Extract (2009, Mike Judge)

All Movie Guide Summary:

Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Ben Affleck, Kristen Wiig, Clifton Collins, and J.K. Simmons star in writer/director Mike Judge's comedy about a flower-extract plant owner contending with an ever-growing avalanche of personal and professional disasters. An employee at the factory has just suffered an unfortunate accident on the assembly line, but little does the put-upon owner realize that things are about to get much worse. As the injured employee threatens to sue and it begins to look like his company will be bought out, the frazzled owner attempts to catch the culprit responsible for stealing wallets from the coat room and begins to suspect that his wife is sleeping with the gigolo he hired to seduce her.

I finally caught up with Judge's latest. This was a "most-anticipated movie" for me last year, though interest slid once reviews were less-than-overwhelming. Though not as consistently funny as "Office Space" and "Idiocracy", "Extract" does ride on that Judge patented low-key charm that is extremely rare in movies and television.
That charm and the inter-personal relationship comedy is what worked for me. All the stuff involving the wife, the gigolo, Ben Affleck, the workplace, was funny, interesting, and somewhat well played (REALLY well played by Affleck, and Dustin Milligan's dumb gigolo is classic Judge); though all the stuff involving Kunis, lawsuits, etc. just seemed like "plot" that needed to be there. I think that even Judge acknowledges this as being somewhat clunky and obvious, by casting himself as a factory employee who has to dispense exposition, at one point in the story, in order to cause some dramatic conflict.
But that plot clunkiness doesn't take away from the shambling low-key charm that this comedy has. Hollywood isn't making these type of movies that often anymore. It really reminded me of some comedy I'd catch on in the afternoon on HBO when I came home from middle school. It's mainly about characters, not a high concept; and most of the humor is derived by these characters and their traits (Judge mastered this with "King Of The Hill"). While not blown away by this film, I'm looking forward to seeing this come up on cable, to see how it holds up and/or rises in esteem. Judge's films always seem to play better, the more often you see them.
I really hope that Judge continues in this vein, and is allowed by Hollywood to continue making his type of comedies. His movies are notorious for not doing any kind of box office (I don't think "Extract" was any different: $10 million domestic), but I really think he's got another stunner or two in him.

The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights (2009, Emmett Malloy)

The Stripes had never played a full tour of Canada. Following the release of their last album, "Icky Thump", the band decided to give Canada the full treatment before embarking on the typical US/Europe/Etc. touring cycle. This documentary follows them through this Candaian tour, where they played every province and territory, and ultimately proved to be the only tour they did behind that album.
This film focuses on live performances and balances between the traditional rock concert formats the Stripes played at night, and daytime performances where the Stripes played non-traditional venues like bowling allies, city buses, rec centers, etc. This juxtaposition helps show what makes the Stripes such a exciting and experimental band; they're ready and willing to play anywhere, anytime, to anyone.
Malloy does a fine job at capturing the band live on stage. The black and white photography goes a long way towards mythologizing this band. Matched with the many varieties of music The Stripes play, the B&W photography helps portray them as a band not-of-a-particular-time.
Malloy (and the Whites) keep us at an emotional distance though. By focusing mainly on the live performance, we never see the inner workings of the band, their personal life, their thoughts on anything but the music. It is just the band, the tour, and the music.
And that is what makes the final scene stand out: Jack plays a song on piano with Meg sitting beside him. As the song goes on and Jack sings; Meg sways, looks at Jack, sings along, and starts to break down into tears. This scene seems out of place because we have no context for Meg's emotions (she is portrayed in the film, and admits to being, the "quiet one" who likes it that way) outside of her role as a drummer in this band. The film makes no mention, that shortly after the film, Meg White canceled the rest of the Stripes tour dates due to anxiety issues. If there was more to the Stripes' tour; was it not captured by Malloy and his cameras? Did certain aspects end up on the cutting room floor at the request of the band? And, if yes, why was this last scene left in?
Regardless, this film captures this incredible band at an exciting stage in their career, trying something really different, in order to change a tour into an exciting adventure. The live performances are always thrilling, no matter the venue. And it is something to see the Stripes walk up on a stage, gear up, and play a "one note concert", thank the crowd, and leave. Awesome.

