Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood is supposed to be, I assume, a scary re-telling of the famous fairy tale. It looks more like director Catherine Hardwicke trying to stick it to Summit Entertainment for firing her from directing the rest of the Twilight films. Red Riding Hood is visually striking but lacks any shred of substance, story, character development, realistic costumes, and logic.

Hardwicke’s stylistic filmmaking really tricks you into thinking you are watching something great. There are epic shots of tall trees in the forest, swooping overhead shots of mountains, stark color palettes, and very detailed art direction. But even the visual aspects have problems, namely the styling of the actors. It appears as if this takes place in medieval times with men drinking mead, women wearing corsets, wood-cutting being a career, grandmothers living in the middle of the forest, and a monster terrorizing the village a la Beowulf. Or something. If this is the case, then everything should look like it is from this vague fictionalized time period. I could not get past the styling of Suzette (Virginia Madsen):

The photo shows from left to right Amanda Seyfried as Valerie (totally an authentic Medieval name, right?), Billy Burke as her father Cesaire (who also plays the father in Twilight, proof of what I said at the beginning), and Suzette, her mother. Unfortunately I could not find a bigger/clearer photo of Suzette. First of all, she has bleached blonde highlights. She also has heavily drawn on eyebrows, a lot of eye shadow, eye liner, mascara, blush, and lipstick. I know that everyone in a film has to wear make-up, but it is supposed to be appropriate to the setting. I’m sure there were some early forms of makeup and hair products back then, but come on, she looks straight out of 2005. Also, it was snowing for almost the entirety of the film and everyone is running around in thin, light clothing.

That was really the only point I wanted to make. There isn’t much more to say about this sad attempt to remake Twilight with a slightly different cast of characters and plot. Of course it has to be a werewolf and not a wolf in this version. Of course there has to be an inappropriate love triangle where the girl can’t choose between two equally horrible men (but they’re attractive, so it’s okay!). Of course girls have to love monsters that could kill them. And Daddy issues. And of course the main girl has all these special abilities for no apparent reason and is otherwise a completely flat, bland character. Thanks, Hardwicke, for continuing the tradition of female directors (except for Kathryn Bigelow) making terrible films that perpetuate all the negative stereotypes about women, girls, and why filmmaking is a male-dominated industry. Keep it up and one day you’ll be just like Sofia Coppola, famous for her films Rich White People Problems: Parts 1-4.

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Magnolia: This Is Something That Happens

Today is my birthday! Well, not exactly, my birthday is February 29th and it doesn’t come around this year. So, in honor of my fake birthday I watched one of my top two favorite movies of all time. My all time favorite movie that I am not posting about is La mala educación/Bad Education by Pedro Almodóvar. I can’t post about that because I’m still having post-traumatic stress from writing a 45 page thesis on it last year. Anyway, this movie:

Magnolia (1999, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson) is a perfect movie. I know I just threw that word around in my other posts about Biutiful and The Social Network but sometimes movies are really perfect, to me. I saw it for the first time in a high school creative writing class when we were writing screenplays. My (favorite) teacher showed us this film as an example of a really good screenplay. Then I rented it, watched it again, then I bought it, and watched it a few more times but I hadn’t seen it in years until last night. And let me tell you, it is still perfect.

ALL of the characters, and there are a LOT of them, are three dimensional and miserable and wonderful and they all either change or don’t change but at the very least they grow in some way. Nearly every line of dialog is poignant, sad, and powerful. The story itself may appear to fall into one of those movies about a bunch of different people who magically all have something to do with each other at the end. But Magnolia does not fall into that trap, by inserting a voiceover narration at the most unexpected moments, giving a meta-commentary on the idea of coincidence, and just being perfect. Each situation is as heartbreaking as the next, and each character just has so much depth, something you don’t see in a lot of films. If you are a sad person or even just a thoughtful person, you will probably relate to each struggle in some way.

