Anomalisa (3/5 Stars)

Back in 2008, when I reviewed Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” I wondered if he would retire. I mean what more could he say? (By the way isn’t it amazing that I can refer to a review I wrote eight years ago?) When I heard that he was coming out with a stop-motion animation movie this year, I saw a glimmer of hope that the idea was just crazy and ambitious enough to not be a let down from his previous masterpiece. Well, it was inevitably a let down. The worst thing had to be that I had to wait eight years to see it. If he had spent a year or two making this in between bigger projects I would have been totally content. But the prospect of waiting several more years for him to create something else after this movie is rather painful. I guess what I’m saying is that I want more, Charlie Kaufman. “Anomalisa” wasn’t enough. Give me more!

Michael Stone, a graying middle-aged man voiced by David Thewlis, has just landed in Cincinnatti to speak at a customer service convention. He is big stuff in the area. Several times his book is referred to as the cause of a 90% boost in efficiency. Not that the movie cares much about customer service. The choice has been made it seems for ironic purposes. Michael Stone is suffering from some kind of strange mental problem. Everyone he meets has the same face and the same voice (Tom Noonan’s). Even when he calls home he hears over the phone the same voice for his wife and son.  

The hint for what is happening is in the name of the hotel he is staying at: Fregoli. He has what is called a Fregoli delusion: wherein the sufferor sees the same face and voice for every person he meets. The one exception is a woman he meets named Lisa, voice by Jennifer Jason Leigh. She is an anomaly, hence the title: Anomalisa. He immediately falls in love.

It does take awhile for this to be set up. The first half of the movie attempts to establish the dullness of this man’s life and accomplishes the task. In the second half he meets Lisa, they involve themselves in a not so torrid love affair, and the very next day over breakfast her face and voice tragically turns into Tom Noonan’s.

At that point I was rather interested in what was happening. In particular, there is a dream sequence that is funny and exciting. But too bad, the movie ends with no third act or resolution. Some more astute friends of mine observed that the Fregoli delusion was just a metaphor for his sad relations with women. I noted with some disappointment that this mundane explanation was more likely than my apparent misunderstanding that the movie was literally about the Fregoli delusion. I feel it would have been a more interesting movie if it were literally about the Fregoli delusion. Oh, well. 

I really hope it will not be another eight years for the next Charlie Kaufman movie to come about.

The Hateful Eight (3/5 Stars)

Given the huge deal Quentin Tarantino, the writer/director of The Hateful Eight, made about his once-in-a-lifetime roadshow, particular aspects are decidedly underwhelming. Take for instance the promise of the movie being shot in Panavision Super 70 mm filmstock. Tarantino gushed about how it was the largest widescreen format that ever existed and that it had not been in use since the 1950’s and 1960’s for such epics like “Ben Hur” and “Cleopatra.” Well, that is wonderful if the vast majority of The Hateful Eight’s three hour run time had not taken place within a single room. This movie is no epic. So I guess its cool that he used that obsolete film stock but he sure did not need to. Or take for instance the presence of additional footage in the movie. Given that the movie is almost entirely composed of people talking in rooms, I’m not sure this movie needed more of that. In fact it probably would have been better with less. It had a new Ennio Morricone score and that’s cool because Morricone made the best Western scores of the 1960s, but this score is not as good as those old scores. The program was pretty cool except that the movie was not a timeless masterpiece so I doubt it will be a piece of memorabilia in great demand.

“The Hateful Eight” for all its grandiose presentation is decidedly a small movie. A bounty hunter named John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is taking a prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to hang in the near town of Red Rock. His carriage picks up two more passengers, another bounty hunter named the Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and the supposed new sheriff of Red Rock, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). There is a blizzard that will intercept them on their journey so they decide to wait it out at Minnie’s Haberdashery. They do not find Minnie at the Haberdashery. Instead they find Senor Bob (Demian Bichir) looking after the place, Oswaldo Mobray the supposed hangman (Tim Roth), General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern) an ex-Confederate officer searching for his son, and Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) who is in town to visit his mother. John Ruth makes the splendid observation that one of these men is not who they say they are. Minnie’s Haberdashery is composed of a bar, a kitchen, a general store, several beds and a place to sit by the fire, but it is all one room. The blizzard sets in and everybody waits for shit to start happening.

