The Dark Knight Rises

Not feelin' it for The Dark Knight Rises.

Don't get me wrong, the rapid pace and intelligent script make for an entertaining thought-provoking film, packed tight with a judicial balance of solid and cheesy lines/imagery/situations, set within an armageddonesque scenario which exemplifies the apotheosis of campy mainstream political drama basking in subtly sensational ludicrousy.

Note that it's just a movie.

Within however, the villain Bane (Roger Hardy), who works in the sewers and is backed by some of Bruce Wayne's (Christian Bale) excessively wealthy competitors, has been using construction workers and freelance thieves to launch a strategic attack which will incarcerate Gotham City's entire police force, set up a kangaroo court to 'judge' the wealthy, get his hands on a source of limitless energy that can be turned into a catastrophically destructive weapon, the whole time acting like a person of the people.

It's a bit much.

And the ways in which construction unions are depicted is frustrating.

Of course it's just a movie, within which Bane is a fanatical lunatic who employs absurd methods to achieve insane objectives.

I mean, what person of the people would destroy a football stadium?

But making him a 'person of the people' does cunningly vilify genuine persons of the people like Franklin D. Roosevelt (who still had to operate in a political dynamic which encountered expedient matters I'm assuming) which is problematic.

He is financed by the excessively wealthy, as mentioned earlier, which logically states that plutocrats are theoretically capable of using popular tropes to achieve despotic ends, thereby making Bane's adoption of the label 'person of the people' all the more problematic.

But this doesn't mean individuals who come from privileged backgrounds don't care about structural issues relating to poverty, individuals such as Jack Layton, and want to try to do something about them using legitimate political methods (pointing out a social democrat's rich upbringing is a divisive tactic used by the right to discredit them, from what I can tell anyway).

Having a source of limitless environmentally friendly power that can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction is also problematic, inasmuch as it indirectly vilifies alternative energy sources while propping up the nuclear/petroleum-based-product status quo.

Obviously, when your economy is seriously dependent on this status quo (see The End of Suburbia, 2004) and the ways in which its revenues fuel social programs, you can't simply change everything overnight without causing mass unemployment (perhaps I'm wrong here, I don't know, but it seems to me that if your economy is functioning with a significant deficit, large scale structural changes to its infrastructure will be disastrous unless they can definitively generate mass profits in the aftermath [which is a pretty big risk to take if you're not flush with cash]).

But at the same time, not trying to find environmentally friendly alternatives to the petroleum/nuclear power base that can't be turned into WMDs or be inexpensively integrated into the grid is equally disastrous (I suppose while searching for such power sources it's important to hire people to continuously monitor whether or not their construction can lead to the creation of WMDs [obviously enough {perhaps this isn't so obvious: it took a very long time to cap the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 because they weren't prepared}]).

People often call me naive, but, whatever: "It was all the more [troublesome] because by nature I have always been more open to the world of potentiality than to the world of contingent reality"(Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. 5 [I don't think I'm like Proust, I just love reading In Search of Lost Time]).

Hence, as an escape, I did enjoy The Dark Knight Rises, but I can't support some of its structural issues inasmuch as, according to this viewing, they aren't very progressive.

There is the issue of Selina (Anne Hathaway) however who is trying to change her life around but can't due to the ways in which her criminal record prevents her from finding employment.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

Take 'em or leave 'em.

Total Recall

Whether or not the action within the Total Recall remake takes place solely within Douglas Quaid/Hauser's (Colin Farrell) mind or in the film's objective domain is obviously up for debate.

The evidence for both sides is provided within a functional formulaic opposition between two states, one who owns the means of production (The United Federation of Britain/UFB), and another who is forced to work within them (The Colony/Australia).

The rest of the planet is uninhabitable due to prolonged chemical warfare.

In the onset, Quaid/Hauser has become bored with the status quo and decides to check out Rekall, a notorious company who can directly plant living memories within your mind. After arriving, he chooses the secret agent program (with the double agent option) and just as he's about to drift off, seconds after he's intravenously hooked up, security forces rush in.

For the rest of the film he's a pseudo-double agent (Hauser) who has had his memory erased and replaced with the persona Douglas Quaid. He instinctively remembers details of his former life, usually gut reactions which help him escape UFB traps, but cannot reconstruct the big picture.

His situation directly relates to a bewildering recurring dream he's been having, prior to visiting Rekall.

I probably should have paid more attention to the myriad chase sequences and mushy one-liners that predominate afterwards, for it's likely that within their action/delivery lie clues designed to disambiguate Total Recall's 'dreamscape.' But said sequences and one-liners are abundant and I found myself zoning out after a while.

