Nerd Theory

Trouble Every Day

2007-03-28T20:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been on a horror kick lately. So, somehow, I found out about this movie and was intrigued enough to spend a precious Netflix spot on it. I've been watching so much old horror, and so much of it is really crappy, that I was looking forward to a modern take. I suppose I was asking for it, but I got more than I bargained for.

This movie has no redeeming value and only serves to make you feel terrible about life in general. At the same time, I think the director is probably one of the few living "masters" of filmmaking. In 10 years, this movie will be a cult classic and will probably be screened in film classes. Not that it doesn't deserve it.

The director, Claire Denise, knows how to use the camera to create suspense. She can "say" very much in an entirely silent scene, absent dialogue, relying solely on glances and gestures. For me, this has always been the sign of a genius filmmaker.

But I'll have to try another of her movies, because this one was ultimately vacuous and only served to make me feel terrible. It is arguable whether or not this is EXACTLY the point of horror. Maybe it is, but I need something, anything to shine through the despair. Or at least the value of experiencing something unexpected and unusual (see Inalnd Empire).

I feel that the point here was to comment on love/lust, individuality and fear eating the soul. But there was clearly no faith in humanity and I don't know why anyone would want to watch a movie with that message and no hope. Or maybe it's an issue of taste. The climax scene was absolutely tasteless and disgusting. A little more focus on the psychological and less on shock could have gone a long way.

Inland Empire - SKOOLIUS

2007-01-23T08:17:00.000-08:00

So, I saw this very anticipated movie. The brief history that I'm familiar with points to the inclusion of pieces previously only available to subscribers of David Lynch's web site, davidlynch.com. For example, the Rabbits clips have been on the site for awhile now, having been filmed after Mulholland Drive. (That's why Naomi Watts gets a voice credit.) Also, I had heard Axxon N would be the name of the new Lynch movie, before Inland Empire came out. I've never seen the Axxon N clips on the site (b/c I'm not a subscriber) so I don't know if he reshot them for this or if they're the same, etc.

Brief sidenote: it's interesting that on this movie and Mulholland Drive, Lynch is working with footage intended for other uses. "Intended" may be a misguiding word there, but Mulholland was supposed to be his TV show follow-up to Twin Peaks, which I thought helped explain all the madness in the last half of that movie. That is, he just had pieces that he was never able to flesh out. And here we have clips from the web site. It's like Tricky reusing samples from his own songs. It's unusual, but it works.

The MOVIE:

OK. I liked it. At times, a lot. The first half was consistently brilliant, and I really started getting excited when Jeremy Irons (as a director) tells his actors (Laura Dern and Justn Theroux) "The movie we're shooting is a remake of a film that was never completed. It was never completed because something happened to the two main actors." That's like something from a wonderful film noir or Polanski pic. At times, Lynch definitely can emulate the old Hollywood suspense masters.

It's hard to rate a Lynch movie the way you rate other movies. Maybe it's just my bias b/c I like his stuff, but I have to compare it more to how you rate your favorite band's albums. You pretty much like everything they do, some being better than the others, but all are better than whatever pop stuff happens to be out at the time. How do you rate Inland Empire the same way you rate The Departed, or Flags of Our Fathers, or Children of Men. They're all great, some flawed, but these are essentially genre pictures donw by great directors. David Lynch is his own genre.

Continuing the music theme: Mulholland Drive was near perfect. It was, let's see, his Nirvana. Inland Empire is his Pearl Jam. We love Pearl Jam. But Nirvana...

My only two comments/complaints about the movie: 1) I'm not sure Laura Dern really pulled off the version of her character that we'll call "the poor woman." This is the woman who tells the guy in the glasses stories about her violent history with men. I suppose I "got" that she was supposed to be some alternate Laura Dern, someone who is completely on the opposite end of the social ladder than the Laura Dern we've been growing close to the whole movie, and this somehow illuminates the overall character that is the movie/woman on the bed/the actress in the movie (as the tag line for the movie is "a woman in trouble"). Frankly, I just didn't buy Laura Dern in that roll, because her face is so absent of real physical hardship. There's a lot of psychic hardship there, but not much actual toil. Given the shifting realities of the film, I think the audience would easily accept a different actress, maybe even a documentary interview of a real woman with these experiences.

2) How about that happy ending? It's new for a Lynch film (barring Straight Story), but I like it. It's very easy to get caught up in the dread of any of his stuff and, previously, the comedic/happy moments were buried in all the other muck. This time, we go out on a high note, which is pleasant.

So, will someone else please go see this movie, so's we can rap?

