Fruitvale Station (5/5 Stars)

Death Comes for Oscar Grant

“There are a lot of kids out there that need help, who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. Is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them, and values them, and is willing to invest in them.”

- President Barack Obama

Events, unforeseeable yet strangely inevitable, have conspired to make Fruitvale Station, already great, into an important and timely film. It is appropriate as ‘Fruitvale Station’ concerns the unforeseeable and inevitable. It is about an extremely specific time and place: The Fruitvale Station of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in the wee hours of the New Year, 2008. We will never know what exactly happened to Trayvon Martin, his last moments only known by a single unreliable witness. But we do know what exactly happened to Oscar Grant. We know because of where and when it happened. It happened on the public platform of a BART station in front of a light rail train bound for Oakland full of passengers coming from watching the San Francisco New Year’s Eve fireworks and it being 2008, many of the cell phones the passengers carried had video cameras. The moments leading up to Oscar Grant’s death were chaotic. A fight broke out on the BART train. The train was stopped at the Fruitvale Station. BART police officers rounded up who they thought were the suspects young black men. The passengers felt the officers were being unnecessarily rough and so flip, flip, flip, all the camera phones came out and started recording through the open doors of the train. Amidst the surrounding ruckus, Oscar Grant gets up from where he had been ordered to sit and wait with his hands raised in a non-confrontational manner. Two of the officers forcefully put him to the ground, face first, and try to cuff him. Oscar won’t give them his hands. One of the officers puts his knee to Oscar’s neck to stop him from moving. The other officer takes out his gun and shoots Oscar point blank in the back. The train crowd reacts in horrific disbelief. Oscar yells out “You shot me. I have a 4-year-old daughter.” The train doors close and the it leaves the station. Oscar Grant bleeds to death on the cold concrete platform.

First time director Ryan Coogler uses the actual cell phone footage as a prologue to the movie. In a way he has to because the incident and how it happened is so utterly unthinkable that without real life evidence, it would be almost impossible to believe that it could have occurred the way it did. It also works incredibly well as a dramatic setup, an omen of foreboding like ‘The Ides of March’ that haunts the rest of the story which shows the last day of Oscar Grant, played perfectly by Michael B. Jordan, as he celebrates his mother’s birthday, picks his daughter up from school, looks for employment, and makes New Year’s resolutions. The incident at Fruitvale Station sparked a politicized debate about race and police brutality and spawned peaceful protests and violent riots in Oakland. But unlike a movie like Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” this movie does not dwell on greater societal topics. What Coogler focuses on and what the movie makes especially clear is why the fate of Oscar Grant was especially sad on a personal level. And “Fruitvale Station” is without a doubt one of the saddest movies I have ever seen. Like “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Shutter Island” sad. Ultimately we are presented with a complex portrait of a young man who had a mother and daughter that he loved and who loved him, who had a girlfriend he wanted to marry if he only had the money, who was hardened by streets and prison, who had plans to grow and hopes for the future, and who died suddenly in a freakish act unfinished, so sadly incomplete. What our President hinted at in his remarks on the Trayvon Martin case is that policy changes may not be the only important thing here. Perhaps what we need is simply a greater sense of empathy for people like Oscar Grant. That we should stop expecting nothing but the worst in the behavior and ultimate fate of young black men and start insisting and expecting that they be involved in our society in a socially productive way. There is a particularly great shot in ‘Fruitvale Station’ that takes place at Oscar Grant’s mother’s birthday party. The food is ready and the family enters the living room in order to eat. But the camera stays in the kitchen and merely peers at the family praying before eating from a distance. It lingers here for a confusing amount of time. That is until you realize that the director Ryan Coogler is keeping the camera in the kitchen in order to frame the praying family with the refrigerator right by the door. The refrigerator is covered from top to bottom with pictures of the family Grant. That is what this movie is about. It is not about police brutality. It is about a family praying together in a house that has a refrigerator covered with memories of love.     

