The Movie Vampire

            If someone ever writes a book called “Things That Aren’t Respectable” they’d probably have to devote an entire chapter to professional wrestling.  I’ve had nothing but contempt for this “sport” and I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a wrestling match in its entirety because of it.  But like all entertainment mediums, the world of wrestling is filled with genuine human interest stories about wash-ups, has-beens, and those who never made it.  Those who dream of being in the WWE may have some strange priorities but are their failures any less tragic then the failures of those who aspire to be boxers, actors, or rock stars?  The new Darren Aronofsky film, The Wrestler, is about one of these sob stories; it’s a film that does what I thought was impossible, it made me care about a pro-wrestler.

            The film is a character study about Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke), who was a major star of pro wrestling during the 80s but who has fallen a long long way since.  Now Robinson, in his 50s, is living in a trailer park but still wrestling in low rent matches in seedy New Jersey venues.  His one escape outside of the wrestling ring is the time he spends at a local strip club where he’s befriended a lap dancer named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei).  After a really hard match, Robinson collapses in the locker room.  Doctors tell him he’s had a heart attack and that another match could easily kill him.  This puts Robinson at an impasse in life, he doesn’t have any real job skills and he yearns for the rush of the fight.  Cassidy suggests he contact his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), but he doesn’t know if she’s going to be interested in talking to him.  Meanwhile, Robinson’s fight promoter is trying to arrange a rematch between Robinson and his old “rival” the Ayatollah, a fight Robinson is tempted to agree to, but which could jeopardize his very life.

            The Wrestler is a film that comes at an important point in the career of its director, Darren Aronofsky.  Aronofsky came to prominence with the visually aggressive independent films Pi and Requiem For a Dream; but his last film, The Fountain, was seen by many as a misfire.  That film was an incredibly ambitious sci-fi epic, but its small scale new age aesthetic ultimately felt cold and pretentious.  With The Wrestler Aronofsky has made the perfect film to recover from an ambitious failure like that: a small scale, down to earth independent film with a minimum of the camera tricks that were beginning to define his style.  This is a film about people, not themes or technical devices, and it’s a lot warmer than anything he’s made before.  And yet, the film still explores the themes that Aronofsky has explored throughout his body of work: Addiction, obsession, and the pursuit of unattainable dreams. 

            Aronofsky shoots the wrestling matches here a lot better than the WWE does. Like all the best boxing films the camera here goes into the ring, which allows for something a lot more intense than a filmed live event.  Some of this footage is surprisingly graphic, particularly on “hardcore” match in which the wrestlers fight using weapons like broken glass, barbed wire, and most disgustingly a staple gun.  The fact that fights like this are going on is very disturbing to me, but it’s all fake right?  Well it is and it isn’t.  The fights are certainly fixed; the wrestlers decide who will win ahead of time.  They are also probably doing everything they can to soften they’re blows, but there are dangers, especially in these small venues that clearly don’t have the same safety standards as the WWE.  For instance, during the film’s first fight Randy cuts himself on the forehead with a razor in order to achieve a blood effect after a blow from his opponent.  Then there’s the aforementioned “hardcore” fight; all those painful implements are used to hurt the fighters, for real, in a scene that far more vicious and disturbing than anything I’ve seen in a slasher film.

            The violence in that “hardcore” scene is not gratuitous; in fact it plays directly into the character’s health problems, his motivation, and a Jesus analogy that runs through the film.  Shortly before that fight the Marisa Tomei character recommends Mel Gibson’s high budget snuff film The Passion of the Christ, pointing out something along the lines of “they throw everything they have at him but he never gave up.”  Of course that bloody violence in that “hardcore” fight is not unlike the floggings which are in Mel Gibson’s film, but to what end?  The point of the biblical passion story is that Jesus suffered for a greater purpose; to save souls or something (my lack of religious inclination is probably showing).  Randy “The Ram” Robinson certainly isn’t trying to save anyone’s soul; he’s suffering to entertain whatever sadistic audience apparently wants to see this. 

At least that’s what he thinks he’s doing, but his real motivation is something darker, something he never admits to himself: he’s addicted, not to narcotics (though he does have a drug problem), but to fame.  His addiction to fame is every bit as self destructive as the addictions Aronofsky depicted in Requiem for a Dream.  This addiction has left Randy every bit as obsessed as the protagonist of Aronofsky’s debut film Pi, but he’s not obsessed with math, he’s obsessed with recapturing his glory days.  This obsession has ruined his family life, led him to abuse the more conventional drug of steroids, and most importantly kept him wrestling long past his prime even after there are major health reproductions for doing so.

The film’s soundtrack will probably be remembered for the self titled Bruce Springsteen folk song that’s already getting Oscar buzz, and that’s a pretty decent thing to be remembered for, but it isn’t what most of the soundtrack is like.  The majority of the film’s music comes from bands like Quiet Riot, Ratt, and Mötley Crüe; that’s right 80s hair metal.  This is not cool music but it’s been chosen wisely for this film because it’s exactly the kind of thing Randy would listen to.  First of all this music is gaudy, commercial, unsophisticated and very masculine; all things that are also emblematic of pro-wrestling.  Secondly, the fact that Randy listens to it fits in perfectly with the character’s obsession with recapturing the 80s.  This is a man who didn’t grow out of this music with everyone else, in fact he gives an entire speech about how “that pussy Cobain” ruined it.  His beef isn’t really with Kurt Cobain, it’s with a culture that moved on and left him behind.

