This is the End (3/5 Stars)

A review of what must be the last buddy comedy from Team Rogen/Goldberg. Bonus: an in-depth analysis of rape jokes. 

A message to all would be writers out there. There are three types of stories you can write that do not need any type of research and which can actually still be quite good. These include “The Coming of Age” story, the “Romance” story, and the “Death” story. These do not need any research because all the details can be taken directly from personal experience. As long as you are fairly observant about what you regularly see and aren’t a total A-hole, people should be able to empathize with the story and enjoy it. However once these stories have exhausted themselves, any further attempts to tell the same types of stories without making the movies about anything more than oneself will generally feel derivative and let us be honest a bit narcissistic. At some point in your career you must start doing that work. Let’s stop being theoretical and start naming names.

Judd Apatow is a good example. He wrote three good movies that people went and saw. “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” which can be accurately described as a coming of age story. “Knocked Up” which is the romance. And “Funny People,” which is the death story. Not a bad track record, but I don’t think anyone bothered to see his latest movie, “This is 40.” Why? Because Judd Apatow has basically already said everything he could about himself, and “This is 40” is merely another movie about himself. The other three were too, but at least they had originality. We had not seen these stories about this particular person before.

Will Ferrell and Adam McKay are good examples of how writers can extend their shelf life by doing work. Will Ferrell has played the same type of character many times before (especially back in his sports comedy days) but his movies are generally about different things. This he has done especially well with his past few movies about regulation of wall street (The Other Guys) and politics (The Campaign). I think it is fair to say that when Will Ferrell and Adam McKay are writing their next movie, they might be reading some books instead of just constantly getting high.

That should be a good segway into writing team Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. They were responsible for the great Superbad, the pretty good Pineapple Express, and now This is the End. What all these movies have in common is that they concern a pair of two guys who are at a crossroads in their friendship and there is some sort of intoxicant involved. Superbad had two high school seniors about to go to different colleges who are trying to buy alcohol for a party in order to impress girls. Pineapple Express is about two twenty-somethings, a pot smoker and his regular drug dealer, that reluctantly bond while running away from drug lords. This is the End concerns two almost middle-aged guys (Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel) on different career tracks who reluctantly bond during the apocalypse. It should be noted that the apocalypse happens but not before everyone smokes a lot of pot. They also smoke a lot of pot after the apocalypse happens. Generally, writers graduate from the “Coming of Age” story into something else at some point. These guys are sort of doing the same story about two friends who like to get high over and over again with just ever escalating background drama. This has to be the last time they tell this story right? They can’t top the apocalypse. I kept thinking of Oliver Stone’s movie “Natural Born Killers,” while watching this movie. They are both good movies and “This is the End” is certainly funny most of the time, but I just have this sinking feeling that we really are watching the end here. Like Stone, the writing team has self-imploded on pot and won’t be making anything worth seeing again. Like drugs, movies about drug use are always better the first time or rather the first time the characters are doing the drugs. The older the characters get, the less fun and more sad a story that revolves around stoners gets. Imagine if Rogen and Goldberg really did write a sequel to Pineapple Express. The actors in this movie (Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride and James Franco) play “themselves” and spend some time getting high, talking about the possibility and actually making a home video version of Pineapple Express 2 while the world burns outside. It is pretty funny, yes, but seriously do not make that movie.

This movie contains the Apocalypse but do not mistake it for a movie about surviving the Apocalypse. Nobody here has a clue about what to do as sinkholes to hell form in the ground, the Hollywood Hills burst into flames, and demons of all shape and size roam the countryside killing celebrities in brutal fashion. Most of the action takes place in James Franco’s mansion where a huge party was taking place when the rapture started. Conveniently none of the comedians were taken up into heaven at the beginning so we get to hear some very funny petty arguing about who gets the last Milky Way bar, who is going to venture outside to get water, and why aren’t we good people who get to go to heaven. The humor ranges to pretty raunchy extremes. At some points I was wondering why the movie did not get an NC-17 rating. I mean, usually if you show a gigantic erect penis in a movie, it is deemed pornographic. Why does it matter if it belongs to the devil and not a human being? Does the MPAA really make a distinction about the difference between human penises and demon penises? Given the R rating, I suppose it does.

In any case, given that this movie contains plenty of pretty successful and some not so successful humor about some rather extreme stuff (and lord knows the way things are going, movies are only going to get even more extreme) I think now might be a good time to delve into a discussion of the proper way to make jokes about very extreme stuff. So as a bonus to your usual review, here is an in-depth analysis of rape jokes. We will take a look at three examples from This is the End and try to figure out what makes them okay/not okay and funny/not funny.

BONUS IN-DEPTH RAPE JOKE ANALYSIS

First: a note on that correct attitude for a rape joke analysis. Why would any comedian want to tell a rape joke? Think about it this way. Any joke in any context always teeters on the edge of funny/not funny. In many cases the difference between people nodding along and rolling on the ground laughing has nothing to do with the subject of the joke. It has to do with the correct amount of voice inflection, word choice, rhythm, misdirection, and improvisation towards the present audience. A rape joke, given the topic’s inherent solemnity, is especially fragile. Tell a knock-knock joke badly and people may groan. Tell a rape joke wrong and you may seriously hurt someone’s feelings. Having said that, the best rape joke will always be better than the best knock-knock joke given the way that certain jokes work. (Why that is will be explained.) Because of this telling a great rape joke is a bit like scaling Mount Everest. They can get big laughs, only the best comedians can do it, and if you try it without knowing what you are doing you just might die in the process. For those reasons jokes about rape and plenty other very taboo subjects are continually attempted by comedians. They are either successful or not. What needs to be understand however is that the main purpose of the joke is to make people laugh not to promote rape.