Oscar Grant is played by Michael B. Jordan. I did not recognize Michael at first no doubt because he has grown nearly a foot and has had the bright taken out of his eyes since I last saw him. But it is indeed him. Oscar Grant is played by the same actor who portrayed Wallace from “The Wire,” another child killed in a supremely unjust fashion. Both are the type of roles that make a strong imprint on one’s movie consciousness. His performance here is especially acute and given that you know how it ends, has a visceral worryingly portentous edge to it. Michael B. Jordan infuses the character with a dramatically susceptible personality given what environment he is in at the time. There is a telling scene told in a flashback in the year 2007 when his mother, played perfectly as well by Octavia Spencer, is visiting him in prison. He has one personality when speaking to his mother about her life and his daughter. And then a fellow prisoner comes by and calls him a ‘Snitch.’ In a flash, Oscar gets up from the table and engages in a verbal fight full of macho threats. And you’re looking at this and thinking ‘calm down man someday you might escalate some shit and get killed.’ Oscar is only 22 years old.

But that Oscar was young and prone to temper flare-ups does not make it his fault that he was killed. And this movie does not especially concern itself with attaching a deep meaning to the act of killing. The reason hinted at in a post-movie epitaph states that the officer thought he was grabbing and shooting his taser. A jury convicted him of nothing but ‘involuntary manslaughter.’ Weirdly this may have been because of the many cell phone videos. Given what they show it is completely crystal clear that there was no good reason as to why the officer shot Oscar in the back. Therefore it must have been a mistake, right? We can go in circles with this. Heck, this movie could be a great primer for a lesson in chaos theory where the watcher can take any little occurrence and be like “If only for this,” or “If only for that” ad infinitum. Maybe a butterfly in the Amazon rainforest flapped its wings and caused the shooting. If only Oscar had not stopped to help a woman pick out catfish in a supermarket that morning then- But what does it matter? Oscar Grant is dead. 

Pacific Rim (4/5 Stars)

Godzilla eat your heart out.

So in the year 2013 (that’s this year!) an instellar rift in the space-time continuum opens up in a deep underwater crevasse of the Pacific Rim. And out of it crawls a big-ass monster. Like huge. Godzilla huge. It crawls over to San Francisco and snaps the Golden Gate Bridge like a twig. That’s when humanity knew it had a problem. So the governments abutting the Pacific Ocean made monsters of their own: Huge man-like robots! Godzilla size! And they sent them off to fight the monsters in the middle of the ocean away from any large metropolitan areas. The robots are capable of firing rockets and all that but the battle style of choice is hand-to-hand combat. Now that may sound oddly impractical to you. I mean why would you spend an enormous amount of time, money, and resources developing a military strategy of up close fighting that could very possibly result in the death of the crew and the obliteration of your mega-robot when you have the technology and ability to simply fly over the monster and drop bombs on its head from a safe distance. You are such a smart ass. Sit down, shut up, and just enjoy the movie.

Amazingly the stupidity of the premise does not result in a stupid movie. This largely has to do with the fact that a very accomplished artist, Guillermo Del Toro, is in charge of everything from directing, writing, and art direction. So like his previous movies (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Hellboy II: The Golden Army) the design of the robots and the monsters is something to behold, the dialogue and character interactions between the humans make sense, and the fight scenes are competently choreographed. Let me repeat that last part because it is of great importance. The battles apply the laws of physics and general theories about space and time. So if you thought that the Transformers movies were great or thought they were terrible, I implore you to go see Pacific Rim because this is what a good movie about gigantic things that fight each other should look like. There is an extended sequence in Hong Kong and in the surrounding waters that works especially well. I saw it in 3D IMAX and will attest that it is worth the extra ticket price. If you are going to see this movie at all, please don’t wait till it comes out on DVD. You need a big screen.