Of course Randy isn’t the only one expounding on the virtues of Ratt in that scene, he finds an unlikely musical ally in Marrisa Tomei’s character.  Tomei is about twelve years younger than Rourke, more importantly she’s a very attractive stripper while he’s an “old broken down piece of meat.”  At first it would seem to strain credibility that she would want to pursue a relationship with him, but it quickly becomes apparent that the two characters are really quite similar.  Cassidy is not a stripper simply because Aronofsky wants to shoot topless scenes. She’s a stripper because that is in many ways the female equivalent of Randy’s profession.  Both are performers in seedy and disreputable stage venues, both put their bodies on display as part of that pursuit, and both are getting a bit too old of their chosen vocation.  The difference is that Tomei’s character is not addicted to her job; unlike Randy she hasn’t tied her identity to her onstage character, which is why she ultimately doesn’t understand how strong the urges driving Randy are.

I’m not overly familiar with the work Mickey Rourke did before he left Hollywood to pursue a boxing career in the early 90s.  I’d seen him in the Robert Rodriguez’ film Sin City where he played likable lug of a character, but there wasn’t much there to prepare me for his work here.  Much has already been written about Mickey Rourke’s amazing performance, and I’m going to try not to dwell on it too much simply because the film deserves better than to be overshadowed by its star.  Suffice it to say that Rourke really does live up to most of the hype that surrounds his work.  This isn’t a theatrical performance like Daniel Day-Lewis’ work in last year’s There Will Be Blood; rather it is a performance that builds a character through careful strokes and subtle decisions.  Interestingly, Rourke has much the same challenge that Anne Hathaway has in this year’s Rachel Getting Married.  Both actors have character who are not particularly lovable and warm people, both do things that make want to dislike them, and yet you sort of have to be with them in their suffering. 

The rest of the cast is solid, but occasionally seems to be rushing to catch up with Rourke.  Tomei is not in quite the same position to show off her acting chops as some of her co-stars, she doesn’t have a big scene and her character doesn’t have as many broad characteristics as Rourkes. Still, through her work she maintains a certain dignity throughout the film that transcends what could have easily been a conventional “hooker with a heart of gold” side character.   Evan Rachel Wood has a smaller role than Tomei’s but it requires a lot more out of her.  She has a scene where she really needs to react to her father in a very direct, very angry way which is broader than anything her co-stars are asked to do.  This could be seen as easier or more challenging depending on your perspective.  Either way she handles the scene as well as can be expected and more or less acquits herself.

Darren Aronofsky’s visual style here is very different form his earlier films, which were a lot more technical.  There are no fast cuts or obvious visual motifs in The Wrestler, its visual style is a lot more conventional and at first glance it doesn’t look like a Darren Aronofsky film at all. This is for the best; firstly because Aronofsky’s old style had probably been taken as far as it needed to beforehand and secondly because this slice of life filmmaking better fits this film which tackles its themes in more subtle ways.  It was a wise reinvention; I was worried about Aronofsky after the failure of The Fountain, but this film solidifies his place among the best auteurs of his generation.

Do not be scared away by the film’s wrestling subject matter, that’s not really what it’s about.  If you dismiss the film for this you’ll be missing out on one of the best character studies we’ve seen in a long time.  This is a very smart, but modest drama, one whose greatness sneaks up on you only after you’ve left the theater.  It’s a film that deserves to be taken seriously and it’s much more than a showcase for Mickey Rourke’s acting comeback.

**** out if Four

            In 1993, a convenience store clerk risked his life savings on a seemingly mad attempt at making a movie.  It was shot on a shoestring budget with cheap 16mm black and white film stock. None of its actors had ever been in a film before and most of the action was in a pair of convenience stores.  What that film, Clerks, did have was a witty, charming, dirty, but most of all hilarious script.  With nothing except a great script to propel it, Clerks became a comedy classic, and its writer director Kevin Smith became a hero to millions of fellow comic book geeks stuck in menial jobs.  Anyone with even a little bit of knowledge about independent cinema has already heard this story many times, but it bears repeating.  Aside from maybe Robert Rodriguez I can hardly name another director who’s successfully managed to launch a lasting career on a credit card funded movie.  Clerks was more than a hilarious movie to me and many others, it was the first time I’d seen a movie show a certain type of person without mocking them, it was a movie that didn’t come from a condescending Hollywood type but from “one of us” so to speak. 

            I’m willing to admit that Kevin Smith is someone I tend to geek out about, the guy’s voice just speaks to me.  However, I don’t show the guy blind love, he’s certainly had his career ups and downs.  Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back are both sort of fun and have their moments, but are really unsubstantial and just kind of stupid.  Chasing Amy was certainly a sign of maturity and worked well on a narrative level, but suffered from just not being very funny.  Dogma, however, had a refreshing take on religion and was also very funny, it was probably the best movie Smith had made since Clerks.  Then Smith made Clerks II, which seemed like a bad idea, but the movie ended up blowing me away.  Clerks II may well have surpassed even the original Clerks I loved it so much.  After that career high I was excited to see what Smith would do next, and this anticipation was increased when Smith announced he’d be working with none other than Seth Rogen, whose been taking the comedy world by storm.

