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June 30, 2009

JUDD APATOW AND HIS GIRLS.

As a brand name, Judd Apatow is doing pretty well. The comedies that he directs and produces are box office and critical successes. He is the driving force behind FREAKS AND GEEKS, which successfully engineered three movie stars (the freaks; the geeks are not quite so big), and is responsible for Steve Carell becoming quite possibly the biggest comedy star in the world. And the brand he produces isn't shoddy either: Apatow produces comedies that both guys and girls like featuring characters and situation who are at once familiar to us as people and unfamiliar in movie scenarios. We aren't treated to the same recycled plot; the word "heart" and "emotion" gets thrown around a lot in reviews of Apatow's movies.

The surprise hit THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN got things kick-started, and KNOCKED UP proved he was no one trick pony. He hit home runs with Will Ferrell movies. The ensuing success of Apatow as a producer with SUPERBAD, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, ADVENTURELAND, and I LOVE YOU, MAN made his last name of the few that the average filmgoer recognizes - that's a select group; in the old days it was "Hitchcock" and "Capra" and now it rests with "Speilberg" and (sadly) "Bay." Only a few (for instance, the recent Jack Black/Harold Ramis stinkbomb YEAR ONE) have proved disappointing. Apatow is an unusual celebrity, and so are the stars of his films. None of them are conventionally good-looking, and all of his films take great efforts to remind us of this. This is one of the factors that critics and audiences find refreshing about his films, that we'd rather see the average-looking Seth Rogen or Jason Segel handle the foibles of a romantic conundrum than impossibly dashing and witty British actors named Hugh. Only Apatow staple Paul Rudd is someone we'd find in a traditional Romantic comedy, and he's usually refreshingly cast against type as someone whose looks caused more problems than they do solutions. Jeffrey Wells offered this criticism of Segel in SARAH MARSHALL:

*I immediately went, "Oh, shit...I'm stuck with this dude for the whole film." Segel is an obviously bright guy with moderately appealing features, but he also has a chunky, blemished ass and little white man-boobs, and he could definitely use a little treadmill and stairmaster time and a serious cutback program regarding pasta, Frito scoop chips, Ben & Jerry's and Fatburger takeout. I don't relate to this at all, I was muttering to myself. *

Yet that criticism can also be turned into a rallying cry, and Apatow has thrived off "moderately appealing" guys to whom audiences give their sympathies.

My own personal opinion is this: TALLADEGA NIGHTS is probably the funniest movie of the decade. I really liked ADVENTURELAND and KNOCKED UP but am lukewarm to the rest of them. THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN veered a bit too far over into "Mad TV" territory; SUPERBAD and FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL were maddeningly uneven and aren't really that much better than the genres they're supposed to be set apart from. An Apatow movie is not a big event for me; I generally end up catching them on Netflix, which is about right. For their fans, these films are endlessly rewatchable.

But I have a bone to pick on one issue, and I'll boil it down like this. Look at pictures of three actors in KNOCKED UP, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, and ADVENTURELAND.

Now look at pictures of their three romantic companions.

Isn't there something a bit unsettling about this? Apatow has invited the "slob" and the "nerd" to a traditional romantic scenario to which they were denied entry. But he hasn't invited any equivalent women. The girls who these dudes end up with are constantly showing up on the cover of glamorous magazines. MARSHALL is a particularly problematic example: Jason Segel forgets the beautiful actress Sarah Marshall (played by beautiful actress Kristen Bell) and instead hooks up with beautiful Hawaaian hotel clerk Mila Kunis, who is even more beautiful than Sarah Marshall. He doesn't particularly learn anything about women; he just happens in to a relationship with the one woman around who is more beautiful than his ex-girlfriend. A similar situation plagues ADVENTURELAND - where dorky intellectual Jesse Eisenberg is forced to choose between the smoking hot local girl and the smoking hot smart local girl* who just shot the celebrity moon with TWILIGHT. I think you'll agree that he makes the right choice; it's a choice that many of us don't get to make.

What bothers me is that these movies are seen as so groundbreaking when basically they're playing the same audience tricks - roping in all the dudes with the promise of getting to ogle the usual suspects, while putting them together with a guy we can all relate to. In the 70s, directors gave us Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Gene Hackman as a remedy to the Tab Hunters who won all the casting calls in the 50s and 60s. But they also gave us a lot of interesting actresses like Sissy Spacek, Ellen Burstyn, and Shelley Duvall who defied the traditional cover-girls who usually graced the big screen. Apatow could this, but he hasn't yet. He and his directors continue to cast his movies with whoever is getting some buzz in the FHM circles, and whoever can promote the movies by wearing her underwear in ESQUIRE. And I realize that the only movie he's made that doesn't fit this criticism is the one I probably like the least: THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN.

