The Grouchy Editor

How to Make a Movie That Will Alienate Men

• Your story should be about a woman (Michelle Williams) who is torn between two lovers:  a solid-but-dull husband (Seth Rogen), and an unattached male model– er, “artist” (Luke Kirby), living next door.
• To antagonize the straight males in your audience, make sure that both the husband and the lover boy have annoying and/or ludicrous personal traits, so that we don’t want to identify with either of them.  For example, depict the husband as a man-child who enjoys speaking baby talk to his wife and whose idea of foreplay is similar to that of Little Billy Brat back in third grade, the kid who enjoyed pulling girls’ pigtails.
• Include a scene in which women receive “aqua fitness” instruction from a Richard Simmons wannabe.
• Just to be mean, include a shower scene in which Williams and sexy comedienne Sarah Silverman are completely nude, and then — just when you finally have the attention of your male audience — sabotage the whole thing by tossing in full-frontal nudity by a group of elderly, obese actresses.
• Create a cute, cloying occupation for the moon-faced lover boy.   Lover boy is an artist and therefore must be “sensitive.”  But he must also eat.  To put vittles on his plate, give lover boy a part-time job — hauling a rickshaw.  In Toronto.  In Canada.

• Include pretty pictures of things like lighthouses, sunsets, and painted toenails.  Especially the painted toenails.
• Include dialogue like this:  “Sometimes I’m walking along the street, and a shaft of sunlight falls in a certain way across the pavement, and I just wanna cry.”
• Or like this:  “I just kissed the top of your head, ever so gently, and then I kissed your eyelids and they fluttered underneath my lips … just a little.”
• Include not one, but two scenes in which the wife — apparently as a test to find out how much her two men love her — sits down on a toilet and pees in their presence.  In the only instance in this movie in which both males display good sense, they both walk out on her.

I didn’t say much about the plot.  Williams’s young wife feels trapped after just five years in her marriage to loyal puppy Rogen.  Will they live  happily ever after, or will life interfere?

Hold on … that was also the plot of Williams’s 2010 film, Blue Valentine.  Blue Valentine was a great movie about a young couple going through a dreadful time.  Take This Waltz is a dreadful movie about a young couple (and heterosexual men in the audience) going through a dreadful time.           Grade:  D+

Director:  Sarah Polley   Cast:  Seth Rogen, Michelle Williams, Sarah Silverman, Jennifer Podemski, Luke Kirby, Aaron Abrams, Vanessa Coelho, Graham Abbey  Release:  2012

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Shame is an emotionally wrenching portrait of modern-day sex addiction and features a powerhouse performance by Michael Fassbender.

Just kidding.

Here is a more accurate lede:  Shame reminded me of masturbation — self-indulgent and meaningless.  Its star, Michael Fassbender, shows his penis and, consequently, critics are hailing his performance as “fearless” and “brave.”

At least a good session of self love lasts no more than 15 minutes, whereas this pretentious drama from director Steve McQueen drags on for an hour and 40 minutes.

Shame is one of those tiresome “damaged people” films, with mournful piano music and actors who wear haunted expressions.  When they wear anything at all.

There are lingering shots during which the audience is expected to reflect on what it’s just witnessed.  Sex addict Brandon (Fassbender) jogs and jogs while his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) has sex with his boss in Brandon’s apartment.  Sissy, a struggling nightclub performer, sings a complete rendition of “New York, New York,” presumably to give us time to ponder the fact that Sissy isn’t likely to “make it” — anywhere.

Mostly, I grew bored during these interminable scenes and instead pondered what might have been in the actors’ film contracts.  Did they void “non-nudity” clauses so that they could perform full-frontal scenes in this movie?  Had any of them seen a really good film about addiction, such as Days of Wine and Roses?  Why does Brandon masturbate so much, when he apparently has no trouble picking up chicks in bars?