            Zack and Miri Make a Porno doesn’t take place in the View Askewniverse, or even New Jersey for that matter.  The film is set Monreville, PA a town that any zombie enthusiast knows the significance of.  The title characters are a pair of platonic friends who live together in a cheap apartment.  It’s important to emphasize that Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are not lovers, just old high school friends splitting the rent.  The two of them work low paying jobs and are beginning to see their bills pile up.  The day of their high school reunion their water and soon their electricity goes out for lack of payment, leaving them close to homeless.  After meeting a gay porn star (Justin Long in a small but memorable cameo) at the reunion, Zack suddenly gets the bright idea that they can make enough money to pay their bills by making an amateur porno movie, after all this is something that requires next to no skill to produce and has a large market.  Zack convinces his coffee shop co-worker Delaney (Craig Robinson) to fund the film with the money he was saving up for a flat screen TV in exchange for a return and an opportunity to judge the “auditions.”  Soon they hire a camera operator (Jeff Anderson), a male star (Jason Mewes), and a pair of women stars (Traci Lords & Katie Morgan, both real life porn stars).  This motley crew assembles in a warehouse, ready to begin filming their porn, a dirty sci-fi parody called (what else) Star Whores.

            The casting of Seth Rogen is particularly interesting because of his major involvement in the Judd Apatow movement of comedy, though bear in mind that apatow himself had no involvement in the film.  It’s interesting, though hardly surprising, that Smith has fully embraced this comedic movement.  One could almost see Smith as a forerunner, even a direct influence on the Apatow comedies with their mix of heartfelt story and raunchy humor; they could almost be mistaken for Kevin Smith movies if it weren’t for the absence of pop culture references.  Fortunately, Rogen hasn’t just been cast because he’s been popular recently, he’s been cast here for the same reason he’s always been cast: because he’s good at playing a lovable loser. 

            Elizabeth Banks is almost as important to the film’s success; she has some genuine chemistry with Rogen and can really spout out these fun Smith lines well.  Banks’ character is very similar to the one played by Rosario Dawson in Clerks II, and her performance is almost as good as Dawson’s.  Craig Robinson is also a really cool sidekick in this, his roles here and in Pineapple Express show there’s a lot more to him than his somewhat subdued recurring role on “The Office.”  It was also nice to see a couple of Kevin Smith veterans getting some roles here.  Jeff Anderson, who played Randal in the Clerks movies, has a small role as the porno’s cameraman.  Jason Mewes, who played the role of Jay in six of Kevin Smith’s seven previous films, is here as the male star of the porno they’re making.  Neither of these actors are reaching that far from the roles that made them famous, but it’s nice to see them doing something else just the same, and they are fine in these roles.  The two real porn stars however, I probably could have done without, they’re basically stunt casting and neither of them bring much authenticity to they’re roles.  They aren’t embarrassingly bad or anything, but professional actors probably could have brought more to the roles.

             Zack and Miri Make a Porno has an interesting tone, it’s almost like a cross between the serious relationship drama of Chasing Amy, and the raunch we saw during the bachelor party scene toward the end of Clerks II.  One could say that this is a film that walks a line between two extremes in Kevin Smith’s work, crude humor and sentimental relationship stories.  All of his previous movies tended to fall to one extreme or the other; here they get almost equal time.  This balance is definitely one of the movie’s strengths; it keeps the movie from being pointless like Mallrats, but also makes for a much more funny experience than Chasing Amy.  What’s more, the movie manages to be sentimental in a much more naturalistic than some of the speechifying that came real close to being a problem toward the end of Clerks II.

            One of the film’s surprises is how much Kevin Smith has improved behind the camera.  Funny as Clerks was, its “visual style” was pretty close to being downright amateurish.  With bigger budgets Smith was perfectly able to keep his movies completely competent but they were fairly standard affairs visually.  This has never been much of a distraction, these are not movie that require major talent in the visual department, and Smith certainly belongs behind the camera in his own movies.  Smith has been a lot like a singer songwriter who maybe doesn’t have the greatest voice but is still the right person to sing his own songs simply because that’s the voice the words belong to.  However, with this movie Smith is really better than just competent.  It’s not bravura filmmaking by any stretch, but it isn’t something that needs handicapping either. 

I was, however, also surprised at just how graphic the movie was. Of course Smith’s movies have always been somewhat dirty and something with the word “porno” in the title wasn’t going to be wholesome, but this was still a bit more graphic then I had expected.  Smith’s movies have always traded in very frank and graphic sexual dialogue, and there’s plenty of that on display here, but before he almost never actually showed anything; this time but there is definitely sex and nudity in the scenes where they’re filming the porno.  Bear in mind that this is a film put out by a major studio and not itself a porno, in fact it doesn’t show anything that wasn’t in P.T. Anderson’s porn industry flick Boogie Nights, but it was surprising all the same. 

I’m not a prude, I wasn’t offended by the material, but I got the distinct impression that Smith was actively trying to shock the audience, but to what end?  Possibly he was trying to simply leave the audience not knowing how to react, thus allowing them to fill the void with laughter, but I’m not sure this really worked as well as he was hoping.  The whole thing may well work better on less jaded audiences who haven’t seen the likes of Shortbus and The Dreamers.  What’s more the movie does completely stumble over the line it was walking during a defecation joke that I found simply crass and juvenile. 

Ultimately it is not in the sex scenes that the film works, but in everything going on around them, particularly the dialogue, which is as good if not better than it was in the rest of Smith’s body of work.  If you’ve seen the rest of Smith’s movies you’ll pretty much know what to expect from the script’s fast quips and general fearlessness.  There aren’t as many pop culture references as there used to be, there are a few, but that’s not the focus.  The laugh quotient is not at Clerks II levels, or at the levels of some Apatow films, but there are belly laughs to be found even if they’re not as fast and furious as some of the competition.  Really, I’m maybe being hard on the film because of high expectations.  This is a lot funnier than the average comedy, but between Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, and even Tropic Thunder the bar for R-rated comedy has been set pretty high this year.  Maybe I’ve just finally had my fill of comedies where slackers curse and screw a lot.  This has a lot of the elements for a great Kevin Smith movie, but it just didn’t have that extra punch it needed to really stand out, especially with such strong competition recently.