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985, Barry Levinson)

Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974, Sam Peckinpah)

Blood On The Moon (1948, Robert Wise)

Silver Streak (1976, Arthur Hiller)

I didn't really watch this. I was falling asleep in and out. I thought that Pryor would be in this more. I usually love Colin Higgins' screenplay work. Should I have been watching Stir Crazy?

Park and Recreation, "Summer Catalog"

Summary:

Leslie holds a picnic lunch for past directors of the Parks Department, hoping they'll provide inspiration as she prepares the annual Summer Events Catalog.

B Story: Tom tries to take the cover photo for the catalog with Mark and Ann as a couple with kid. His plans are complicated by Ann looking awkward on-camera.

C Story (really the B story?): April and Andy busy themselves at the picnic. Decide to go out to a bar, which April is to young to get into. Their date is a bust. A picture of them together at the picnic ends up being the Catalog cover photo in the end.

Bigger Than Life (1956, Nicholas Ray)

Wall Street (1987, Oliver Stone)

Five Graves To Cairo (1943, Billy Wilder)

Thank you Turner Classic Movies for showing this rare Wilder gem (and one of Tarantino's Favorite WW2 Films). Wilder's second feature as a director is an WW2 intrigue tale with all the Wilder prerequisites: colorful characters, social/political commentary, and inventive dialogue and set pieces.
In his book of interviews with Wilder, Cameron Crowe compliments the filmmaker by commenting that the opening of the film is like something out of Indiana Jones. And he's right! At the top of the film, we see a tank driving up the desert from the distance. A man hangs off the side. He wakes to find himself the only alive soldier amongst a renegade tankful of dead bodies. He jumps out and the tank drives off. He cant keep up and the tank drives into the distance. It's a great opening with my summary doing it no justice.
Classic bit of Wilder wit: The Field General Rommel (played by Erich von Stroheim) instructs his gopher that upon his return to Cairo he wants to see a specific opera, but "omitting the second act, because it is too long and not too good." Of course this happens during Five Graves' second act which was not too long and very very good.
This film has a great fight scene between the waiter/soldier and the German lieutenant takes place in the dark and we only see a dropped flashlight shining up at us from the floor. When it is picked up, we see who lost the fight.
This film needs to be released on disc.

Up In The Air (2009, Jason Reitman)

I've been working my way through the Oscar nominees and finally got to Up In The Air, namely because it came out this past week on DVD/Blu-Ray. It is a very good film with some great performances. This is the kind of movie that is rarely made these days; the mid-level drama-with-jokes. It had elements of classic comedy scenarios; the romance, the business comedy, the misanthrope-who-needs-to-change comedy, set against the backdrop of the current jobless crisis. More filmmakers should be using current events as the backdrops for comedies. The reason this film had the most Oscar-nominated actors this year was because it had clearly defined characters that were each given character moments that helped drive the story, and weren't just shoehorned in for fireworks. Another reason films like this don't get made often; the ending. Bittersweet. Some things don't work out. And the things that do work out for Bingham; they are bittersweet. And that's what made this film rise in its quality to me: the ending.

The Hurt Locker (2009, Kathryn Bigelow)

Yeah. What a loser. I finally caught up with The Hurt Locker. A week after the Oscar. Blah blah blah. What can I say? I'm poor right now. And I tried real hard to watch it the night before the Oscars. No luck. But now I can say I saw the Best Picture of the year.
I loved it. The bomb-diffusing scenes, though almost repetitious, were very suspenseful. That repetition is intentional in the storytelling though, showing how these soldiers are faced with this drama day after day after day after day.
Jeremy Renner is really solid and deserves the attention he's receiving. This role reminds me of Colin Farrell's breakthrough role in Tigerland. The opening shot of the film is a POV shot of a bomb-diffusing robot and that perfectly describes Renner's character.
I noticed that the soldiers all end up inheriting/taking things from the dead around them. From the dead soldiers they take their juiceboxes, artillery, Renner's character takes the dead soldier's job, they take a bomb out of a dead child. I'm still working out what I think this means. If anyone has any ideas, comment away.
The ending was very solid as well. The shots back at home cleaning the gutters, at the grocery store shopping for cereal, the excitement wasn't there for the soldier. I was pissed that 60 Minutes' Bigelow Profile spoiled the ending/suspense for me while I was watching the piece. But when watching the movie, I forgot all about the ending while engaged in the suspenseful bomb diffusion set pieces. They are that well put together.