Let’s lay down some ground rules. These come from Sigmund Freud’s joke book Jokes and Their Relationship to the Subconscious. I have not found a better explanation of how jokes work and believe me it is not from a lack of trying. Comedians sometimes try to explain why things are funny but unfortunately a lot of them are kind of in the dark when it comes to their craft, or are guided mainly by instinct which should explain why one of the best movies about telling a joke, The Aristocrats, is not especially funny.

Freud says there are three causes of laughter. I will label them jokes of Efficiency, Misdirection, or Hostility. This is the End has a rape joke for each one. Let’s start with the easiest to explain.

Efficient Joke telling, Freud says, is the art of not using as few words as possible but using too few words. Take a pun for example: a Buddhist monk refused anesthesia at his local dentist’s office. His goal: Transcend dental medication. The pun conveys two meanings in the space of one. In this way, it saves the brain psychic energy, which is released in the form of a sense of relief and laughter. Take note that if I phrased the joke differently it would not be funny. A Buddhist refused anesthesia at his local dentist’s office. He did so because he misunderstood the phrase transcendental meditation, a form of Buddhist prayer, for the phrase transcend dental medication. Tedious, a bit? Brevity is the soul of wit, so only say what is needed to say, if that. In This is the End, after a series of petty arguments, Jonah Hill prays to God to kill Jay Baruchel. Instead a demon comes into Jonah’s room while he is sleeping. As the demon climbs up onto Jonah, he scratches his arm with his hooves and leaves three marks. Jonah opens his eyes and exclaims, “This isn’t a dream. This is real!”

Do you get the joke? Maybe, depending on whether you are already informed as to what this scene is parodying. A parody like a pun is an efficient joke. It conveys two meanings in the space of one, given of course that the audience knows what the pun is referring two. In this case, you would have had to see Roman Polanski’s 1968 classic horror movie “Rosemary’s Baby.” The line “This isn’t a dream, this is real!” is uttered by Mia Farrow. Her husband, in exchange for help in his career, has drugged his wife and essentially sold her to a coven of witches so they can have a host for the spawn of the devil. The drugs wear off just as the devil is climbing on top of her, scratching her arms with his hooves. (By the way, this is the last movie you should ever show to your pregnant wife.) Parodies are a derivative form of joke, and like puns, they can sometimes elicit groans as being way too obvious, like for instance, TV shows that parody Star Wars or The Godfather ad infinitum. An efficient joke told too many times loses its efficiency. This was the first time anybody parodied “Rosemary’s Baby” and so I thought it was funny (not to mention the obscure reference massaged my film buff ego). Of course, now that I’ve explained it to you, you probably won’t find it funny, but hey, that’s just the way efficient jokes work!

A Joke of Misdirection, Freud says, is the art of bringing up a not-funny topic as a mere distraction for something else far more benign. A not-funny topic, let’s say rape, instills in the listener a sense of danger. So they put up mental defenses in order to deal with this topic. But the joke is not about this not-funny topic. It is entirely about something else. As the listener comes to this realization it brings down its mental defenses, causing psychic relief with the side effect of laughter. One of the best examples is the Black Knight fight in “Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail.” King Arthur is having a duel with the Black Knight in order to cross a bridge and succeeds in chopping off the Black Knight’s arm. But the fight does not stop here. The Black Knight seemingly in no pain at all insists that they continue. “But I cut your bleeding arm off!” The king says. “No, you didn’t” contradicts the Black Knight. “Yes I did!” the king insists pointing to the Black Knight’s lack of arm. The Black Knight pauses and then remarks “Tis’ but a flesh wound. Now, have at it.” The end of the skit has the King finally acquiescing to a draw after he chops off all the remaining limbs and the Black Knight still won’t admit defeat.

We have been presented with something rather serious, dismemberment (and probably death), which has been subsequently misdirected into something harmless and absurd, petty bickering as to whether the duel is over or not and who is winning it. Generally the more serious the topic is the funnier the joke can be if and only if the misdirection is successfully pulled off.

The misdirection rape joke in This is the End works like this. After three days of hanging out in James Franco while the apocalypse rages outside, the six men are treated to an unexpected guest in the form of Emma Watson. For those who live in caves, Emma Watson played Hermoine in the last eight Harry Potter movies and is widely considered to be especially beautiful. She has been hiding in a drainage pipe for the last 72 hours. She is dirty. She is tired. And she has nowhere else to turn. James Franco immediately offers his bedroom for her to stay in. She takes this offer, heads upstairs, and the six guys have a conversation. Jay Baruchel starts it. He relates to the guys the importance of making Emma Watson feel comfortable given the obvious situation. The other guys agree and promise not to overburden her with questions about working on the Harry Potter movies. She probably gets a lot of that and it is probably really annoying by now. No, Jay says, the other situation. You know the apocalypse outside and the disappearance of all lawful society and the fact that she is the only female in a house with six guys. We want to make her feel comfortable and not put out the wrong vibe, he implores. “What vibe?” the group asks. “What are you talking about, Jay?” Jay, ever the shy nice guy, feels reluctant to actually say the words. So Danny McBride pipes in, “I think what Jay means is a ‘rapey vibe.” The group becomes indignant and insulted. Nobody was at all considering raping Hermoine. And then the conversation devolves into some petty bickering as to who exactly Jay was specifically worried about so much that he felt the need to bring up the rape topic. They point fingers and accuse each other until McBride suggests that Jay isn’t worried about Emma at all and instead brought up the topic because he is afraid of soon becoming the house bitch himself. Emma for her part is in the bedroom only hearing enough of the conversation to pick out the word ‘rape’ a bunch of times. So she accosts the group with a fire axe, steals all of their water, and leaves the mansion.