*** out of Four

            When Michael Moore made Farenheit 9/11 in late 2004, George W. Bush was the most divisive person in the world.  Now, that probably isn’t the case.  With approval ratings in the twenties it’s probably safe to guess that a majority of people can finally agree that “dubya” is a horrible president that should never have been elected.  In case you haven’t guessed already, I’m no fan of our current president, and I never have been.  I’m making my bias clear right up front, unless you’ve had your head in the sand for the last eight years there’s no way to look at something like this without bias.  Oliver Stone is not a filmmaker known to keep his head in the sand; he’s completely upfront with his biases, and that’s what makes his movies so interesting.  The George W. Bush presidency is the perfect subject for Oliver Stone to do his magic, and low and behold here’s an Oliver Stone directed biopic about our forty third president.

            Many people lump Oliver Stone’s JFK and Nixon as peas in the same pod, but they’re really very different films.  JFK is not a biopic; the title character doesn’t even have a speaking role. Nixon is a full fledged biopic, though despite being over three hours long it focused almost exclusively on tricky Dick’s political career.  With W. Oliver Stone examines a president’s entire adult life and in half as long a running time.  The film generally focuses on three separate periods of Bush’s life: his life as a hellraising college student, his time as a businessman and Texas politician, and his presidency.

            Playing the titular character is Josh Brolin, who’s coming off a great 2007 in which he acted in Grindhouse, American Gangster, and No Country for Old Men.  I liked the choice of Brolin for the role from the moment I heard about it and he doesn’t disappoint.  Doing a George W. Bush impression isn’t that hard, just about every two bit impressionist in the country does him.  The trick here was probably just not getting too carried away with the impression, to not focus on the impression to the detriment of the acting in a given scene.  If Brolin had focused too much on the impression the movie could have devolved into a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. 

            The other various cast members also need to be able to make a balance between impression and acting, and some do it better than others.  James Cromwell doesn’t really look much like George H.W. Bush, but there’s a certain New England aura too him that makes him the right contrast to the younger Bush’s Texas swagger.  Elizabeth Banks’ Laura Bush takes a similar approach and so does Scott Glenn’s Donald Rumsfeld.  Thandie Newton on the other hand tries so hard to imitate Condoleezza Rice that her line readings are devoid of any real humanity.  Toby Jones has similar problems playing Karl Rove, and Jeffrey Wright is never quite able to pull of Colin Powell.  Richard Dreyfuss is probably the only actor other than Brolin who is really able to pull off imitation and acting in equal measure.  Dreyfuss’ Dick Cheney looks and sounds exactly like the real Vice President and he never feels robotic in his imitating.

            I’ve always been a fan of Oliver Stone’s movies, the man used to have an uncanny ability to put out a lot of very long and very ambitious movies in very quick succession while still maintaining a very high level of quality.  Then he made U-Turn and it’s like the man’s career fell off a cliff.  Any Given Sunday had its moments and World Trade Center was competent enough, but with clunkers like Alexander and the aforementioned U-Turn it’s hard to deny that Stone’s output has been dramatically worse than it once was.  W. Looked like a perfect project to make a comeback out of, unfortunately I think this falls prey to a problem I never expected a fearless director like Oliver Stone to have: it plays too safe. 

            The film feels very plausible, a bit too plausible.  Almost everything in the movie is a well documented historical event that Bush himself would probably agree to, albeit with a deliberate focus on the things that make Bush look bad.  It’s almost like Stone was so afraid of being dismissed as a left wing kook that he decided to stick so close to the facts that there isn’t much left for the movie to show that wasn’t already covered in Fahrenheit 9/11.  I’m not saying I wanted Stone to lie, what I wanted was for him to tell me something I didn’t already know, even if it meant using a little speculative fiction.  Some of the best moments in the movie are during pre-Iraq strategy sessions where Dick Cheney lays out a scary theory of American imperialism.  I’m sure this stretched a lot further than what can strictly be proven, it was probably speculated, and that’s what I wanted to see more of.  I would have liked to see Stone go behind the closed doors of the White House and seen the planning that went into some of Bush’s botched policies like he did with Richard Nixon.

            I also think the film suffers because it doesn’t really show a lot of the consequences of Bush’s actions.  Of course one could easily argue that we’re seeing those consequences in our daily lives, but why fictionalize this at all if we already know all the real details.  There’s some brief Iraq war footage, and the film goes a little bit into the period where Bush sees that the war isn’t as easy as he expected, but the film stops long before he finds himself become the least popular president since Hoover.  The film also focuses in entirely on Iraq during the presidential portions, which is also a problem.  Hurricane Katrina isn’t mentioned once even though that was where the public really turned on him.  The Patriot Act is mentioned briefly and there’s a set up for No Child Left Behind that’s never delivered on.  While Iraq is probably going to be the main red flag in the Bush legacy, it’s by no means the only mistake he made.  This was never a problem with the three and a half hour Nixon, hopefully we’ll see a director’s cut that can fit more of this stuff in, until then we’re stuck with a film that focuses mainly on George Bush Jr. that underachieving president’s son who might have a better job some day in the future. 