This summer, Apatow's FUNNY PEOPLE might remedy his troubling paradigm. Apatow's wife, Leslie Mann, stars as the romantic interest of normal-guy-extraordinaire Adam Sandler. I've always liked Mann, as she brings a screwball sensibility to every scene with her big eyes; she was my favorite thing about KNOCKED UP. But I worry that Apatow's success will keep him from revising the can't-miss genre that he's successfully masterminded. Here's hoping that Apatow casts women who, like his men, can be described as "average."

*- An argument can be made that Stewart is "average-looking," and that this is the key to her success. But I think that ADVENTURELAND director Greg Mottola is constantly reminding us what an impossibly beautiful woman she is by shooting her in skimpy clothing, short shorts, and (in a few situations) her underwear. In other words, sexualizing her.

Posted by Andytown at 2:23 PM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2009

BEST MOVIES OF THE DECADE?

When I probably should have been doing something more important, I decided to go through all the yearly top 10 lists on Metacritic and come up with some "nominees" for the best of the decade . . . here's what I have so far.

First . . . I feel like this list betrays how many foreign movies and documentaries I haven't seen. It also is perhaps incomplete and probably inaccurate - since I saw all the mumblecore movies (FUNNY HAHA, MUTUAL APPRECIATION) late, I'm not sure exactly when they did (or didn't) hit theaters. Also, I have yet to see a great movie in the 2009 film season - STAR TREK is the best movie and it certainly won't end up on any lists.

Despite the renaissance of 2007, the early "ots" are far superior to everything post-2005.

File this under "rental recommendations"

2000
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
ALMOST FAMOUS
AMORES PERROS
BAMBOOZLED
BEST IN SHOW
CASTAWAY
THE CELL
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
GEORGE WASHINGTON
HIGH FIDELITY
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU
REQUEIM FOR A DREAM
TRAFFIC
UNBREAKABLE
WAY OF THE GUN
WONDER BOYS
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME

2001
ALI
BLACKHAWK DOWN
DONNIE DARKO
FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
GHOST WORLD
THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
MEMENTO
MULHOLLAND DRIVE
THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS
THE TAILOR OF PANAMA
VANILLA SKY

2002
24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE
25TH HOUR
ABOUT SCHMIDT
ADAPTATION
THE BOURNE IDENTITY
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
FUNNY HA HA
I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART
IGBY GOES DOWN
THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE
THE PIANIST
Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN

2003
21 GRAMS
28 DAYS LATER
ALL THE REAL GIRLS
AMERICAN SPLENDOR
BIG FISH
CITY OF GOD
FINDING NEMO
KILL BILL
LOST IN TRANSLATION
MASTER AND COMMANDER
OPEN RANGE
SHATTERED GLASS
SPELLBOUND

2004
THE AVIATOR
THE CLEARING
COFFEE AND CIGARETTES
COLLATERAL
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
I HEART HUCKABEES
THE INCREDIBLES
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
PRIMER
SIDEWAYS
SPIDERMAN 2

2005
BROKEN FLOWERS
CINDERELLA MAN
ELIZABETHTOWN
THE ICE HARVEST
KISS KISS BANG BANG
MATCH POINT
MUNICH
THE NEW WORLD
THE WEATHERMAN

2006
BABEL
BRICK
CHILDREN OF MEN
THE DEPARTED
DREAMGIRLS
THE FOUNTAIN
LETTERS TO IWO JIMA
MIAMI VICE
MUTUAL APPRECIATION
THE PRESTIGE
TALLADEGA NIGHTS
TELL THEM WHO YOU ARE
UNITED 93

2007
DANCE PARTY, USA
THE DARJEELING LIMITED
GONE BABY GONE
I'M NOT THERE
INTO THE WILD
THE LIVES OF OTHERS
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
RATATOUILLE
RESCUE DAWN
THERE WILL BE BLOOD

2008
THE CLASS
DARK KNIGHT
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
SYNECHDOCHE, NY
WALL-E
THE WRESTLER

Posted by Andytown at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2009

TRANSFORMERS STINKS (NO I HAVEN'T SEEN IT)

REVIEWS OF THE NEW TRANSFORMERS

I love it when critics band together to attack a terrible movie. Here's a few:

