Irreviews

I am a huge Brit Marling fan, both of her writing and her acting. Both of her previous films were remarkable in their own way. Another Earth was a lovely, haunting little film about regrets and the limitations that get imposed on our lives, and The Sound of My Voice was a really interesting (and accurate) depiction of cult frauds and how they operate.  I have looked forward to her third film, The East, since last summer, ever since I noticed on IMDB that it was in post-production. That’s how good Brit Marling is: you mark her films on your calendar a year in advance.

I think Brit is a serious screen-writing talent. She chooses daring, interesting topics, and has the skill and courage to not just cheaply exploit them, but to create from them strikingly moral works of art which resonate deeply. I sincerely hope that she does not sell out to Hollywood, and rather makes the effort to continue developing and deepening her craft. I really think that down the road she and her directing partner Zal Batmanglij could together become another Costa-Gavras.

With her third offering, The East, Marling is expanding into making films with wider commercial appeal. I found the film very enjoyable, even if it did not lodge in my mind quite the way her first two films did. The story is laid out really well, with solid dialog and good pacing, and character development is skillful and efficient. It features some gutsy writing – from the cleverness of the group’s attacks, to the amorality of her corporate bosses, to its morally visionary ending of the sort that is not seen much any more. Also on display is Marling’s profound understanding of the speech and behavior within cult groups, which is so spot-on I figure she must have had some direct exposure to cult groups in her past. In the lead role, Marling gives (as usual) a lovely, nuanced performance, and the supporting performances are for the most part excellent.

So why did it fail to lodge in my mind like Marling’s earlier films? Little things that added up to just enough of a distraction that I probably would not feel the need to watch the film again. Some elements of the eco-terrorism plots were, in my opinion, a little unbelievable, and despite the way these elements blend seamlessly in the context of the larger story (due mainly to Marling’s writing skill,) they still don’t sit quite right, and somehow this dilutes the emotional impact of the story.

Also, Ellen Page is just not my favorite actress, as anyone who reads this blog will have readily deduced, and I felt her important role was hamstrung a bit by her vacuous presence and cue-card delivery of lines. (Imagine instead someone like Jessica Chastain in this role, and I think you’ll see what I’m getting at.) Even a year ago when I first noticed the film, I was worried about the involvement of Ellen Page – well, most of my fears were realized. I fully comprehend that I stand entirely alone in my assessment of Oscar nominee Ellen Page, but take it for what it’s worth. 

But setting aside my nitpicking, let me be clear that The East is a very well-made film that is interesting, surprising, and lots of fun. I very highly recommend it!

And to Brit Marling: if you are reading this, please consider the content of this lecture by Jacob Appelbaum as a topic for your next movie.

This is a film about teenage boys, their hatred of their parents, and the drama of the girl that comes between them. It feels clunky and derivative, and made almost no impression on me. I wouldn’t even bother Netflixing it.

I really liked Shadow Dancer. It’s not great, and it suffers from too little dialog and too many “meaningful facial expressions,” but nevertheless it’s a good story, well-told, with solid performances across the board. Not much to say on this one except I highly recommend it.

Something really fascinating is going on with this documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. Julian Assange has vehemently denounced it. His small cult fandom is outraged by it. Its creator, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney, feels it is very fair, and indeed seems rather proud of his creation, claiming that the only people who criticize the film are those that haven’t actually seen it. The reaction to the film in the media has been extremely positive, indeed the film is clearly seen as not taking sides, and therefore destined to become the factual framework in which all the players and issues will be understood and judged.

So why did I leave the theater so uneasy about the content of this film?

Perhaps it’s because Gibney’s provocative interview clips of Assange are entirely re-edited and re-purposed footage from someone else’s earlier documentary project on WikiLeaks, footage shot in the context of a completely different filmmaker-subject relationship, one in which Assange may have felt comfortable to speak more loosely and say unguarded things, confident of the artistic intentions and scruples of the guy with the camera.

