Star Trek (2009)

I don't care what any Trek fan says, this has all the heart and spirit of Roddenberry's original vision. Just because it's spiced up with a bit of action doesn't mean it's entirely devoid of intelligence.

Even if all the pieces don't fit cannon - or, in some cases, pass scientific muster - the end result is a roller-coaster of an adventure with great actors who don't mimic their characters but embody them in such a way that it does tribute to the actors who first portrayed them.

I recently had a discussion where I realized that plot holes don't really bother me that much. For those uninitiated, a plot hole is defined as when a logical inconsistency appears in the fabric of the established rules for your fictional world.

For a world such as Star Trek there will be certain expectations for how the tech will look and work, and there will be sticklers for the cannon and history of the world.

I notice these things, but I don't let an inconsistency in an established cannon affect my experience of a movie.

As with plot-holes, so do I often forgive cannonical flubs or inconsistencies. Even if the science isn't particularly sound, if the story and overall plot make some semblance of sense, what a scene adds to the overall story is more important than whether some sort of flaw is present in explaining all the events.

This is a very long-winded way of saying I don't care what flaws there are in this story because it's a fun, exciting romp that does justice to the source material.

That was all I could have asked for from a Star Trek movie.

This movie somehow goes beyond my expectations of what it could have been. It's not just nostalgia. By making this an alternate reality that is also directly tied to and affected by the "Prime" universe, J.J. Abrams and co. have found an elegant solution to keeping the original timeline intact. For fans who don't like this story, the original cannon has not been erased, this isn't a reboot that says it didn't happen.

There is a very comfortable feel to this film. I haven't seen it nearly as many times as, say, Ferris Bueller or Stand by Me or other movies from my childhood. Yet it feels like I've been watching it all my life. Each time I revisit it, even though I know what's coming it still finds way to surprise me and the thrills don't just fade, they increase.

Maybe my response is more emotional than logical, but I like it, and that's my humble opinion.

Archives: Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2

Any time that studios interfere with an artistic vision, there is a sting, as good art, like the Bushido Samurai sword, is an expression of the artist's soul.

From Blade Runner to Donnie Darko and Kill Bill, or even casting back to the Hayes code of the 30s-60s, great filmmaking has constantly been spurred by constraints and studio interference.

The truly great filmmakers, then, are ones who can work within these constraints and make a better piece of work come out of the interference and meddling of studio execs who can't think beyond the bottom line.

Although split into 2 volumes I can't help but consider both parts as one. I'm aware of the "Whole Bloody Affair" cut which takes the entire thing and presents it as one story. I definitely would love to see that, however I have heard tell that that particular version orders events more chronologically. I don't know if it would have the same impact as the way it's put together in Vol 1-2.

This, then, is why, while I have not seen "The Whole Bloody Affair," (a re-edit of Vol 1 and 2 into a single piece of work) that if I ever do see this version of legend, my preference will most likely be for the two separate volumes as originally presented theatrically.

Part of why the two volume approach works for me is that I love the non-linear aspect and another part is that each of the two volumes is structured in such a way that they nearly perfectly mirror each other.

As to the structure ove Vol 1 and Vol 2, the sequence in which The Bride is recuperating from her coma, and the scene where she is buried in Vol 2 each act as a pause in the story which gives us a moment to see some exposition/back story for characters (in Vol 1 it's Oren Ishii, an external story while in Vol 2 it's The Bride's tutelage under Pai Mei, an internal story).

In fact, for every story beat in Vol 1 that's influenced by external factors, in Vol 2 the same story beats are hit through internal characterization of Beatrix Kiddo and her relationship with Bill.

The final sequence in Vol 1 where The Bride defeats the entire Crazy 88 squad and exacts her revenge upon Oren is contrasted by the final confrontation with Bill being a muted family drama in which The Bride learns her daughter is alive and instead of having a knock-down drag-out fight with Bill, she downs him after crossing swords just a few times, employing the Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique. One almost feels sorry for Bill when he laments that Pai Mei taught her a technique he did not see fit to impart on any of his other students, even Bill himself.

