Running With Scissors 04/20/07

This movie starts out like this: (Blackout) Maybe this is how I should tell the story of my life (paraphrased somewhat.) 
Bad news bears alert! Do you know what you're doing or not? You don't know where to start this movie? Maybe it should start like this? We need a little more confidence here in the tale. Why even a voiceover? just start it: This is what happened. Authoritative, direct. Don't waste my time, figuring out what you're trying to do at the beginning. 
This movie suffers from a more mild identity crisis. It tries to be a comedy, but there's nothing funny about a true story like this. Sure one can insert humor in here and there as comic relief but don't expect me to laugh at these poor poor people. They easily win my pity not my scorn. Mental illness of course can be very serious. Especially when you're mother is seeing an even crazier shrink who drugs her out of her mind in order to adopt her kid along with his monthly child support check. Throughout the movie we get the sense that author is somewhat afraid of people's reactions. So he puts up this fence to show that he himself is above the entire mess. He makes it known and clear to the audience that this movie is supposed to be funny. Which wouldn't be a problem if what really didn't make people laugh is someone telling us outright that we should. Like I said before this movie needs more confidence. Not just in themselves but also in the audience. They need to trust that we will want to find the story interesting or funny. Is that not why were here watching the movie? Paticularly in the first quarter the movie holds our hands a little too much. It gets better though.
We have good performances all around. Most notably from the adults, Cox, Bening, and Baldwin, who seems to be in every movie nowadays. The younger charachters not so much, but then again there's not much to them and its probably pretty hard to play a homosexual schizophrenic as if you know what you're doing. 
The director's ability is somewhat in flux also. Again toward the beginning. He loves doing interesting things with the camera sure and I respect the ambition but there's a reason we have an editing room. Like bad jokes in comedies, if a montage doesn't work or has no purpose than it shouldn't be in the picture. We have quite the montages in this film, slow motion, pop music, fast-forward, snow from the ceilings. About three quarters of them work. Another quarter doesn't. Where's that asshole producer when you need him.
Is this is going to turn into that review that bashes the picture the entire time but then recommends it. Unfortunately yes. Why? Because as I said, it has problems. But three fourths of the time it works, and the story is more interesting and ambitious than most of the stuff out there. So while it may not have reached its perfection as a story, the goal was set up high and a failure at this level is respectable.

The Departed 11/08/06

I think this will be the last gangster movie Martin Scorcese ever directs. In his earlier efforts like Goodfellas or Casino there is this feeling of awe in the grandeur of the life. He brought you into this underworld with a certain amount of excitement. That excitement is gone in this movie and what remains is a certain level of detachment and acceptance. Even ith all the violence and gore it definitely sounds like an old man is telling the story. A man that has seen it all and is never surprised. The best line in the movie is also the last. I won't give it away but it says it all. Acceptance, no remorse, no real regret, no huge emotion. This whole thing, this whole crap game, this gangster life, it never stops and its gotten pretty damn old. 

Don't get me wrong this is still a great movie. and funny too. I was not expecting something, anything half as funny. There were three screenwriters on this movie: William Monahan, Felix Chong, Siu Fai Mak. I don't know who did what, but there were a hell of a lot of great one-liners that I have to go back and memorize.
This movie also had a stellar cast with everyone doing an awesome job. Nicholson, DiCaprio, Wahlberg, Baldwin, Sheen. They all did a great job. My huge praise goes to Matt Damon though, who really completes the most twisted and distorted character of them all. NIcholson and DiCaprio might get Oscar nominations. I wouldn't be surprised either way. But Damon definitely deserves one, I will be dissapointed if he doesn't garner some attention.
The one weak point in this story is the one woman character again. She had a great part as the shrink to both undercover agents. She could have been great, but oppurtunities were missed and her part became quite useless. In this story she didn't even need to be there. You could have cut her and made the movie twenty minutes shorter: which also would have been a good idea.


Added commentary: Because I felt like it, I saw this movie once more in a theater on March 6th. It is a better movie the second time around. Everything that I didn't think made sense or didn't understand the first time around, this time I got. For instance, seen again, I don't think the woman charachter was a weak part and I don't see any reason to cut anything at all in this movie. The second time around it went much faster and smoother. I also got the moral. The movie's about lying and what goes with that territory. Pay attention first time watcher. There's no good or bad guys. This isn't cops and robbers. It's a game of cat and mouse. Catch that stinking rat.