Perhaps it’s because so much of We Steal Secrets rests on the claims and opinions James Ball, who is portrayed in the documentary as a former WikiLeaks insider who became disgusted with Assange, but who in fact was just a teenage aspiring journalist who volunteered there for a few months. I find that even the most cursory research into this kid positively stinks: Wikileaks forced him out because he was stealing documents and meeting secretly with David Leigh, an anti-WikiLeaks columnist for The Guardian. Now, Ball himself works for The Guardian, publishing a variety of negative claims and allegations against WikiLeaks and Assange (all of which are strenuously denied by WikiLeaks as fabrications.) Where in the documentary is WikiLeaks side of the story regarding all this?

Perhaps it’s the strange way Gibney approached the Swedish sex allegation issue – not by presenting and examining the evidence and deducing a logical conclusion, but by merely playing various clips of hysterical and irrational-sounding “honeytrap” claims made by Assange supporters, and then contrasting this with an interview with one of the women, who talks about how her life has been destroyed by Assange’s actions. Powerful stuff, on the surface, but what exactly does she want Assange to do? According to this documentary, she wants him to personally return to Sweden to answer some questions about why his condom broke. Instead of presenting Assange’s side of this story, Gibney springboards off this condom issue to present the outrageous hypothesis that Assange might be a serial impregnator of women, fathering children by deceit or force, all over the globe, a “cry for help,” if you will, from a warped and rootless criminal. This hardly seems fair.

Perhaps its the way the granting of political asylum by Ecuador was handled: dismissed as a hypocritical joke, because the Correa administration has been “condemned” for suppressing free speech. Gibney of course does not make the slightest effort to examine the validity of this “condemnation,” and completely ignores the laborious, months-long process Ecuador went through reviewing evidence of political persecution (which Assange and his people had to provide, of course) before agreeing to shelter him. The documentary trivializes the actions of a dignified sovereign nation, almost like it’s not a real country, and implies its President Rafael Correa (who has a Ph.D. in Economics) is nothing more than a banana republic clown.

Perhaps it’s how the documentary opens with the claim that Assange was personally responsible for the WANK worm which attacked DOD computers in the late 1980’s. As far as I can tell, no one has ever accused Assange, or even suggested he was involved in any way. Gibney’s “evidence,” if you can believe it, is that the text of the WANK worm carried a quote from a Midnight Oil song, and Julian Assange apparently likes that band! By virtue of this claim, the documentary quietly but provocatively makes Assange’s teenage hacking seem much more iniquitous than it actually was, and associates WikiLeaks with cyber-terrorism and the potential to bring about nuclear catastrophe. Has any honest piece of journalism ever began which such an outrageous juxtaposition of barely relevant ideas?

Perhaps it’s the way Assange’s YouTube T.V. show The World Tomorrow is only mentioned as proof of megalomanic indulgence, when any viewing of the actual content of this show gives quite a different impression of his motives. I invite you to have a look for yourself at the interviews with Rafael Correa, Imran Kahn, or Moncef Marzouki, and decide for yourself whether Assange just wants attention, or whether he is, by the example of his show, making a valid and important point about the shortcomings of the modern media, and about how journalists should be plying their craft.

And perhaps it’s because the story of Bradley Manning is excessively and derogatorily focused on his homosexuality, his gender-identification issues, and his extreme emotional vulnerability, weirdly buttressed with bizarre and unflattering interview footage with Adrian Lamo, the autistic hacker who was Manning’s hand-selected confessor. From watching this documentary, one could not help but come away with the definite impression that leaks like “cablegate” come from mentally disturbed individuals who run in seedy crowds, and are therefore very dangerous, just like the government says. But should we really think this way? And is airing all this “dirt” on Manning really contributing anything valid or important to the issues at hand?

Julian Assange says that the biggest current threat to mankind is ignorance, and the biggest facilitator of ignorance in society is “bad media.” We Steal Secrets strikes me as a lovely example of bad media: a high-profile journalistic statement, with just enough truth to cover its ass (the financial attacks on WikiLeaks, Manning’s torture by the U.S. government,) and which slickly pretends to give a complete picture, but which actually presents issues in a dishonest and blatantly manipulative way, and encourages sloppy thought and shallow reasoning in the public mind. As a result of this, Julian Assange comes across as a dangerous, hypocritical lunatic, and WikiLeaks as a fatally flawed and dying institution that deserves to die – thanks to bad media, these ideas will now become part of the historical record.