". . . the ugliest, most hateful, most simple-minded and incomprehensible assault on art and decency since the last Michael Bay movie. It's bad (that goes without saying), and it's possible that even its fans will have the brute sense to recognize that it's bad--but it's bad in such a way that defies easy description. It's so bad, it's exasperating." - Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central

"If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination." - Roger Ebert

"For far too long, the movie consists of chase scenes, scrotum jokes, shrieked conversations, broad slapstick, and depressingly regressive ethnic caricatures. A good deal of time is also wasted on LaBeouf and dream-girl Megan Fox dickering over when he'll finally say "I love you." Which is an odd choice for a film otherwise once again pitched at 13-year-old boys, to whom fart jokes are always funny, all women below the age of 40 are apparently plasticine porn stars, and nothing's cool unless it blows up--or better yet, in an unfortunate running gag, humps something else and then blows up." - Tasha Robinson, AV Club

"At 149 minutes, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is six minutes longer than the 2007 noise machine from which this sequel sprang, but those six minutes are like dog minutes. . . "Revenge of the Fallen" is more like listening to rocks in a clothes dryer for 2½ hours. Nobody's looking for anything other than relentless, brainless action from this sort of movie, but Bay, whose best junk came early with "Bad Boys" and " The Rock," offers nothing but visual and aural chaos. No one moves a camera more restlessly, to less interesting effect, than this man, although his sense of space is his own, I'll grant him that: Each time the battle between the Autobahns and the Technocrats (I think I have that right -- sorry, make that Autobots and Decepticons) comes down to one 'bot against another, you cannot really tell what's happening, and who's vivisecting whom. Your eye instinctively flees to the far corners of the screen for some relief from the computer-generated mayhem." - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Posted by Andytown at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2009

TODD PHILLIPS

On his kind-of frustrating Podcast, "The Treatment," Elvis Mitchell interviewed HANGOVER director Todd Phillips. Phillips made his name directing documentaries that I didn't see, but sky-rocketed with the dopey arrested development comedies ROAD TRIP and OLD SCHOOL. I thought both movies had a few funny moments, but were almost completely forgettable. What's interesting is that Phillips views himself as "punk rock" director, because he has embodied some kind of iconoclastic spirit that he has intellectualized to an absurd degree. We are talking about the director of MR. WOODCOCK here, not Jean-Luc Godard.

I haven't seen THE HANGOVER, but I'm guessing it thrives on the kind of knuckleheaded misogyny and semi-shocking envelope-pushing that makes his previous popular in frat-houses everywhere. Phillips clearly sees himself as a darling of a certain politically incorrect criticaluminati, guys who debunks meaning and significance and think films should ultimately be about nothing. So Phillips thinks he's farting in the face of suburban values or something by celebrating drunkenness and immaturity. What he's done, however, is made staples of frat-boy DVD collections, who clearly don't talk about the "lack of irony" in OLD SCHOOL so much as they enjoy its quotable crudeness.

Phillips sees himself in the vein of Judd Apatow which, in a way, he is. But Apatow - while no Preston Sturges (the subject of a future blog post) - and his productions are substantially better than Phillips. Phillips may be able to talk about himself as making paeans to masculine identity, but he really appeals to the lowest common denominator. Apatow at least puts that stuff under his (limited) cinematic microscope instead of exploiting it for cheap laughs.

Ten years ago, AMERICAN PIE kick-started this genre by upping the ante with a particularly disgusting scene of gross-out humor; this was redeemed, it seemed, by some compensatory sentimentality at the ending that (to me, anyway) was a hollow excuse to indulge in all the crassness that preceded it. Phillips seems to think he's an innovator because he avoids that sentimentality and, I guess, in some ways he is. He seems pretty purposefully empty, but the bottom line is he isn't all that funny. I don't think comedy should necessarily teach us life lessons; ANIMAL HOUSE didn't - it was the kind of ode to the value-free paradise that Phillips seems religiously dedicated to reproducing. Satires have to have objects, and points - at least according to those wrote them in the 17th Century. But Phillips, in his brazen "confidence" (a word he used a lot to describe himself), will not stand by and have his films be meaningful in any way.

This mission would be refreshing if he were any good at it, but if THE HANGOVER is any good, it will be the first in his awful catalog to be so.

--- On a (mostly related unrelated) side note, in the song American Pie - most of the symbolism has been unshrouded. But why do the guys drinking whiskey and rye in the dry levy sing "This will be the day that I die?"

Posted by Andytown at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)