This is one of the best jokes in the movie and perhaps you can see the misdirection. The subject of Emma Watson being gang-raped is brought into the audience’s consciousness. It is a very serious thing and the psychic defenses to go up in order to deal with such a situation. But soon enough it becomes clear that she is not in any danger. Nobody in the house is thinking rape but the nicest shyest guy who brings the topic for the sole purpose of protecting her. Finally the joke ends on a suggestion that even Jay does not think it is likely and is only acting out of a selfish desire to protect his own self. At this point the misdirection is so complete it actually becomes unnecessary for Emma to vividly demonstrate her ability to defend herself, but why not show it anyway. She whacks Seth Rogen in the face with the axe but. And then she leaves the movie entirely. So don’t worry. There is no way she is going to get raped and nobody is suggesting that it should happen. Relax.

A Joke of Hostility, Freud says, is the only type of joke that does not particularly need any cleverness. It is an insult that gives pleasure. The idea is thus: You are a human being with instinctual desires to do anything and everything you want whenever you want to do it. Society sets up rule saying you cannot whatever you want. An insult directed at these boundaries and the people/institutions that set them up is pleasurable. What are the usual culprits here? Politics, Religion, Sex. Not coincidentally, those topics are the holy triumvirate of Comedy. What needs to be understood when someone critiques these kinds of jokes is that they are literally funny even if they are absolutely offensive. Let’s say you are in grade school minding your own business on the playground and a group of kids comes over, steals your ball, and beats you up. Is that funny? Well, you probably wouldn’t think so, but listen to all the laughter. How can you say it isn’t? Laughter is objective proof that something somewhere is funny. Let’s take a much more public example: comedian Seth MacFarlane’s hosting of the 2013 Oscar telecast, in particular we can discuss a highly derided musical number he did with the inexplicably named Gay Men’s Choir of Tuscon titled “We got to see your boobs!” In this song he insulted every actress in the audience who had ever appeared nude in a movie regardless of context. It is a particularly dramatic insult. He is taking the work of an actress and completely disregarding anything and everything and saying that is the only part that matters is the boobs. To make it more dramatic, he does not make the joke as he is masturbating to Mr. Skin in the privacy of his home. He is doing this to a captive audience of actresses in the room in front of a billion people watching TV. Boy, did Charlize Theron look humiliated. I’m sure Seth MacFarlane thought the whole thing was hilarious. He must have because it takes months to plan and practice an Oscar Telecast and he had a team of writers working with him. They must have had long conversations over long tables about how funny it was. The joke bombed terribly at the Oscar show and the main reason is that for the joke to work the audience would have to hate women. The audience in the building is at least half women and men that work closely with them. The audience watching around the world is primarily women; the Oscar telecast being not only about movies but a huge night for fashion. (The Female Super Bowl it is consistently referred to.) Surely I have never witnessed such a colossal comedic miscalculation on such a grand scale before, but why it happened can nevertheless be explained. Seth thought it was funny and to him it was because he is a total douchebag who hates women. Freud blames this on sexual frustration. He vould say that Seth believes, probably correctly, that none of the actresses in the audience would ever sleep with him and so he is out for revenge. Anyway, the epilogue to this story is that the producers who hired Seth have been hired again for next year. The show got very good ratings although it probably was not because the show was any good (it wasn’t) but because it had been the rare year when many of the movies nominated had been very popular with mass audiences. I guess the people at the Academy that hire the producers want to be irrefutably proved wrong before changing anything.

Now how about that hostile rape joke in This is the End. It comes near the end. Danny McBride had been earlier thrown out of the house for wasting water and masturbating on James Franco’s last porno mag. After a bunch of other stuff that I won’t give away happens, James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Jay Baruchel find themselves outside the house running away from demons as well.  And at that point they run into apocalyptic gang of rapists/cannibals led by none other than Danny McBride who plans on….you guessed it…raping and eating his old friends. To prove he has turned this evil within say 24 hours he brings out his sex slave who he has already sodomized several times. And making a neat celebrity cameo is Channing Tatum.

There are a few things that make this not so not funny. One, Channing is a very strong man. Second, he has consented to being in this movie.  Third, it is kind of surprising to see him here at all. But the joke really is not all that funny. It is not clever in an efficient way and surely isn’t misdirection. According to McBride he has already been raped several times. So to find it funny you would have to not like Channing Tatum or perhaps just not like celebrities. There is a repeated hostile joke in this movie involving celebrities dying horrific deaths. These like the rape joke are counting on the audience to have some sort of hostility towards the idea of celebrity in and of itself. This I do not share, most likely because I generally do not watch bad movies. I hear Channing has been in a couple stinkers (GI Joe) but as I have yet to see them, I do not share the hostility. So for me this particular joke was not all that funny.

But you may say, “Hey Max, I don’t hate anybody. I would never find hostile jokes to be funny.” Ha, ha, ha, of course you hate people. Everybody hates somebody. But I understand where you are coming from: you aren’t or at least do not want to be a total douchebag like Seth MacFarlane. So the question is how can one laugh at hostile jokes without being a total douchebag? It is a question of not what is funny but what is polite social behavior and I may as well name the rule after myself because I’m making it up right now.

Max’s Rule of Hostile yet Polite Jokes: The polite amount of laughter one may derive from a hostile joke must be directly proportional to the power of the subject being attacked. So making hostile jokes directed at children, the homeless, the disabled, oppressed minorities, illegal immigrants, and the like are not politely funny. Jokes directed at prime ministers, presidents, corporate CEOs, school principals, are politely funny. It should be noted that any of the above powerless categories could become politely funny if given power. For instance, it is not polite to make fun of someone’s blindness, but if a blind man becomes the Governor of New York it totally polite to make fun of his blindness. If you have never seen SNL’s lampooning of the blind ex-Governor David Patterson, believe me it is very funny.