However, before Quaid enters Rekall, the one-liners are delivered with a self-reflexive gritty disengaged realistic dexterity.

After entering Rekall and then travelling to the UFB, Hauser's first olympian flight is characterized by constantly shifting ground and split-second opportune life saving reflexes, in short, the stuff dreams are made of.

Yet, as many people find themselves looking for permanent work, often having to travel and compete to secure it, their terrain constantly shifts, working for a year here, another there, perennially stuck in a probationary period.  

And while searching one must often use brief inter/national/provincial/regional expressions while communicating.

Quaid knows who he is. There's no doubt in his mind as to his identity nor to his historical path.

Hauser has to rely on hidden messages and/or direct support/condemnation, mired in contradiction due to his supposed status as double agent, apart from the messages he's left behind for himself, and his actions, to formulate a stable I, oddly mirroring the establishment of a dream identity, albeit purely rational within the space's systemic parameters.

His sudden epic coercive confusing circumstances require a leap of faith which he makes, choosing to fight for the oppressed (the UFB has run out of land and seeks to invade the Colony to take theirs), which he does with the aid of his stunning versatile partner (Jessica Biel as Melina) while his former wife (Kate Beckingsale as Lori Quaid) does everything she can to stop them.

And an enigmatic individual whose personality reflects the end of history prevents the colonialization while enabling the creation of a social democratic state, amidst cheers and celebrations and a giant advertisement for Rekall.

Is this resolution too good to be true?

Well, in order to openly discuss the legitimate claims of oppressed workers in the post-9/11 age of austerity while working within a domain that regularly produces works designed to infantilize them, it makes sense that such a discussion would have to take place within an ambiguous framework in order for everyone involved to avoid any imperial entanglements.

At the same time, if the narrative does take place solely in Quaid's mind, it's designed to provoke critical discussions of the ways in which the military industrial complex is using pop culture to substitute images for reality in order to disrupt collective left-wing political actions by situating them within the cult of the individual, thereby making them seem unattainable (director Len Wiseman having taken control of the means of production).

Meaning that either way, Quaid is Hauser.

Rock of Ages

Well, without digging too deeply into the ideologic-socio-political dimensions of Rock of Ages, here's a brief snapshot of what happens.

A beautiful young girl (Julianne Hough as Sherrie Christian) travels from Oklahoma to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming a singer. It becomes clear early on that the odds are stacked against her but she's fortunate enough to catch the eye of a barback (Diego Boneta as Drew Boley) with similar dreams who finds her a job at the prominent nightclub (The Bourbon Club) where he works.  

In less than a week they've developed a strong emotional bond.

Known, as love.

Legendary demonic alcoholic singer Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) and his band Arsenal are scheduled to play their last collective performance at the Bourbon Club, and the sultry studious astute Constance Stack (Malin Akerman) of Rolling Stone hopes to ask Mr. Jaxx some sharp related critical questions beforehand.

After three or four minutes she's prancing around in her underwear.

She does still publish a vitriolic article later on.

But by the end of the film she's carrying his baby.

Meanwhile, the clueless adulterous Mayor Mike Whitmore's (Bryan Cranston) religious wife Patricia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) hopes to put an end to the Bourbon Club's cult and is crusading against Mr. Jaxx as well.

The only man who ever made her feel like a real woman.

By the end of the film she's back in the audience, hoping Stacee will notice her once again.

Sherrie and Drew break up and she finds a job stripping while he gets stuck in a boy band.

And another monster rock ballad is sung.

I'm not really looking to complicate this film or anything, but it does present politics and feminism as hypocritical meaningless endeavours whose initiatives crumble beneath the seductive gaze of the established subterranean patriarch.

In this case, the political initiatives are invasive and counterproductive but if they function as a foil for such initiatives generally they can be considered belittling and grossly disproportionate (there is no alternative political option presented).

I prefer grassroots music to that manufactured by market based research but it's not as if classic rock isn't alive and well.  

It's nice to see gay characters given a strong masculine structural role within, not in terms of encouraging anti-feminist apolitical activities, but in regards to taking risks in order to establish an integral celebrated entrepreneurial identity.

I can't think of any other things to say besides the fact that the film's soundtrack contains some songs that I like.

Rock of Ages. 

Rollin' along.

The Change-Up

The Change-Up introduces another comedy wherein a male friendship is composed of one person who is responsible (Jason Bateman as Dave Lockwood) and another who lives a carefree day-to-day lackadaisical freestyle (Ryan Reynolds as Mitch Planko). While Lockwood's mannerisms are prim and proper, Planko's are slapdash and inappropriate. While Lockwood tries to be a strong respectable family person, Planko smokes weed all day and is still interested in raw doggin' randoms.