I’m going to list a few of my favorite quotes from the film:

Quiz Kid Donnie Smith (played by William H. Macy):

“I really do have love to give; I just don’t know where to put it.”

“And the book says, ‘We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.'”

“No it is not dangerous to confuse children with angels.”

Earl Partridge (played by Jason Robards, pictured with wife Linda, played by Julianne Moore):

“Don’t ever let anyone say to you ‘You shouldn’t regret anything.’ Don’t do that, don’t! You regret what you fucking want! And use that, use that, use that regret for anything, any way you want. You can use it, okay? This fucking life…it’s so fucking hard, so long! Life ain’t short, it’s long, it’s long, God damnit.”

And finally, from the narrator:

And there is the account of the hanging of three men, and a scuba diver, and a suicide. There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, “Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn’t believe it.” Someone’s so-and-so met someone else’s so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”

And those are just some of the reasons why Magnolia is perfect and my favorite and the movie that made me truly realize that film can be art.

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Another Blog Post About The Oscars

I love the Oscars. I know they are kind of meaningless but I love movies (shocker) and I like seeing all the actors and directors and it’s fancy. This year I’ve seen 8 out of the 10 best picture nominees. I haven’t seen The Fighter because I already saw and loved Raging Bull so I don’t feel obligated to watch any more boxing movies. I also haven’t seen The King’s Speech and I’m sorry, I’m sure it’s a great movie but it’s just not appealing to me. Maybe I will try to watch it before Sunday because it’s going to win everything and I’m going to be bitter. And maybe I’ll end up loving it. But for now, here are my thoughts on the other nominees (I promise not to talk too long about all of them).

Black Swan was a thoroughly entertaining film. I was never bored. I’m really not into Natalie Portman but she didn’t bother me as much as usual. I really like Darren Arronofksy and the film definitely had a lot of his trademark touches. Plus, how beautiful is Mila Kunis? Very beautiful. Excellent cinematography, editing, and directing. Only the writing falls a little flat at times, and sometimes seems like it’s confusing just for the sake of being confusing. In an interview with MTV, Arronofsky said that originally he was developing Black Swan and his 2008 The Wrestler as the same movie. He said, “I realized pretty quickly that taking two worlds like wrestling and ballet was much too much for one movie. So I guess my dream is that some art theater will play the films as a double feature some day.” I really, really loved The Wrestler so I’d be interested to watch them both back to back, and I definitely see how they have overlapping themes (failure, hurting yourself for success). Definitely one of my favorite films of the year, and I’m impressed that Natalie Portman learned so much ballet in such a short amount of time. And that’s the last nice thing I have to say about her.

(Next is The Fighter which like I said, I haven’t seen.)

I think the new (as of last year) system of nominating 10 films for best picture instead of 5 is a little silly, because at least 5 of the films don’t really belong on the list. I loved Inception, but it’s not really best picture material. Still, it’s a fun film that’s difficult to wrap your brain around. I love Leonardo DiCaprio, just like every other girl my age who grew up with Titanic, and he is awesome in this movie, as usual. Also, Joseph Gordon Levitt. Even though the story can get convoluted, I always appreciate when a movie pushes the boundaries, even if it causes it to fail. Props for trying to do something different. Also, great film techniques to take us in and out of the many layers of dreams.

More like The Kids Are Mediocre. Seriously, this does not belong on the best picture list. And Mark Ruffalo is taking up a spot as a best supporting actor nominee that should have gone to Andrew Garfield. More on that later. I guess it’s nominated because Hollywood loves to pat itself on the back for not being racist (see: Crash) and for not being homophobic. Yes, this is a mainstream movie about a lesbian couple raising children, so it SEEMS like it’s progressive but guess what? IT’S NOT! Come on. Julianne Moore’s character repeatedly cheats on her wife with Mark Ruffalo (I can’t even be bothered to look up the characters’ names) because I guess even though she’s a lesbian, what she really wanted and needed was a man. And what the kids really wanted and needed was a dad, not 2 moms. And everything works out with no consequences at the end, just like a typical heterosexual romantic comedy (see: Did You Hear About The Morgans?). Ok. Great. Moving on.