Bad Company (1972, Robert Benton)

Continuing my Jeff Bridges Marathon (started by Thunderbolt & Lightfoot ), I pulled Bad Company off my my shelf. I had never seen it before, but bought it some years ago because (a) it was cheap, and (b) based on the filmography of writer/director Robert Benton. Bad Company was Benton's directorial debut after having co-scripted Bonnie & Clyde for Warren Beatty/Arthur Penn. Like most Westerns made in the 1970's, Bad Company takes a revisionist look at Western mythology and character archetypes, with Benton balancing this with odd humor and sudden violence.

The main characters are Civil War draft evaders, Jake (Jeff Bridges) and Drew (Barry Brown), who meet up and become a roving band of would-be outlaws. We often forget that a lot of outlaws like "Billy The Kid" were actual teenagers during their height of popularity. Likewise, Jake's (Bridges) gang is made up primarily of teens and early twentysomethings. The youngest looking close to twelve. All inexperienced, and the film holds these characters to that inexperience. The kids are kids. They like to act like they know how to survive, but they don't even know how to skin a rabbit. When attempting to rob a stagecoach, the gang hides and sends one of the boys to flag down the coach. He flags down the coach, and rides off with them leaving the boys bewildered. I don't think they knew what to do. A shocking piece of "Assault on Precient 13"-type violence, involving a pie and a farmer, comes out of nowhere. But it perfectly drives home reality to us and the characters.

This was a easy going film that I look forward to revisiting. The Gordon Willis photography is beautiful and naturally-based. Jeff Bridges is (always) good; this time playing the dopey leader of the gang. Brown is an actor I was previously unfamiliar with, but I look forward to seeing him in something else (I own an unwatched Daisy Miller DVD). Benton's The Late Show will also be making its way off my shelf in the near future.

Laura (1944, Otto Preminger)

All Movie Guide Synopsis:

This adaptation of Vera Caspary's suspense novel was begun by director Rouben Mamoulien and cinematographer Lucien Ballard, but thanks to a complex series of backstage intrigues and hostilities, the film was ultimately credited to director Otto Preminger and cameraman Joseph LaShelle (who won an Oscar for his efforts). At the outset of the film, it is established that the title character, Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), has been murdered. Tough New York detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigates the killing, methodically questioning the chief suspects: Waspish columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), wastrel socialite Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), and Carpenter's wealthy "patroness" Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson). The deeper he gets into the case, the more fascinated he becomes by the enigmatic Laura, literally falling in love with the girl's painted portrait. As he sits in Laura's apartment, ruminating over the case and his own obsessions, the door opens, the lights switch on, and in walks Laura Hunt, very much alive! To tell any more would rob the reader of the sheer enjoyment of watching this stylish film noir unfold on screen. Everything clicks in Laura, from the superbly bitchy peformance of Clifton Webb (a veteran Broadway star who became an overnight movie favorite with this film) to the haunting musical score by David Raskin. Long available only in the 85-minute TV version Laura has since been restored to its original 88-minute running time.

A Foreign Affair (1948, Billy Wilder)

All Movie Guide Summary:

Writer/director Billy Wilder (in collaboration with producer/writer Charles Brackett) earned his first critical condemnation with A Foreign Affair. Reviewers accused Wilder (as they would so often in the future) of moral bankruptcy, challenging him to prove what could possibly be funny about the Nazi war guilt, the bombed-out city of Berlin, the postwar European black market or attempted suicide. All of these elements are in Foreign Affair, and all are very funny. John Lund is an American army captain carrying on a casual affair with Berlin songstress Marlene Dietrich, who accepts Lund's attentions so long as there are contraband cigarettes and nylons added to the bargain. Iowa congresswoman Jean Arthur is sent as part of an American fact-finding delegation to Berlin, and Lund is compelled to clean up his act--or at least pretend to. Despite her initial shock at the corruption all around her, straitlaced Arthur eventually falls for Lund, but Dietrich has been at this game a lot longer. For an interesting cinematic and sociological exercise, A Foreign Affair should be shown in tandem with Wilder's 1961 Cold War comedy One, Two, Three.

