Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Me and my timetables.
Here we are in February already, and I’m just now putting up my second regular column for the year. I was fooling myself saying I’d do this and the DVD column both on a weekly basis. In trying to prepare them both, I ended up getting neither one finished on time. I think it’s more likely I’ll alternate them once I get settled in for the year, since it takes me about a full week to put either one together. One thing that’ll help is if I cut down on the extraneous chatter and get right to it. First up, there’s a movie I’ve been wanting to see for quite a while...
CLUB DREAD
It’s been three years since I saw SUPER TROOPERS at its first Sundance screening. I spent a good part of the next day with the guys that make up Broken Lizard. When they finalized their deal to sell the film to Fox Searchlight that afternoon, it was big news for them, that life-changing moment that so many filmmakers go to Sundance in search of. The celebration lasted long into the night, and I walked away with an impression of each of them as normal, unaffected writer/performers who just wanted to make good comedies. They were modest, pleased with the reactions to that first midnight screening. One thing we talked about was what they wanted to do next. Jay Chandrasekhar seemed enthusiastic when he told me, “We want to make a slasher movie.”
And now, three years later, they have.
Broken Lizard’s CLUB DREAD isn’t a postmodern spin on the genre like SCREAM, and it’s not a spoof made up of overt references to other movies like SCARY MOVIE. Instead, it’s a genuine slasher film that happens to hav ea sly, occasionally silly sense of humor. The film isn’t built around high-concept set pieces. Instead, it’s character humor, an attitude towards everything that distinguishes the film’s comic voice.
Jay’s a very good comedy director who reminds me of early Ivan Reitman, back when he was making effortlessly funny films like MEATBALLS and STRIPES and GHOSTBUSTERS. He’s been working on shows like UNDECLARED and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT in addition to directing the Broken Lizard films, and he’s just got a gift for setting up a comic reality and giving all of his actors the right support to let them be their funniest. There’s something really generous about the way Broken Lizard writes good material for everyone in their films and not just for their own characters. Bill Paxton, Brittany Daniel, Jordan Ladd, and Samm Levine are all given plenty to do in CLUB DREAD, and their comic sensibilities mesh perfectly with those of the boys.
For those of you who haven’t seen SUPERTROOPERS, Broken Lizard is a group of five guys who write and star in films together. One of them, Jay, is the director. The others are Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske. What impresses me about them is the way they play a completely different dynamic in this film than they did in SUPERTROOPERS. Most comedy teams give the same sorts of roles to certain people each time. Graham Chapman, for example, was always the lead in the Python films. He was Brian. He was King Arthur. There was just something so stiff and pompous about him that it was fun to make him the central figure and then unleash the lunacy of the rest of Python upon him. In CLUB DREAD, everyone plays against the roles that they had in SUPERTROOPERS. For example, Jay was smooth personified as Thorny in TROOPERS, but he’s sort of a douche as Putman, a vaguely slimy and possibly malicious tennis pro, in DREAD. Heffernan deserves cult god status for his work as Rod Farva in TROOPERS, and he’s great but almost unrecognizable here as Lars, the island’s new masseuse. Lemme, Soter, and Stolhanske all get to misbehave the most in this film, and they look like they’re having a blast as they earn the film its R-rating with all the sex and the drugs and the general mayhem.
CLUB DREAD all takes place on a small Central American island where Coconut Pete (Paxton), a Jimmy Buffet clone still milking a few minor hits from the ‘70s, has set up a resort where people come to party themselves stupid in the tradition of his songs.
One by one, though, the staff of the resort starts turning up dead, violently murdered. Are the terrifying campfire stories true? Is there a maniac loose? Everyone ends up a suspect, and there are a lot of really entertaining red herrings. It’s not a complicated film, and it’s not pretending to be anything besides a slasher film. It’s charm comes from the confidence and the enthusiasm of the cast, and from the way it plays by the genre rules without being smug and self-satisfied about it.