It takes awhile. By my count it takes about an hour and a half, which in my humble opinion is too long. Most of that time is exposition, that is to say it is people talking about what other people have done in the past. Something along the lines of one character saying to another, “Don’t you know who this so-and-so is, they did some crazy shit during the war.” I wrote about this sort of thing earlier in my “Steve Jobs” review. Movies are a show not tell medium. Lots of scenes where people talk about what happened in the past are more appropriate in the play medium where it is necessitated by the lack of ability to go all over the place but rendered harmless by the immediacy of the action. “The Hateful Eight” would probably make a great play. Very little would have to be changed. As a movie it can be, from time to time, <ahem> boring. There I said it. Boring, especially during the first half. It also does not help that Tarantino, though admittedly funny and cool, is not as funny and cool as he thinks he is. Some of the look at me funny and cool lines fell flat because the movie had not yet become cool or funny enough for them.

In the meantime and through to the end there is plenty of use of the word nigger and a lot of punching the woman in the face. We can take these one at a time because Tarantino does interesting things with the first one and not so interesting things with the second.

It is fair to say that the cinematic relationship between Samuel L. Jackson and Quentin Tarantino is a special one that does something more than simply transcend the race line. For other white writer/directors it is simply enough to make a sympathetic black character that has a rounded personality and isn’t merely an appendage to the white people. Jackson and Tarantino do more than that. They create black characters in the midst of terrible racism that are also complicated to the point of being bad men themselves. It is tough to be a despicable black character when everybody else in the movie is calling nigger. In this movie, we are drawn preternaturally to Major Marquis Warren’s side because he is the ultimate underdog, the one black guy in Wyoming. We judge the goodness and badness of the other characters by how they treat him. If they have respect for him, like John Ruth, he is a good guy. If they do not, like everybody else, they are not good guys. The most interesting thing about this movie is that by the mid way point, the audience may start wondering whether Major Marquis Warren is somebody to cheer for at all. Samuel L. Jackson has I believe only been nominated for one Oscar (Pulp Fiction). I believed he should have won for Django Unchained. If he is nominated for this movie, it can be said it was deserved. He is the reason why the movie should be watched at all.

Now for the gratuitous violence done towards the woman in the story, Daisy Domergue. She is a course rude bitch with a mouth on her. In the past she has murdered people and she deserves to be hanged. For as much insight Tarantino has had about the history of race relations, he shows a general lack of knowledge about the history of women. I have not yet heard of a 19^th century (or before) story about a woman like Daisy Domergue. Nor am I likely too because no such woman or very few of them have ever existed. Tarantino has this false notion that feminism in movies consists of giving a woman a weapon (gun or sword or kung fu) and having them kick ass. It does not work that way. You see women are physically weaker than men. At some point it does not matter how good at kung fu they are. They will generally lose battles to guys who have 50 or 100 pounds on them. The astute feminist screenwriter will then give their female characters what historical women have always had, shrewdness and wiles. They will not simply make them another man. When Tarantino made “Django Unchained” he paid attention to the psychology of a slave. Jamie Foxx did not just start out badass and plucky. He had to be rehabilitated from a society that would inflict physical and psychological harm on him if he did anything out of line. When making a historical period piece about a woman it should be required that their respective psychology is taken into account because women were subject to societal pressures as well. Tarantino ignores this and his reason for doing so is to make it okay for this particular woman to be punched in the face a bunch. That is to say he has made this particular woman more of a rotten bitch than she historically has any sense in being and he did it in order to make it okay for terrible things to be done to her.

I remember there was a time when Tarantino’s movies were violent but not as violent as people thought they were. When I watched the DVD extras of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, a big deal was made by how the violence merely felt gratuitously violent because of superior moviemaking. Like in Reservoir Dogs you don’t actually see the ear being cut off, or in Pulp Fiction the samurai cut is below the screen. Contrast that with Tarantino’s last several films where the blood being spilt is generally more extreme than what it would be in real life. One could reasonably question whether if say someone blew off someone else’s head three or four feet away from Jennifer Jason Leigh would she really be splattered with that much blood and brains? I doubt it and I’m pretty sure it is in there less for realism and more because Tarantino wanted to see a woman’s face splattered with blood and brains. It sure makes one question about early Tarantino’s professions of not being as violent as people said he was. As soon as he got a decent budget to splatter blood all over the screen he went whole hog.

Welcome to Me (3/5 Stars)

Well, what is a borderline personality disorder? I concede that it is a thing because it sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I would not trust myself to describe it accurately. And I just watched an entire movie in which the main character a woman by the name of Alice Klieg (Kristin Wiig) explores all of its facets in a very public way. The very public way she does socially awkward things I suspect is part of her disorder. But in another sense she does a lot of things that utterly stupid though completely sane people are capable of as well. The distinction is important especially in a comedy because stupid people are funny but mentally ill people are not. So which of Alice Klieg’s actions fall into what camp? A better definition of what ails her would help the audience out quite a bit. As it is, the prevailing feeling in the theater is, “should we be laughing at this?”

