Revanche

Problems. Solutions. What happens when simple plans go terribly wrong or your perfect life lacks one component culturally representative of stability? Götz Spielmann's Revanche tackles tough problems and even tougher solutions in a concretely realistic fashion, developing dynamically hard-boiled characters in a complicated, nocturnal narrative. Ex-con Alex (Johannes Krisch) and his prostitute girlfriend Tamara (Irina Potapenko) plan to rob a bank and escape to the South while husband and wife Robert (Andreas Lust) and Susanne (Ursula Strauss) struggle to have their first child. One poorly aimed bullet ruins one potential future while possibly consummating another; Robert does his best to cope while Alex works through his frustration. Revenge is in the works, but rather than showcasing its bloodthirsty desire, Spielmann lethargically allows it to steep, thereby using his characters to demonstrate a broad range of its associated affects. Functioning as a steadfast foil is Alex's grandfather Hausner (Johannes Thanheiser), constituted like a rock, embedded, providing age-old bits of timeless empirical wisdom to anyone fortunate enough to listen. Revanche certainly isn't pretty, and it doesn't deal with cookie-cutter subject matter as it evocatively unravels its panorama, definitive and lucid, decadent and deadly. Bizarre in its motivations and cryptic in its revelations, Revanche oddly functions as a formulaic compromise, conceptualizing high and low.

The Invention of Lying

Matthew Robinson and Ricky Gervais's The Invention of Lying introduces a simplistic plot that collapses beneath the weight of its subject matter. After having lost his job, apartment, and chance with a beautiful woman (Jennifer Garner), Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais), who inhabits a world where no one lies, discovers that if he engages in the act of lying he can do whatever he wants. No one clues into the fact that he's using his imagination to conjure fantastic stories and everyone supply acquiesces to his mischievous, modestly mendacious designs. But he has a conscience and won't lie in order to seduce his love interest, even though she consistently mentions that he isn't an adequate genetic match due to his gut and pug nose. That's about it. Apart from Gervais's characteristic dry wit, a number of entertaining cameos, and the odd hilarious bit, the film falls apart after Bellison learns to lie and would have been much funnier if it had taken place solely in the world where everyone tells the truth. Some basic plot developments are suspect as well, for instance, after having spent all of his money on rent, Bellison has money to spend at a casino, and Bellison's nemesis Brad Kessler (Rob Lowe) questions his statements even though he's supposed to believe everything everyone says. It's like Gervais's attempt to move away from sordid material into a more family friendly domain shatters his usually impeccable humour and results in a cutesy-wutsey romp, occasionally funny, but generally dismissible. Not a word of a lie.

A Serious Man

The Coen Brothers's A Serious Man examines the impact of a series of disruptive events upon the life of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg). Things are going well for Larry near the film's beginning insofar as his status-quo routine is firmly established and he is being considered for tenure at the educational institution where he works. Things could certainly be better: he has trouble establishing a dialogue with his children, his gun loving neighbour (Peter Breitmayer) doesn't recognize where his lawn ends and Larry's begins, and his down-on-his-luck brother (Uncle Arthur played by Richard Kind) lives with his family and can't seem to get his life together. But these minor problems are dealt with stoically albeit non-confrontationally by the introverted Larry who still remains confident in his work and cohesive in his appearances. Then, suddenly, his wife (Sarah Lennick) announces she's leaving him, a hopeless student (David Kang) places him in a ludicrously awkward position, his brother is arrested, the tenure committee begins to receive disparaging letters, he's forced to endure humiliating conversations with his wife and her new love interest (Fred Melamed), he gets in a car accident, discovers he owes Columbia Records a large sum of money, and so on and so on, while seeking help from confusing rabbis (Simon Helberg, George Wyner), making sure his son (Aaron Wolff) is ready for his Bat Mitzvah, living out of a matchbox hotel (with his brother), . . . ; in short, things amusingly spiral out of control as Larry tries to keep from discombobulating. It's definitely a Coen Brothers film inasmuch as they effectively introduce over a dozen dynamic characters and awkward situations who/which are tightly tied together in a coherent chaotic whole, a whole which situates old world legends in a post-modern predicament while simultaneously disseminating that very same predicament as an old world legend. Some of the characters could have used some more screen time (Uncle Arthur for instance), the ending could have had a little more closure (the Coen Brothers taking a roguish shot at their audience), the Dybbuk could have been reintroduced a bit more directly (although I suppose it's amorphous presence is meant to stimulate debate [a debate about which they are likely chuckling]), and Larry could have occasionally expressed himself more elaborately (although I suppose that's the point of the ending). But, nevertheless, A Serious Man playfully and mischievously creates a multi-dimensional functionally dysfunctional world, wherein audience and characters alike are treated to a cornucopia of possibilities and a plethora of problematic realities.

District 9

What happens when a spaceship full of aliens possessing highly advanced military technology parks itself over a major city and waits for first contact? In Neill Blomkamp's District 9, those aliens are transferred from their ship to a segregated section of town, fenced off from the strictly human, and left to struggle while the military tries to find a way to harness their secrets. Seen as an economic burden, a foreign intrusion, and a quizzical curiosity, these aliens make ends meet with the limited resources left at their disposal, scraping by a meagre living while holding on to their coveted technologies. Enter Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a hapless, enthusiastic, South African citizen, who is accidentally sprayed by a clandestine fuel while serving a couple of aliens their eviction notice. This fuel transforms his body into a human/alien hybrid, extremely sick yet capable of firing extraterrestrial weaponry. None to happy regarding his life threatening transformations, Wikus escapes the authorities and flees to the only place he can hide, the alien's pseudo-encampment. There he reencounters the fuel's creator and the two launch a preposterously poignant plan to save both their lives.

