Category Archives: Movies

The sense of an ending

[Some spoilers possible]

It’s not even the middle of June and I’m already tired of watching cities explode. Two in two nights. Two nights ago with “This Is the End,” last night “Man of Steel.”

Someday I’ll have to see “Star Trek Into Darkness,” which will make three. And are there any exploding cities in “Iron Man 3?” Even if there isn’t, there are plenty more where those came from. This summer a week will not go by without a variation on this theme: “World War Z,” “White House Down,” “ Pacific Rim,” “The World’s End,” “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2.” Well, the last one just seems like the end of the world.

Didn’t we get this out of our system in 2012 after the bogus Mayan prophecy? And whatever happened to “too soon” when it comes to movies shamelessly exploiting 9/11 imagery? I am reminded of the Theodor Adorno quote cited in J. Hoberman’s fine new book “Film After Film” – “He who imagines disasters in some way desires them.” And who wouldn’t want to see Michael Cera hooked like live bait on the splintered end of a shattered lamp post as happens in one of the more amusing scenes in “This Is the End?” The film’s irony aside, it reeks of self-loathing. No Fox News windbag or Evangelical scold could paint a more damning picture of Hollywood. Drawing on the Book of Revelations, not to mention the exorcism scene in “The Exorcist,” it is a self-flagellating admission that Hollywood is the new Babylon, doomed to utter damnation and the inescapable nuisance of Danny McBride when the end finally does arrive.

As for Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” Henry will be reviewing that film in detail in another posting, but I did want to share a couple of observations. First, didn’t we have those giant mechanical jellyfish destroying cities in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon?” Except in that case they looked more like giant mechanical shrimp.

There are many other annoying borrowings from other movies, but what’s the point of complaining? That’s what most movies are these days, though some are more artful about it.

Second, no doubt others have pointed this out, but isn’t this a kind of comic book, f/x-addled version of “The Passion of the Christ?”

Some similarities: Kal-El has a unique birth (though a reverse of the Biblical version – in a world where reproduction is all artificial, his is the only natural, i.e, non-virgin birth). He has been sent into this world by his father to redeem it. He conceals his true identity until the Messianic age of 33 when he offers himself up to the Satanic powers of General Zod as ransom for the human race. He refuses the diabolical temptation to use his omnipotence to take over world. In a punishing sequence reminiscent of the brutal stations of the cross in Mel Gibson’s movie, he gets beaten like a piñata by Zod and his minions for what seems like the whole movie. When the final Apocalyptic battle begins he takes on the cause of good against the powers of evil, though Zod and company seem less like Satan and his legions than they do the neocon Spartans in Snyder’s “300”). And to sum up, Kal-El/Superman is guided by a spectral dad who is a combination of God the Father and God the Holy Ghost; he has a longsuffering mother; and he suppresses his hots for that modern day movie equivalent of a harlot, a female journalist. (Okay, that last one is more like “The Last Temptation of Christ”).

Maybe fundamentalist groups should send busloads of believers to see both of these movies, or rent them (in expurgated versions, of course) and show them in their churches.

In truth, though, the only end that films like “Man of Steel” prefigure (not so much “This Is the End,” which I laughed at frequently and inanely – though I’m afraid, seemingly unambiguous ending notwithstanding, it will spawn several “Hangover” style sequels), is that of narrative filmmaking as we’ve come to know it. Such films point to a cinema experience reduced to endlessly repeated formula and 3-D destruction, and perhaps are a foreshadowing of the “implosion” of Hollywood that Steven Spielberg has prophesized. And he should know – after all, he pretty much started it..

— Peter Keough

The Frankenstein Monster’s Great Grandnephew

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The previous was written by the universally admired, if excessively modest, Peter Keough, one of the two Go’s in Critics A Go-Go. I’m Henry Sheehan (not a legend so much as a distant rumor), based in Los Angeles since 1986, a native of Greater Boston, and, yes, a B.C. High boy. And, oh yes, unable to post a picture here. Next time.

As Peter noted, some recent movies have bent their depictions of terrorists to make them more appealing to the Western middle class. That is, these anti-bourgeois destroyers are simultaneously upholders of bourgeois values through dramatic sleight of hand. At times, the movies are effectively slick, but fundamentally specious.

Terrorists aren’t the only killers to benefit from a whitewash. The Iceman, co-written by Morgan Land and Ariel Vromen and directed by Vromen, tells the purportedly true story of a professional hit man who knocked off over a hundred victims in order to maintain a middle-class life for his wife and daughters, who never suspected what dad was up to. A true psychopath, Richard Kuklinski began his killing career by settling personal grudges before going to work for a mid-level gangster in New Jersey. During these early days, Kuklinski also developed an aw-shucks crush on sweet Deborah Pellicotti, whom he quietly pursues until she agrees to marry him.

Kuklinski is depicted as coldblooded and conscience-free (although he does refuse to off women and children). To break up the monotony of serial murders performed by a near automaton, Vromen plays with the mood of the most violent scenes, to the point of alternating the ghoulish with the ghoulishly funny. He is a competent filmmaker (rare enough these days) and The Iceman is well shot and, especially, well edited. The director has a sure sense of pace and is adept at relating a packed narrative.