And as is always the case with bad media, We Steal Secrets bets everything that Americans are too lazy and self-obsessed to undertake the boring and time-consuming investigative work required to find out whether this documentary is presenting an honest picture of the issues, or whether it is lying to them. Basically, it’s betting everything that we don’t care one way or the other, as long as we don’t have to think.

Shame on you, Alex Gibney! Shame on you!

Dear Richard Linklater,

My wife and I are giving you and your co-writers permission to not wait another nine years to make the next movie, and suggesting that instead you make one in two years, at which time you should take another stab at this film, Before Midnight, dismissing this existing version in some creative way – a nightmare, or a communication from a parallel universe, something like that. This will give you all more time to reflect on the profundities of human mid-life, develop a greater artistic perspective on it all, and create a work of art worthy of the first two films in your series.

Given the wonderful surprises and insights the first two films contain regarding their respective periods of life, I can’t believe that the three of you looked at human mid-life and all you could come up with is you have kids, grow bitter, and develop petty contempt for your spouse. Jesus, man! Tell us something we don’t already know! As Andre Gregory would say, the artistic picture of the world you’re showing people is exactly the picture of the world they have already, and (as he predicted) that’s why its so boring and deadening.

I always saw the first two movies not so much as a story of two people, but as an artistic rendition of powerful internal forces in human life. In the first, it’s a scenario of falling in love and connecting that few people get to experience, and yet everyone experiences on some more subtle, less literal level.  The second film is about the possibility of redoing your life when you are already down a road that seems impossible to reverse, again a fantasy, but one that in more subtle ways people confront. I might also say they were at their core about the possibility of mental freedom, in a way. But what mid-life possibilities is this third film exploring? That we all wind up fucking miserable, and totally lose ourselves in angst-ridden regret and inarticulate belligerence? Personally, I am finding midlife just as surprising and profound as earlier periods of my life, maybe more so. True, I also find it more complicated, but given that I don’t have anything like the economic privilege and relative luxury that the three of you possess as a result of your charmed professions, please let my exhortations inspire you all to reflect more deeply on the possibilities of this time of life.

I’m happy that your collaborative process allows you to mine the events from each of your lives during the past 9 years, but you should know better than anyone that these characters are not necessarily just literal reflections of your lives. You invented them 18 years ago, and I imagine they should have over time some internal congruence as characters. Based on the prior two films, I don’t really believe she would develop such open contempt for Jesse. I don’t know if I believe they would have cheated on each other, but if they did I certainly don’t believe they would not have already talked about it. I don’t believe they would not have already thoroughly discussed her feelings about the terrifying birth of their daughters, or his ever-developing guilt about his son. I don’t believe they would suddenly have nothing interesting to say about anything, or that he would be stuck wishing she would metamorphose into an moronic bimbo. Frankly, I don’t even believe that their basic speech patterns would have changed so much in nine years. I think something went terribly awry in the creative process – these characters don’t seem like themselves at all.

Also, another tip as you are working on the revision of the story: the only characters with substantial speaking roles should be the two leads. That’s what everyone is paying money to see: Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, walking around, talking to each other (walking around someplace beautiful and interesting, not sitting in a generic motel room.) The dinner scene in the beginning was way too long, the characters were not set up well at all, nor were they interesting, the content of the discussion was really boring (including the contributions of Celine and Jesse,) and the whole long, drawn-out scene did not serve any function relative to the ideas later in the film. Ditto for the overly long scene in the beginning where Jesse gets “feedback” on his new book ideas from all those oafs – that’s a discussion that Jesse and Celine would have had, and should have had. When you have magic in your grasp, don’t discard it.

Anyway, thanks for your time and consideration, and I’ll be anxiously awaiting Before Midnight Redux, releasing in theaters June 2015.