Alice Klieg lives alone and with the TV on nonstop. She especially likes talk shows like Oprah. One day she wins the lottery, a seventy million dollar jackpot. She has a conversation with her psychotherapist (Tim Robbins) in which she explains that she will stop taking her medication and move into a casino hotel room. She also has big plans for an Oprah like talk show. She pitches the idea to a local access production channel. “I want it to be about me,” she explains, “and I want to come in on a Swan boat.” The head of the channel (James Marsden) asks for 150K per show for 100 shows. She immediately takes out her checkbook. After the meeting the other members of his production company, his brother (Wes Bentley) and two producers (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Joan Cusack), balk at the idea. But Marsden explains that they are almost broke. They either take the money or start laying people off.  So “Welcome to Me,” a show written, directed, and hosted by a crazy person is born on the local access channel in the 10am two hour time slot.

This is a very interesting premise with lots of potential as a movie but the pitfalls should be rather obvious. The main one is that making fun of a person with mental illness is not a nice thing to do. And if you don’t make fun of them, than where is the comedy going to come into play. The best example of a movie making that leap is David O. Russell’s ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ that has several characters with some sort of madness in them. But at the same time they aren’t completely defined by their madness. That is to say they are people with personalities that have disorders not just clinical manifestations of the disorder itself. This allows their behavior to be guided by choices. Choices maybe influenced by the illness sure, but choices nevertheless. The clear demarcation of where illness ends and personality begins is how the viewer knows whether to laugh at Bradley Cooper wearing a garbage bag while he is running. There is reason behind it. He wants to lose weight and the bag helps him sweat. And yes he knows he looks ridiculous but he doesn’t care because he is very excited and focused on what he is doing. The “excited” and “focused” is part of his disorder but Cooper puts on the bag ultimately for sane reasons: he wants to lose weight. His disorder doesn’t compel him to wear garbage bags while jogging for no reason. If it did, it would not be funny. It would be sad.

When Alice Klieg is shown sleeping on a bed in a sleeping bag as opposed to under the covers it is not explained why she wants to do this or even whether a borderline personality disorder would influence a person’s choice to do this. (I assumed germophobic reasons but then again I’m not sure what that has to do with bordline personality disorder). Or take the several instances in which she states that winning the lottery was not luck but due to believing in herself, an idea she got from watching Oprah. Now for all I know that could be part of the disorder. But it could also be the case that she is just a stupid person. I wish I knew because its mean to make fun of retarded people for being retarded and I’m not sure if that is what is going on here. Here is an example of an opportunity wasted: Very early on in the story we are told that Alice is off her medication. Well, okay. But what was she like when she was on medication? That would be a good clue as to what is happening with her. This is not explored by the movie.

To be clear the movie does not impinge upon the viewer any guilt from watching the proceedings. (If they were funnier perhaps they would. I am reminded a little bit of the remake of a French movie in which a group of elites host a competition to bring the biggest idiot they can find to dinner party.) The main reason is that Alice Klieg’s friends, family, and ultimately her cash-strapped employees act in good faith around her. Nobody tries to ouright steal her winnings. Sure having a TV show is an incredible waste of money but lottery money is fit to be wasted and to the production company’s credit, they try to do a competent job of realizing her vision. The TV show itself is the most interesting thing going on in this movie. Here Alice recreates dramatic scenes from her life, fake fights with her mom (an off-screen Joan Cusack) who always wins, makes and eats her favorite recipes, and even uses her past veterinary skills to neuter and spay any dogs the audience wants to bring into the studio. Something is going on in that studio and it may or may not be special but it is at least original. The reactions of the people working there are mixed. For instance Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character quits but it is not entirely clear whether she does so because she thinks the company is taking advantage of Alice or because she thinks the work is below her. Maybe both. Wes Bentley takes Alice out on a couple of dates because she asks him to. She is very intent on sleeping with him right away. Again it might be nice to know if that is the disorder working or plain horniness.

Is it possible to be cured of borderline personality disorder? The movie ends with Alice doing several things differently than she usually does in her normal routine like for instance sleeping under the covers instead of in a sleeping bag. I’m not sure what that means. As for Kristin Wiig’s performance, since I did not really understand the character, I’m not sure how to gauge its excellence. She is always interesting to watch and it speaks of good casting to put her into the main role here but her comic potential is limited by all the above. Comedy writers take note for your future endeavors: It is not enough that a person enters a room in a swan boat. That situation is not inherently funny. You have to know why they are doing it.