Michael Shannon is effective as Kuklinski, though the performance relies on the stark qualities he uses to animate most of his characters. But his large forehead, overhanging brow, and growl of a voice does recall a character from Hollywood’s Golden Age: Frankenstein’s monster – or at least the monster that was brought to the screen by James Whale. But Whale was able to bring to the monster what Vromen doesn’t – maybe can’t – which is a crucial sense of ambivalence. Whale’s creature is a monster because of the criminal brain implanted in him, yes, but his violence is sparked by human hostility. He is taunted by Frankenstein’s assistant Fritz and hated by villagers when he accidentally kills a little girl because he doesn’t know his own strength. Then there’s the monster’s horrible death, a mob cheering as he screams in pain inside a burning windmill. But Whale doesn’t underplay the monster’s threat; he does kidnap Dr. Frankenstein’s bride-to-be.

In modern Hollywood, the mad scientist’s monster has largely been replaced by the psychotic killer. Rarely, but occasionally, a filmmaker will try to get into a killer’s head. But Vromen is Kuklinski’s ally in compartmentalizing his life. There are only tenuous and largely glib connections between the two halves of the killer’s life. So the film is compartmentalized, too, a series of scenes linked by plot but not by revelation.

–Henry Sheehan

Two films too soon for Boston and one that just sucks

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Greetings. I’m the East Coast, Boston-based unit of this movie blog, the counterpart to L.A. movie critic legend Henry Sheehan. Despite the continental divide,our sensibilities have much in common, as we are both passionate lovers of film and both attended Boston College High School, where Fr. Leo Muldoon, S,J., was our Dean of Discipline.

Draw what conclusions you may.

Here’s my first post:

Living as I do less than a mile from the site of the Marathon bombings, maybe I was more squeamish than usual at a scene in “The Shadow Game” in which an IRA terrorist leaves a bag containing a bomb in a London underground station.

I’m sure viewers in Britain, where the film opened last August, had unpleasant flashbacks as well. It seemed to get pretty good reviews, though. Not so great at the box office, however – it made around $300,000 at 150 or so screens, which at $2,000 per screen is barely “After Earth” numbers. Here in Boston the distributors seem a little unsure about their product, as its opening has been kicked like a can down the road week after week. Now it’s scheduled for June 14: we’ll see if that’s “too soon.”

Be that as it may, my initial discomfort gave way to anxiety for the well-being of the terrorist. You have to feel for her. She’s bearing guilt and anger from a childhood incident when she passed off an errand to her younger brother, who got shot, presumably by British soldiers, for his troubles. Now as an adult, Collette, played by a winsome and worried Andrea Riseborough, no longer has the stomach for the terror business, especially since she has a boy of her own. But a British anti-terrorist agent played by haggardly handsome Clive Owen is strong-arming her into betraying her group.So they fall in love.That’s the problem with terrorists, at least in the movies; to know them is to love them.

Such is the case in Zak Batmanglij’s “The East” as well. Here a corporate undercover agent played by the smart, tough, good-looking Brit Marling infiltrates a cell of eco-terrorists headed by the smart, not so tough, but equally good-looking Alexander Skarsgard.

This group is more precise in its targeting: rather than indiscriminately threaten the hoi-polloi taking public transportation, they go after the rich and privileged elites responsible for poisoning the environment, destroying the economy, and, in general, ruining everything for everybody to enrich themselves. So, despite the cabal’s smug self-righteousness, you can understand how Marling’s agent might be seduced by their message, not to mention by Skarsgard’s ripply torso. Unfortunately for the distributors of “The East, however, apparently their plans to promote the film in Boston by bringing in Marling for interviews went awry and they had to cancel. It seems she was supposed to be in town on April 15, the date of the Boston Marathon.

The studios might be cautious, but what are we to make of their insistence that terrorists are essentially loveable and misunderstood? What does that say about the audiences they are appealing to? That deep within the most law-abiding citizen is a repressed urge to raise hell?

Such is the premise of “The Purge,” which opens June 7. In the year 2022, a group called “the New Founding Fathers” has taken over the country. They’ve managed to reduce unemployment to 1%, and nearly eliminate crime.

Their solution? Simply set aside one day every year in which anarchy reigns – theft, rape, murder, double parking, whatever suits your fancy. I reviewed this for the “Boston Globe,” but here are a couple of quick thoughts. Wasn’t this same story on “The Twilight Zone” at some point? If not, it should have been. As a 30 minute TV episode it would have worked just fine.

Secondly, James DeMonaco’s film does offer one intriguing insight. Here and there, mostly on the TV broadcasts in which pundits discuss the merits and shortcomings of the “Purge,” it is suggested that this policy insidiously benefits the rich, who can afford better weapons and the elaborate security systems sold by the film’s protagonist (played by Ethan Hawke). Since the poor are therefore inevitably the victims, they are in effect culled from society – Neo-liberal, Darwinian economics at their most primitive.

Oh, well. The closest the film gets to developing this rather subversive concept is by having the chief ringleader of the bad guys wear a prep school blazer.

–Peter Keough

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