The mega-robots work by mimicking an in-flight-crew stationed in its head that act out all of the movements of the machine. When these robots were being manufactured it soon became clear that a solo pilot could not handle the stress of wielding such a large vessel i.e. he would get nosebleeds i.e. a sure sign impending death via brain damage in movies. So a pair of pilots with each pilot controlling a particular hemisphere of the mega-robot’s “brain” was deemed the solution. What this meant is that the two pilots “drifted” together, which means that while piloting the mega-robot they were in each others heads working as one. So the team needed to be compatible on a profound level. This concept is ridiculous as well but watch what Guillermo does with it. Given that we accept this condition, it sets the movie up for some rather meaningful drama between the pilots of the mega-robots, like sibling bonding or a love story. They have to have a “connection” you see.

I generally do not enjoy blockbusters all that much not because I don’t like huge spectacle, but because the movies always insert these serious dramatic confrontations or idealistic speeches or tearful reveals in between all the dumb explosions. It’s the change of tone that I find particularly jarring. If the spectacle were totally unbelievable why would I care about the trumped up dramatics. It is to the credit of Pacific Rim that I did not mind all the quiet scenes in the movie. I thought they worked okay and were not annoying.  

There is something of course to be said of the main character Raleigh played by Charlie Hunman. Who? That’s right, I haven’t heard of him either. I remember with some nostalgia the heady years of the 2000s when the revolution in digital effects had just come into effect. I wrote then that the effects had the side of effect of revolutionizing casting in blockbusters as well. Where the 80s and 90s blockbusters had relied heavily on ginormous muscle men like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the new effects had produced enough dazzle on their own that the studios felt confident for the first time in hiring actors actually known for acting in the lead roles. Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., Christian Bale, and Johnny Depp come to mind. I could also mention Shia Lebouf, who (and I swear this was true at the time) had done enough good movies to be considered an interesting actor when he was hired for the first Transformers movie. It seems that these days are now going gone and the leading roles in summer blockbusters increasingly depend on the Abercrombie & Fitch stable of muscular (for the men!) yet doe-eyed (for the women!) man meat. Charlie Hunman is no exception. And him and his ilk, like say Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, Chris Evans, and Taylor Kitsch are fast becoming interchangeable parts in the current blockbuster cog. They all look the same, act the same, and more than likely are named Chris. I don’t want to seem like I am merely belittling six pack abs. After all, I have written the praises of Brad Pitt, Channing Tatum, and quite recently Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the past. The problem is that there seems to be this notion that you can stick one of these guys into a leading role and then that’s it. You do not have to put any more effort into the character. Once we all get a look at those abdominals, all the women will want to be with him and all the men will want to be him. Unfortunately a movie isn’t exactly like sex. It takes far longer to get through. (You can make the argument that a movie trailer or other marketing platform is given the respective length of time). For that reason it is a bit more like storytelling and it is actually of some relevance as to whether the person the story is about has a personality worth spending a couple of hours with. 

For that reason, it is a pleasure to see Charlie Day, Idris Elba, and Ron Perlman inhabiting the rest of the supporting characters, but Charlie Day especially. Mr. Day is currently one of the most interesting actors on television. There he plays Charlie in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” a frenzied, illiterate, unhygienic, seemingly celibate, rat-obsessed janitor of a dive bar. Here he plays Dr. Newton (“call me Newt”) an eccentric scientist who has his expertise in the monsters of the deep. He has got this crazy plan to drift with the still intact brain of a recently deceased monster in order to learn the secrets of the species. He does a very good, very funny job of it especially when playing against the stoic Idris Elba, commander of the army, and the dangerous Ron Perlman, CEO of the black market for monster remains. This is Mr. Day's first blockbuster and he fits right in. I hope to see him in others.

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. 

Much Ado About Nothing (4/5 Stars)

“Thou and I were made too wise to woo peaceably.”