Yours Truly,

Mr. Irreviews

Love Is All you Need is a typical “wedding movie” – beautiful location, crazy families, emotional drama, pre-wedding jitters, and the cold, handsome guy who needs to loosen up and find love. But this Danish film feels different than its American counterparts on several levels. It is less frenetic, and the inevitable cliches are played more straightly and earnestly, rather than for pure comic effect. And there is more attention to dialog, even if the dialog is not spectacular. It comes across like a nice little family story, in a beautiful setting, and it holds your attention pretty well, even though the pacing slows a bit toward the end. The main character, played warmly by Trine Dyrholm, is a very relaxing and enjoyable companion for 116 minutes. The supporting cast is basically solid, and Pierce Brosnan looks every bit like a guy Trine Dyrholm would fall for.

Nothing special here, but it’s inoffensive, enjoyable, has beautiful scenery which is very well-filmed, and doesn’t leave you feeling pissed off in the end.

Critics are in ecstasy over this film, and New Yorkers are standing in long lines at IFC to see it (and IFC has it playing every hour, all day long.) It is so terrible my wife and I agreed we should have walked out after 10 minutes, and I must say that describing this film’s awfulness is neither easy nor rewarding for me – I would prefer to forget it altogether, as soon as possible.

Francis Ha is co-written by Greta Gerwig, and it feels like a rip off of her last two major roles, Lola Versus and Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress. From Lola Versus comes the base story – an immature and naive woman in her mid-to-late 20’s suffers relationship instability and suddenly finds herself adrift in her life, by virtue of which she learns various life lessons and eventually settles in a place of relative contentment. From Damsels in Distress comes an attempt to mimic Whit Stillman’s humor and quirky approach to dialog and scene structure, along with the daffy-but-purposeful affect of Francis herself, which echoes Gerwig’s character Violet in Damsels.

But Lola Versus was a funny, charming little movie, and Gerwig’s character Lola was a lovely and appealing creation – convincingly flawed, but smart, human and sweetly likable – who traverses a quite pleasing developmental arc over the course of the movie. It might not have been a great movie, but it was well-written and nicely directed, made great use of music, and had solid character development, even among the supporting players. Francis Ha, on the other hand, is sluggishly unfunny, suffers from sloppy and indifferent character development across the board, makes terrible, clumsy use of music, and has a story that somehow manages to be simultaneously incoherent and contrived, the only point of which, apparently, is to create a series of dull and unconvincing vignettes for the completely unlikable and irritating twit Francis to parade around in.

The one addition to the base story from Lola Versus, which might have partially saved the film had it been done competently, is the central relationship of Francis and her best friend Sophie. But this innovation just deepens the disaster, because the writing is so terrible Francis and Sophie do not even remotely seem like best friends. Everything is wrong: their conversations, their body language, their actions toward each other, and their joint evolution. Their relationship is so false, and Sophie so badly conceived as a character, that the movie can’t even successfully hold dramatic tension between the two. Every time Sophie reappears, you’re like “ugh, why is she back?” Every time something happens between them, you’re like “ugh, whatever!”

As for the mimicry of Whit Stillman, it too is a disaster. In his early masterpieces, Stillman’s dialog managed to be crisp, quirky, funny, absurd, realistic, beautiful-sounding, profound and above all unique, all at the same time; in his deeply flawed later films, it still remained at least somewhat quirky and fresh. The dialog in Frances Ha, on the other hand, is none of the above, built almost entirely on tired cliches and over-recycled ideas, jumbled, stumbling and ugly-sounding, and further marred by muddled scene composition and the previously mentioned sloppy character development.

If unknown writers tried to sell this shit to a paying audience they’d fall flat on their faces, but shoot it in black and white and stamp Noah Baumbach on the cover, and you’re guaranteed widespread critical acclaim. It’s kind of infuriating, the attention this stupidly pretentious film is getting, while an amazingly fresh, funny and insightful indie film like Mental – featuring an actress (Toni Collette) who has more talent in her little finger than Greta Gerwig has in her whole body – is arrogantly dismissed by these same critics. Or to give another example, a sweet and earnest little film like last year’s Hello I Must Be Going, which has a story that coincides 80% with Francis Ha, yet completely transcends it on so many levels, is almost entirely ignored by critics, and was gone from theaters before you could blink.

