The Grouchy Editor

If there’s a lesson to be learned from James Franco’s grueling ordeal in 127 Hours, my guess is that the wrong people will learn it.  By now, most people know the story of young Aron Ralston, the climber who became trapped in a Utah canyon and was forced to amputate his own arm.  Ralston, who failed to alert anyone to his whereabouts, spent five miserable days in a hellish hole before, essentially, rescuing himself.  The moral of the story seems to be:  No matter how tough (and young) you think you are, at some point you’ll need other people.  (A second lesson is obvious:  Don’t mess with Mother Nature.)

Believe it or not, I used to be a young man, even more foolish than I am now.  So I’m guessing the reaction from today’s young men to this film will fall into one of two camps:  1) Wow, I guess I’d better not try to be so much like Superman – I really do need friends and family, or 2) That Ralston dude was a wimp.  I’m going out climbing tomorrow, and I ain’t tellin’ nobody!

British director Danny Boyle, whom I think is better suited to fast-paced material (Trainspotting and 28 Days Later come to mind), is constrained here to one actor and one setting.  He tries to overcome this potential handicap with a series of low-impact flashbacks and hallucinations whilst his hero is trapped.  These predictable techniques are only mildly effective.  The audience doesn’t have much emotional stake in Ralston’s life, unlike the connection we felt for Tom Hanks’s marooned executive in Cast Away.

Franco is personable and entertaining as the focus of nearly every scene (somewhere, Ryan Reynolds – similarly entombed in last year’s Buried – is scratching his head and wondering what became of his Oscar nomination), but he can only do so much.

As for the famous amputation scene, it’s gorier than I was led to believe, but I was more affected when Hanks had to extract his own tooth in Cast Away.     Grade:  B 

Director:  Danny Boyle  Cast:  James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Sean Bott, Treat Williams, Kate Burton, Clemence Poesy, Koleman Stinger, John Lawrence, Rebecca C. Olson  Release:  2010

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I’ve never been to Australia, but if there’s another country (or continent, if you prefer) that has more in common with the United States, I’d like to know what it is.  Australia and the U.S. share a common history.  More so than, say, Canada, we share a “wild west” mentality that lingers to the present day.  More so than England, we have prominent gun cultures.  Aussies and Americans love their macho, and they love to drink.

So it comes as no surprise that our movies are similar, in particular our crime movies.  An armed-robbery gang lives in a blue-collar neighborhood.  Loyalty to the gang is paramount, and so is fear and hatred of the police.  One young man wants to escape this paranoid world, preferably with his sweetheart.  I am describing Boston and The Town, but swap Beantown for Melbourne, and you are watching Animal Kingdom.

Australian actress Jacki Weaver has gotten a lot of attention for her role as mother “Smurf,” the reptilian matriarch of the crime family in Kingdom, but – at least until the final minutes of the film – her part is relatively small.  Weaver is good, but this movie belongs to Ben Mendelsohn as eldest son Andrew.  Andrew just wants to be helpful, he’ll tell you.  Are you gay, but hesitant to “come out”?  Sit down and talk to Andrew about it.  Having troubles with your teenage girlfriend? Andrew can be your friend and counselor.  But beware, because Andrew isn’t always so friendly ….

Animal Kingdom is compelling, but like The Town, it’s not a great movie.  Part of the problem, I think, lies with the young protagonist, Joshua.  Joshua is a typical teenage boy, full of angst yet shy to the point of being a complete enigma.  He is a blank slate, and it’s tough for an audience to relate to blank slates.      Grade:  B

Director:  David Michod  Cast:  Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford, Jacki Weaver, Sullivan Stapleton, James Frecheville, Dan Wyllie, Anthony Hayes, Laura Wheelwright  Release:  2010

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The best movies don’t end well.  By that, I mean that their fadeouts are bittersweet, ambiguous, or flat-out depressing.  Citizen Kane dies, alone and friendless.  Rick and Ilsa are separated, apparently for good.  Old Yeller gets shot.

Blue Valentine is that kind of movie, and that’s a good thing.  Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams play (superbly) a married couple that would seem to have it all.  Young, bright, and white in America – if these two can’t attain the American Dream, what hope is there for anyone?

Director Derek Cianfrance films his romantic tragedy in a documentary style, which is both a strength and a weakness.  The sense of eavesdropping on private moments lends credibility and depth to the proceedings, and yet ….