- Shakespeare

Among a multitude of others things, what is also great about Shakespeare is that it is supremely low budget. Production value can be added but it is not needed. After all, Shakespeare originally produced all of his plays on the bare stage of the Globe Theater. He had no sets, no furniture, and no curtains. The only things added to his words were generally props and costumes. Think about that. It means that anyone anywhere in the world could adapt a play with minimal cost and it could turn out to be just as the Bard originally intended. There aren’t even any intellectual property rights to buy. The whole catalog belongs to the world. The best Shakespeare I have seen (a performance of Richard II) wasn’t even in a theater. A bunch of actors just got together and put on a show for free in a park field, (Yes I tipped). The writing is so descriptive the lack of visual aid hardly ever matters. You want to know what it looked like when Ophelia committed suicide, just give a listen. Shakespeare makes his characters speak for uncharacteristically long lengths in order to compensate for the lack of visual aid. And perhaps to compensate for the rowdy crowds and not very good actors (both common staples of Globe Theater and amateur community theater nowadays) he marks his characters without the slightest trace of subtlety. It is very hard to screw up a performance in Shakespeare because the dialogue is so brazenly truthful, profound, and above all articulate. Given some patient translation you start to notice with startling clarity that what is being said are things we all think but rarely ever have the time, patience, or bravery to figure out how to actually say (even almost 500 years later!)

Unfortunately there is generally the impulse for modern moviemakers to add all those pretty things money and technology make possible even though Shakespeare made it all superfluous. This is sometimes done to an absurd degree. There are plenty of high-school movies that are adapted from Shakespeare but the only thing used is the plot. Even the words are ditched in favor of “accessibility.” Fie! I bite my thumb at thee! Directors need to have much more faith in the audience. Let us now consider director Joss Whedon’s take on “Much Ado About Nothing.” It is my opinion that this is how Shakespeare should be done and what is more, you can do it too. We all can.

The story of how this production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” is well known now. Joss Whedon had just finished production of a huge tent-pole movie named “The Avengers” and had two months before post-production started. He was in a funk. (As he probably should have been. See my review of “The Avengers”). His wife noticed this and counseled to instead of taking a planned vacation to spend the time doing one of his favorite hobbies, putting on a Shakespeare at his home. This has apparently been a long-time Whedon thing. To wind down after working on TV series all day, he would invite his company of actors over to his house and they would read through Shakespeare for fun. This time however, Whedon got out his digital camera and made a movie over a period of a couple of weeks. The result feels so Shakespeare. The entire thing takes place in a mansion. There is no production design besides the original architecture of the place. The cast is dressed in simple modern costume. The actors, all having worked with Whedon before and now on a movie not really intended for an audience beyond themselves, are friendly and relaxed. And the movie is shot in black and white, a perfect choice given that it allows the audience to not be overly distracted from the words. You can really focus in on them here, and like almost all Shakespeare, it is incredible stuff.

“Much Ado About Nothing” is a comedy about two pairs of lovers, one serious and the other comic. The serious romance concerns that of Claudio (played by Fran Kranz) and Hero (played by Jillian Morgese). In serious romance tradition, their love is perfect but besieged upon by outside forces intent on breaking them apart. In this case the subterfuge and sinister behavior of Don John (played by Sean Maher) who is at odds with Hero’s father Leonato (played by Clark Gregg). The comic romance concerns that of Benedick (played by Alexis Denisof) and Beatrice (played by Amy Acker). In comic romance tradition, the only thing keeping Beatrice and Benedick from each other is their own combative personalities. Benedick takes it with some pride that he won’t ever fall for a woman and Beatrice, a dormant feminist, doesn’t think much of men. Their relationship is marked by sharp patter, sharp jabs wit, and finally a smoldering recognition that each may have finally met their match in the other. A conspiracy is formed against them as well, however, it is hatched for the purpose of getting them together. Wicked lies are spread that each is secretly in love with the other! And….hilarity ensues.

All of this takes place at Leonato’s mansion over a weekend that contains a party that I would seriously have wanted to attend. What’s more, near the end, Nathan Fillion shows up as the incompetent yet very proud police chief Dogberry, and is hilarious for each and every second he is on the screen. All and all, this is a great piece of community theater that is sure to be much valued within the Wheedon-verse. It is a delight to be able to crash the party. If only the “The Avengers” was this good.

p.s. I have been inspired to put “Firefly” in my Netflix queue.