Tarantino stated in interviews at the time that Vol 1 is the question and Vol 2 is the answer, and what more elegant image could be employed by the ending of Bill than to have him simply take five steps and fall to the ground, dead?

He also states that Vol 1 is much more inspired by action and Kung Fu movies while the second is more of a Leone Spaghetti Western.

Vol 2 is certainly more slowly-paced, more dialogue-driven and more like "classic" Tarantino, and if I were really hard-pressed to choose a favorite, Vol 2 would be it.

Some of the best tales are simple tales. Although Kill Bill is 4 hours long, it's premise of being a bloody rampage of revenge is elegantly simple. All of the references stuffed into this movie are testament to Tarantino's encyclopedic knowledge of film. However, unlike certain other cultural blenders like Ready, Player One, Kill Bill does not reference for the sake of nostalgia or just because it's cool. Okay, maybe there are a few "super-cool" moments, but none of them draw attention to themselves or pull you out of the moment.

Going back to my cultural blender analogy, the two Volumes are so smoothly blended (much more so than Budd's Margarita) that the references are organic and feel natural to the flow of the film.

Along with Austin Powers which came out around the same time (and also a little like Star Wars re: the influence it had on blockbusters), Kill Bill presaged the coming wave of franchises and nostalgia. Films of late (while some have been exemplary) have been built around remakes, cultural references, and generally giving the audience something familiar in order to sell more tickets. It's a bit of an anomaly in that regard, as it was a brand new IP but built out of familiar tropes and ideas. As Vulcans are so fond of saying, "Only Nixon could go to China." Only someone like Tarantino could rise above the nostalgia-strewn cultural wasteland and present a piece that is immediately new and fresh while at the same time seeming so familiar, warm, and comforting.

Sin City: When Film Noir meets High-Octane Action

Fun fact for the Quentin Tarantino aficionado: Deadly Little Miho's swords were made by Hatori Hanso.

On the subject of interconnectedness, Quentin Tarantino has stated in interviews that his films are all part of a shared universe. Some of the movies are part of the "real" world, and some are movies people in that "real" world might go to see.

For instance, in Pulp Fiction Mia Wallace had starred in a TV pilot called Fox Force Five. This could be part of the "real" world level, which could mean that Kill Bill (with its Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) could be a retooling of the Fox Force Five concept into a movie. In fact that could very well be Mia Wallace playing The Bride, getting swords from Hatori Hanso who also made swords for Miho in a shared cinematic universe within Tarantino's own cinematic universe. The layers are mind boggling.

Sin City is a 2005 neo-noir semi-anthological film based on the comic book series by Frank Miller. I'm no fan of Miller's personal politics. He has been known to espouse support for conservative and fascistic politicians, and a few years ago he did try to soften that image after going on a twitter rant against Occupy Wall Street, among other liberal element. Politics notwithstanding, the man can weave an entrancing and intriguing tale.

To be sure when you look back on stories like Sin City or The Dark Knight Returns through the lens of the current cultural temperature, it would certainly seem that creators like Frank Miller seem to advocate for things like fascism at worst, at the very least a return to white hetero testosterone toxic maleness.

And while politics certainly do have a bearing on the art, I am much more interested in discussing the art than Miller' s political views.

The art of Frank Miller is, to be sure, stunning, visceral, densely layered, inspired by classic film noir tropes and, most of all, entertaining.

The characters of Sin City are like flies trapped in amber. They have modern conveniences like cell phones, yet they drive old cars and act like the world they live in is Los Angeles, circa 1946: Real men stand up for their values, politicians and clergy own the police, and mafia rules still apply vis-a-vis how the sections of town are carved up. The hookers even get their own part of town and the rights to defend it as they see fit. So long as they don't fuck with cops, the cops don't fuck with them.

