Category Archives: Late Review

by | January 19, 2010 · 6:02 pm

Lateish Review – Youth In Revolt

Um…hi everyone. How are you doing? I mean, uh, are you doing okay? No? Me neither, hahahahaha that’s so funny. I, uh, know what you mean. Anyway, I was…I mean…uh…I uh…if its not too big of an inconvience for you and…uh…if you don’t have anything else to do I…uh…I was just wondering if it might be all right if we…uh…talk about the new Michael Cera movie? Maybe? Or not, because I can do whatever you want to do.

Okay, let’s talk about it then. Youth in Revolt is an adaptation of the sprawling, darkly comic novel by C.D. Payne about a shy, verbose young virgin who falls for a girl and has to embrace his dark side by literally inventing a second persona to do bad things in an attempt to woo her. Hijinks ensue (most of which get left out of the film version); hearts are filled and broken; age is come-of (I really need to work on my phrasing).

Cera does double duty, playing both the put-upon lead and his dangerous alter-ego (outfit with a moustache and cigarette) but, except for a few amusing moments where the two sides of his personality have direct conflict, he doesn’t give a very dynamic lead performance, settling too much into his all-too-familar awkward wallflower act, and not really engaging with the rest of the cast (including Zach Galifianakis and Steve Buscemi). His female counterpart, newbie Portia Doubleday, handles Payne’s hyper-literate dialogue but there’s not a whole lot of chemistry between her and Cera.

The other film’s other problem is one common to literary adaptations, especially ones based on books as long and jam-paced as Payne’s. There’s simply too many ideas going off in different directions and not quite enough focus. The film feels to overstuff and never ends up getting control of all the disparate concepts and ideas contained inside. Director Miguel Artera throws just about everything he can at the wall, including a number of animated sequences, but can’t really bring everything together in a satisfying way, especially towards the end where the film mostly drops the darkness and becomes a relatively bland, somewhat sappy love story.

Which isn’t to say the whole thing is a complete wash. There are a few funny moments, just not enough to keep up any sort of momentum for the film’s entire duration. The screenplay sands off too many of the edges, so Cera’s revolt feels too bland and, while the movie features a number of supporting character with the potential to be interesting, there’s far too many of them for any to actually become interesting.

Youth in Revolt has some promise, thanks mainly to the source material, but the filmmakers weren’t quite able to wrap their heads around it and find a way to synthesize that into a movie. Add in yet another milquetoast Michael Cera performance with him doing mostly the same stuff we’ve seen and you’ve got…uh…I mean…it was okay, but I…uh…what did you think?

Jonah’s Score: 48

Tangled Up in Wires Grade: C

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by | December 11, 2009 · 4:16 pm

Late Review/Hate Session – The Blind Side

America has spoken and, resoundingly, it has said “WE LOVE THE BLIND SIDE.” The Sandra Bullock/sad football player vehicle has grossed over $100 million in three weeks, is on pace to possibly break $250 million, and even beat Twilight at the box office this week. So, the newspaper I occasionally write for asked me to go see it. I know, I know. But I have this weird thing where, whenever something becomes a phenomenon or even an unexpected success, I really want to check it out. With The Blind Side I was especially curious, how did it manage to beat New Moon? Was there anything at all redeeming about a film that, on first glance, looked hopelessly schlocky?

No. No there is not.

This is an appallingly stupid movie; one that is willing to employ every hacky, C-level trick in the book to manipulate you and one that is completely tone deaf to the issues it is supposedly taking on.

If you don’t know, the film is based on Michael Lewis’ excellent nonfiction book The Blind Side in the same way that gonorrhea is based on fucking. In Lewis’ book, the inspirational story of Michael Oher’s rise from abject poverty thanks to his skills as an offensive lineman is put into an almost fatalistic context as Lewis dissects the way advances in football stategy turned the left tackle into the most important position on the offense. In the film, director and writer John Lee Hancock strips away Lewis’ history lessons and shades of grey, turning the film into a generic, Lifetime ready story of how spoiled rich people saved some poor sucker’s life.

Fully 1/3 of The Blind Side’s dire 128 minute running time is composed of close-up or medium shots of actor Quinton Aaron’s sad, droopy face (in the role of Michael Oher), looking at nothing or no one in particular. Aaron is either the most minimalistic actor to ever appear on screen, or the guy just can’t perform very well as his expression literally never changes throughout the entire film. The other 2/3 consist mainly of Sandra Bullock asking Aaron questions like “what book did your mom read you before you went to bed” or “why don’t you own any clothes” and then being stunned when it turns out that Oher is too poor and too black to have had any of those experiences. Rather than coming off as empathetic or charitable, she simply seems like the dumbest, most sheltered woman who ever lived. As written, the character isn’t forceful or funny (like the script wants her to be), just hateful and irritating, and even the best actor would have trouble with it. But instead of the best actor, the producers got Sandra Bullock, who gives a performance so hideous that it shoots the concept of subtlety in the face and then fucks the body.

