Hey folks, Harry here with the fundementalist AICN reviewer, Massawyrm. He's out thumping... not Bibles, but cigarette butts against most any substance to pack dat tobacco! Through his skull fog we'll give listen to his thoughts on the family film JARHEAD and that introspective bit of melancholy that was CHICKEN LITTLE... Here ya go...
Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Jarhead
Sam Mendes does not make simple films. He make complicated films, films thick with mixed emotions that often leave you unsure how to feel after the credits have rolled. With Jarhead, he’s made a film that will divide and section off audiences as it is a film that very much plays upon the emotions you carry into it about both Desert Shield/Storm and Operation: Iraqi Freedom. But unlike most controversial films on the issues in recent years, neither side of the fence will celebrate it. Because Jarhead doesn’t give a fuck about politics. Not the least bit.
Jarhead isn’t about how we need to be over there or don’t need to be over there. It’s simply about how shitty it is to be over there, for better or worse. It’s harsh, brutal, and by all accounts, a completely accurate portrayal of the runup and execution of the war. And despite its lack of discussing politics, politics was all most could talk about after the film. Those not talking politics were complaining about having watched a war film with a total lack of war. Because this isn’t that kind of war movie. This isn’t a movie about laying in fox holes while mortars scream past. This isn’t about the young recruit showing the picture of his girl back home to the Sarge before getting wasted by a sniper. This is a movie about being on another planet entirely, a movie about being completely separated from everything you know and love and being thrust into a dusty pit of boredom, mindfucks and complete reality reprogramming.
And this movie hit me where I live. You see, I’m a military BRAT. Born and raised. And I am the eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son going back 7 generations that we have records on. I am the first eldest son in my family in 5 generations not to serve. My Great Grandfather was a high-ranking officer in WWII, my Grandfather a code breaker who served in Korea and my father served on one of the early attempts at an anti-terrorism task force before becoming a training specialist who served for 26 years, retiring just before Iraqi Freedom. If that weren’t enough, a good half-dozen of my high school click signed up in the various branches, some who still serve now, and many of my friends since – from angry Coffee shop poets to quiet Airline reservation agents – have signed up or served in some fashion in one of the three major conflicts in the last fifteen years. And if you think I don’t carry with me the guilt of never shaving my head, losing the beard and suiting up for my country, you’ve got another thing coming. I’m reminded of it every god damned day. I’m reminded by my friends and my family. But I’m not reminded by what they say, rather I’m reminded of what they don’t say.
For me the most poignant scene of Jarhead is a small one at the beginning – when the drill instructor asks Jake Gyllenhaal about his father’s service in Vietnam. “Did he ever talk about it?” “Only once, sir.” “Then you know he wasn’t lying about it.” And it took me back to the time my father told me about crawling through a ventilation shaft John McClane style. When he told me about how the metal buckled and made a loud “whump” and about how all he could think was “Fuck. I’m dead. I’m fucking dead. What the fuck am I doing? I’ve got a baby son at home. I’ve got a wife. What the fuck am I doing?” only to discover later that it was a training op. It took me back to my friend Robby talking about storming out of the belly of a transport plane at 3 AM, M-16 ready to bear to find nothing but a platoon of screaming men looking around the empty, black Afghanistan night. And it took me back to my friend Philip talking about his utter relief of getting assigned to guard a holy site in Iraq that both sides were deathly afraid of putting a single bullet into, allowing him to never once have to pull the trigger on his sniper rifle outside of target practice.
That’s the film Sam Mendes has made. He’s not telling the stories of the guys storming over the hill into a hell of machine gun fire and grenades. He’s telling the story of the guys who stormed over the hill to find nothing. The guys who never had to fire their rifles. And the guys who came back fucked up anyway.
And already the talkbackers are getting fired up ready to explode in a fury of “Alright already, just review the god damned movie.” Well, Jarhead is a movie you can’t just ‘review.’ It’s not that kind of film. It’s a very personal film. It’s a film that forces you to draw from your own life, to put yourself in the position of the protagonist, to feel the surreal mindfuck that is mass conflict. It’s about watching good men - men with ambition, men who want to serve their country, men who want to be heroes – become totally changed. It’s about small details, like the wall of shame – the spot for you to put pictures of your girl back home who fucked around or left you for another guy. It’s about the sad truth of what these guys go through. Having seen it through my friends eyes, my father’s eyes, this film hit me pretty hard. And it made me breathe a guilt-ridden sigh of relief for never having gone. This film took me back to watching a friend leave her husband of 8 years, who she loved dearly, because he came back from Iraq “different”, unable to open up, unable to do anything but get drunk and stare out a window. And I breathed that sigh of relief for my wife as well, for never having to see that herself.