So it is that the three stories and some change, presented in a Pulp-Fiction-esque, non- linear manner, concern good cops, ruffians, and outlaws trying to take on a power structure much bigger than they are, and each character meeting his own nihilistic end.

The three characters - Dwight, Marv, and Det. Hartigan (played marvelously by Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, and Bruce Willis, respectively) - are all in some part expressions of Miller's idealized fantasy, inspired no doubt in equal measure by the comic books he read in his youth as by the noir films he so lovingly references in his hand-drawn tales.

The comic books are literally so good all co-director Roberto Rodriguez needed to do was use them as both script and storyboard. It's one of the most literal translations of comic book to screen I have ever seen. Sure, it could be called lazy to work that way. Rodriguez certainly could have rewritten parts and set up his own angles. But there is a certain thrill as a comic book reader to see all those lovely panels brought to roaring life.

There isn't any subtext or metaphor to Sin City. Certainly there is some level of social commentary to the piece and while that treads the same territory as most noir (the rich get away with everything and keep regular joes under their heel by intentionally keeping society in a state of being perpetually impoverished), it was quite refreshing in 2005 to see a movie like this take the noir tropes and amp them up to action movie levels.

Yes, everything was filmed in front of a green screen but that was also part of the charm, was that the backgrounds were specifically tailored to look like comic book panels. So even though the storytelling tropes were old and perhaps even tired, the visual flair was absolutely fresh and intriguing.

Archive Post: Moonrise Kingdom

The main theme of this film seems to be that through adversity and hardship come growth and positive change. Spoilers ahead.

This is only the first time I've seen it but it comes close to Rushmore as being one of my favorite Wes Anderson works. It is stunningly and disarmingly beautiful in its exploration of the awkwardness and bloom of youth.

I have the say the simple beauty of the closing moments of the film really caught me off-guard and I wept openly for quite some time as a result.

I fell in love with all the characters in this, and it seems to be one of the more personal or emotional films Anderson has put together.

The look and feel of the movie is incredible. I wonder if they used film and lenses similar to those available in the 60s, because the color palette, the grain structure, and general tone of the colors and compositions felt very close to that of movies I've seen produced in the 60s.

Other themes like that of making a family with what you have instead of specific/blood relations, as well as society's mistreatment and misunderstanding of people who are more intelligent than most really stand out here. They are common themes among Anderson's body of work but aside from Rushmore this film integrates those themes into the fabric of the story much more organically than some of his other features which, make no mistake, are fine examples of filmmaking.

Sam and Suzy are misfits, pariahs within their various social circles. It's not through any fault of their own, however. Sam is an orphan and his foster family finds him hard to manage. He is a good kid, but sometimes acts out in ways that 60s society finds hard to handle. In a lot of ways the character reminds me a bit of myself in my youth. I was a scout but didn't get along well with my troop, I was bullied in grade school, and like Sam often had the feeling that the kids around me would be glad if I just ran away or disappeared. Fortunately I had loving parents who helped me navigate those troubled times. When Sam makes a connection with Bruce Willis' character, a chief of police for the small island community, I couldn't help but root for them. Captain Sharp needs someone to take care of in order to give his life direction and meaning, and Sam needs a guiding hand.

Similarly, Suzy is a troubled youth and while her parents do appear to have nothing but her best interests at heart, they are starting to drift apart and their marital troubles spill over into having issues managing and raising their family.

So in the end, when Mr. and Mrs. Bishop resolve to find a way to stay together despite Mrs. Bishop's infidelities, one gets a sense of the family truly coming back together and healing. The final image, that of a painting Sam has made of the inlet where he and Suzy stayed, standing in Suzy's home where the family is healing is a poignant encapsulation of the things we yearn and long for versus what we really have, and how we must reconcile the two.

Anderson films have always been about the dichotomy between what the characters fantasize about, and what they really have, which is probably why his movies are so touching and humanistic. Most of us have within us this sort of cognitive dissonance. Moonrise Kingdom is one of the most fully formed and crystalized expressions of this duality inherent to just about everyone.