            The film’s clever trailer is a montage to the tune of the song “Once in a Lifetime” By the Talking heads.  Over the course of the montage the song’s lyrics seem to match up with what we’re seeing on screen.  Among the most telling of these lyrical juxtapositions is the line “And you may ask yourself-well…how did I get here?” That’s the question I think Stone is most interested in answering, and it’s a valid question to be ask going into an election.  If nothing else, I think this might work as a cautionary tale about the importance of vetting the people you vote for.  George W. Bush had no business being president and he was voted in by people who went with him without really thinking about the implications of his policies.  This is a movie about the dangers of casually voting for an underachieving dude just because he talks tough.  Otherwise it’s a fairly standard biopic that reenacts a lot of stuff we already have video footage of. 

             I’m making it sound like I disliked this movie a lot more than I actually did.  The movie is not boring, it held my interest for its entire running time and it worked fairly well as a narrative.  I think I’m mostly just disappointed because of how great I think this maybe could have been.  This is a well made film with some good performances at its center; it does enough right to be worth watching.  What it isn’t is the Oliver Stone comeback film that I’ve been waiting for.  For the most part this feels like yet another missed opportunity in an early autumn movie season full of them.

*** out of Four

            It’s no secret that Woody Allen is a remarkably prolific director; it’s something that Stanley Kubrick used to envy him for.  It’s almost a law of physics that there will be a Woody Allen movie for every calendar year and he shows no signs of slowing down.  When people think of Woody Allen movies they usually think of his “nebbish” character going around New York, dealing with relationships, and having intellectual discussions about life, then making fun of said conversations.   The movies are still pretty much the same in this decade except Allen’s mostly been staying behind the camera and he’s now working in Europe instead of New York.  The tour of Europe that Allen started with Match Point four years ago has mostly been good for him and his newest film, Vicky Christina Barcelona, will probably be remembered not only as the height of his European period; in fact it’s the best movie he’s made in at least fifteen years.

            The film follows two young American women as they spend a summer in Barcelona.  The first, Vicky (Rebecca Hall), is a straight-laced grad student who’s engaged to a promising businessman (Chris Messina) back home.  The other is Cristiana (Scarlet Johansson), a self-styled free spirit who aspires to be an artist, though she has not chosen a medium to express herself with.  When the two attend an art expedition they meet a somewhat eccentric Spanish artist named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who within minutes of meeting them invites them out to spend a weekend at his estate in Oviedo with the clear intention of bedding them.  Vicky is not impressed but Cristina is intrigued by the notion of spontaneously running with an artist, Cristina wins out and they take the side trip.  Over the course of the weekend Vicky and Juan form a bond, but it is with Cristina that he eventually starts a long term relationship.  This relationship works quite well, but then his crazy ex-wife María Elena (Penélope Cruz) enters the picture which may or may not throw a monkey wrench into the gears of their relationship.

            Most Woody Allen movies use satire to explore greater human themes; the themes explored in Vicky Christina Barcelona are youthful soul searching, culture clashes, and self destructive relationships.  The first of these themes seems to be a surprising topic to be brought up by a director over seventy, but it’s also one that rings true.  Vicky is a character who has her whole life mapped out in a very dispassionate but sensible way, but she lacks a certain passion.  Cristina is the opposite, she’s spontaneous and open minded but in many ways naïve and without direction.  Both are using this Barcelona trip as a means to find themselves and both will try to live with the other’s philosophy.  The catch is, no one really “finds” themselves by running around Eurpoe, hell most people never “find” themselves, and Allen knows that the live of these two women aren’t going to be redefined over the course of a summer.  That’s not to say that either are static characters, but their development is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. 

            Woody Allen really opened up opportunities for himself when he realized that there were plenty of pretentious intellectuals living outside of New York who were just as rife for satire.   The Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz characters seem like the prototypical southern Europeans: they ooze confidence, open-mindedness, creativity, and fiery passion.   The catch is, most real Spaniards don’t really cat like this, and they probably represent the whole of their culture about as accurately as Woody Allen’s persona represents New York.  This type of heightened behavior is used to point out the differences between the two American leads and the people who enter their lives; it’s also the source of most of the movie’s comedy.  Bardem’s frank sexual advances are quite funny, especially in the way the two women react to it, and Cruz’s wild anger is another comical element. 

            The third and probably most important theme is that of self destructive relationships.  Life with these two crazy artists is interesting, wild, and fun, but I it doesn’t make for a stable relationship and it’s no way to live for more than a few months.  The Bardem and Cruz characters are people who thrive on pure passion, but long term relationships need a lot more than that.  The relationships Vicky and Cristina form with Juan Antonio are satisfying but there’s no future in them and they’ll eventually end up like Juan Antonio’s highly destructive relationship with María Elena. In this way the film reminded me in many ways of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, another film about an American who spends a long stretch of time with a pair of crazy hyper-sexual Europeans only to ultimately be driven away back to the comfort of a simpler life. 

            However, this is no love letter to monogamous stability either; the couple who are hosting Vicky and Cristina in Barcelona are held up late in the film as an example of a safe and stable relationship that is devoid of passion, and ultimately leading toward boredom and infidelity.  It would seem that this is the kind of future in Vicky’s future if she marries the fiancé she choose because he was merely nice and was pleasant and had career prospects. So in many ways our heroines face a catch-22, the catch-22 faced by everyone looking for love: choosing passion can be messy and choosing stability denies people of true happiness.  This is in many ways a fairly cynical take on relationships hidden beneath the surface of this seemingly light hearted film, which is a big part of why the film works so well, there’s real complexity to be found in a movie that plays as quality adult entertainment.