TROOPERS really caught on when it hit home video and cable. People took a chance on it, and a lot of people fell in love with it. I have a feeling CLUB DREAD’s going to be the same thing all over again. No offense to the hard-working people at Fox Searchlight, but I think they missed the mark with those lousy trailers that are in theaters right now. They’re too broad, and they oversell certain moments that work much better in context. The new official site for the film is live, and it’s pretty good, especially the blog that the Broken Lizard guys are all keeping there. I wish the MPAA wouldn’t censor them on the site, but rest assured... the movie delivers on the genre’s two essentials: titties and gore. Eli Roth is going to be megapissed when he sees Jordan Ladd drop her top in this when she wouldn’t do the same for CABIN FEVER, and SWEET VALLEY HIGH fans (most of whom are 30 year old guys who are going to pretend they don’t know what show I’m talking about) are going to enjoy Brittany Daniel and her hardbody in all its glory.
Overall, CLUB DREAD is a very funny movie, and the more fond you are of the genre, the more you’ll appreciate the delicate balance that Broken Lizard has pulled off with this, their third feature.
Can’t wait to see what’s next.
MY TEN FAVORITE FILMS OF 2003
If you ask me, 2003 delivered some wonderful films, movies that felt to me like instant classics, movies I know I’ll return to for years to come. The ones that made it into my top ten list this year were the ones that felt effortless, like stories I’ve known my whole life.
Let’s count them down in reverse order, starting with...
10. OLD BOY
I love to disagree with Harry, especially when he adopts a movie or a particular filmmaker as his pet cause. But in the case of Chan-Wook Park, he’s right. SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE was tough, uncompromising, a stunning reversal from the much more Hollywood-ready aesthetic of JOINT SECURITY AREA. Neither of these two films, though, prepared me for OLD BOY, a raw and wrenching revenge story that oozes malice from the very first scene. A drunken businessman is arrested and detained, and he’s not released until a friend of his shows up to bail him out. They stop at a pay phone in the rain, and in one distracted, confusing moment, the businessman disappears.
What follows is one of the craziest, most surreal interpretations of being held captive since Patrick McGoohan’s THE PRISONER. The businessman, Daesoo (Minsik Choi), is held for 15 years, and by the end of it, it doesn’t matter what his name was. He calls himself “Monster” to mark the fact that he is no longer who he was. He isn’t punished by his captivity; he’s destroyed by it. He is systematically devastated, every level of his identity stripped away from him. It’s a tour-de-force performance by Minsik Choi, maybe the single most agonizing performance in any film all year. When he’s finally unleashed on the world, he’s like a one-man plague, devoid of any sense of restraint, on a mission that is more instinctual than deliberate.
There’s no way to really discuss the film any further without ruining it. Like many of the best of the recent Korean films, this movie works on many levels simultaneously. As a revenge story, it’s both substantive and affecting. As an examination of the schizophrenic spirit of Korean itself, it’s uncompromising and blatantly political. And as a surreal horror film, it is every inch the masterpiece that BLUE VELVET is. This is the kind of film that will stick to you long after you’ve seen it, and it establishes Park once and for all as one of the world’s most interesting working filmmakers.
9. PETER PAN
Wow. What happened?
Actually, I take that back. I know a lot of what happened. This was a difficult film for a lot of the people involved, and for a number of different reasons. By the time it came out, Universal’s limp, indifferent marketing campaign had sent the signal loud and clear: the film was a dud. It had to be.
But... it’s not. Not remotely.
Egos aside, how does a studio look at a film like this and not recognize that they’re part of something special? I was pretty wild about the script when I originally reviewed it, but nothing PJ Hogan has every directed would indicate that he was the right guy to make the defining live-action version of JM Barrie’s classic tale. And even if I don’t think Hogan’s film is perfect, it is memorable, beautiful, and vigorously imagined. His Neverland is a dreamscape made real, the weather serving as a barometer of the emotional mood of Peter Pan himself. His London is lovely and romantic and warmly detailed. There’s a definite appeal to both places, and when Wendy struggles to figure out where she belongs, her quandary seems believable.
As far as the people who freaked out about the film’s subtext are concerned, they’re idiots. The subtext is the whole point, and it’s always been part of the material. If you try to judge this film against Disney’s neutered cartoon, you’re doing the story a disservice. This is, and has always been, about the transition between childhood and adolescence, and the perils of holding onto childhood too long. Rachel Hurd-Wood is positively luminous as Wendy, the casting discovery of the year, and the movie really works because she holds it together. Jeremy Sumpter is the film’s biggest stumbling block, uneven in many scenes. He’s not bad, and there are numerous moments where it’s perfectly clear why he was chosen for the role. Thankfully, Jason Isaacs is more than good as Captain Hook; he redefines the character. I thought it would be impossible to surpass Disney’s Hook, the single best thing about their film. Isaacs did it, though. There’s a seedy aging rock star quality to the way he plays it, preening but lethal, and as the film progresses, he reveals some real depth to the character.