A Clockwork Orange: The Triumph of the Spirit

The tragedy of Alex DeLarge is the tragedy of society at large. A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick's follow-up to 2001: A Space Odyssey, presents a much more bleak futurescape than the optimistic space epic from just a few years before.

As it turns out, calling 2001 a more optimistic view of the future may be a misnomer. That jump-cut from the Dawn of Man to the docking sequence in the space station begins with an edit from the bone thrown into the air to a satellite, explained in the text of the script to be a nuclear platform. Indeed in 2001 several scenes depict tensions between America and Russia, and while it is downplayed, it's still palpable. The script goes into much greater detail about this and I think part of the reason the narration which describes these tensions was excised was that the preference was to focus on the optimism for the advancement of humanity.

It is also important to keep in mind that the previous film to 2001 was, of course, Dr. Strangelove. To be sure Kubrick did not want to overlap subject matter, preferring to make each picture its own distinct statement.

And realizing this approach on the part of the director helps to understand why we have two movies back-to-back which cast an eye to the future, but which have vastly different outlooks.

Granted, aside from The Dawn of Man segment, not a single scene in 2001 occurs on Earth. Every segment takes place on the space station, the moon, or the Jupiter I mission. So we don't get a feel for what conditions are like planetside.

Meanwhile the view of British society in A Clockwork Orange (which takes place in 1997, incidentally) is that of urban sprawl and decay; everyone complains about the lack of law and order, and when the government does undertake to address issues like overcrowding in prisons their approach is to make easy fixes - employing a Pavlovian technique to make the worst offenders averse to violence, but also enlisting ruffians and hoodlums who are caught for lesser, more petty crimes, such as Alex's old droogs (friends, in his made-up parlance), as police officers.

Even those who purport to help Alex once he has been spit out of the meat grinder of the prison system, victimize the boy and use him to make political gains just as he victimized them.

The second half of the film is concerned with the ghosts of Alex's past coming back to haunt him; the old man he beat to within an inch of his life in the first scene, followed by the revelation of Dim as a police officer, and then finally delivered into the hands of the writer whose wife he and his crew had raped, and is now himself wheelchair-bound.

In many ways the punishment that Alex receives is disproportionate to his own transgressions. To be sure the writer whom he assaulted would certainly be expected to have an adverse reaction to realizing just exactly who Alex was, but to kidnap him, subject him to Beethoven's Ninth (which as a side effect of the conditioning is just as painful to him as thoughts of sex and violence) and cause him to nearly commit suicide seems an overly cruel retribution, even if his wife did kill herself due to the brutality of Alex's rape and assault.

And then we learn that the writer is himself taken by Britain as a political prisoner, which highlights the cycle of violence and the dangers of having the state be involved in "curing" aberrant behavior. The book does end with Alex coming to a personal decision to become a moral, upstanding citizen. But the reason to end the film where it did was twofold: firstly Kubrick had only read the American version of the novel, which drops the final chapter and ends instead with the conditioning technique wearing off and Alex resuming his anti-social ways. The second reason is that this ending hammers home the point of the main theme which is that the choice to be good and moral is just that - a choice. It cannot be forced upon a person by conditioning.

I do not believe A Clockwork Orange would have had the cultural impact it did had the original ending of the book been employed. Writer Anthony Burgess was understandably disappointed by the film, stating that it lacked the lessons of his novel. But I think his judgement was clouded and he was unable to see the merit of the Kubrick ending which makes an excellent point about the human soul.

Both artistic visions have merit - Burgess' ending speaks to the ability of humanity to rise above one's circumstances, while Kubrick' s ending speaks to the inability of outside forces to control the human spirit, that its inherent traits, whether for good or ill, will always re-emerge no matter what the outside factors.