And so on.

But their friendship endures nonetheless, the historical nature of their bond trumping and bringing together their disparate personalities.

In more ways than one.

As fate would have it, one evening they decide to urinate in a fountain at the same time while simultaneously stating that they wished they had the other's life, after which they wake up the next day having switched bodies, forced to live that other life that they had spontaneously stated they wished they had (while urinating).

The rest of the film's mildly amusing while Planko tries to bluff his way through a merger that Lockwood worked on tirelessly for months and Lockwood tries to star in a soft porn flick, etc. Maybe amusing's not the right word. There's a lot of shock comedy straight from the sewer that is relatively unexpected and difficult to watch. I found it more surprising than amusing although I was amused by the surprises.

Content switches form and is provided with a significant degree of freedom due to the historical nature of that form's condition, and, with a little coaching, manages to improve on its initial foundations after coming dangerously close to destroying them completely.

But like the old change-up pitch, you expect it to come in fast and furious and instead it slows down and fades.

Old idea scatologically revitalized oscillates from one extreme to the other before falling flat.

The Change-Up.

The Couch Trip

Some solid ideas are in place.

John W. Burns, Jr. (Dan Aykroyd) is causing trouble for his lacklustre psychiatrist, Lawrence Baird (David Clennon). But just as he is about to be transferred back to prison, he intercepts a phone call offering Baird a position as a psychological radio host in Los Angeles, sitting in for one George Maitlin (Charles Grodin), which he promptly accepts. All he needs to do is escape from the ward, fly to LA, convince a shrewd lawyer that he is a trained professional, and dispense beneficial practical wisdom live with the electric confidence of a warm and friendly person of the people. But before he can get his act in place, another individual with a somewhat skewed relationship with 1980s socio-cultural sublimations catches instinctual wind of his former identity (Walter Matthau as Donald Becker), and decides that it's time to cash in on his disenfranchised observations as well.

The Couch Trip's form is well thought out. If I was in charge of deciding which pitches receive the opportunity to be fleshed out whimsically I definitely would have given that for the The Couch Trip the green light. But unfortunately, while gathering critical creative support, unable to sustain the potential of its expectations, it ironically suffers a nervous breakdown, from which it rarely recovers.

When you have an over-the-top idea which requires a sharp degree of energetic immediacy, one impossible situation to overcome after another, the ways in which that energetic immediacy is galvanized must be sensationally plausible while seeming run of the mill. And The Couch Trip's script, boldly defended by Dan Aykroyd, lacks the wherewithal needed to project even a paltry degree of plausibility, and therefore only transmits a mediocre current.

Walter Matthau does save the day from time to time, and the script is deep, establishing multiple subplots and providing several characters with room to flow. But the material with which said characters are provided falls consistently flat, and although the idea of John W. Burns, Jr. works for me on every level, the predicates and commentaries used to build up his rhetorical flexibility do not, at least in terms of making a film entertaining.

Opening Night

While knowledge and treaties, expectations and caricatures haunt her, as horrible people transmit their perspectives nonchalantly, striking yet stark, cutting yet insignificant, Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) prepares for Opening Night and artistically assails its cultural predisposition. A young fan is dead, struck by a car after having sought her attention. A brilliant role threatens her fluidity and unwittingly seeks to sequester her career. Friends offer advice which she refuses to indulge, instead choosing to transform its venom into a seductive performance, on her own terms. Is John Cassavetes a misogynist? He certainly presents how abrasive powerful men can be and how hard it must be for women to have to navigate a culture saturated with paternal misgivings, as they're expressed benevolently as if they represent some sort of divine goodwill, as if they reflect a woman's best interests. The psychological abuse Myrtle suffers directly presents the subtleties of a misogynistic discourse, thereby courting a misogynistic qualifier for the film. But it seemed to me as if Cassavetes was using misogyny to point out how trapped many women feel while championing a strong heroine who stoically and creatively endures and counters its virulence nevertheless, thereby realistically accepting its cultural and political prominence and productively demonstrating the herculean effort required to combat it. He's not playing softball and taking a walk through Central Park, he's presenting difficult and controversial material in order to capture the essence of a pervasive dark cultural tenant from which progress can be made (by those who accept his diagnosis and want to do something about it).

It's really quite ingenious.