Nothing in Shame makes us care about these characters.  Brandon’s a handsome, well-paid office drone who lives in a nice Manhattan crib.  Sissy is a moderately talented, attractive singer.  Apparently Brandon and Sissy are Irish kids who somehow wound up in New Jersey.  That’s as much as we learn about them.

Shame delivers sermons about the usual crap — sex for sex’s sake is sad and destructive; addicts have trouble connecting emotionally with others.  Along with the graphic sex scenes, this is material that might have been daring in the 1960s, but today is just a pointless jerk-off.       Grade:  D+

Director:  Steve McQueen   Cast:  Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie, Lucy Walters, Mari-Ange Ramirez, Loren Omer, Hannah Ware, Elizabeth Masucci, Rachel Farrar  Release:  2011

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In 1994, three explorers stumbled on a cave in southern France that, having been shielded from the elements for thousands of years, harbored an amazing treasure:  prehistoric paintings of horses, panthers, lions, and at least one human, all of them etched on calcium-lined rock and dating back some 32,000 years.  Two years ago, the French government granted limited access to the Chauvet Cave for filmmaker Werner Herzog so that the world might share in this archaeological wonderland.  In 3-D, no less.

Sounds like the makings of a spellbinding documentary, doesn’t it?  Alas, too often during Cave of Forgotten Dreams I felt like I was back in 7th-grade science class, grateful when the lights went off so that I could catch a few winks during the screening of some plodding educational movie.

The images in Cave are impressive.  I did not see the film in 3-D, but I was still drawn to Herzog’s lingering, panoramic views of what most inspired our ancestors:  animals.  Not only are the paintings well-preserved, many of them are artistically striking.

Unfortunately, Herzog’s film is 90 minutes, and that’s a long time to fill the screen with slow pans of stalactites, stalagmites, and hand prints on shadowy walls.  Also, Herzog is determined to speculate on What It All Means, and that means introducing the “experts.”

Among the scholars who provide archaeological insight, we meet one geezer, “Master Perfumer” Maurice Maurin, who — I kid you not — sniffs at holes in the ground to ferret out caves. “Primal techniques,” Herzog explains in narration. 

We also watch as a cave researcher wobbles a spear through the air in a clumsy attempt to demonstrate how primitive man hunted game during the Ice Age.  “His efforts may not look very convincing,” says Herzog, stating the obvious.

In a strange postscript, Herzog photographs some mutant albino crocodiles and wonders aloud what the crocs might make of the nearby cave paintings.  Is it possible, he asks, that future historians might look back at humans who explored the Chauvet Cave in much the same way that we now look at these crocodiles?

As long as Herzog was dragging me into la-la land, I began to speculate about one particular drawing on the cave’s wall, which is shown near the end of the movie.  I could swear that the image is of Bart Simpson.       Grade:  B-

Director:  Werner Herzog  Featuring:  Werner Herzog, Jean Clottes, Julien Monney, Jean-Michel Geneste, Michel Philippe, Gilles Tosello, Carole Fritz, Maurice Maurin  Release:  2010

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Above, can you spot Bart Simpson?

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If I told you that this review was written by Zargon, a 10,000-year-old wooly mammoth that was recently discovered in Antarctica, unfrozen by scientists, and then taught typing skills by an English teacher, you’d have to admit that the possibility is fairly imaginative.  Hopefully, we could also agree that it’s a profoundly stupid claim.  But that’s what you get with The Cabin in the Woods — an imaginative but profoundly stupid horror movie.

Esteemed film critic Roger Ebert has written of Cabin’s plot, “You’re not going to see this one coming.”  With any luck, that’s because you’re a somewhat rational human being who expects at least a modicum of realism in your movies, even silly movies like this one.

Everything in Cabin is culled from countless kids-in-peril flicks of the past.  You already know the story:  Five kids party at an isolated cabin, where bad things happen to them.  The kids are all archetypes from other slasher movies, which isn’t entirely bad because it does mean we get an obligatory topless scene from one of the girls, this time courtesy of actress Anna Hutchison.