Both are squarely aimed, ultimately, at showing that choice must be a factor in a person's development. Removing choice - whether it's the choice to do evil or otherwise - also removes the individual's ability to defend one's self, as well as to grow, develop, and change. Alex, once dropped back into society, is in a state of stasis due to the Ludovico Technique. While he cannot perform acts of sex and violence he also cannot choose not to and so cannot truly grow. That, then, is the ultimate tragedy of Alex DeLarge.

Breakfast at Tiffany's: The Importance of Viewing History in Context

There are two sides to a movie like this, which I think makes its history and cultural impact all the richer for it. On the one hand, from an artistic or critical perspective, and putting the film into a purely historical context, it is a wonderful cross-section of Americana in the early 60s, a texturally rich character study painted in equal measures of comedy and drama. On the other hand there are some quite regrettable and problematic portrayals, such as Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi.

It is important, as always,to contextualize any piece of work because art and cultural representation do not exist in a vacuum. That being said, I recall a critic, looking back on an older work and making a distinction that, while yes there were stereotypes that were acceptable and in fact even expected at some points in time, it is still a mark of a strong artist that does not give in to these stereotypes. A writer or director working at a time when a particular stereotype is acceptable, then, can be forgiven by history for using these stereotypes, but can make a stronger statement by rejecting such prejudices, by being forward thinking and rising above those expectations.

So the trouble with Breakfast at Tiffany's for me is that, while I do love this movie dearly I cannot profess my whole-hearted love for the work due to its problematic representation. Fortunately, it did serve as a teachable moment and was in some ways a catalyst to help Hollywood move away from negative, yellow-face portrayals and indeed before the end of the decade shows like Star Trek would start to have more positive portrayals of Asian characters.

All that being said, this film still rests among my top 25-50. It's a wonderful script, deftly directed by Blake Edwards. It contains many tropes inherent to romantic comedy that track from It Happened One Night to more current hits like (500) Days of Summer.

I am sure there were other characters previous to Holly Golightly that also contribute to the manic pixie girl model, but I would have to say Ms. Hepburn's portrayal is the most popular, recognizable, and iconic, thus the most influential.

For 1961 there are quite a few things about this movie that push boundaries. One scene involves a burlesque striptease - albeit a milquetoast one - and the taboo subject of both the male and female leads being an escort or otherwise..."kept"...in some way make it quite unique in that regard.

The real beauty of Breakfast at Tiffany's lies in the simplicity of its tale. It's not particularly innovative or ground-breaking. But iconic movies need not always be forward-thinking.

It's not always about setting a new standard or finding a new trope, but in finding new ways to employ established tropes.

No one would have expected an established starlet, cresting the height of her popularity, to play a call girl.

Of course, they also could not come right out and say she was a call girl, so they had to couch her profession in coded phrases like, "Fifty dollars for the powder room."

Breakfast at Tiffany's, although flawed and problematic, remains a picture of a particular moment in time. America, and indeed the world, was on the verge of a tumultuous and transformative decade and era. In many ways it's a last gasp of the post-WWII time of prosperity. I often wish I could have been around in the sixties, and part of the reason I desire that was to experience movies like this and other classic favorites in a theatre for the first time. As art shapes culture and history, history and culture also shape art. This film is stuck somewhere between the classic Hollywood model, and the New Hollywood. I wouldn't have it any other way, because it doesn't fit either of those models or paradigms. It's completely its own thing and could not have been made any other way or at any other time. In this way it is a nearly perfect movie because it was made at the perfect time for it to be its own thing.

The lessons that can be drawn from Breakfast at Tiffany's are plentiful. Just as Paul and Holly learn to accept their flaws and become better people for it, similar lessons can be applied at the macro level, as Hollywood eventually learned (and, regrettably is still in some cases continuing to learn) not to rely on stereotypes and tropes for comic or dramatic effect. I hope everyone who sees this comes away a better person, or at least a bit more aware.