In terms of design and cinematography and composition, this is the most visually arresting fantasy film since George Miller’s equally misunderstood BABE: PIG IN THE CITY, but this isn’t just a case of style over substance. This is a film that will reward repeat viewings and thematic deconstruction, dense and smart and sincere. It’s just a shame it didn’t have the right support in terms of the way it was released. Here’s hoping people discover the film on video, and that it has a long and healthy shelf life.
8. FINDING NEMO
It’s simple, really. If you’re a Disney stockholder, you have no choice but to fire Michael Eisner. The man is an anchor, dragging the studio down. He is obviously a very, very selfish and petty person to let any personal issues stand in the way of successfully renegotiating Disney’s contract with Pixar.
After all, if FINDING NEMO represents the state-of-the-art for the company, then they are arguably the most consistently brilliant story department in commercial filmmaking today. What’s impressive is how deep the talent roster at the studio goes. Every person in Pixar in every department contributes something to the almost hallucinatory images they create or the always-wonderful characterizations or the great set pieces that make each film so exciting. Andrew Stanton really stepped up as the director of this one, and he manages to work real magic with his two leads. Albert Brooks has been one of my favorite funnymen since the first time I saw REAL LIFE in the early ‘80s, but it’s crazy how one of his best performances comes when he is voicing an animated fish. Ellen DeGeneres is note-perfect as Dory, spacy but eternally optimistic. It’s a lovely comic duet that packs a surprising emotional punch. There are a few moments in the film that successfully tug at the heartstrings, but there’s one particular edit near the end, a simple silent flashback to Nemo as an egg, that took my breath away. The real secret to Pixar’s enduring appeal is something that a cretin like Eisner will never understand, the sophistication of their craft and their respect for their audience.
7. LOST IN TRANSLATION
So much praise has been heaped on this film that there’s a chance people won’t be able to see it fresh. It’ll be overhyped, no matter what. That’s a shame, too, since Sofia Coppola’s second feature is a lyrical little haiku about feeling adrift in your own life and finding someone or something to hold onto, even if only for a moment. Coppola’s got a gift for creating moments that feel spontaneous, casually staged, but which speak volumes about her characters. She’s a completely natural filmmaker, and between this and THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, it’s clear that she has a strong voice that has to be encouraged. I’ve heard people get hung up while discussing this film, trying to match characters and situations in the film to people in Coppola’s real life based on gossip, but worrying about the real-life connections is missing half the fun. I’ve been on record as a big Bill Murray fan for as long as I’ve been at AICN, and seeing him in a film like this is like ten Christmases rolled up in one. He strolls through the film with a sort of majestic cool, so when he drops his defenses and shows us the man behind the movie star, it’s piercing. Scarlett Johansson does what many more experienced actors have failed to do in the past: she stands toe-to-toe with Bill without blinking. She’s so open, so honest, that Bill seems to want to do nothing more than protect her. This film’s sense of sweet reminds me of Linklater’s superlative BEFORE SUNRISE. This film isn’t wafer-thin or inconsequential, as its harshest detractors suggest. It’s fragile, delicate, and that’s what makes it so precious.
6. LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE
A marvelous reminder of the purest communicative power of cinema, this French-Canadian animated film is eccentric, exaggerated, and even grotesque at times. It’s never anything less than engrossing, though. Every inch of the frame is packed with something compelling. Every scene is loaded with jokes, some subtle, some broad. And the thing that makes it great is the way it plays almost entirely without a dependence on dialogue. My parents were in town, and my wife and I took them to see it along with my mother-in-law who speaks almost no English.
And in the end, everyone was able to enjoy it equally, a testament to the wonderful comic storytelling rhythms of Sylvain Chomet, the film’s writer-director. His story is strange and simple. A little boy lives with his grandmother and his dog. He harbors a secret fascination with competitive bike racing, and when his grandmother finds out, she starts training him. He grows up to be sleek, like a greyhound, with monstrous calves that are the result of his seemingly endless bike riding. He enters his first Tour De France, only to vanish before reaching the finish line. The surreal caper that spins out from this set-up involves frogs, gangsters, rented watercraft, ocean liners, gambling, and three mysterious singers who used to be famous, and it almost defines description. It’s a celebration of just how potent the pliant reality of animation can be when everything comes together. There’s a distinctly French sense of humor, keeping firmly in the tradition of Jaques Tati, and Americans are portrayed as fat on an almost-impossible scale, but only the most rabid of Franco-phobes will be able to resist this oddball charmer.