            A major factor in the film’s success lays in the cast; this is an excellent example of a small cast where everyone seems to have just the right chemistry.  Scarlett Johansson is an actress that can be hit or miss, but she works quite well here.  Cristina is a character whose naiveté could have easily been very annoying, but Johansson manages to avoid this by avoiding any girlishness in the character, instead of coming off like a schoolgirl she manages to come off as a genuine free-spirit.  Rebecca Hall, has the straight-man role here which would seem to be easier but it isn’t, she has some of the more thankless Woody Allen dialogue to deal with and she pulls it off quite well.  Javier Bardem has a role that’s the exact opposite of his Oscar winning role in No Country For Old Men, in that film he had to be an emotionless sociopath but here he needs to be a wildly passionate artist.  Of the four leads he’s probably the least noteworthy, but he still holds up his end of the ensemble.  The real standout is Penelope Cruz, an actress who’s had a lot of trouble with English language roles in the past.  Cruz does have a lot of Spanish dialogue here, but most of her lines are in English (at least when Juan Antonio has his way), and she pulls it off by letting her character not have the best grasp of the language either.  This is the same trick Jackie Chan learned to use in the Rush Hour films, he built his character as someone who doesn’t speak perfect English and his accent seemed a lot more natural.  That’s hardly the most important thing about her work here, she has a character that has even more raw passion than Juan Antonio, yet she keeps from looking like a complete lunatic while shouting at people. 

            It was recently announced that Woody Allen will be returning to New York to film his next project, presumably ending his European era.  When I first heard this it seemed like a good sign, but now that I’ve seen this I realize how the change of location has helped freshen up Allen’s style.  Woody Allen is such a prolific guy that it’s way too easy to take his work for granted, it’s easy to compare his latest movies to other Woody Allen movies and have them fall short when they should be comparing them to other romantic comedies playing now, with those standards it becomes clear just how much of a treasure the guy is.  But his work here is above and beyond the call of duty even for Woody Allen, it lives up not only to other romantic comedy but also up to some of Allen’s own best work.

**** out of four

            Movie stars have the interesting role of being loved and hated by the general public.  They turn themselves into larger than life figures for a living and are worshiped for it, but the same people who put them up on pedestals are just as quick to throw them under the truck for the inevitable ego they develop.  You won’t see Tom Cruise in the advertising for the new Ben Stiller comedy, Tropic Thunder, but he has a pretty prominent cameo in the film; ask him and he’ll tell you all about how the public can turn on someone they once loved for his perceived hubris.  Given the way he’s been treated in public, it’s strange to see him enthusiastically taking part in this film, one which may look like a parody of war movies, but that genre is only a secondary target.  The real targets of this film’s satirical wrath are movie stars and the industry that creates them.

            The film is about the making of a fictional Vietnam War film called “Tropic Thunder,” that’s become a horribly troubled production because of the rookie director’s inability to control his cast of eccentric actors.  This film within a film stars Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller, who also co-writes and directs), a Tom Cruise-esque movie star who’s action fare is no longer drawing in the crowds, forcing him to mold himself into a legitimate actor in prestige films.  Tuggman’s co-star is Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), a respected Australian method actor in the vein of Sean Penn who misguidedly underwent pigment altering surgery in order to play an African American in the film, completely oblivious to the fact that he’s essentially in blackface.  On the other side of the respectability spectrum is Jeff “Fats” Portnoy (Jack Black), an overweight actor famous for extremely low-brow comedies, clearly a dig at Eddie Murphy’s recent career path. Also in the fake film are Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel), a young actor who hasn’t been driven insane with fame, and Alpa-Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a rapper starring in the film.

            With this war epic looking like a bigger financial disaster by the day, the film’s director (Steve Coogan) is put under pressure to finish the film or have it shut down.  Desperate, he decides to take the insane advice of the film’s author, a grizzled handless Vietnam veteran (Nick Nolte), and decides to drop the actors into an uninhabited jungle filed with hidden cameras and explosives in hopes of getting naturalistic performances from the actors.  What he doesn’t realize is that the jungle he dropped them into is the territory of a real drug cartel who the actors mistake for actors in this elaborate experiment in guerrilla filmmaking.

            Last week saw the release of Pineapple Express, the newest film produced by Judd Apatow, whose team is the dominant force in film comedy right now.  But the Apatow group wasn’t always on top, throughout the late 90s and early 2000s film comedy was owned by a group that has been dubbed “The Frat Pack.”  This core group consisted of Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Luke and Owen Wilson, and Vince Vaughn.  There seemed like no end to this groups fortune and their success peaked with 2005’s Wedding Crashers, that same year Apatow came out of nowhere and put out The Forty-Year Old Virgin, since then the frat pack has never really been the same.  I didn’t think there was another good film left in the frat pack, but this is a real shock, the first Ben Stiller movie I’ve seen in eight years and it’s really giving a great Apatow production a run for its money.

            One really can’t help but compare these two comedies being released over two consecutive weeks in August.  While Pineapple Express did the trick of giving a stupid concept to an overqualified director, Tropic Thunder takes the opposite approach and has a traditionally low brow director handling a fairly smart satirical concept.  Ben Stiller should be given a lot of credit for coming up with this concept and for making a movie as funny as he did, one can’t help but think this would have had even more punch to it in the hands of a braver, more sophisticated satirist like a Jason Reitman, a Trey Parker, or even a Spike Lee. 

