answer is that while I leaned to actually recommend this movie the dependence on unfunny material by the end of the trailer, when you should really be leaving me with a smile, is just not enough for me to do so.
Just like prison, so much potential just wasted away.
THE GROUND TRUTH (2006)
Director: Patricia Foulkrod
Cast: Robert Acosta, Kelly Dougherty, Patricia Foulkrod, Nickie Huze, Sean Huze, Denver Jones, Joyce Lucey, Kevin Lucey, Jackie Massey, Jimmy Massey, Herold Noel, Chad Reiber, Steve Robinson, Robert Scaer
Release: September 15, 2006 (Limited) & Available for purchase at the film’s website
Synopsis: The Ground Truth stunned filmgoers at the 2006 Sundance and Nantucket Film Festivals. Hailed as “powerful” and “quietly unflinching,” Patricia Foulkrod’s searing documentary feature includes exclusive footage that will stir audiences. The filmmaker’s subjects are patriotic young Americans – ordinary men and women who heeded the call for military service in Iraq – as they experience recruitment and training, combat, homecoming, and the struggle to reintegrate with families and communities. The terrible conflict in Iraq, depicted with ferocious honesty in the film, is a prelude for the even more challenging battles fought by the soldiers returning home – with personal demons, an uncomprehending public, and an indifferent government. As these battles take shape, each soldier becomes a new kind of hero, bearing witness and giving support to other veterans, and learning to fearlessly wield the most powerful weapon of all – the truth.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: I think I’d like it but…the rest of America? Not so sure about that.
I am pretty sure that having Will Ferrell run around in his Fruit of the Looms asking for the divine help of Tom Cruise in any kind of situation is worth something. There’s got to be a dollar amount you can put on antics like that.
I am also pretty sure of what happens when you put Will in a serious movie like MELINDA AND MELINDA and WINTER PASSING: money stops flowing like virginal wine out of a spigot.
So, it’s with great difficulty that I’m saying that while having a marquee like Will is wunderbar, after seeing this trailer I am really eager to see this movie which can only spell doom if the studio is hoping for a financial windfall.
Firstly, though, it’s so splendid to just see Emma Thompson kick things off properly in this trailer. She’s been visually absent from films that all it takes is a simple prompting by Queen Latifah who I’m surprised to see as I thought her time is too taken up to tell me to “Gather ’round the good stuff” as it pertains to Pizza Hut pizzas.
The premise is quirky to begin with, don’t think the irony of having Tony Hale from Arrested Development pop up in this comedy is lost to me, but Emma’s voiceover jives with the idea that she is a writer who is working out her book, with the prescience of determining her character’s fate, and having it actually happen to a real man.
“I don’t know how to kill Harold Crickâ€
Almost like ALL OF ME but having tinges of something Charlie Kaufman would write the trailer effectively takes a pretty warped concept and makes it tangible. Will doesn’t seem to be operating from his usual slapsticky comfort zone and I am not sure if this is where people could start to become skittish.
In fact, I would assert that what we are shown of how this situation starts to take control of Will’s life is not that funny in a conventional sense, per se. He becomes wrapped up in this woman’s narrative and it is the story that is being told within the confines of his mind that starts a great “What If†that I don’t believe a lot of people will gravitate toward with their money.
The one segment of the trailer where Will does raise his voice in the way that he’s best known for doing it’s not done out of humor but of genuine frustration that he doesn’t know who or what is going on with him. I think it’s a stretch to assume that this is where the real funny lies but Will’s visit to Dustin Hoffman, a psychologist of sorts, who tells him to keep track of plot details to see if he’s living a comedy or drama is wicked funny.
This is where the trailer really gains momentum going forward to the end of this thing.
Harold begins to take charge of his situation, he studies the moments he hears in his head to see what’s going to happen to him and when we finally get to Emma’s pronouncement that Harold is now caught in a series of events that will lead to his demise it’s this statement, backed up with another Will Ferrell yell to the heavens, that makes you afraid of what comes next.
Will taking the lead in contacting the woman who he finally figures out is the person writing it all, communicating with her, wondering whether she will take him seriously or vise-versa, is one of the more strange and compelling “What ifâ€s that’s been put out there in a while.
The Pretenders’ “Stop Your Sobbing†is a radical choice for a trailer background track but kudos for the person behind this decision. In a time when trailer music ranges from Top 40 to music that peaked on Casey Kasem’s radio show decades ago it’s nice to be challenged with unconventional musical selections.
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