RATING: Theory of Relativity

Pan's Labyrinth - SKOOLIUS

2007-01-11T12:30:00.001-08:00

The question is, did I like it? I suppose I bought into it, but I had to remind myself that I liked "The Dark Crystal" and "Labyrinth" when I was a kid.

RATING: Chaos Theory

A Ratings System

2007-01-11T12:27:00.000-08:00

See below for a ratings system. Per usual, a movie is designated a score, based on its relevance to existence.

Children of Men - The SKOOLIUS Reply

2007-01-11T12:26:00.000-08:00

Cool. I loved it too, of course, but needed some edification. Thanks.

I really loved the long takes. So much suspense is done the same way (through editing) these days that I was giggling with happiness at seeing a new way. And I love that the sound is part of the chaos too, like when they’re fleeing the anarchists in the forest and the song on the radio keeps playing the whole time. Brilliant!

RATING: Evolutionary Theory

Children of Men - The STARK Reply

2007-01-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

Too simplistic. I'm just not sure at all how that applies to this movie. I know that you are quoting without (enough) context, but I think it's the simpleness of the plot--guy-must-go-from-here-to-there--that was at the heart of its power. I thought the brilliance of the film was its (as one reviewer said) treating its audience as adults. And as I watched, I just kept marveling at the beauty of the film, that horror could be so beautifully and humanly rendered. And I think my mouth must have been making little Os of wow pretty much incessantly at the depth and power of the metaphor. Here we are in a dystopian future that, like 1984, is very much the dystopian present. I think that Cuaron (sp?) very effectively takes us (to use KW's phrase) willingly to a place we don't want to go.

By setting the horror in an imagined future, he can take us to a London (read: home) where bombs go off like they must in Baghdad every day, where there are bonfires of the bodies of animals, where there are guns going off everywhere, where you could as easily get shot as eat. But because the metaphor is so well drawn, we can also get a taste of a kind of brutality that has probably existed in every society, and certainly ours. So when they are going into the fugee camp on the bus, and the snarling guard could exist at any point in human history, almost. Certainly he could be a southern cop hauling people away from a freedom march in the 1960's.

And I think part of the beauty of the film is that it is not the laying out of specific issues with any kind of preaching at all. I like it that Theo is pretty much apolitical. He just longs for something that works. It is the specificity of the simple journey--the wearing of flip-flops, the strawberry flavor that makes Jasper cackle so, the lovely cover of the Rolling Stones' song (was it Ruby Tuesday? And who did it?), the unmanned art in the museum-as-fortress (metaphor!)--that makes the general of the chaos and bloodsheld so unnerving. Where are we in time? Is this the IRA? Is it al Queda? Is it white supremacists?

All I can say is that I need to see it a couple of more times, I think, to see more of what's actually in it. And I think Michael Caine ought to get some sort of award for that performance, which, though small, was brilliantly rendered. And the locations were just mindblowing. Nothing there was in the least unconvincing.

Children of Men - SKOOLIUS

2007-01-09T06:39:00.000-08:00

Children of Men. My friend’s wife, who is Armenian and somewhat of an expert on the Armenian genocide, said she thought the movie was too simplistic. I mention her credentials because it made me slightly self-conscious of being one of those liberals who likes everything simplistic and phrased in “ethical” terms (whereas she is someone who actually knows about this stuff, and such atrocities have affected her life somewhat directly). I don’t know, I’m just saying that’s how it made me feel. The question is: is this movie simplifying everything and jerking tears out of us when it could be laying out specific issues and addressing them systematically (and thematically)? (Incidentally, she’s a liberal too and very anti-war, I just think she doesn’t like “preachy-ness.”)

In answer to my own question, I’ll go way back into my own vaults and reference my defense of the movie Munich against people who accused it of the same thing. I had watched “One Day in September,” a documentary about the Munich hostage tragedy, a week before seeing Munich, the Spielberg film. I loved them both, the former because it dealt in facts, the latter because it captured the “emotional truth” of the situation, or it at least reminded us of what it must have actually felt like to experience that, even just via the news. I suppose that’s the whole point of narrative film anyway, isn’t it? While documentary has it’s own point, I suppose.

I’ll copy The Nefarious Doctor Stark b/c I know he’ll want to weigh in.

Mission Statement

2007-01-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

NERD THEORY: Being a blog dedicated to reviewing pictorial stories and moving pictures, those often accompanied by sound, by means of a discussion moderated by Skoolius Lutzius, 29th generation descendant of a Gallic Roman slave who won his freedom by reviewing plays for the emperor at the time.