The Great Gatsby (5/5 Stars)

Those familiar with the art of director Baz Luhrman have generally had to meet him halfway. For many artists the old ‘meet halfway” is usually not worth the trip. Greatness or the lack thereof though not entirely causal is highly correlated with accessibility. But Baz is one of those exceptions; the shortcomings of his movies (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet, Moulin Rouge) in terms of believable human emotion and orderly plot rhythm are oftentimes successfully offset by the larger than life ambition of his musical numbers and the overall gorgeousness of the production (costumes, sets, cast, and etc.) One cannot say that his approach makes perfect movies. Moulin Rouge, being a very good example, has as many awkward transitions and stilted drama as incredible moments of inspired grandeur. The silly and great existed not only in the same movie but also sometimes within the same scene for instance when two middle-aged men sing and dance Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” surely one of the more unforgettable scenes I have ever seen.

It is my pleasure then to announce that The Great Gatsby largely avoids Baz’s regular pitfalls and it does so by strictly adhering to the superior writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose book this movie very faithfully adapts. It is not much to say that F. Scott Fitzgerald is a better writer than Baz Luhrman. Most everybody is. It means far more to say that Fitzgerald’s words can complement the visual ambitions of Baz because like Moulin Rouge and his previous movies, The Great Gatsby is something of an orgiastic delight of colorful sensations, including an extended look at one of the more incredible parties I have ever witnessed in a movie. (For those that thought the Miami sleaze-fest in this year’s Spring Breakers looked like fun, they need to take a gander at what a real party looks like. Sure the version of Jay Gatsby’s continual party at his long island mansion is probably unapproachable in real life, but it still contains several nostalgic elements we seem to have completely lost in the 21^st century i.e. parties where people dress up and not way-way down and actually know how to dance.) There is an especially inspired moment in The Great Gatsby that introduces the enigmatic Jay Gatsby (played by Leonardo Dicaprio) after much hype to the climatic swell of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” while a multitude of fireworks explode in the distance. As far as first impressions a la Baz go, I would rate it just as high as when Romeo first spies Juliet through a fish aquarium in Romeo +Juliet.

The best of Fitzgerald’s writing is preserved through the narration of Nick Caraway (played by Tobey Maguire) and seamlessly interweaves itself with the extremely restless camera of Baz as it does such 3D contortions as starting at the top of the Empire State Building and descending till it ends with a close up on Nick Caraway’s upward looking gaze on the street. At another time the camera will travel unbrokenly between Jay Gatsby’s nouveu riche mansion to across the bay where his romantic obsession Daisy Buchanan lives with her aristocratic husband (played by Joel Edgerton) in her own mansion. This may seem a bit much, but on the other hand it is not like Baz is adapting Ernest Hemingway here. If you want to see a Hemingway-esque movie, go see Jeff Nichol’s Mud. Here we are adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose books unapologetically overflow with the kind of flowery vocabulary that makes it a perfect fit for what Baz likes to do.

I suppose now it is the point of the review where I rewrite my high school book report. I will try to do a better job of it this time. I cannot recall saying anything that insightful back then.

The Great Gatsby is narrated by a young man named Nick Caraway who moves to New York City during the roaring twenties and takes a Wall Street job. Right next door to Nick is the Gatsby estate where endless parties go on almost every night though no one quite sure knows why. Gatsby is a ghost at his parties. Most partiers never see him. One day, Nick gets an invitation. Weirdly when he shows up, he finds he is the only person to get an invitation. What’s more is that the reclusive Gatsby wants to meet him. Gatsby puts on quite a show and story for Nick. Gatsby is from a highly respectable family who are all dead now that sent him to the best schools and such. Then he went to war in WWI and became a war hero. Nick, who unbeknownst to Gatsby is a down to earth guy, is surprised even more to find out the reason he is being treated to such a display. Jay Gatsby is in love with his cousin Daisy Buchanan, a woman who rejected him once because he was too poor. He wants Nick to ask Daisy to meet him for tea, nothing else. That is what all the parties were for. He was throwing them just to entice Daisy to show up. And when she never did, he invited Nick. There is a great scene where an especially nervous Jay finally asks Nick to ask Daisy to tea and thinks it is necessary to sweeten the deal by offering Nick connections to all his Wall Street buddies. But Nick declines the offer. He will do it as a favor. Imagine Jay’s surprise. Nobody in the “respectable society” he is so desperately trying to shoehorn into never once did anything for free or as a friend.