Reaction Pieces Coming Soon

As you may have noticed, I'm doing a little spring cleaning by just posting/listing films that I have watched since the beginning of 2010 without personal reaction pieces. There is a backlog of films I've seen before starting this blog that I am not prepared to write about. So, in order to keep track of the films, I'm just posting their poster art and a summary from AllMovieGuide. I will be posting reaction pieces about the films/TV shows I'm currently watching shortly.

Shutter Island (2010, Martin Scorsese)

All Movie Guide Summary:

Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio team up as a pair of U.S. Marshals who travel to a secluded island off the coast of Massachusetts to search for an escaped mental patient, uncovering a web of deception along the way as they battle the forces of nature and a prison riot in this Martin Scorsese-helmed period picture. Laeta Kalogridis adapts Dennis Lehane's novel of the same name, with Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures splitting production and distribution duties. Ben Kingsley co-stars as the head of the institution where the patient resided, while Michelle Williams portrays Leonardo DiCaprio's deceased wife, whose memory haunts him during the investigation. Max von Sydow, Emily Mortimer, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, and Jackie Earle Haley round out the supporting cast.

Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (1974, Michael Cimino)

All Movie Guide Summary:

As much an eccentric character study as a road movie, Michael Cimino's directorial debut follows the adventures of a quartet of misfits in their life of crime. Retired thief Thunderbolt (Clint Eastwood) and sweet drifter Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) meet cute when Thunderbolt jumps into Lightfoot's stolen car to escape a gunman. The pair embarks on an oddball journey to get Thunderbolt's loot from an old robbery before his former associates, the sadistic Red (George Kennedy) and cretinous Goody (Geoffrey Lewis), get to it first, but all four are too late; the one-room schoolhouse hiding place has apparently vanished. So instead, the four play house and work legit jobs while they plot to rob the same place Thunderbolt and Red hit before. Although the plan goes awry, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot discover that they may still have succeeded-or so they think. As the easy-going mediator between the two, Eastwood's Thunderbolt was a move away from his tough cop-westerner image; his audience accepted this then-atypical performance enough to turn Thunderbolt and Lightfoot into a moderate hit. Bridges received his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, but Cimino turned down a subsequent deal with Eastwood, moving instead to his artistic peak with The Deer Hunter (1978) and career nadir with Heaven's Gate (1980).

Community: "Interpretive Dance"

Summary:

Jeff tries to keep his new relationship a secret but the study group doesn't make it easy for him. Elsewhere, Troy and Britta come clean with their own secrets.

The A and B stories are clearly summarized in that description. Troy and Britta's secrets are dance class (! shock!). It was all fairly routine/traditional, with no real feelings being hurt, and no real big changes (maybe Jeff CAN have a relationship with someone). There wasn't a 'C' story. Everything worked out in the end. There were a few laughs. But this episode reaffirms why I still have a few more clogging up the DVR. I'm just not racing to watch them like I do other shows. The show has got a great cast but the stories end up feeling very stock and easily predictable.

My Viewing Log Introduction

This is practice. I cannot stress this enough. I realize that I'm really putting myself out there, by publishing my thoughts on things (no matter how trivial they may seem) in a rather public way on the internet. So I should take this first blog post to state the intentions I have with this blogspot address.

Entertainment/media criticism is rampant these days. So, this is just what the world needs: another amateur yakker blogging about pop culture, right? There are enough voices flooding the blogspot world, do I really need to add to the noise?

No. I don't. But I don't really want to. I'm mainly using this space to practice writing about the things I'm watching, reading, and listening to. Publishing my thoughts is a way to force myself to form clear thoughts and opinions on the media I'm taking in. Consider these as "reaction papers" or an (admittedly) personal catalog. I may not have anything to add to the discussion at all, but will plainly list what I have been watching. That's my plan. If you've got something to add; feel free. This is mainly a blog for me and my friends, though I welcome anyone add to the discussion.

What I'm Viewing Now:
I'm watching the USA/Canada Olympic hockey game right now. 3rd period. I know next to nothing about hockey, besides playing Blades of Steel on Nintendo as a youngster (and wait, wasn't there a good N64 hockey game we played?). But this is exciting (US just tied it up, 2-2), as has been most of the Olympic coverage.

In the coming days, I may be adding my thoughts on Lost, The Oscars, Wall Street, and American Idol, amongst the many other things clogging my DVR, Netflix, and iTunes.

Let's have some fun.