Let’s wrap this up: Can a hostile rape joke directed at a woman ever be politely funny. There is potential for it of course, but it depends on a directly proportional amount of glass ceilings being broken it would have to be directed at a particular woman and not just the gender. I cannot think of a more hostile joke than a rape joke. Even death is not nearly so hostile. I do not know how many rape jokes were directed at Maggie Thatcher, but I do know there is a big musical number in the play “Billy Elliot” that is all about wishing her a swift death. On the day of her death, the current Broadway Production asked its audience as to whether it wanted to keep the song. The audience voted to keep it in. Was that misogynistic? Of course not. Maggie Thatcher was the prime minister of England. She was making policy choices that directly affected the lives of millions of people. She had power. Contrast that with Charlize Theron being forced to sit silently through Seth MacFarlane’s crassness and you have a clear example of how power affects the politeness of a hostile joke. It also matters if the powerful person is a terrible person. For instance, hostile rape jokes directed at Hitler are always polite. 

Spring Breakers (4/5 Stars)

Perhaps it would surprise you if I described this as a religious movie. I’m not saying you will find Jesus here, but a religious dichotomy pervades it. There is no room for some moral middle ground. A person can be either all good or all evil. 

Four young women (Rachel Korine, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez) faced with the prospect of what to do with their Spring Break can either stay in Kentucky and go to church meetings or they can go down to Florida and party on the beach. And oh what a party it is! Spring Break in Florida is not an idle vacation. The director Harmony Korine’s vision of it makes clear that hard drugs, harder alcohol, gratuitous nudity, fornication, and illegal public disturbances are all mandatory. What’s more, entrance to this MTV fever dream party requires a test of dishonor to prove the travelers have the requisite bad intentions to gain admission. The four women are extremely low on funds and will not have enough money to last the week. So they do what must be done. Two of the girls (Ashley and Vanessa) don hoodies and with hammers and realistic squirt guns hold up a restaurant. They rob the register and patrons while screaming that they will kill anyone who moves.

The first half of the movie is seen through the eyes of Selena Gomez. She is the most good of the four women. In Kentucky we see her attending the type of church groups that have a charismatic preacher and get everyone to sit in a circle and sing Alleluia. For anyone not initiated with this type of group think religious fervor it is not unlike being on drugs. It can be very inspiring and a lot of fun. It is on the opposite side of the spectrum from Spring Break, but the passionate experiences being chased are not dissimilar. One just happens to be all good and the other all evil. Selena’s experience is glimpsed darkly through director Harmony Korine deft use of voiceover poetry, multiple layers of editing, and neon cinematography. It’s a wild trip until all things go wrong and the four women land in jail for underage and illegal everything. The shock of the situation is too much for Selena and she takes the next bus back to Kentucky with tears in her eyes. And that’s when things get really wild. The moral anchor of the movie has been let loose and the three other women remain in Spring Break land to see how deep the hellhole goes.

Your friendly guide to the underworld is a drug dealer/rapper named “Alien.” As he likely to explain on numerous occasions, he is not of this planet. “Alien” is played by one of my favorite people (not actors, people) James Franco. Alien has many tattoos, lots of bling, dreadlocks, and a giant grill. Someone asks if he is rich? “Yeah I’m rich. Take a look at my mouth.” Oh boy do I love this character. There is a particularly great scene where he takes the three women on a tour of his house and just points out stuff saying, “Look at my shit! I got all this shit! Look at my shit!” I was immediately reminded of the chapter in “American Psycho,” where Patrick Bateman takes about ten pages to list all the stuff in his apartment. To make it all complete, Alien even has the 1983 version of “Scarface” starring Al Pacino on a 24/7 loop. Reader, if there is one way to tell you are dealing with a grade-A moron it is their overwhelming admiration for “Scarface.” Scarface is a conspicuous consumer who amasses material possessions without enjoying them, who becomes a paranoid coke addict, whose family deserts him, who murders his best friend, who dies a horrific death, who is the real life inspiring figure and role model for idiots everywhere. What I absolutely love is that James Franco is the complete opposite of “Alien.” He is after all the type of person who having already achieved fame and fortune decided to enroll at UCLA (BA), Columbia (MFA), Yale University (PHD), and now the Rhode Island School of Design to basically study for fun. His performance is a winking one but it is good enough to the point where it should still fool the fools. People who are inspired by Scarface should find “Alien” to be the real thing too. For the rest of us, there are lots of laughs including what is sure to be one of the best scenes of the year: James Franco at a white piano at sunset singing Britney Spear’s “Everytime” while the three women armed with semi-automatics cavort around with matching pink hoodies and swimsuits. I almost fell out of my seat. 

In essence, if you were ever curious as to what a cloistered nun with a tendency to see the devil everywhere Jesus isn’t may think what goes on during Spring Break than this is the movie to see. Real life is probably much more mundane. I’ve never been to Florida Spring Break but I have been to places where they have the same kind of dancing i.e. the type where people shift their weight from foot to foot, jump up and down, and wave their hands in the air ad infinitum. It is essential to employ various quick editing techniques and blare loud music to make this look like it is a fun thing to do. In real life it is a rather rote experience and one generally needs to be under the influence to enjoy it. At least that is what I have been told numerous times by numerous people after expressing my own confusion. Have you ever been to a big-tent religious festival where people dance around and speak in tongues? I would assume it would be better to be totally stoned for that experience too.  

p.s. It is my opinion that Scarface is a great movie. I do recognize that and like the movie. I just happen to think only an idiot would want to be like Scarface. 