Best Picture Series: Wings (1927)

Wings

1927

Release date: 5/19/27

141 Minutes

Director: William A. Wellman

Story: John Monk Saunders

Screenplay: Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton

Titles: Julian Johnson

Producer: B. P. Schulberg

Cinematogapher: Harry Perry

Black and White

1.33:1 Aspect Ratio

Nomination Year: 1927/1928 1st Academy Awards Ceremony

Won: Best Picture

Writer's note: In this series I will watch a Best Picture-winning film and go a little deeper than my usual reviews. I hope you enjoy my thoughts and perspective.

During an early scene where two characters sit on a swing, the camera fixed upon them as it swings backward and forward, I said to my partner, "I can see why this won Best Picture." Indeed the success of the marvelous 1927 silent feature, Wings, lies in the way it presents its story visually. Whether it's an intimate moment shared between two characters with the camera pushing forward, impossibly gliding over café tables, or a dog fight where we actually see the actor in the cockpit, it is the spectacle of Wings that won critics over.

The plot revolves around two pilots who enlist during World War I. Jack and David are rivals for the hand of Sylvia. Mary, who has been helping to build a car, is in love with Jack and joins the auxiliary motor pool in order to be near him. The central story that holds this together seems cliché now, with milquetoast applications of a similar formula in movies like 1966's Grand Prix, but given the time it was made these were fairly new tropes (theatrical history notwithstanding).

Where the stakes are heightened for the viewer is that they are placed in the plane with the actor. Even if one is not won over by the story or characters, one does get caught up in the dynamic camera movement and unique angles employed by cinematographer Perry. Planes were developed with two cockpits in order to achieve this technical feat. And actors Charles Rogers and Richard Arlen are to be commended for pulling the original Tom Cruise Maneuver: They actually learned to fly and logged over 98 hours of flight time.

This was something that Wellman greatly appreciated, as he could see the actors were not pilots and did not love filming the flying bits nearly as much as the stunt pilots did. Even so, they went up and flew their scenes each day, which brought the respect of the director, himself a pilot and veteran.

In this film we see magnificent recreations of the WWI frontlines and trenches, some incredible dog fight simulations, and a staging of the final, big push where American, British, and French forces broke through the German lines.

While the dramatic through line does give some weight to the characters' arcs and journeys, it is the wonder of this spectacle that makes Wings what it is. Its legacy of revolutionizing camera placement and usage in action sequences tracks through to the afore-mentioned Grand Prix, as well as the flurry of gritty cop dramas during the late 60s and 70s which featured kinetic and ground-breaking car chase sequences like Bullitt, The French Connection, and The Seven-Ups.

The best measure of filmmaking, to my mind, is whether a film tells the story visually. One can squabble over depth of characterization, and yes it is important for an audience to have strong characters to connect with. Storytelling at its heart is about putting together the elements of plot, story, and character and entertaining audiences by showing what happens to these characters. Film is a visual medium and while some filmmakers like George Lucas insist that sound is one of the most important elements of movies, I feel that the image is of primary importance. For a film like Wings, this is an elemental truth.

It is an important entry in the annals of film, an unwitting culmination of the silent era, an era that would soon go by the wayside as The Jazz Singer would be released the following year, and a new paradigm would swiftly emerge in Hollywood. As the first Best Picture winner, Wings may not necessarily be the best silent film ever made, but it certainly represented a number of pinnacles for the format. It also stands out among the field as one of two silent films ever to win, the other being 2011's The Artist. The 2012 restoration of this film, with tinting, filters and cells individually painted with fire effects during the dog fights, has stood well the test of time. It's as thrilling to watch today as it must have been upon first seeing it in a theatre in 1927, and is vastly more impressive an achievement than may of the CGI-laden fare of contemporary offerings. This is not to denigrate CGI as a creative tool, but when a movie can achieve the real thing - real planes flying, real crowds, thousands of extras, etc. - it has an undefinable, intangible quality of depth and realism.

This, then, is the lesson Wings can teach us which is to fly by the skin of your teeth and go with your guts. William Wellman had guts. He told his producer he was going to make the film a success by showing the audience things they had never seen before, then he went out and did it. And he ended up creating an enduring classic, as well as film history.