Movies similar to Blue Valentine in the past – I am thinking specifically of Days of Wine and Roses and Two for the Road – relied heavily on melodrama.  Alcohol was a major culprit in Roses; infidelity reared its ugly head in Road.  There are no such obvious trappings in Cianfrance’s movie.  Two nice people run up against something much more mundane:  dashed expectations about married life.

I’m sure that mirrors reality for many people, and it suits the realistic tone of the film.  But I wanted something more.  I was watching, after all, a product of the Hollywood Dream Factory.  Where was the stirring soundtrack, emphasizing dramatic highs and lows?  Why were there no villains – human or otherwise – for me to hiss?  Instead of emotional catharsis, I left the cinema with this feeling:  shit happens.     Grade:  B+

Director:  Derek Cianfrance  Cast:  Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka, John Doman, Mike Vogel, Marshall Johnson, Jen Jones, Maryann Plunkett, James Benatti  Release:  2010

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I was washing up in the men’s room at the movie theater when I noticed another man, roughly my age, doing the same at another sink.  “Which movie did you like better,” I asked him, “this one or the old one?”

He hesitated a moment, looked up and said, “I think this one.”

“I think I prefer The Duke,” I said.

We had both just watched the Coen brothers’ remake of True Grit, the classic John Wayne western.  I understood why the man in the restroom had hesitated.  It’s hard to distinguish between the two films, one produced in 1969 and the other just released.  Hard to distinguish because if ever the word “remake” applied to a motion picture – aside from Gus Van Sant’s ill-conceived carbon-copy of Psycho – this is the time.

To say that Joel and Ethan Coen pay respect to the 1969 film is an understatement.  The dialogue in the two films is frequently twin-like, the story, except for its ending, is the same, and some of the settings (I am thinking of the dugout scene) appear identical.  But the Coens enjoyed an advantage with their version of Charles Portis’s novel:  a bigger budget and superior production values.

In that respect, the Coens’ True Grit is the better movie.  But watching it is an eerie, déjà vu-like experience.  Ethan Coen has said that his and Joel’s film is more faithful to the spirit of Portis’s book than it is to the Wayne movie.  I don’t buy that for a second.  The new film is the old film but with different actors and better art design.

It all comes down to this:  Whom do you prefer as Rooster Cogburn, Jeff Bridges or John Wayne?  The man in the restroom preferred Bridges; I believe I prefer The Duke – but only by a whisker.         Grade:  B-

Directors:  Joel Coen, Ethan Coen  Cast:  Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, Dakin Matthews, Jarlath Conroy, Paul Rae, Domhnall Gleeson  Release:  2010

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Years ago, I read James Frey’s controversial book A Million Little Pieces.  By the time I picked it up, Frey’s “nonfiction” memoir had been exposed as a partial hoax, so I knew what to expect.  But you know what?  Had the publishers simply marketed Frey’s book as fiction, I think it still stood a good chance of becoming a bestseller.  It was that good.

Similarly, Catfish is documentary that has fallen under intense media scrutiny.  Is the film real, or an elaborate prank?  Either way, it’s a gripping detective story and an insightful examination of the new social media.

Catfish depicts the strange odyssey of young New Yorker Nev Schulman and his Internet relationship with a mystery woman living in rural Michigan.  As the movie progresses, it becomes apparent that a gigantic con game is afoot.  But who, exactly, is being conned — cocksure Nev and his two pals, who just happen to be making a movie?   The audience?  There is something disingenuous about the New York boys, who were the beneficiaries of some amazingly good luck and coincidences in the course of making a seemingly mundane film.

The Social Network is the buzzed-about film of the year, and it’s often referred to as the “Facebook movie.”  It is not.  It is a film about business, friendship, and betrayal; the Internet is merely the background to the story.  The real “Facebook movie” is Catfish.  Every facet of new technology comes into play:  GPS, text messaging, Facebook, and cell phones.  But so does the dark side of our brave new world:  identity theft, digital alteration, and the loss of face-to-face communication.

The irony is that while the audience watches someone getting his chain yanked in Catfish, it has to wonder if it’s being played itself.   Or, as Ariel Schulman says to his brother Nev,  “We don’t know how much of it’s bullshit.  And they don’t know how much of it you know is bullshit.”                Grade:  B+

Directors:  Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost  Featuring:  Yaniv Schulman, Angela Wesselman-Pierce, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost  Release:  2010

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