Oz: The Great and Powerful (3/5 Stars)

Darth Vader, check. Wicked Witch of the West, check. All we need now is a movie that explores the past psychological trauma of Lord Sauron of Mordor.

James Franco stars as the titular Oz in Director Sam Raimi’s newest film, “Oz: The Great and Powerful” a prequel of sorts to “The Wizard of Oz” that focuses on how Oz got to Oz and became the Wizard of Oz. Like Dorothy he makes the trip via a black and white Kansas twister and lands in a country complete with color. This time though it’s a world of 3D digital construction and this leads to one of the more concurrent flaws in this type of movie. The characters don’t seem to be looking at what they are looking at. Someday I hope to see a character look upon a glorious digital landscape such as Oz and just be incredibly amazed by it. Like struck deaf and dumb for at least a moment or two. This doesn’t really happen to Oz, who acts more like he is a kind of bored James Franco walking around in a green screen room.

The “Wizard of Oz” is one of our odder modern fables. We know all the characters: the witches, good and wicked, the wizard, a charlatan all smoke and mirrors, the land inhabited by munchkins, yellow brick roads and emerald cities. But does anyone remember what all this is there for or why it exists at all? What’s the point of this magical land?

The most satisfying explanation I have heard is that the tale is meant to be not only a children’s story but also a work of political symbolism concerning the late 19^th century Populist movement. That would explain why Dorothy is from Kansas a bastion of populists and why the magical slippers are made of silver (not ruby red!) the free coinage of silver being a major platform of Populism. There are a multitude of other theoretical political symbols. The yellow brick road represents the gold standard. The scarecrow without a brain represents western farmers, the tin man with no heart represents the eastern factory worker, and the cowardly lion is none other than William Jennings Bryan three-time presidential candidate. Some symbols are kind of really obvious. The poppy fields that put all travelers under sleeping spells represent the scourge of opium and the inhabitants of the town of China are the actual Chinese. So when one of the wicked witches destroys the town of China (and this happens in this movie) it can and probably does represent the mistreatment of the Chinese immigrant labor force (at least in the book). And then there is perhaps the best wickedly satirical symbol of all, The Wizard. He represents the Gilded Age Presidents of the latter 19^th century, a series of forgettable not very influential or powerful men of seemingly great influence and power. Everybody thinks the president has power and can solve all their problems, but in reality it is all smoke and mirrors and the best he can do is hand out clever gifts like instead of a brain, a university degree.

It is a credit to the original author, L. Frank Baum, that adaptations can ignore the politics behind the book and still work on a basic though rather arbitrary level. But complete ignorance of the original politics, as the recent adaptations (Both Broadway “Wicked” and “Oz: The Great and Powerful”) illustrate, prevent these artworks from achieving greatness. This modern desire we have to humanize the Wicked Witch of the West is a huge mistake. The Witch in political symbolism is not human at all. It is a symbol of huge monopolistic corporations that terrorize the various constituents symbolically represented in the Land of Oz. The Populist movement put a lot of stock in the idea that the free coinage of silver (i.e. the magic silver slippers) would save them from these interests. More likely though, the end of a very long drought that swept the Midwest in the 1890s would actually be the key. There is a reason why water is the magical ingredient that melts the witch. But who cares about all this right? Who cares! Who cares! Okay I will get to my point. The Wicked Witch needs to be evil incarnate. Her character does not really work any other way. After all she will go on to enslave flying monkey minions and bomb the countryside with fireballs. To say the motivation for that type of behavior comes from a misunderstanding in a love triangle doesn’t quite fit. One recalls how Darth Vader decided to murder millions of people after Natalie Portman died. A tragedy for sure but I think it's fair to say that Darth overreacted. Some characters motivations are best left unexplained. After all, that is one of things that made Margaret Hamilton’s performance in the 1939 movie so memorable. The witch is absolutely wicked for no apparent reason at all other than that it is in her nature as a wicked witch.

I cannot imagine why someone thought Mila Kunis would be correct for this role. First of all, she does not look anything like the Wicked Witch. The Wicked Witch has an infamously angular profile. Mila’s face is way too round. Second, she fails to lend any acting bite to her performance. As a result she doesn’t sound or act evil in a convincing fashion. Weirdly, Rachel Weisz is capable of both of these qualities. Why didn’t anyone think to switch the roles around?

This movie needed to be more creative and ingenious than it is. I wasn’t too impressed with the Wizard who spends more time explaining to people that he doesn’t have powers than tricking them into thinking that he does. But hey it is probably the best movie out there right now so what else are you going to see. 

127 Hours (5/5 Stars)

A fatal mistake and plenty of time to think about it.

Life moves fast for most of us and it can sometimes be hard to find a decent amount of time for self-reflection. A chance to slow down, take stock of your life, and learn from your mistakes might just be a blessing in disguise. Some people find that a stint in prison is just what they needed. Aron Ralston has just found himself in such a situation as well. He is in the midst of a life-changing experience, if only he can survive it.

I suppose most people walking into the theater will already know the true story of Aron Ralston, an engineer who was hiking in the Arizona desert when a falling boulder pinned his arm against a canyon wall. Unable to lift the boulder and not having told anybody where he was, he was trapped and helpless for 127 hours. And then he decided to cut off his arm and hike back without it. So he did. This is that story.