This movie is that sigh of relief for those who never went and a truthful nod to those who did. Sure, this is an anti-war film, but not the “THIS Anti-war” film some are hoping for or dreading it to be. Mendes is smart enough to keep any politics out of this film whatsoever. Sure, there’s the “Political commentary” guy, but he often gets shouted down with a “Fuck politics. We’re here.” And frankly, that’s the best that can be done with a film like this. Sure, there are going to be members of the ReRe Right who are going to blatantly refuse to see this film on principle (that principle being any anti-war film is wrong because we all “know” it’s against THIS war”) but any that do end up seeing it won’t walk out offended unless they’re really aiming to. Frankly, I feel any extremists on either side of the ideological argument are going to walk out disappointed that they didn’t argue their side enough, because the film never really bothers with either side at all. This is a film about the troops, the boys, the guys stuck there and the shit they brought home with them.
I’ve got to say, Jarhead is really good. But it’s not great. If Mendes made one identifiable mistake in this film, it’s the inclusion of (an albeit great) scene in which the Marines are getting all fired up at a screening of Apocalypse Now. The problem is, despite how wonderful a scene it is, it conjures up a direct comparison to a far superior film. Apocalypse Now is part of the Trifecta of truly amazing anti-war films – along with Das Boot and Full Metal Jacket. And it doesn’t help that the film opens with an FMJ-like Boot Camp sequence. Nothing, I mean nothing, will ever overshadow the power of Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermy directed by Kubrick. Jarhead surely doesn’t. No, Jarhead belongs in another category of Anti-war films – the really good ones. This is up there with Good Morning, Vietnam and Tigerland, with Born of the Fourth of July and Coming Home.
The performances are all solid. Jake Gyllenhaal is fantastic, as usual. He’s a really solid actor that may have just hit the bigtime. Jamie Foxx proves once again that he’s not a fluke, ending up in that small, special collection of stand up comedians that have proven to be really great actors. But the real breakout performance here is Peter Sarsgaard who quite simply, well, the brother’s been in a lot of bad movies. Sure, there’s some high points in his career, but he never managed to do anything to really stand out against the other performances. With Jarhead, that all changes. Jarhead made me forget that this was the same assclown from Flightplan and the Skeleton Key. Here he simply delivers the kind of performance he can really build a career on.
All in all, it’s a really good film that really is going to reflect your own feelings about war and the men who fight it. If you’re the type that thinks anyone who puts on a uniform is a crazy, ignorant mother fucker, well, this film ain’t gonna change that idea. However, if you have friends or family that served, as I did, or serve yourself, this film could really speak to you. I really enjoyed this film. Mendes did a great job with the material he had. It’s shot beautifully, paced well and did a great job of showing both the horrors of war, and the horrors of isolation. But it’s still not great. Not quite.
Chicken Little
What can I say? This is yet another typical Disney animated film. A motherless character from a time honored story gets a modern day rewrite, complete with hipster references, jokes aimed at five year olds and a dash of a pathetic attempt at making the adults laugh. Disney’s first real foray (Valiant doesn’t count as it’s a British animated film with a Disney logo) in Pixarless 3-D animated films, showcasing just how bad Eisner screwed the pooch by pissing them off. Chicken Little is so sub-par mediocre that it’s really just another blip on the radar. It’s this years Shark Tale, without adults actually laughing the first time through.
Sure, it’s cute. But despite what the trailers are selling, it’s far from an animated Alien Invasion movie. Hell, the aliens don’t even show up until the last 20 minutes of the film. It’s a film about a son trying to get his father to believe in him. A whole section of the movie that just turns out to be pretty lame, but not entirely unwatchable.
The biggest problem with the film is its total ineptitude with humor. In typical fashion, they’ve thrown in jokes for the adults that are really nothing more than non-sequiturs. Sure, they’re making movie references and throwing in the lyrics to disco songs…but they actually mean nothing in the context of any given scene. It feels as if “Hey, this scene needs something for adults – how about we throw in a Star Wars reference or something.” “But this has nothing to do with what’s going on” “That’s okay, the parents will be so bored, they’ll laugh at the first thing they recognize.” And yes, you laugh a few times. Then you begin to wonder. “Hey, why was that funny? That wasn’t funny. I must have been so bored I laughed at the first thing I recognized.” And somewhere a Disney exec is smiling. “I told you.”
But thank god the aliens actually invade, because once that whole sequence gets going, the movie gets pretty good. It’s solid fun mayhem with a few clever jokes. What really saves this movie from the dungheap, however, is the last ten minutes. The climax is really good, but the epilogue is freaking stellar. I mean really, gut bustingly funny. They start rolling out great cameos like Fred Willard, Patrick Warburton and Adam FREAKING West in the funniest thing he’s done in years, and the movie just gets smoking. For a brief five minutes the movie actually attains a Pixar/Shrek level of entertainment. Of course, it takes over an hour to get there. Had the rest of the film lived up to the ending, it would have been something really worth watching. As is, well, if you’re a parent and your kids are dying to see this, you’ll be able to sit through it with a minimal amount of pain. You might even walk out happy as the ending tickles you just enough to forget the rest of it. But when your kids get it on DVD, you’ll definitely be telling them “Hey, come get daddy when the aliens invade. Daddy can’t sit through that stupid baseball game again.” I can’t recommend this, not in the slightest. Unless you have kids, this is definitely a pass. If you do have kids, well, this will hold them over until Zathura kicks their ass, and yours, next week.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. I know I will.
Massawyrm
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