This film was so traumatic, I think I may have developed an allergy to Greta Gerwig, an actress I formerly found really charming. It also completely confirmed my impression of Noah Baumbach as a dangerously overrated filmmaker, critical praise of whom should be consumed with great caution and trepidation.

This piece of crap will probably win the Oscar for best original screenplay, but count Irreviews as a dissenting voice concerning the artistic brilliance of this film.

Well, my wife and I sucked it up and went to The Great Gatsby, against our better judgement and despite that film’s horrifying preview. We had to see what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, I did not come away with much of an answer, besides the clue that a large number of women in the audience were happily giggling at every little thing Leonardo DiCaprio did on-screen (I though he was getting a little old for this, but obviously not.) The entire film is so fake looking it is practically a video game. The screenplay is just as dumb as the novel – a clumsy, ponderous, boring love story with sledgehammer symbolism and uniformly unlikable characters. The film’s rap soundtrack is painful and irritating, and the whole melding of different eras really didn’t work very well, unlike Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) where it worked quite effectively. My wife felt that Luhrmann’s technique of pumping-up the telling of the story well past the point of “over-the-top” distracted somewhat from the vapid insipidness of the story itself; I think that’s true, but for me it just as frequently felt like rubbing salt in an already painful wound.

As for the cast, Carey Mulligan’s career is clearly over. It’s a good thing we got to enjoy her in An Education and Bleak House, because the way she’s headed right now – Gatsby, Shame, Money Never Sleeps – augurs very badly. Tobey Maguire is a similar actor, actually, in that he created some excitement early in his career – The Ice Storm, Ride With The Devil – and then slipped into oblivion with Spider Man and various other bilge, while Jake Gyllenhaal stepped into the vacant shell of Maguire’s early career trajectory. Joel Edgerton is emerging as an unambiguously bad sign in movies. All three of these actors are pretty painful to watch in The Great Gatsby (surprisingly, Edgerton comes across the best,) but with material this hopeless it’s not fair to lay too much blame on them personally. As for Leo himself, he has proven in the past he can rescue pretty bad material with his energy and intensity, but this film is so awful it absolutely flattened him. And I have to add: he definitely did not figure out how to say “old sport” convincingly, which is a huge problem given the number of times that unfortunate phrase is uttered in the movie.

But there is another Gastby-like story in theaters right now, one that is actually interesting, well-written, and beautifully acted and directed: Mud. Matthew McConaughey plays the Gatsby role, a fellow named Mud, who grew up a poor nothing, and who has spent years stalking a silly mixed-up girl with a botanical name (Daisy here becomes Juniper,) who he is convinced will one day run away with him. The observer / facilitator role is a young boy named Ellis, who with his friend “Neckbone” find Mud living near them, on a deserted island in the Arkansas wilderness, scrounging like an animal and hatching his obsessive love-schemes, and Ellis quickly comes to idolize Mud as a paragon of constancy, hopefulness, and resourcefulness. There’s even a revenge plot against Mud for a wrongful death which was at least indirectly “caused” by Juniper. Plus the whole thing occurs in a setting filled with docks, boats, water, and symbolism that is a good deal more sophisticated and subtle than the crap in Gatsby.

But that’s where the similarity ends. Unlike Gatsby, Mud is a really good story. It reminds me of brooding, atmospheric 90’s indie films set in the American South, like Ulee’s Gold or Coastlines. It’s a gripping little film that covers a pretty wide range of human emotion with skill and ease. Mud himself is a really cool character, and McConaughey – who is emerging as quite an interesting actor late in his career – is wonderfully entertaining and believable in the role. Both of the boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) are flat-out fabulous. The supporting players – the mother and father, and Neckbone’s Uncle (played by Michael Shannon, another really interesting actor) are all strong, and Resse Witherspoon is good as always, in a tiny, almost symbolic role.

I’d like to further remark that as a portrait of a dying way of life, I found Mud light years better than Beasts of the Southern Wild – both involve people clinging to a moribund, hardscrabble, water-bound lifestyle, but Mud treats it as a delicate subtext, whereas Beasts smashes you over the head with it. I thought Mud was more visually interesting than Beasts as well.

I very highly recommend Mud.