John Lee Hancock’s direction is a little better than the Z-grade acting and script, although he uses it in service of naked, calculating, unearned manipulation. His favorite trick, and its an extremely irritating one, involves cutting to reaction shots of people in the same room watching the film’s most inspirational moments (like when Tim McGraw recites “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and relates it to football. Yes, it is as asinine as it sounds) in awe, looking on with wonder as a character does something amazing to improve the life of poor, innocent young Michael Oher. The movie keeps going to this cheap trick again and again, like Bill Belicheck calling a screen pass on 3rd down, as if the movie itself cannot get over how mindblowingly inspiring it is. And I’m sure this will shock you, but in its eagerness to make sure you don’t think at all, the movie glosses over any of the tough issues of race and class that Oher’s story raises, and the ambiguity of what the Tuohy family did.

“The Blind Side” takes everything that makes Michael Oher’s story compelling and casts it aside in favor of a story that feels so manipulated and hollow that I forgot that it was based on a true story. It is less a story than a collection of episodes, some “funny” some “sad,” without any truth to it. People don’t act the way people in “The Blind Side” act, from the sub-Two and a Half Men schtick of the Tuohy’s young son to painful way Sandra Bullock oversells every emotional beat she has to play. At times it is so laugh-inducingly bad that it seems to be ironically parodying itself, but this film isn’t that aware of anything, least of all itself.

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by | November 9, 2009 · 4:28 pm

Late Review: Where the Wild Things Are

Ever really want to see a movie or hear a record right after it comes out but just never get around to it? And doesn’t it suck that when you finally do get to it, everyone has already taken part and weighed in? For us here at Tangled Up In Wires, it’s a problem we face regularly. That’s where Late Review, a semi-regular feature, comes in. We take a look at something after we’ve been exposed to the review blitz and see just how good something really is. Our first late review? The much discussed Spike Jonez film, Where the Wild Things Are.

As a kid, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was a favorite of mine. When I first heard that Spike Jonez was making a film adaptation, I was cautiously optimistic. After all, I’d love Jonez previous two films, Being John Malkovitch and Adaptation, and his music videos were some of the most inventive I’d ever seen. The first trailer for the film, set to the Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” only furthered my excitement for the film. Yet advanced reviews were decidedly mixed. Many praised Jonez and co-writer Dave Eggars for creating their own story while others questioned why an adaptation was even needed in the first place.

Now that I’ve seen the film, I can safely say that it’s an absolutely stunning film that should be considered independently of the book that it’s derived from. Sendak’s book is short, and truthfully, with little plot outside of a young boy, Max, getting in trouble before going to where the wild things are to get out all of his frustration. Jonez and Eggars have taken this idea and expanded it and made it their own. If you forget about the original story, you’ll find the film less an adaptation of a beloved childrens book, and more a story of what it’s like to be a kid.

The Max Where the Wild Things Are the film is every bit as precocious as the Max of the book, but the film gives him far more depth. Played extremely well by Max Records, Max is the neglected youngest son of a split family. He has a teenage sister who, like most teenagers, wants nothing to do with her young brother. His mother (Catherine Keener) faces stress at work and has begun dating again, much to the his displeasure. Early on, he acts out, destroying a popsicle stick heart he made in his sister’s room after her friends hurt him. When his mother gets mad at him for protesting his date, he bites her and flees, finding a boat to take him to a mysterious island.

It is there he meets the Wild Things, here given names. There’s Carol, a defacto leader voiced by James Gandolfini, his best friend Douglass (Chris Cooper), the timid and not listened to Alexander (Paul Dano), Ira (Forrest Whitaker) who is always striving for attention, Judith (Catherine O’Hara) who always has complaints, and KW (Lauren Ambrose), the sweetest member of the group who just wants to have fun. There’s also a silent Bull who sulks in the background quietly. On the Island, Max is proclaimed king and after they have their Wild Rumpus through the woods, he gets them to start building the dream of Carol, a fort where they can be happy, and where anyone they don’t like isn’t welcome. As the project moves along, the personalities of each Wild Thing becomes stronger, and problems ensue. It becomes clearer, also, that each Wild Thing represents one part of Max: Carol’s jealousy, Alexander’s feeling that no one listens to him, and Ira’s persistent attempts at attention each make up a part of Max’s personality and show him exactly what that looks like in him.

Needless to say, the film isn’t a kids film. Kids might enjoy the story of Max running away to be with the Wild Things, but they may not understand the larger themes at work throughout this film. The film isn’t about escaping into a dream world, it’s about the inherent loneliness and confusion that, though often attributed to teenagers, is often overlooked in kids, and the Wild Things personify the major emotions felt by Max. Max gets angry when his sisters friends hurt him, just as Carol and Alexander when they get hurt during a dirt clod fight. Everything that Max teaches to the Wild Things, he also teaches to himself, and the film does a brilliant job of portraying that.

Visually, the film is absolutely stunning. Jonez has outdone himself with the beauty of the surroundings and the way in which he moves the characters about them. The Wild Things are also stunning. A combination of actors in suits and computer generated faces, the Wild Things look real and almost human. I haven’t seen CGI eyes be that expressive before, and it gives emotional depth to the creatures and keeps them from being disconnecting the emotions of the live action Max.

All and all, Wild Things is a good film that memorizes the viewer throughout its 90 minute run time. Like I said, those that can separate the film from the book will enjoy it much more. The book was about escaping into fantasy, and if you can manage to do that, you’ll love the film.

Tangled Up in Wires Grade: B+

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