Opening Night's a powerful film that doesn't bombard you with its thesis; rather, it modestly presents an artist struggling to maintain control of her craft while suffering a midlife crisis. The politics of performance and the relationship between strict adaptions of written material and inspired improvisations are dramatized within, and Myrtle's predicament (that of the successful female actress trying to preserve her identity in an industry dominated by masculine ideals) reflects that presented by several prominent Canadian journalists in regards to the feminine voice's place in 21st Century film. Rowlands's performance is strong enough to dig deep down into your psyche and propel you to feel what she feels, think what she thinks, as you desperately prepare to deliver the performance of a lifetime. On par with A Woman Under the Influence and stronger than Husbands and Faces, Opening Night delivers a play within a heroine within a film within a vision which courageously exposes a deep rooted cultural miscue.

Shutter Island

Condensing dream sequences, identity (de)mystifications, psychiatrical polarizations, and traumatic war related manifestations into a staggered, disorienting psychological thriller, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island invigorates and interrogates the traditional detective film. Federal Marshals Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are on the beat, sent to the Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane to track down a missing patient. Located on Shutter Island, this isolated mental institution is reserved for violent criminals whom Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) does his best to humanely treat. Provided with limited access to the resources necessary to conduct their investigation, Daniels and Aule do their best to take advantage of organizational loopholes while restrainedly exchanging professional courtesies. A graveyard, a storm, witnesses living in caves, and a healthy supply of cigarettes keep their attention focused, while clues lead to questions followed by riddles and conundrums. Daniels's past haunts him throughout as he digs deeper and deeper, valiantly attempting to subjectively recalibrate his object. The heart of the matter harrowingly pulsates, as personal veins and institutional arteries enigmatically transmit their heuristic fluid.

Tough to craft a mainstream thriller that doesn't come across as hackneyed. In Shutter Island, Scorsese successfully infuses his subject with suspense while cultivating a paranoid, disillusioned aesthetic. Many of the scenes stand on their own and the coherent whole they eventually establish benefits from their gritty individualism. The paranoia is often moderately ridiculous and the dream sequences drag and would have benefitted from a more clandestine form of surrealism. The performances are strong, skillfully utilizing Laeta Kalogridis's hardboiled dialogue which diligently and effectively delineates their characters (Mark Ruffalo stealing the show). The ending suggests that means are more important than ends and objectively salutes tenacious innovative thinkers for attempting to remodel professional paradigms. But the ends are still distressing and I can't help but wonder if they reflect Scorsese's own fears regarding his attempts to rearrange the genre's conventions.

Zelig

Zelig, Zelig, Zelig: just who the hell is Woody Allen's Zelig? In every situation he physically, mentally, and spiritually adjusts to become one with his interlocutors, and there's nothing he can't learn, stomach, or do. His story inspires songs, advertisements, sensations, newsreels, critical and commercial interpretations, parades, biographical imitations. There's a wealth of tightly edited picturesquely paced material reminiscent of Citizen Kane and formically linked to any Wes Anderson film. His doctor does her best to establish an I but as he moves from congenial agreement to aggressive confrontation similar situations and age-old psychological adversaries arise. Playing baseball, writing academic essays, acting, golf, Zelig moves and grooves with the rest of the 'em all the way to an hilariously restructured resolution, creatively and comedically cast with the most intertextual of designs in mind.

I'm Not There

Bob Dylan. Many different roads, many different worlds. Impossible to capture the essence of such a multifarious individual (or any individual really) within a film, wherein lies the strength of Todd Haynes's I'm Not There. Haynes takes several events from Dylan's life and weaves them into a fascinating biographical mosaic, challenging, creating, and invigorating different characteristics of Dylan's character (and caricatures), using intertextual, non-linear, subterranean, and heuristic devices to skillfully construct and deconstruct the myth. Different people live different lives at different points throughout their life, throughout their days, and I'm Not There aptly highlights this ontological feature. There are six Dylans, each with a different name, some with a different race or gender, each qualifying a different nuance of the legend, potently examining the potential reality within a fluctuating fantastic frame. At the same time, Haynes's portrait comprehensively analyzes what it means to be biographical, real, historical. Random quotes are interspersed throughout, riddles within conundrums within denotations, and several of them cater to Dylan's uncanny ability to simply chronicle the convoluted vicissitudes of life. Definitely long, definitely complicated, certainly challenging, positively electrifying, in a folksy kind of way, I'm Not There's not one to miss and will inspire new interpretations with each subsequent viewing.