The movie never leaves reality to the point of a Zucker Brothers or Mel Brooks film, but it doesn’t have the kind of relative reality featured in something like Knocked Up or Meet the Parents either, its tone is somewhere between the two extremes.  Despite the somewhat brainy concept and digs at flatulence comedy, the film still finds itself going for gross out moments and random absurdist pieces.  Mind you these are moments, not the norm, but they’re all the more jarring because of it.  Also, as brainy as the Hollywood satire is, it’s anything but subtle in nature.  The message is right there for everyone to see; people in blockbusters are in it for the money and people in independent movies are only in it to pamper their egos.  That is a pretty cynical message overall, and Stiller inelegantly rubs it in the audiences face to the point where it would be tiresome if he hadn’t made it so damn funny along the way. 

That’s the thing about Tropic Thunder, while it really is pretty flawed, the jokes keep coming and the film is ultimately so funny that it’s kind of hard to really complain.  One could commend Stiller for not trying to have his cake and eat it too, he clearly decided that making the audience laugh is the number one priority and was willing to sacrifice the overall movie to make sure that goal was accomplished.  David Gordon Green took the opposite approach with Pineapple Express and decided to put breathing room between the jokes to give the film a more relaxed feel and build up to larger laughs.  In other words, the comedy in Pineapple Express is quality over quantity and Tropic Thunder is quantity over quality, and it comes down to the viewer to decide which form they prefer.

If nothing else, Stiller has put together one hell of a cast here.  The man who steals the show, by far, is Robert Downey Jr. who’s clearly having a great year.  What Stiller is doing with this role is a major gamble as it could easily be misconstrued as something extremely offensive.  Downey’s character is such a character actor he believes he can play an African American; as a result Robert Downey Jr. spends the whole film in a realistic makeup to look like an African American.  It is important to note that Downey isn’t playing a black guy; he’s playing someone else playing a black guy, an important separation that helps diminish the offensive nature of the role.  Many have said that Robert Downey Jr. deserves an Oscar for his work here, but I wouldn’t go that far.  He works hard and that work is evident, but at the end of the day all he’s doing is putting on makeup and talking in a funny voice, granted that’s probably harder to do that than I make it out to be but still I don’t exactly see this as a performance for the ages. 

To cut down at the offensiveness of that role an actual African American performer is present to undercut Kirk Lazarus’ nonsense at every turn and make fun of his absurd role.  Brandon T. Jackson plays that straight man role well, but I can’t help but think the conflict between the two actors could have been played up more.  Also acting as a straight man is Jay Baruchel who helps the film immensely with his reactions to the craziness around him.  Jack Black is of course a pretty big star to be playing second fiddle in a movie like this, his character probably isn’t the funniest but I think he does the best he can with the role and I found the way he played his character in the fictional film to be rather amusing.  There are also a number of good performances by people behind the camera of the fictional movie.  Tom Cruise has a hilarious cameo as an Ari Gould- style profane movie financier, Steve Coogan works pretty well as the fictional film’s director, Matthew McConaughey has a nice role as an agent, and Nick Nolte has a good turn as a tough guy veteran who turns out to be as full of it as the actors in the movie.

Oddly, the weakest character turns out to be the one played by Ben Stiller himself.  Tugg Speedman doesn’t really have a comedic hook the way Robert Downey Jr.’s method actor does or Jack Black’s drug addict does, but he also isn’t a straight man like Jackson or Baruchel.  Stiller also doesn’t really look like much of an action star and it’s hard to imagine him staring in something like “Scorcher VI: Global Meltdown.”  Stiller clearly tries hard but really doesn’t have the same kind of material to work with as he gave many of his co-stars. Some of his character’s quirks, like a desire to adopt a child feel underdeveloped and rather strange as a result and his insecurities are never really explained, just assumed to exist.

With Robert Downey Jr.’s crazy blackface antics, one would think that any misplaced controversy would come from the NAACP or someone like al Sharpton, but they both seemed to get the joke.  Instead the group that’s decided to launch a boycott against the movie are the special Olympics and ARC, who both view a sub-plot in the movie as offensive to the mentally disabled.  The sub-plot involves clips from Tugg Speedman’s previous film “Simple Jack,” in which he played a mentally handicapped man in an insanely over the top manner in what is clearly a cynical attempt at getting an Oscar.  The message isn’t any more subtle here than anything else in the movie; that actors exploit stories about the handicapped in order to show off acting skills and advance their careers.  I can only think of three explanations for this silly boycott A. the organizations in question are truly oblivious to the movies message, which I doubt B. They judged the movie without seeing it and don’t want to lose face by backing down, or C. They’re just as full of it as the characters in the movie and are just trying to get attention.  Either way the jokes on them because Stiller’s script has more sympathy for the mentally disabled than many of the movies that they let pass without controversy.

 Tropic Thunder is clearly a good comedy, it has major problems, but it’s simply too funny and has too many smart ideas to really stay mad at it for long.  Still, I can’t help but think it could have been a whole lot more, and I don’t really have too many people to blame than Ben Stiller.  It almost feels like he was too afraid to make a straight up satire and felt he needed to pad it with a lot of unneeded but admittedly funny lowbrow material.  I think the movie could have done without a grossout gag related about a severed head, an absurd twelve year old drug lord, and a weird sub-plot about a tivo.  Still it probably isn’t anywhere near as flawed as the Love Gurus and Norbits of the world and if I told Ben Stiller I laughed through most of the movie he’d probably think his mission was accomplished. Fair enough.