5. IRREVERSIBLE
Gaspar Noe is a monster. There’s something very, very wrong with him, and his deservedly controversial meditation on the way chaos tears down even the most beautiful things in the world is unforgettable. When I first saw it at the Egyptian, it was one of the single most miserable experiences I’ve had in a theater all year. That’s because Noe played a nasty trick on his audiences by laying down an audio track consisting of a sub-sonic noise used by riot police to make crowds sick. It’s brutal, and almost feels like a cheat since the raw force of Noe’s imagery will give you a stomachache without any additional help.
Told in reverse chronological order, this is the story of a young couple in love whose lives are ruined when she is attacked and raped, sending him on a stumbling, rage-fuelled grab for revenge. The film starts at the darkest, ugliest moment as Vincent Cassel and his friend, played with real wit by Albert Dupontel, finally confront the man they think is the rapist deep inside a gay S&M club called The Rectum. What Noe does in that first sequence is shocking no matter how inured you think you are to violence on film.
You can’t discuss the film without giving special praise to Monica Bellucci for her work. The rape scene is harrowing and horrible and graphic, and she takes it farther than I can imagine most big-name actresses would be willing to go. In the end, though, it’s not the shock moments that make the film great. I think it really comes to life in the second half when we see just what it is that has been lost because of these events. The film ends on such a deliriously beautiful note that it’s hard to believe we could be watching the same film at all. This film, like the next one on the list, is not for everyone, but for those who are brave enough, it will linger.
4. IN MY SKIN
Writer/director/actor Marina de Van has pulled off something altogether original with this searing, ugly, unblinking fable about the ways in which we hurt ourselves. She gives the year’s best female performance, no doubt about it, and she’s pretty much the whole film. I went crazy for this when I saw it in Montreal, and people had extreme reactions to it. One guy passed out in the theater. Two girls threw up in the lobby after staggering out during one particularly intense scene. Oddly, it’s not an overtly gory film. There’s a little bit of blood and flesh, but it doesn’t wallow in it. Instead, there’s an emotional intensity to this one woman’s downward spiral that will tie you in knots. The film is actually quite beautiful, sleekly photographed and designed. When the fabric of reality begins to unravel, de Van expertly charts every step of her deterioration. The result is one of the most important and individual horror films in recent memory. Like David Cronenberg, de Van understands that horror is both personal and political, and she balances both expertly. Even though it’s nowhere near as graphic, this film packs a more direct visceral punch than IRREVERSIBLE, and it ultimately hurts more because of the sudden, bleak ending. You can’t go into this film expecting easy answers or easy imagery, but for those who are willing to watch, IN MY SKIN will leave a scar.
3. KILL BILL, VOL. I
This was my favorite piece of candy all year long, a film that shouldn’t matter at all but somehow does. I saw this five times in the theater, and it was because I was compelled to keep going back, dragging other people to check it out each time. I got such a chemical rush out of this “duck press of exploitation cinema” that I almost feel like I should apologize.
Almost.
I’ve heard many of the criticisms of the film, and all I can say to anyone who didn’t enjoy it as much as I did is your loss, my gain. Maybe it helps that I have fond memories of going to grindhouse all-night shows in a pre-Giuliani New York City or that I’ve been to several of Quentin Tarantino’s own Austin festivals or that I love crazy cult movies on a nearly-primal level. Whatever the reason, this movie just wrapped itself around my pleasure center and won’t let go. I get a buzz from watching it, and I’d argue that anyone who thinks KILL BILL is a betrayal of Quentin’s early promise never really understood his talent to begin with. Tarantino told me just before he started filming that one of his goals in making this film was so he could learn how to stage and shoot action sequences. Mission accomplished. The House Of Blue Leaves is a spectacularly orchestrated bit of mayhem that I enjoyed more with successive viewings. If there is any letdown with the film, it’s the fact that these fascinating characters are gone as soon as we get to know them. Uma Thurman’s never been given this sort of role, and Quentin deserves credit for seeing something in her that no one else ever has. The same is true for Sonny Chiba, who exudes a warmth here that I never knew he was capable of. Overall, KILL BILL may be the least important film on this whole list, but it also might be the most purely enjoyable.
2. THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
What can I say about Peter Jackson’s triumphant epic that I haven’t said already? What praise can I offer up and heap on it that I haven’t already in earlier articles?
I suppose I can go on the record thanking the people of New Zealand, the unsung heroes of this production. Tax subsidies and other financial incentives effectively turned every citizen of the country into an investor on the film, something they seem to have willingly shouldered. I’m not sure any other country on Earth would have done the same, and the end result should be a source of enormous national pride.
I can also offer thanks and congratulations to the hundreds and hundreds of artists and craftsmen whose work went underappreciated but which made all the difference. The scale of the entire endeavor is part of what makes it all so overwhelming, and that’s only possible because of all the people who poured their hearts and souls into the project. When people are truly inspired by something they’re working on, it shows in the final product.
The reason the film came in second on this year’s list instead of first is because I’m still not convinced the theatrical cut works completely. This was the first of the three films where I felt like major chunks of story or characterization were compromised by the theatrical running time. In particular, I feel like the Denethor storyline just didn’t work. Still, so much of the film is so great that it’s impossible for one or two fumbled subplots to knock the film too far down the list. The middle of the film is like virtual reality, engrossing and emotional, and stands as one of the most transporting sequences in all of fantasy cinema. I wrote at length about why I like the film’s multiple endings, but in particular, it’s everything involving Sam Gamgee that seals the deal for me. Sean Astin may have gotten screwed by the Academy this year, but in the long run, he’s created a characterization that will be one of the most revered of the genre, just one of the many great performances in this, the grand conclusion to one of cinema’s great adventures.
1. CITY OF GOD
No film surprised me more in 2003. No other film felt so complete, so richly packed with life, overflowing with great characters and dozens of storylines all told with just the right attention to detail. No other film brought a corner of the world to more persuasive life for me.
CITY OF GOD is an explosion, a carnival, a movie with all the textural density of a great novel. It is a major accomplishment for filmmakers Katia Lund and Fernando Meirelles, and I’m curious to see if they can pull off another miracle of this magnitude. If so, then they have got to be placed on anyone’s short list of world cinema’s most exciting new voices. When MEDIUM COOL was released, it still felt transgressive to blur the line between documentary and fiction, but in the thirty years since, the line seems to have dissolved altogether. Movies routinely either pretend to be documentaries for comic or dramatic effect, or they lift the visual language of the documentary, using the hand-held feel to make their stories feel more “real.” THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT led the fake documentary genre down a creative dead end, and in recent years, filmmakers have gotten much more facile at combining the various bits of film grammar in interesting new ways. What Lund and Meirelles have done so beautifully here is craft something that is obviously an expertly woven narrative, but one that uses real events and real people as characters in an effort to anchor the story in reality. The film is shot on the real locations using non-actors, many of who probably have some sort of connection to the real events, either through family or friend.
The result is intoxicating, a story about life on the fringe that has all the propulsive drunk-on-movies energy of GOODFELLAS or BOOGIE NIGHTS. I remember just about a year ago, when I saw the film in a tiny screening room at the Miramax building in Los Angeles. There’s a party scene midway through where music’s playing and everyone’s dancing and, for a brief moment, everyone’s genuinely happy. The mood doesn’t even last the whole party, but for a few fleeting moments, these are the luckiest people in the greatest place on Earth. For a few moments, the City of God is Heaven, indeed, and Lund and Meirelles give us all the wings to reach it.
I applaud Miramax for keeping the film in release for a full year so far, and I’m sure they’ll expand to more theaters to capitalize on the Academy’s largesse. I just wish they hadn’t postponed the upcoming DVD release. I may be annoyed, but it’s a shrewd decision. I know I’ve got no choice now but to go back and see it on the bigscreen again. It’s been too long and I’m impatient to slip back into this world with these characters.
And on that note, I’m going to wrap up this morning’s column so I can put up some other stories and also get to work on the DVD Shelf that’s almost ready to post. If you want to know what films I did or did not see in 2003 for consideration for my list, or if you’d like to read the runners-up, just follow the links and check it out.
Otherwise, I’ll catch you soon. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