Into the Wild

Sean Penn's directorial debut transforms Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild into a feature length film. The film chronicles the disillusioned mid-twenties crisis of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch). McCandless finishes University, decides not to study law at Harvard, and, much to his parent's dismay, begins a reclusive voyage across the United States (with the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp). His goal is to reach and live within the wilds of Alaska. Along the way, he encounters several free-spirited individuals including Catherine Keener, Hal Holbrook, and the always entertaining Vince Vaughn. Supertramp's travels are fun to watch, his gritty adventurous spirit a free flowing flame glowing throughout the American wilderness. His insights and observations are thought provoking as well, as he hitchhikes along, using quotations from his favourite authors to guide and frame his experience.

Into the Wild is a coming of age film, about life and different ways of approaching it. There are many paths that one can travel and choosing one is not easy. Supertramp seeks one that is natural, living in the woods like Thoreau as a way to confront and discover truth. His pursuit is both bold and naive, the simply complicated consequences of not knowing where or how to fit in. He cannot escape the memories of his parents’ problematic marriage, and his travels are thoroughly haunted by them. Penn's direction juxtaposes their impact with the increasing worries of his family and insights from his sister Carine (Jena Malone), thereby depicting the troubling effects of individuality, and the ways in which hardship transforms relationships. Solutions to these explorations are by no means stable, and Into the Wild illustrates that one's existence is inextricably qualified by their convoluted relations to others.

Inland Empire

Just finished David Lynch's Inland Empire and here are some initial impressions: the film begins by settling us into a darkly surreal landscape, reacquainting us with Grace Zabriskie who plays Laura Dern's portentous neighbour. She sets up the film's phantasmagorical relationship with linearity before fading into the background. Zabriskie is one of several characters whom I would have liked to have seen provided with a bigger role. In fact, my principle critique is the quality that I usually love so dearly within Lynch's texts: its weirdness. Rather than taking the time to firmly develop a number of characters throughout, Lynch introduces several characters, has them utter mysterious one-liners, and then trail off into the dreamscape. The mysterious nature of the film's compelling, kind of like an ontological detective story; but it would have been more so if we didn't lose Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Jeremy Irons and Grace Zabriskie half way through (Irons and Stanton return briefly near the end). Instead, Laura Dern liaises with a number of identities before disappearing and reappearing in a variety of different puzzling contexts, the realities of which are difficult to penetrate to say the least (do her multiple identities reflect an artistic actors torment, the feeling they acquire from trying to BE so many different people correctly, in the context of their various stories?), and the rest of the cast is forgotten. What made Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Drive so mesmerizing were the different characters caught up in the enigma, the different opaque perspectives within. Inland Empire suffers by not providing more of its principle characters with a chance to flesh out their identities, while, fittingly enough, the lead character experiences a severe crisis regarding her in/abilities to do so.

Secret Honour

For those of you searching for a film that casts a humanitarian light onto the life and times of Richard Nixon, you should check out Robert Altman's Secret Honour. Within, we are introduced to Nixon and only Nixon as he rants and raves for an hour and a half about how he was universally coerced during his political career, drinks Chivas Regal, and ponders blowing his brains out. Played by Philip Baker Hall (Tom Cruise's father in Magnolia and one of Larry David's Doctor's in the early moments of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 4), this fictional version of Nixon breaks through the shallow conceptions which the media often employ to tether his volatile life to a mundane manipulative caricature. I'm no expert on the Nixon phenomenon, but Secret Honour does successfully accomplish the remarkable task of pointing out the socialist side of this iconic Republican, thereby accentuating the irrational's pervasive influence on so many attempts to isolate an individuality.

Not that I like Richard Nixon.

Crimes and Misdemeanours

Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors snuck up on me. The first half of the film was slow moving and mundane, leaving me to concentrate more thoroughly upon the divergent dimensions of different varieties of dragonflies than its developing motifs. But as the videotape ran on, I discovered another multi-layered take on life, morality, and existence, with relevant themes breaking through a tragically-comedic allegory. Hence, we are not surprised when we discover characters marrying and divorcing in the film's final moments, nor do we startle when the pretentious wealthy "glad handing dandy"(Twin Peaks Pilot) steals the woman of Allen's dreams. Allen's nemesis is played by Alan Alda and their polarity metaphorically examines the old artistic-merit versus kitschy-sensationalism dialectic, hilariously, especially since Allen is filming Alda's biography. Allen's attempts to expose Alda's shallow character are juxtaposed against Martin Landau's moral battle throughout, a moral battle waged with his conscience after severing ties to his mistress once and for all. Landau (Judah Rosenthal) can't decide whether or not to go public with his guilty conscience (thereby ruining several lives) or to simply get over it. All in all, Crimes and Misdemeanors is worth viewing just to hear some of the jokes, such as, "hey kid, don't listen to what your teachers are saying, just look at them and see what they're going through." Etcetera.