What are we to think of Gatsby? This is a question that the whole country wants each and every young citizen to contemplate. Here is a man that embodies so many of the contradictory values of America. He comes from a poor family and worked hard to make his fortune, but he lies about his past and presents a consumerist façade of aristocracy and easy living. His great ambition and individuality have led to success, but it is accomplished by being a bootlegger with shady acquaintances. He is driven by love, hope, and idealism, but his dreams are unrealistic and ultimately illusory.  He is rich. He is kind. He is handsome. He is a criminal. He is a home wrecker. He is a phony. But importantly, F. Scott Fitzgerald chose to write of Gatsby through the eyes of Nick Caraway, a character whose realness is undeterred by the sound and fury of the Roaring Twenties. We see Gatsby clearly through Nick the way no other person in the story does. Gatsby does much that is corrupt but his ultimate purpose is incorruptible. Everything he does, he does for love, and this he proves beyond a doubt when he is prepared to take a manslaughter charge for an undeserving woman right after she rejects him. There is much about Gatsby that we may sneer at but Nick Caraway remembers his father’s advice once passed down to him a long time ago, to always look for the good in people. And that special type of good Nick sees in Gatsby stands tall amidst all the fucking shit he imposed on his life and all that life imposed on him. That is what made the man Great. 

Mud (3/5 Stars)

‘Mud’ is the third feature of one of the more exciting new American directors, Jeff Nichols. Nichols first came upon the scene in 2008 with “Shotgun Stories,” one of the more impressive no-budget films I have ever seen. He progressed in leaps and bounds with his second feature, “Take Shelter,” which I still consider the best movie of 2011. That movie added to Nichols repertoire the kind of special effects only achievable with a decent budget. With “Mud,” Nichols adds the presence of movie stars, something a small movie can generally only achieve when the makers have a reputation for quality work.

Two kids, Ellis and Nick, take a motorboat out to an island in the Arkansas part of the Mississippi river.  They are adventuring to check out a boat that somehow found itself in a tree. They find the boat but they also find a man named “Mud” (this is not a made up name apparently as all the other characters in the story call him that too) who is hiding out there away from the authorities. Mud (played by Matthew McConaughey asks for help and weaves a story about killing a man out of love for his woman Juniper (played by Reese Witherspoon). Ellis, whose parents are talking of divorce in the background of home scenes, decides to help Mud. Because as he explains at one points these two love each other. The kid does not do a whole lot of explaining his actions, which is accurate as he is just a kid after all and probably wouldn’t be able to articulate what he wanted to say even if he wanted too. The other adults in the story however take notice of his odd behavior and sneaking about and provide many opportunities for advice. The advice varies of course but most of it is about love and it is as helpful as basically anything you can tell a fourteen year old in vague, uncertain, and metaphorical terms (the funniest advice comes from Michael Shannon character, uncle to Nick. He uses a ceiling fan he dredged up from the Mississippi river to make his point). Some things, kids just need to figure out for themselves.

It is a good question as to what Ellis (played by Tye Sheridan) actually learns from the experiences he has in this movie other than women are unpredictable and it (maybe?) is not a good idea to fight with other guys over them.  I am going to keep from talking too much about the storyline here because there isn’t much more to the movie than the limited twists to the plot. I could talk a bit about the performances but I couldn’t really propound on the specialness of them that much. My best observation I think would be how Tye Sheridan must have a helluva right hand because he keeps landing punches in the faces of guys twice his size. It looks a little awkward because he has to reach up so high. I wouldn’t think the jabs would have much impact but they keep on doing so. I suppose I could also mention that the Mississippi river looks pretty neat.