(Haven’t seen The King’s Speech.)

I LOVED this film. Originally I only wanted to see it because I love Danny Boyle, the story didn’t sound too appealing but I went to see it anyway and I was totally surprised and blown away. I’m not the biggest James Franco fan (I mean, how can you not roll your eyes at him at least a little bit, he’s teaching a class about himself!) but he was fantastic. I don’t know what the real Aron Ralston is like, but Franco puts so much personality into the character that I’d like to believe that’s exactly how Ralston is. Plus, to get through a situation like that, you have to be! Wonderful directing and editing, as usual for Danny Boyle. And I cried tears of relief when he finally made it out (spoiler alert?) while Sigur Rós played. What a beautiful scene. I really think this film is underrated.

What is there to say about Toy Story 3? It’s cute, heartwarming, sad, and colorful like most Pixar movies. I remember the first Toy Story from my childhood like most probably do, and in this newest installment, Andy is packing to go away to college. This resonated with my friends and I who saw this film just after graduating college. Which of course is not the same thing as first going to college, but that’s not the point. Growing up, moving on, leaving your toys behind you, it’s depressing. Also, how often do you see a best picture nominee with a 3 at the end of its title?

Oh man. The Coen Brothers! Jeff Bridges drinking whiskey on a horse with an eye patch! There is a lot to love about True Grit. Roger Deakins, the cinematographer who often works with the Coen brothers, did an incredible job, as usual. Some of the shots in this film are breathtaking, despite taking place in the middle of nowhere. The acting was wonderful. Hailee Steinfeld is FOURTEEN YEARS OLD and awesome. Like most Coen brothers productions, there was always some odd, uncomfortable humor that would pop up once in a while, which I enjoyed. The directing is flawless, of course. Even though I was admittedly a little bored in the beginning, the last 45 minutes made up for it. Overall, a solid movie.

Ugh, Winter’s Bone. “Have you seen my daddy?” and something about meth and the Ozarks for about two hours. This film was really hyped up and I swear I wanted to like it but I was just not feeling it. I don’t even have any good reasons. Sorry.

I am in love with The Social Network. WOW. Each aspect of the film fits so perfectly with the rest of it. Of course, Aaron Sorkin’s dialog is unbelievable and hilarious. But this script needed good acting to carry it out, and Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield nail it without any problems. (Also, lol Justin Timberlake. You know what’s cool? A BILLION dollars.) Good writing combined with good acting needed good directing and David Fincher knew exactly what he was doing. It’s funny because in interviews Fincher keeps saying how this movie wasn’t that great and he doesn’t understand why it’s getting so much attention. Relax, Fincher, you know it’s a good movie. Also, I saw David Fincher speak at the New York Film Festival and he said that he shot each scene hundreds of times until it was absolutely perfect. I can’t even imagine how long that must have taken and how much patience everyone must have had. But it really shows. It is absolutely perfect, just like he wanted it to be. You almost forget that it’s a movie about rich bored white kids at Harvard who invented Facebook and then fight over billions of dollars. I don’t know, the making of this film was seriously just magic. Incredible. Also why was Andrew Garfield not nominated for best supporting actor?! Come on. He was so good! “Sorry my Prada’s at the cleaners along with my hoodie and my fuck-you-flip flops you pretentious douchebag.” and “You better lawyer up, asshole.” Good thing we gave that spot to Mark Mediocre Ruffalo who sat around the movie the whole time looking scruffy on a motorcycle. I can’t give this movie enough love. I hope it wins everything it’s nominated for. And I’m tired of everybody saying “The Social Network should win, but The King’s Speech will win.” Well then why can’t The Social Network just win if we’re all in agreement here? Because The King’s Speech is straight up Oscar bait so it will get what it set out for. Even though The Social Network is so timely and on point and indicative of our current state of being. And the final scene is just crazy awesome and wonderful and I don’t have enough words for it. Jesse Eisenberg sits at his computer after all the lawsuits and everything finally quiets down. He opens Facebook, HIS OWN INVENTION, and sends a friend request to some girl he screwed over and apparently still cares about. “Baby You’re A Rich Man” by The Beatles starts playing and Eisenberg sits there continually refreshing Facebook, waiting to see if the girl will accept his request. That action is so inane and so specific to all of us who are addicted to the Internet and give so much importance to social networking sites. And yet, even the man who created it (ok, in this fictionalized version) can’t rise above the power of Facebook. Even though he’s a rich man.