*** out of four

            In retrospect, “The X-Files” was a really innovative and influential show.  I’ve seen each and every episode of the show, which would seem to suggest I’m a huge fan, but I’m not really.  You’d never find me going to a convention or anything, but I found it to be very compelling T.V. that was always worth my time.  Stylistically it was a very slick and well produced show, Fox put some real money into the show and the various directors managed to make each episode like a cool mini horror film.  On a substance level it was one of the first mainstream shows to try to have a series arc, one that required the viewers to watch the show sequentially and keep track of what’s been going on.  Of course the good days didn’t always last and the show clearly jumped the shark somewhere around season seven where it sort of devolved into self-parody.  By the show’s end one got the feeling the writers may not have really had sort of been making the mythos up as they went (anyone accusing “Lost” of doing that better take a closer look at this show’s anti-climax).  Still, I was exited about the prospect of a new movie that would push all that mess aside and simply make a good story with the characters I loved, using the creativity that made the show famous.

            When we last left Mulder and Scully they were wanted by the government and on the run.  The movie begins a few years later and it turns out they weren’t in quite the dire condition we thought they were.  The government has apparently quit looking for the two, who are now living together in a remote rural house.  Scully (Gillian Anderson) is now working as a doctor at a catholic hospital called Our Lady of Sorrow.  Mulder (David Duchovny) however is living as a recluse of sorts and seems to spend his days researching paranormal activities in newspaper articles.  While working at the hospital Scully is approached by an FBI agent named Mosley Drummy (Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner) who brings with them a simple offer; help them with a current case and the FBI would forgive them for their previous transgressions.  This recent case involves a psychic priest named Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly) who has been leading the FBI to a missing agent of theirs who appears to have been kidnapped by a pair of men involved in strange medical experiments.  Crissman is a convicted pedophile, a the always skeptical Scully has absolutely no patience for his psychic abilities, while Mulder thinks there may be something to what he’s doing.

            Mulder and Scully were first seen on the big screen in the 1998 film The X-Files: Fight the Future.  That film was not spectacular, but it certainly mangaged to deliver what people wanted: an elongated X-Files story brought to the big screen with a significantly larger budget allowing for at least three set pieces that could never be done on the show’s budget.  This new film, however doesn’t seem to have been given anywhere near the kind of budget “Fight the Future” was given.  As such, this is a much more character driven story than many would expect, in fact it’s almost more of a Mulder and Scully film than it is an X-Files movie. 

            The X-Files was never really an action based show, it was more about science fiction and horror, still it was about FBI Agents and as such it wasn’t really unreasonable to expect a few shootouts and chases from any given episode.   This however, feels like a very non-violent take on the X-Files formula.  In fact, I don’t think either of the lead characters so much as hold a gun throughout the duration of the film.  There’s one mediocre foot chase, and a moderately thrilling finale, but nothing like the set pieces involved in “Fight the Future.”  As such it was probably a horrible idea to release this film in the middle of summer when audiences are particularly expecting thrills.

            The film also isn’t nearly as supernatural in nature as most fans will be expecting.  This isn’t based on the shows “mythos” formula, but rather it is attempting to replicate what the show did with its stand-alone horror themed episodes.  The film has a psychic investigator and some people doing bizarre surgeries, but as far as freaks of the week go, these guys aren’t all that freaky.  In fact a lot of the material here feels more like something one would find in an episode of “CSI.”

            With no action, no science fiction, and minimal horror it would seem that the entirety of the film’s burden rests on the character driven drama.  So is the show deeper and more thematic than an average episode of the show?  Well… sort of, but I don’t think that’s going to be worth the eight-year wait for most of the show’s fans.  The film deals with the relationship between Mulder and Scully after all these years and with the lingering longing Scully feels about the son she gave birth during the show’s run (I honestly don’t even remember what ended up happening to that kid).  Ultimately it’s about Scully coming to terms with Mulder’s stubborn quest for the truth, which is reflected by Scully’s determination to save a child at her hospital. 

            This is ultimately more Scully’s movie than it is Mulder’s and in turn Gillian Anderson has a lot more to do here than Duchovny.  Duchovny mostly delivers the same performance one would expect given his track record on the show, he’s a little more morose, but it’s mostly more of the same from Duchovney, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Anderson on the other hand is portraying a much-changed character.  This is a Scully that has gone through so much and has become almost completely drained, but Anderson doesn’t overplay this.  These are both very sad characters, one gets the notion that their lives have really been ruined by their work with the FBI; in this sense the movie is sort of a downer, as a fan of the show I feel these characters really deserve some peace and there’s nothing like that to be found here. 

            The supporting cast is nothing to write home about.  Amanda Peet is a good actress but she’s on complete autopilot here.  I didn’t expect much from Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner, mainly because he’s a third rate rapper, but he was average enough.  Billy Connolly, was a little more interesting, mainly because of his very weird Scottish accent.  What’s a Scottish pedophile doing in West Virgina?  I don’t know, but I still think he created a fairly good character with his performance.

            The X-Files: I Want to Believe isn’t really a bad movie; it’s just not a good movie, at all.  If this was made as a T.V. movie or direct to DVD it would be perfectly satisfactory, but that’s not what this is, it’s a theatrical movie ten years in the making.  Chris Carter has made a movie that mostly stands up to scrutiny, but will satisfy few.  It just isn’t the X-Files movie the fans wanted, it wasn’t the X-Files movie that would attract non-fans, and it certainly isn’t the X-Files movie I wanted.

** out of Four