“127 Hours,” was directed by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting) and stars James Franco in what is basically a one-man show. The story itself is very limited (Franco unable to move for a long time) but the way it is told is fresh and energetic. Danny Boyle does his usual incredibly innovative editing and camera techniques. My favorite sequence is when Boyle starts at Franco and takes the camera on a fast forward pace through the canyon back to his car and zooms in on the full bottle of Gatorade resting very peacefully in the back. It would be a good idea to bring some water to this movie. You will feel thirsty. James Franco does an incredible job as well. You should go to this movie just to see the look on his face the first couple of seconds after the boulder pins his shoulder. It’s all right there. His life is flashing before his eyes. He will probably get nominated for this role. I never saw “Buried” with Ryan Reynolds, but I would think that these two movies ought to be seen together. Then you can debate who gives the better performance. (By the way, James Franco is one of my heroes. The guy already had a successful career but went back to graduate school at Columbia to get a Masters of Fine Arts. Why? For fun. He’s now working on a P.H.D. in English at Yale. What a cool guy.)

At its most basic level, “127 Hours” is a procedural movie. It treats the dilemma of being stuck between a rock and a hard place not as melodrama but as a problem to be solved. It helps that the real Aron Ralston was an engineer because it allowed his character to be very ingenious about his predicament. He constructs a pulley system, he tries his best to get warm at night, he rations his water, and after awhile he starts to wonder what is the best way to go about cutting off his arm. It also helps that he has brought along his video camera because that way he can explain to us exactly what his plans are. At one point he logically states why he knows that he will be dead before anyone finds him and what, from an engineering standpoint, he will need to get the boulder off his arm. At one point I was reminded of that great scene in “Apollo 13,” when the rocket scientists are asked to figure out how to get a square box in a circular cylinder only using socks and other things in the capsule. This movie is exceedingly interesting from an intellectual point of view. If you are an engineer, you probably will love it.

Then there are those scenes where Franco dwells on all the mistakes he’s made. He forgot his Swiss Army Knife, he didn’t return his mom’s phone call, he didn’t tell the guy at his work where he was going. Then he has even more time to think. He regrets a break up with a girl who said she loved him on a magical night. He apologizes to everyone about everything on the video recorder. He hallucinates and sees his family and friends sitting on a couch and staring at him so very far close and yet so very far away. There’s nothing quite like having a near-death experience to really clear the mind.

It’s true that there is a grisly scene where Franco cuts through his arm, and yes it is graphic and painful to watch. But there is a huge difference between watching this and watching something like “Saw,” or other gruesome horror movies. When you watch “Saw” you really don’t want to see limbs getting hacked off and that’s why it should scare you when it happens (or you do and then I suppose you’d like this movie just for that scene). But in this movie, by the time Franco gets around to cutting off his arm, you want him to do it. I know by that point I was like, “Fuck the arm. Get the hell out of there.” I really doubt Ralston misses it as well. He’s probably just happy to be alive. We all should be.

Date Night (2/5 Stars) April 12, 2010

Somebody forgot to include jokes in their screenplay.

Money can buy you a lot of things that can make a movie better. Shelling out the top dollars will get you A-List comedians like Steve Carell and Tina Fey. It can allow you to cast great character actors like Mark Wahlberg, Ray Liotta, James Franco, and Mila Kunis in bit parts. It can allow you to shoot highly technical action sequences in primo New York spots like Times Square, Central Park, and FDR drive among others. It can get you fancy cars, gorgeous sets, and a stylized marketing campaign. It can get you perhaps anything you want in a comedy except the main ingredient: Jokes. You can’t buy laughs. This is because jokes have a very short shelf life. They can’t be told more than a couple of times before they lose all of their power. They have to be grown and cultivated. Some writer somewhere has to sit in a room, employ a little creativity and come up with something. This movie forgot that part of the process. It seems like it was built along a one-sentence pitch like, “Hey let’s put Steve Carell and Tina Fey in a movie together. Wouldn’t that be great.” Everyone agreed to make the movie way before the script was assigned to some schlub named Josh Klausner to crank it out over the weekend. It didn't need to be funny because the marketing campaign could capitalize on the actor's reputations for at least the first weekend gross. They aren't going to get me next time. Klausner’s next movie as a writer will be “Shrek Forever After.” I will remember not to see that one. 

This movie employs a variation of what Roger Ebert lovingly calls an “Idiot Plot.” An “Idiot Plot” refers to the series of stupid misunderstandings that a couple in a romantic comedy will go through before they realize they love each other in the last scene of the movie. The idea is that if they just took a moment to sit down and talk about it then everything would be sorted out and fine. They don’t do this because then the movie would be five minutes, not a long drawn-out hour and a half. The Idiocy in this Plot has mostly to do with the actions of some very stupid and incompetent hit men and the retarded police who can’t seem to connect some fairly obvious dots. Carell and Fey play boring married couple (The Fosters) that gets in a case of mistaken identity after stealing a dinner reservation. The hit men take them into an alley, pull out guns, and ask them to provide an incriminating flash drive. To avoid getting shot, the old married couple tell the hit men that they hid the flash drive in a floorboard in the Boathouse in Central Park. (Does that sound like a believable story to you? I personally thought it was retarded.) As the hit men stare at the wooden floorboards in the Boathouse Carell sneaks up behind them and hits both of them with an oar. They are incapacitated for about 30 whole seconds as the old married couple makes their escape across the Pond in a boat that can’t go more than a couple mph. The hit men stumble out of the Boathouse and unload about five or six rounds of ammo at the row boat no more than 20 feet away. Not a single one gets anywhere close. The Fosters go to the police. A simple explanation is all that is required. But no, the Fosters spy the same hit men in the station as cops. So the Fosters don’t tell the officer that is questioning them anything. They high tail it out of there because they think the entire police station has been compromised. (It hasn’t). This is completely ludicrous but is completely necessary to the story. After all, if they did the logical thing the movie would be over in a couple of minutes. 