So, I think it’s clear which one is my favorite. Which films will you be rooting for on Sunday?

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The Case for Female Directors: Zoe Cassavetes

The film industry is dominated by men. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently and have tried to seek out female directors. Zoe Cassavetes, daughter of director John Cassavetes, wrote and directed her 2007 Broken English. It was not a very good film. It was a lot like a Hollywood romantic movie, but with a lot less money. Despite this, I found that it had some interesting things to say about feminism.

I wrote one of my final papers about the differences between second-wave and third-wave feminism (and how they are shown in Cagney & Lacey and Weeds). I see this dichotomy in Broken English, so I’m going to give the fastest, least boring explanation possible of the two types. Second-wave feminism is from the 1960s and 1970s, fighting for women’s rights, equality in the workplace, everything you think of when you think of “feminism.” Third-wave feminism began in the 1990s and offers a more loose interpretation. Thanks to all the work the second-wave feminists did, women today can enjoy their freedoms and choose how they want to live. For example, the second wave made it possible to go out and start a career and not have to be a stay-at-home-mom; the third wave says you can be a stay-at-home-mom if you choose to be, it’s all up to you.

Rosie the Riveter, I've always loved this

A lot of the writings on feminism set up this discourse between the second and third wave as “mother and daughter.” The mother being, of course, the older woman from the second wave, and the daughter being the younger woman today. There is a scene in Broken English that shows parts of this conversation. The film is about Nora (Parker Posey) living in New York City in her late 20s-early 30s looking for love. She has bad luck with men, and everyone around her is married. She also seems to have depression and anxiety and is generally miserable and lonely. Anyway, there is a scene where she is in a restaurant with her mother Vivien (Gena Rowlands) and the two women discuss the state of Nora’s love life. Nora’s mother and other older women continue to ask her when she is getting married throughout the film. Vivien says to Nora:

“I can’t quit thinking about how hard it must be for young women nowadays. I mean, on the one hand, the world is wide open to you, all the choices you want, I think there’re too many choices really. It just must be very confusing, trying to find a path through all of that. Especially with men.”

Vivien is perhaps too old to have been a “second-wave feminist” and I know I’m making a huge comparison, but Vivien represents an older way of thinking about women. Women used to have a “path,” they were to get married, have babies, and take care of their family. Today we have “too many choices” and Nora represents the “third-wave” woman, maybe even later. She has all of the choices in the world open to her, but yet she seems to want to just choose to get married. According to the new feminism, it’s fine if she chooses that. But then that choice doesn’t really work for her, because she just can’t seem to find a good man. And then as a result of not being able to find a good man, she is miserable and doesn’t want to pursue any other “choice” open to young women today.

On the surface this seems to be an anti-feminist film, which is discouraging since we don’t have many female voices in the film industry. Zoe Cassavetes had a chance to say something good about young women today. Instead, she buried her message into a tangly, problematic script. But I think I understand what she was going for. Despite the many choices young women have, many women still are only interested in securing a man. But having a man will not make you suddenly happy (if you are already depressed). Nora’s best friend Audrey (Drea de Matteo) is married to Mark (Tim Guinee) who is very rich and successful. But Audrey is almost as miserable as Nora is.

