LA Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) is looking for a new story to write when he chances upon a surprisingly talented street musician, Nathaniel Ayers, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), and discovers that Ayers is a brilliant multi-instrumentalist whose schizophrenia eventually caused him to drop out of Julliard and abandon a potential career to live on the streets. What begins as a story for the paper soon leads to a close and unlikely friendship between the two men that changes the lives of both.
Sigh. Here's another film about a privileged white* person's deep and important emotional journey as he plays the father figure and helps out all the poor homeless people. The film is based on the real Lopez's book about this relationship, with all the egotism that one might expect from someone who would use the life stories of the less fortunate to propel himself to fame. The Soloist is frequently unbelievable and almost entirely cringeworthy (and the 'comic relief' provided by scatological humor doesn't help). It would have still irked me a little with its tendency to put Ayers and the other street people of Los Angeles in the position of the other and the naive child, but a film about Lopez coming down from his pedestal a little and realizing that offering endless handouts to his favorite homeless person for being so, I don't know, noble or whatever, is nothing short of insulting might have been a bit more forgivable. Unfortunately this isn't it, and Lopez walks away a hero.
At least The Soloist does know what it has going for it. For one thing, it is gorgeously filmed, with evocative use of light and shadow, echoing the contrast between the worlds of Lopez and Ayers. For another, Downey manages to find the heart of the role of Lopez, and if nothing else this is an interesting character study of someone who tries to change the world in order to escape from his own personal problems. Then when Lopez and Ayers attend a rehearsal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the scenery fades to a display of color and light and the music takes center stage. Maybe it should have from the start. Maybe this should have told the story of a gifted, yet troubled man trying to keep his dignity and express himself through music**. But again. Not this film.
*Wikipedia tells me that Lopez is "the son of Spanish and Italian immigrants", but in the film, the surname is the only indication of this.
**Which would make this an oddly themed week of movie-watching for yours truly.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
#24 - The Devil and Daniel Johnston
The Devil and Daniel Johnston tells the story of the titular Daniel Johnston - music's eternal outsider - as he ascends to (niche) fame and descends into a spiral of mania, Christian fanaticism, and mental breakdowns, constantly producing reams of drawings and stacks of cassette tapes of music. Johnston himself, though he is still alive and (relatively) well, is elusive and at times opaque, and so the story is told through the words of family and friends, over the soundtrack of his musical recordings, which are simple and yet haunting.
Though the film gets off to a rocky start by describing Johnston's fairly unremarkable childhood, the story quickly picks up to the point where it would be impossible to create something uninteresting about this man. Johnston - and his illness - is fairly presented: he seems at times to be the mythical figure, the childlike mad genius in his world of delusions, unreachable and prone to outbursts, but always cutting through the mystique is Johnston's sardonic self-awareness. There is a great story here, and the production team were successful in finding the right people to tell it and to bring it out, and in showing us, gently, the strange and at times wonderful contents of Johnston's teeming mind.
And yet I wonder - if this story is so perfectly cinematic, why didn't anyone think to make cinema out of it? When so many scenes, excellently articulated, would be fantastic to see acted out by a talented cast, this documentary's choice of sort of 'reenactments' (where we inhabit a camera as it supposedly follows Johnston's footsteps into the settings of the film's events) not only fall flat but seem almost disrespectful to Johnston's life in their sensationalism. But if the team weren't going to find actors to actually bring these scenes to life, it should have remained as it was without the reenactment scenes: a collection of interviews (and tape recordings and archival footage) that present reality as it actually was, not as a lurid tabloid fantasy. And at the times when The Devil and Daniel Johnston sticks to reality, it is solid and painfully, gorgeously true.
Though the film gets off to a rocky start by describing Johnston's fairly unremarkable childhood, the story quickly picks up to the point where it would be impossible to create something uninteresting about this man. Johnston - and his illness - is fairly presented: he seems at times to be the mythical figure, the childlike mad genius in his world of delusions, unreachable and prone to outbursts, but always cutting through the mystique is Johnston's sardonic self-awareness. There is a great story here, and the production team were successful in finding the right people to tell it and to bring it out, and in showing us, gently, the strange and at times wonderful contents of Johnston's teeming mind.
And yet I wonder - if this story is so perfectly cinematic, why didn't anyone think to make cinema out of it? When so many scenes, excellently articulated, would be fantastic to see acted out by a talented cast, this documentary's choice of sort of 'reenactments' (where we inhabit a camera as it supposedly follows Johnston's footsteps into the settings of the film's events) not only fall flat but seem almost disrespectful to Johnston's life in their sensationalism. But if the team weren't going to find actors to actually bring these scenes to life, it should have remained as it was without the reenactment scenes: a collection of interviews (and tape recordings and archival footage) that present reality as it actually was, not as a lurid tabloid fantasy. And at the times when The Devil and Daniel Johnston sticks to reality, it is solid and painfully, gorgeously true.
Friday, August 6, 2010
#23: Blade Runner
Important note for those who are keeping score: we watched the Final Cut edition. (And based on what I hear about the other editions, I am very glad we did.)