District 9 examines racism, technological progress, media manipulation, militaristic modifications, and misfortunate messianic mollifications in a fictionally scientific fashion. The film's intellectually deep but solidly entertaining, bridging the gap between esoteric modes of artistic expression and smash-em up mass marketed 'action' flicks. Bit over-the-top, vicious, and sensationally subtle, District 9 still focuses on contemporary racio-cultural issues, productively pointing out that these problems persist. It's a shame that these narratives often boil down to who has the bigger gun, but, unfortunately, this is a cultural code that has been heuristically hard-wired, a potential fact, which, if I'm not mistaken, Blomkamp is ironically deconstructing (banging his head against the wall) by using de Merwe as his hero.

The Maiden Heist

Wasn't too impressed with Peter Hewitt's The Maiden Heist. I rented it because I couldn't resist seeing a film starring Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, and William H. Macy, and while they played their quirky typecast characters with the same seductive skills that have sustained their prolific careers, their acting couldn't overcome the lacklustre script as the film flounders during its second act. What's missing is a serious problem. Each of the aforementioned stars works as a museum security guard who has fetishized a particular work of art. Upon learning that their favourite pieces are to be transferred to an exhibit in Denmark, they concoct a plan to steal them. But while heisting, their plan goes off without a sensational hitch, leaving their audience slightly bored by the lack of substantial shock. The introduction's strong enough with a startling opening scene which showcases Walken's traditional mania, but as the plot slowly unravels, and the characters develop a stronger relationship with their favourite work of art than they do with each other, nothing unforeseen is introduced to ridiculously yet rationally complicate things, which results in a mediocre finish.

Angels and Demons and The Dark Knight

Rented Angels and Demons and The Dark Knight the other weekend and was surprised by the similarities between their endings. Both films showcase idyllic characters who have fallen from grace (one by his own free will, the other pushed) in their pursuit of the greater good. And at the end of both films, the powers that be use their influence to ensure that both characters are venerated, in order to avoid disrupting their elevated cultural image. Thus, the public within both films avoids falling into a cynical abyss by not having their heroes seriously defamed, while their audience falls into a cynical abyss after having been provided with a direct representation of historical manipulation, a direct representation which calls into question the saintly status of their inveterate icons. Of course they're both simply films so their demonic destabilization of the established order of things can be dismissed angelically as pure fiction. But the interactions between these two narrative levels forge an interesting balance, subtly illuminating the fictional aspects of these non-fictional dark knights.

The Hangover

Don't really see what all the hype's about surrounding Todd Phillips's The Hangover. Sure, some scenes are seriously hilarious, and it's fun to watch a group of rowdy dudes hit some cataclysmic highs and lows while partying it up in Vegas. But a lot of the humour is of the "taser to the groin"/"beaten down with a crowbar"/"I'm a lunatic psycho" variety and after a while all the juvenile violence wears a little thin. The lunatic psycho (Zach Galifianakis) has a lot of offbeat points to make that infuse the film with a particularly dark functionally awkward comic sensibility, but it's overt psycho awkward without the mediated ridiculousness that made famous psychos like Serial Mom and many, many Christopher Walken characters so appealing. The over-the-top shenanigans try and establish a dimension of ridiculous awkwardness but the constant jocktacular beatings and bizarre attempts to establish a realist counterpoint destabilize its productivity. It has its moments, like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas accidentally runs into Animal House while recycling a bad "and then I #$%# her" joke, but those moments are few and far between, and the high-powered "yeah, we're full of testosterone" backbone doesn't help The Hangover convalesce.

World's Greatest Dad

Few films slowly and subtly build their dark comedic landscapes as effectively as Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad, and the finished product is an hilarious mixture of aerobic angst and ideological agony. The facts: single father Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) works as a high school poetry teacher whose elective class is none to popular. He's been trying to sell a book for most of his adult life with no success and his anti-social son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) disdainfully dismisses his heartfelt attempts to establish a loving relationship. Well, one day Kyle accidentally chokes himself to death and after discovering the body, Lance can't let the police find him in such a disheveled state. So he writes a suicide note and moves him to the closet, making it look like Kyle traditionally took his own life. But unfortunately for Lance, the suicide note is discovered online and quickly disseminated to the majority of his high school's student body. Much to his surprise, Kyle becomes something of a legend as the students cast him as a tragic misunderstood hero, a misguided object of idolatry and veneration. The only thing Lance can do is go along, and soon his poetry class is full of admirers and he's invited to Dr. Dana's (Deborah Horne) television show to plug his conjured version of Kyle's diary. But all good things must come to an end, and just as the high school library is being renamed in Kyle's honour, with a special appearance by loveable singer-songwriter Bruce Hornsby, the truth, and Lance's shot at the big time (including his first book deal), comes crashing down. Wherein lies the ideological agony of the film insofar as realistically speaking Lance's co-workers etc. are upset because he lied to them, but, ideologically speaking, they're even more upset that he told the truth, thereby ruining the cult of Kyle by delegitimizing their exhaulted hero. Things return to normal for good 'ole Lance and he looks like his life has improved remarkably in the aftermath, Goldthwait's succinct salute to Lance's courageous individualism. By showing us what Kyle was like before his deification and then forcing us to awkwardly watch the absurd heights said deification reaches (notably the recurring shots of Kyle's uncharismatic comic "portrait"), Goldthwait maniacally and ingeniously establishes an elegant elegy for what it feels like to squirm, not as raunchy or frank as a well-crafted John Waters film, but just as resolute in producing unsettling tremors of intellectual discomfort.