I think the overarching message of Broken English is that more often than not, life just sucks. The game of finding a man to marry is just something to distract women from their unhappiness. Because even if you do find a wonderful rich and successful man who can provide for you, like Audrey, you will eventually become lonely again and wish you weren’t married. “Having a man won’t make you happy” is a good enough message, but (Zoe) Cassavetes doesn’t offer any alternative. You are either alone and miserable, or married and miserable.

Wonderful.

Broken English can really be summed up by the annoying cliche: "Men: can't live with them, can't live without them."

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Why?

Over the last year and a half, every couple of weeks one of these posters started showing up all over New York City: on bus stops, in the subway, on construction sites, and of course on television. Although I have not actually seen any of these films, and while I’m sure they are enjoyable to watch, they are all the same film to me. Poorly written romantic comedies with some kind of contrived conflict that the famous people on the cover are definitely going to solve by the end of the movie, probably by getting married. I am not saying that I only watch meaningful and artistic independent films, but I am saying that enough is enough. We get it.

I understand how the film industry works. Big studios want to produce films that will make the most amount of money by appealing to the lowest common denominator. And unfortunately, we asked for this. Our American culture values reality television, over-produced pop music, and big budget romantic comedies. And money. Lots of money. There is a demand for bad romantic comedies, so there will continue to be a supply of bad romantic comedies.

But why isn’t it like this in other countries? For example, Spain. Pedro Almodóvar is Spain’s most important and most beloved director. Yet he makes complicated films with brilliant color palettes scored with popular songs that he tweaks for his own purposes, that delve deeply into questions of gender roles, family, religion, and society. If a filmmaker in America tried to make something like Almodóvar’s Bad Education (2004), only a select group of people would care, and it wouldn’t be enough to convince studios to finance any future projects of this hypothetical American Almodóvarean director. (See: Terry Gilliam.) Yet in Spain, Almodóvar is highly respected. Which leads me to believe that mass produced terrible movies are an American tradition.

Mainstream American cinema would just never center a film around a transgendered sexually abused heroin addict seeking revenge, but mainstream Spanish cinema did.

I am in no way saying that all other countries only make brilliant films. I am also not saying that all American films are bad. The problem is that we just don’t care. We would rather mindlessly watch a very offensive battle of the sexes between Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler. And there is nothing wrong with occasional mindlessness. It’s just that popular mainstream American cinema is currently 90% mindless. And I am proposing that we do something about it.

Maybe we need better marketing strategies for independent films. Although I argue that the “indie” film is dead and over thanks to films like Juno (2007) and 500 Days of Summer (2009) which successfully commercialized quirkiness. But independent films still exist, they just don’t always have to be about quirky young people. I wrote about Terry Gilliam’s 2009 The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus here. It’s a prime example of what I’m talking about. We had a film that explored the nature of dreams and reality, performance and cinema itself. It had wonderful cinematography and thought provoking dialog. Yet it’s been criticized because the plot is hard to understand. So what? The only reason this film even came out is because it was Heath Ledger’s last role, and we only care about celebrities. Otherwise it probably never would have gotten enough funding.

Look at us shoving our quirk down your throat!

Independent films need more financing and more promoting. We can’t change the values of our fellow Americans, and we can’t change that bad movies will continue to make money. But there is this abundance of hypothetical money that only gets funneled into terrible projects. Why not spread some of it around and give independent filmmakers a chance? Of course not all independent films are good. In fact there are plenty of terrible independent films that don’t deserve more money.

I don’t know what my solution is, but I would like to be a part of it. I have now graduated from NYU and am trying to figure out what to do with my life. This is something I am very passionate about. If anyone happens to be reading this that works for an independent film company, please, hire me. (Hello, ThinkFilm, IFC, Focus Features, Sony Pictures Classics, and everyone else!)  I want to help you. I live in NYC and I have a lot of office experience and I can be your receptionist or bookkeeper if that’s what you need. But I can also use my writing ability and analytical thinking to help further the cause of independent and foreign film in the United States. Let me help you change the film industry.