In the metropolitan labyrinth of 2019 Los Angeles, 'blade runner' Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) hunts down genetically-engineered humanoids - 'replicants' who have broken free from off-world labor colonies and run loose in the streets where their supreme intelligence and physical abilities make them highly dangerous to the human race they rebel against. Deckard's mission: to recognize them and take them down. And yet, that pervasive ethical dilemma...
Director Ridley Scott achieves a sort of nirvana for the top elite here. In an almost MacGuyver-esque turn, he takes a very tired and overdone concept with heavy-hanging morals, a clumsily unsubtle script, and a cast who can't seem to muster up the energy to care about their characters...and not only manages to spin them into a tapestry of gorgeous-and-painful-and-painfully-gorgeous images and almost impenetrable layers of meaning, but also to use them to his advantage in setting the film's dystopian tone. Blade Runner plays out like a dream, with disorienting cuts and surreal, kaleidoscopic imagery.
We couldn't stop talking about it afterward. In this cut particularly, Scott leaves several important questions left hanging. The answers are all buried somewhere in the film, but there are more answers than there are questions. A narrative that appears to be straightforward can be reanalyzed and restructured to give each scene new context and meaning. And at the same time, the expansive and dizzying futuristic cityscapes and high-octane action scenes are also a visual delight, so I can turn my inner academic off and yes, still enjoy the ride.
In the metropolitan labyrinth of 2019 Los Angeles, 'blade runner' Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) hunts down genetically-engineered humanoids - 'replicants' who have broken free from off-world labor colonies and run loose in the streets where their supreme intelligence and physical abilities make them highly dangerous to the human race they rebel against. Deckard's mission: to recognize them and take them down. And yet, that pervasive ethical dilemma...
Director Ridley Scott achieves a sort of nirvana for the top elite here. In an almost MacGuyver-esque turn, he takes a very tired and overdone concept with heavy-hanging morals, a clumsily unsubtle script, and a cast who can't seem to muster up the energy to care about their characters...and not only manages to spin them into a tapestry of gorgeous-and-painful-and-painfully-gorgeous images and almost impenetrable layers of meaning, but also to use them to his advantage in setting the film's dystopian tone. Blade Runner plays out like a dream, with disorienting cuts and surreal, kaleidoscopic imagery.
We couldn't stop talking about it afterward. In this cut particularly, Scott leaves several important questions left hanging. The answers are all buried somewhere in the film, but there are more answers than there are questions. A narrative that appears to be straightforward can be reanalyzed and restructured to give each scene new context and meaning. And at the same time, the expansive and dizzying futuristic cityscapes and high-octane action scenes are also a visual delight, so I can turn my inner academic off and yes, still enjoy the ride.
#22 - Kung Pow!: Enter the Fist
Steve Oedekerk's Kung Pow! is something of an experimental comedy. The premise: a parody of kung fu action movies. The gimmick: splicing together shots from Hong Kong martial arts film Tiger and Crane Fist with original footage, sometimes using greenscreen to bridge the gap. The story: fairly simple - a young man, Chosen One, seeks to avenge the murder of his parents by members of the mysterious Evil Council in hand-to-hand combat.
My friends and I put on this movie because we had remembered it being uproariously funny. We are fairly sure now that the reason we remembered it that way is because the last time we saw it, we were twelve. A fairly intriguing concept crumbles in Oedekerk's hands. The humor consists of a series of sophomoric gross-out gags, and even the few shining moments in this rotten script are dragged out until they no longer induce laughter. This is the pitfall of allowing one individual to take on the roles of writer, director, and lead actor. (Unless you're Tommy Wiseau and the result is unintentionally funny.)
Moreover, Oedekerk's treatment of the Tiger and Crane Fist footage lacks true heart, the ingredient necessary to bring a parody beyond mocking and into the realm of enjoyable entertainment. In order to make this concept work, we need to understand why it is that kung fu films, in all their over-the-top splendor, are nonetheless captivating. Had it been the center of gravity of the film, we could have then gotten the chance to laugh at its overindulgence and melodrama while simultaneously enjoying its exuberance. Choosing instead to deface the footage with scatological humor and slapstick renders it irrelevant: this would have been the same film had Oedekerk used 100% original footage, and it would have been similarly dull.
My friends and I put on this movie because we had remembered it being uproariously funny. We are fairly sure now that the reason we remembered it that way is because the last time we saw it, we were twelve. A fairly intriguing concept crumbles in Oedekerk's hands. The humor consists of a series of sophomoric gross-out gags, and even the few shining moments in this rotten script are dragged out until they no longer induce laughter. This is the pitfall of allowing one individual to take on the roles of writer, director, and lead actor. (Unless you're Tommy Wiseau and the result is unintentionally funny.)
Moreover, Oedekerk's treatment of the Tiger and Crane Fist footage lacks true heart, the ingredient necessary to bring a parody beyond mocking and into the realm of enjoyable entertainment. In order to make this concept work, we need to understand why it is that kung fu films, in all their over-the-top splendor, are nonetheless captivating. Had it been the center of gravity of the film, we could have then gotten the chance to laugh at its overindulgence and melodrama while simultaneously enjoying its exuberance. Choosing instead to deface the footage with scatological humor and slapstick renders it irrelevant: this would have been the same film had Oedekerk used 100% original footage, and it would have been similarly dull.
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