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t usually require realism in comedies. (I just gave a good review to Hot Tub Time Machine.) What I do require though, is that a comedy be funny. If it isn’t funny, then it might as well be taken seriously. And if I’m taking something seriously, the unreality of the plot better not insult my intelligence. (If it’s funny it can do anything it wants.) But Date Night isn’t funny. I didn’t laugh more than three or four times the entire movie. It’s quite remarkable actually. Everything that ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ the B-movie with the second rate cast did right, ‘Date Night’ the slick A-List movie gets completely wrong. For example, both movies employ a throw-up joke. If you want to know how to do that right, watch the former. “Date Night” does it all wrong. First of all it gives us plenty of warning. (Carell going “oh I’m going to throw up!) Then the actual throwing up takes far too long. (Carell does it once, then has to do it several more times). It wasn’t funny the first time because it breaks the 1st Rule of Shock Humor: The joke NEEDS to be UNEXPECTED. Otherwise there’s no shock. It’s just yucky. For the same reason it wasn’t funny the second or third time either. The whole thing lasts about thirty seconds, about 29 more than the audience needs to get the joke. This is not how you tell a throw-up joke. These people don’t know what they’re doing. 

This pattern screws up the majority of the jokes in this movie. They will be fairly obvious in the first place and then that joke will be endlessly repeated as if the movie expects a punch line to get funnier upon each telling. There’s this bit where various side characters react with disgust at the Foster’s stealing of the reservation as if it is a huge social faux pa. After the second time, I could basically lip-sync what the next person would say the third, fourth, and fifth time. The movie is just one vacant scene followed by another. It’s a good thing Mark Wahlberg is shirtless during his entire performance because nobody in those scenes can tell a joke about anything else. If he put on a shirt, they would have nothing to say. 

I will say one more thing. Action sequences can be funny if done right. Here they aren’t but yes theoretically it is possible. Sexy is never funny. I bring this up because the Fosters inexplicably find themselves in a brothel with a bunch of scantily clad strippers everywhere. Tina Fey has to get into a stripper costume and do some awkward dancing herself. I don’t recall laughing at any point. You know there is a reason that ’30 Rock’ goes to such incredible lengths to uglify Tina Fey when she plays Liz Lemon. It’s because it is very hard to laugh at someone who you are physically attracted to. Tina Fey is gorgeous. That’s why ’30 Rock’ puts her in glasses, has her walk funny, and gives her an eating disorder. It allows her to be funny because we aren’t thinking of other things. (For a very good example of this, take the SNL “Chippendales” sketch. Who is funnier: Patrick Swayze or Chris Farley?) For this reason, no comedy should ever present a truly sexed up scene. What inspires lust and what inspires laughter are completely different things. If your purpose is to make people laugh, then that scene will be a great yawning void in your movie. Welcome to Date Night.

A movie with Steve Carell and Tina Fey will never be all terrible. I liked the semi-serious scenes where they simply acted like the married couple that was trying in good faith to revitalize their marriage. These are the type of scenes that allow a critic to say the movie is a “comedy with heart.” Except here of course there is no comedy. Just a void with some heart. Anyway, those scenes allowed this movie to get a 2 star rating.


Added a couple days Later:

I have to add a caveat to what I said about sexy never being funny. There's always an exception to the rule, and that would be Marilyn Monroe. She had the ability to be sexy and hilarious at the same time. (Seven Year Itch, Some Like it Hot). I think the big reason for this is because she was always so oblivious of her effect on the men around her. In other words, she didn't know she was sexy. It's a very hard thing to pull off because it is so very absurd (and thus funny). As Marlon Brando in 'A Streetcar Named Desire" once quipped, "I never knew a woman who didn't know she was good looking without me having to tell her."

Milk (5/5 Stars) 12/07/08

The last movie I saw Sean Penn in was "All the Kings Men." It was a flat out terrible and boring movie about a populist politician that gains power in a rough place only to be assassinated at the end. Supposedly it was based on the career of the real life politician Huey Long. That was early 2006. Sean Penn hasn't been in a movie since. Now he's in Milk, a movie about a populist politician that gains power in a rough place only to be assassinated at the end. It's based on the career of real life politician Harvey Milk. The main difference is that this movie isn't one of the worst of the year, it is one of the best. 
I had an awesome time at this movie. More than anything it made me want to go out and become a city supervisor. Not to be involved in the gay rights crusade, but simply to get involved in politics at a local level. That's where the action takes place you know, whether its quelling riots or simply getting the dog shit off the ground. The triumph of this movie is that it transcends a stigma of simply being pro-gay and tells, I think, a universal story of a community forming together and asserting themselves in the political process. It's a great movie about democracy and a savvy politician who used the system to help better the lives of his constituents. 
Sean Penn is getting huge buzz for his performance and he deserves it. He is virtually unrecognizable in this film. When I think of Sean Penn I think of the murderer in 'Dead Man Walking' or the gangster in 'Mystic River.' I would never have thought that he would be perfectly cast as a flamboyantly gay politician. He is so good in this movie that half way through I forgot about how good he was and just looked at the character as Harvey Milk. Sean Penn has a stamp on this guy. Just like Mozart, Elizabeth I, and Marie Antoinette, Harvey Milk is no longer public domain. He is owned by Sean Penn. This is one of the best performances of the year.
Shadowed by Penn is a bevy of other great performances. The two most notable are Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, one of Milk's subordinates. and a stunning turn for Josh Brolin, as the Conservative Catholic Dan White, one of Milk's fellow city supervisors and his eventual assassin. Brolin's performance is on the heels of two other notable ones in 'W.' and 'No Country for Old Men.' That makes a hat trick of good roles. He's been having quite the year and a half. In this one he thankfully gives us a better excuse for White's behavior than eating too many twinkies. Its an empathetic portrait of a man who finds himself caught in a dramatically changing society. And according to his upbringing the change is driven by degenerates and amorality. No wonder he has frustration when he fails delivering his platform and sees Harvey gain success on his. We see his world slipping away. After five years in prison we are told that Dan White committed suicide. Watching this movie you can understand why.
Overall this movie is sensational, inspirational, and smart. It was written by Dustin Lance Black and directed by Gus Van Sant. This is his first movie since 'Good Will Hunting' that may break out of indie land and into mainstream theaters...maybe. The subject matter might put a lot of people off. (It could win over a bunch of people I think if they didn't leave at the first love scene and saw the entire movie.) I expect to see Oscar Nominations from this movie. The lock is for Sean Penn for best actor. But other ones like Best Original Screenplay are a good bet. And I think Josh Brolin did a good enough job to warrant mention but Best Supporting Actor is so crowded every year that it is unlikely. 
I've come to notice that any movie taking place in the 1970s has this grainy look to the cinematography. Sort of like movies that take place in the 50s being in black and white. What's up with that.