Gatsby, on the other hand, can safely be skipped – I wouldn’t even bother Netflixing it when it finally comes out. It’s really a turd.

Pain and Gain is a true story about three nut-jobs who abducted a rich scumbag, legally robbed him of every asset he had, left him alive but homeless and penniless, and somehow got away with it for a good long while. My main takeaway from this film is never live in Florida, based wholly on the completely inept police response to this outrageous caper.

Pain and Gain approaches this whole story as an over-the-top comic farce, which might not have been ideal but was certainly understandable. What’s weirder, however, is that no attention is payed to exploring, or even explaining, the psychological or emotional state of the perpetrators. Instead, the film is happy to imply that the massive immorality portrayed in the story is a by-product of bodybuilding itself!!! Scenes of pumping iron and muscle obsession are carefully and constantly mixed in throughout the story, in a way that leads to a clear association of demented criminality with fitness mania. This seems spectacularly unfair to me. Two of these guys were obviously deeply disturbed individuals, time-bombs who were destined to explode on society no matter what their hobbies were. The other guy was just kind of slow and impressionable and got swept up by the other two. The fact that they all lifted weights was basically a joke, the strange context of their criminality, not the cause of it! I mean, it’s definitely funny at times, all these muscleman jokes and references, but after a while I found myself thinking “what does this filmmaker have against bodybuilding?”

One thing I did like about the film was the role of positive thinking in bringing about all this mayhem. Walberg attends a self-help seminar where he learns the universe will provide riches if he could just become a “do-er,” which to him means kidnapping, grand theft, torture and murder. However, even his warped interpretation of this crap advice is blamed squarely on bodybuilding, which is disappointing, given that positive thinking was way more culpable in this case.

I don’t know what to say about this film. It definitely holds your attention, the story is so utterly bizarre. It’s also quite funny at times, and exciting. The Rock gives a surprisingly nice performance as a slow-witted, Christian bodybuilder somewhat uneasy with cold-blooded murder. I think I would probably recommend Pain and Gain. Just don’t take its message about bodybuilding too seriously or too literally. Even if these guys had met in chess club, no good was going to come of it.

Stories We Tell opened in NYC this week (it opens in select theaters across the country next week.) My wife and I both enjoyed it, but I have to say I was not as deeply impressed as were the New York Critics, who are falling over themselves to praise this film (probably because it seems to them the kind of film that “smart” people should like.) A.O. Scott went so far as to claim the term “documentary” was completely inadequate to capture the marvelous grandeur of this film. Nonsense! It’s a nice little documentary in which Sarah Polley explores the mystery of her own birth father, told from the perspectives of everyone who was touched by the mystery – her siblings, the father she grew up with, and those that knew her mother.

Stories We Tell is fun to watch – there’s something about it that echos the charm of most average families and their patterns of interaction. It’s a well-made documentary, sometimes funny, occasionally moving, and above all very human and unpretentious. However, I did not find its exploration of story-telling, or how stories form in the mind to be at all fascinating or deep or compelling. Indeed, I’m not sure the film really had anything much to say on this topic. I felt that almost everyone interviewed was more or less on the same page, factually and emotionally, with regard to her mother and everything that transpired, and that the main appeal of the film was its lovely technique and the simple, charming, down-to-earth quality of its story. When compared to a very similar but vastly superior documentary like My Architect, particularly noting that film’s exquisite sense of mystery, macabre, moral ambiguity and unresolved emotional threads, Stories We Tell suddenly seems rather pedestrian, and even a tad dull. 

Plus, Stories We Tell has a strange aftertaste, because the film comes across as a kind of “gift” to her non-birth father who she grew up with, and a bit of a “diss” toward her discovered birth father, who was the one person in the story who actually had certain views that diverged (marginally) from the consensus. The problem is, none of this is explained, and because you like her birth father Harry (he and the mother form the compelling emotional center of the story) it feels a bit strange and even wrong that he gets frozen out in the end.

I have a lot of respect for Sarah Polley, both as an actress and as a filmmaker. Stories We Tell is an interesting artistic exercise, one that I would never need to see again, but one I’m glad to have seen once. I would recommend it – just don’t expect more than a nice little, family story.