Much has been made of Cabin’s supposedly novel take on a tired genre, but imagination with no discipline is also what you get when a three-year-old draws pictures on the wall.  With his own poo.       Grade:  C

Director:  Drew Goddard   Cast:  Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Brian White, Amy Acker  Release:  2012

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The gripping war movie Lebanon is unpopular with some groups in Israel because, according to a news report, “the film will deter young men from volunteering for the [Israeli] army.”  I don’t entirely buy that argument.

Does Lebanon emphasize the horrors of war?  Yes, indeed.  As you might expect from any war film, there are graphic scenes of violence, gore, and sheer terror.  Does Lebanon also glamorize war?  I’m certain that it does — at least for some members of the audience.

I feel confident that many young men will identify with at least one of the film’s four main characters, young Israelis confined in a hellish tank at the onset of the 1982 conflict in Lebanon.  This kind of viewer-identification is nothing new;  audiences sided with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker when Bonnie and Clyde was in theaters.  And I’m guessing that more than one Nightmare on Elm Street fan would enjoy being in Freddy Krueger’s blood-stained shoes.  Some young men who watch Lebanon will be repelled by what they see; others will leave the movie and seek out an enlistment officer.

For me (an old man), the most compelling reason to see Lebanon is its stunning photography.  Director Samuel Maoz, who wrote the script based on his own experience as a gunner in the 1982 battle, also has a background in art direction and photography — and man, does it show.  Shot almost entirely within the confines of a leaking, creaking tank, Maoz’s visuals are a luminescent feast, with green and gold patinas casting an eerie glow onto a drop of sweat falling off a soldier’s chin, or a crushed cigarette floating in a pool of oil.

You might think that a 93-minute movie restricted to the inside of a tank is about 90 minutes too much, but you’d be mistaken.  We feel the men’s claustrophobia, but there is also suspense because we see what they see:  kaleidoscopic snapshots of chaos on the dangerous streets outside of their metal cocoon, all viewed through the lens of a rotating gunsight.

Some people will likely experience Lebanon as a big-screen videogame: cool-looking, violent, and with clearly defined good guys and bad guys.  Others will see it as a harrowing anti-war statement.  Some people will see it as pro-military; some will see it as anti-army.  That’s just the way we are.       Grade:  B+

Director:  Samuel Maoz   Cast:  Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen, Michael Moshonov, Zohar Shtrauss, Dudu Tassa, Ashraf Barhom, Fares Hananya, Reymond Amsalem   Release:  2010

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Take Shelter is the kind of movie that works on some levels, but it’s also the kind of movie that you probably won’t be anxious to see more than once.

The film does have a lot of things going for it:  It’s a story with supernatural elements that does not insult the intelligence.  It’s a film that depicts mental illness in a sensitive, never sensational, manner.  It’s well-directed, relatively absorbing, and features some fine performances.  But it’s ultimately unsatisfying.

As usual, the culprit here is the script.  The plot is unfocused and, as another reviewer points out, in the end Take Shelter is a disappointing “shaggy dog story.”

Director-writer Jeff Nichols does capture a world seldom shown in the movies:  blue-collar, rural America.  Curtis (Michael Shannon) and Samantha (Jessica Chastain) are working-class stiffs raising a young girl with a hearing disability in small-town Ohio.  Curtis has a problem, too.  He suffers from visions and nightmares that are disturbingly realistic.  Are they a harbinger of doomsday?  Or has Curtis inherited a psychological disorder from his mother, a woman who was institutionalized for similar reasons?

Mostly, Take Shelter is an examination of one man’s descent into mental illness, but we don’t really empathize because we’re never quite sure what kind of movie we’re watching — is it a drama about the devastating effects of mental illness, a la A Beautiful Mind?  Or is it an apocalyptic thriller, an Armageddon in Ohio?  The movie doesn’t really deliver in either respect.         Grade:  B-

Director:  Jeff Nichols   Cast:  Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Tova Stewart, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon, Natasha Randall, ron Kennard, Scott Knisley, Robert Longstreet   Release:  2011

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