I will close with one final point: James Cameron. Titanic (1997) was the highest grossing film in the United States. And it deserved to be, it was a wonderful film. He then broke his own record with Avatar (2009) which, in my opinion, was a disaster. No disrespect to the incredible visual world he created, it was aesthetically pleasing and arguably “changed the game.” But the writing was horrific, we had stock characters that we didn’t care about who were motivated by some vague narrative that was much more developed in Pocahontas (1995). I got over it, I was ready to move on–but no. Avatar is currently in theaters again so that it can make all of that money all over again. And it was already released on DVD, but it will later be released again as soon as the 3D technology is ready, which means the film has now been in theaters twice and will be released on DVD twice even though it ALREADY broke all the records the first time it came out. To make matters worse, soon Titanic will be re-released in theaters in 3D. Which means that it will make all of its original money again, plus millions more due to inflation and the fact that a ticket to see a 3D movie costs almost $20 in NYC. And then it will probably be re-released on DVD, and then re-released again as a 3D DVD. BUT HE ONLY WROTE ONE FILM. He isn’t even trying to make another 3D game changer with a horrible script, he’s just using one he has already written. And the studios will give him all the money he needs, because they know that it will easily continue to break records. And all the independent films will continue to need money, and that’s why I need to be a part of restoring meaning to American cinema.

However, I will always love Titanic.

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Violent Island

Shutter Island (2009) finally came out, and I saw it on its opening night. I really enjoyed it, despite all the bad reviews about how it is disappointing and not Martin Scorsese’s best work. It’s certainly no Taxi Driver (1976) but I appreciate it for what it is, a good old-fashioned creepy movie with a straight narrative and a couple of twists. And of course, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. One aspect of the film that I find interesting is Scorsese’s use of violence.

Violence, both physical and psychological, is an overarching theme in almost all of Scorsese’s films. A lot of his films are just blatantly about violence itself: Mean Streets (1973), Goodfellas (1990), and The Departed (2006) — all dealing with mafia-related violence. Raging Bull (1980) is about boxing, an inherently violent sport. Taxi Driver (1976) depicts a Vietnam war veteran, a man shaped by violence and who himself commits violence. Even some of his less explicitly violent films such as The King of Comedy (1982) and After Hours (1985) deal with a lot of psychological violence (as do the physically violent films).

Shutter Island to me seems like a culmination of all of Scorsese’s ideas of violence. It has plenty of physical violence and it is probably his most literal use of psychological violence. All issues with fake Hollywood psychology aside, the film deals with mentally ill patients of a psychiatric institution. Without spoiling anything, it’s clear from the trailer that something is just not right on Shutter Island. The doctors and orderlies seem to be hiding something, and they may be using psychology itself violently. There is also another layer to this: the film itself is psychologically violent. With all the twists and gruesome detail, the viewer feels like they themselves have been a victim of psychological violence. I saw it with my friend Allison and at the end she said that she wanted to curl up under some soft blankets and cry.

Another aspect of Scorsese’s culmination of violence in this film can be seen in the dialog. Several times throughout the film, the characters discuss violence itself and seem to consider it philosophically. At the beginning, a doctor calls Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) violent, although Teddy hasn’t done anything violent to warrant such an accusation. We then see a flashback proving the doctor’s point. Teddy is confused as to how the doctor could have known this, and it raises some interesting points. Does committing violence make a person violent? Is experiencing violence enough to cause a person to be violent? Can you really tell that someone is violent just by looking at them? How much violence does someone have to commit before they are forever violent? Why tell stories of violence? There are other conversations in the film about these ideas. Also, Teddy repeats the line “I’m not here to kill anybody” many times. Although he is usually answering a question, it also seems as if he is trying to convince himself, to talk himself out of violence.

After decades of making films about violence, Scorsese finally seems to sit back and let his characters wonder what the hell all of it really means. Although nobody seems to come to any type of conclusion, I really like that he’s asking these questions.

Martin Scorsese on the set of Shutter Island

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