The Pineapple Express 08/07/08

'Pineapple Express' is the latest comedy hit from producer Judd Apatow. It was cowritten by the authors of 'Superbad' Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg. It reunites the two stars Seth Rogan and James Franco from their humble beginnings as freaks in the late nineties one season TV show 'Freaks and Geeks.' Filling supporting roles are Apatow regulars like Bill Hader, Kevin Corridan, and Craig Robinson. New faces include Gary Cole and Rosie Perez as bad guys and Danny McBride as a fellow drug dealer. Seth Rogan is a process server who frequents his dope dealer Franco. Seth witnesses a murder that implicates himself and Franco. They are chased by hitmen, A drug war erupts, and Hilarity ensues. The one thing that really struck me about this film is how different it is from its other Apatow predecessors. Most of those were heartfelt romantic comedies laced with obscenity. This one is much more action oriented. There are plenty of shootouts, lots of people die, huge explosions, there is even a car chase. Combine all the violence of Apatow's previous films and they won't equal a quarter of what you will find here in 'Pineapple Express.' It's a distinctive new turn for the Apatow group. It makes you wonder what else they can do. 
There is still heartfelt core here though, a must in every Apatow film. It basically revolves around the fact that Rogan feels uncomfortable with being friends with his drug dealer. Franco on the other hand is blatantly needy. I wouldn't blame him. His days consist of hanging in his apartment, smoking dope, and waiting for customers to show up. When Rogan shows up, completely stoned, raving about a murder, and orders an escape into the woods its probably Franco's first time out of the house in weeks. James Franco's performance here is something special. Franco, who has always played straight romantic leads, is perhaps the funniest guy in the movie. His comedic timing is perfect. His stoner accent is right on. He has the ability to mine great lines for laughs that only a few comedians can. It is the best comedic performance I have seen all year. Seth Rogan is perhaps a better writer than actor (which isn't really an insult), he's got a certain Adam Sandlerness to him, where it seems like he doesn't really have any discernible range. (He can smoke a doobie really well though, and it pays off in this movie.) One thing he does have is a very limited ego. There are always certain imperfections about his characters that he has no qualms about exploring. Running across the street is a grand expedition for the somewhat overweight guy. He also is a great straight man to his fellow actors. He sets up Franco perfectly in so many scenes in this movie.
These people really are on a roll. The two funniest movies I have seen this year were both Apatow productions. Besides Pixar, it is the most reliant brand out there. The only complaint I could have about this film, is it's too creative violence. There were a couple moments in the film when a person was shot, or someone died, or some body part was blown off, that I simply didn't find that funny. Gore simply isn't to me, and I think they shouldn't have gotten so grotesque in some parts. Gun violence very rarely is funny I've noticed. It's too lethal and bloody. Now, if you hit somebody with a shovel or smashed a two by four over their head, that could be hilarious. Shooting them in that same head, not so much. The huge climatic action sequence at the end got a whole lot funnier when they ran out of ammo and had to find more creative ways to pummel each other. 

Spiderman 3 05/19/07

I'm no comic book geek, nor do I stand in line to see every new comic book movie, but I can tell a good movie from a bad one. Spiderman 3 is astounding. A perfect capper to an already stunning trilogy. 
What usually hurts a superhero franchise is that the bad guys become indefinitely more interesting than the superhero. This has yet to happen in a Spider Man movie. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is still as fun to watch as ever. And his charachter grows ever more three dimensional. This time his arc is helped by Venom, a strange substance from a meteorite, that turns Parker into a much more aggressive Spidey. This is entertaining in its own sense since Parker is a nerd and takes alot of unheeded crap from people. So in this movie we relish in the revenge he dishes out. Although the film never quite makes us feel good about it. Good is good and bad is bad. There's morals in this one as with all Spiderman movies. So when Venom goes to far we all see that its hurting rather than helping and it makes the villains essentially even stronger than before.
And what villains. These aren't huge names here but are they ever the perfect choices. Thomas Haden Church brings a certain humanness to the brute Sandman. and Topher Grace my God! This kid blew me away. You would never expect him to be a villain like this, but he's perfect for this role. I can't see anyone else playing it as good. He's come along way. Look for him at next year's MTV movie awards. 
All in all my faith in sequels is being redeemed somewhat. I just have to make sure that its not only the movie's name that stays the same. But also the director (Sam Raimi), the writers (Sargent and Raimi) , the stars (Maguire, Dunst, Franco), and the right actors (Church and Grace) for the right roles. Not the big marketable names essentially, but the right ones. 
All of them do a fantastic job in a movie that has so much considerable range. Notice how they will pull a simple doorknob gag after a mind-blowing special effects sequence or take the time to watch Dunst sing or introduce a French maitre-di fully. Throughout the movie I felt I was watching seasoned veterans do what they do best.