You what this movie reminds me of? Those classic Criterion Collection European films. Ones like “The 400 Blows” and “Au Revoir Enfants.” These are movies that my book “The 1001 Movies You Need to See Before You Die” keeps telling me to see, but for the life of me I cannot understand what makes these movies great. I understand why they aren’t bad, but why would they be great? They accomplish perfectly what they set out to accomplish but in the end it is exactly what it is, not much.  

It is a sort of critical paradox that the more a movie tries to do, the more ways it can fail. I think that may be the reason why ‘Mud’ which does is a very good not so ambitious movie can score around 98% on Rotten Tomatoes while Michael Bay’s ‘Pain and Gain’ and probably Baz Luhrman’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ (I say probably because I have yet to see it, will so this weekend) are hovering around 50% even though they are very dense movies that aiming to accomplish quite a lot.

Pain and Gain (4/5 Stars)

You may think you have seen this movie from director Michael Bay before. You may have taken a look at the trailer, noticed the macho men, the strippers, and the conspicuous consumption of fast cars, big houses, flashy clothes. You’ve seen it before glorified and sensationalized in other Bay movies like the “Bad Boys” franchise, “Armageddon,” and the “Transformers” franchise. And yes “Pain and Gain” has all of that but there is a fundamental difference here. “Pain and Gain” does not glorify any of that. Instead it has contempt for the arrogance, greed, and stupidity that all of the above. It’s like Michael Bay grew a conscience about the types of movies he was making or something. There is morality in this picture. This movie, like his previous, is still heavily tasteless of course. It contains gratuitous violence, heavy substance abuse, and a cast largely made up of beefcakes and supermodels, sure, but it is not an amoral movie. The message is clear: The characters being portrayed here are, to borrow a direct quote from the movie, really “fucking dumb,” and the movie quite successfully makes much humor out of their stupidity. That is of course before they get so stupid that people start dying. Then the laughs kind of peter out and one watches the movie in what must be described as a state of awe.

This is a true story. The screenplay was based off of a series of Pete Collins’s news articles in the Miami New Times. Now what does that matter? For anyone who has seen Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” we all know he would gladly and immediately sacrifice the truth if it means he could use more explosions.

(One of my favorite movie critic anecdotes belongs to a man who took it upon himself to listen and rank every single audio commentary in the Criterion Collection. Apparently the best one ever consists of the science advisors from the inexplicable inclusion of Michael Bay’s “Armageddon” sharing anecdotes about how they kept on telling Michael Bay that none of what was on the screen was good science or remotely possible and Michael Bay ignoring their advice in favor of more explosions.)

And it is true that Michael Bay still does not care about the truth. I had the pleasure of looking up the news articles and finding out that about half of what is on screen never happened. But here is the best part: The story is so wacky and bizarre that I bet you would not be able to tell just by watching the movie which parts were made up. You may as well flip a coin for true or false on every unbelievable thing you see. That is after all the reason the real police (as they do in the movie) did not believe the story and refused to investigate even in the face of an incredible amount of evidence left over by really dumb criminals. Imagine my shock when I learned that Michael Bay did not add any explosions. That one explosion happened. It did.

Mark Wahlberg stars as Daniel Lugo, the manager of Sun Gym. He is the type of guy who believes big muscles and the right attitude as opposed to say an education or honest work is the key to success in America. He attends get-rich-quick seminars from a Tony Robbins-like personality named Johnny Wu, played by Ken Jeong. Johnny believes in the American Dream and it isn’t the old 1950s consumerist fantasy of a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, two cadillacs, a wife, and a couple kids. His American Dream is a mansion bigger than your neighbors, a flashy speedboat in addition to a flashy car, and the ability to pick up the most expensive golddiggers at the most expensive strip club. “I had a wife and kids,” says Johnny, “then I stopped being a loser. Now I have seven honies to pick from.” And Johnny points to seven supermodels in the front row. Daniel Lugo nods his head and thinks, “Man, this guy totally gets me.” To my great delight he also references the Al Pacino character in 1983’s Scarface as one of his role models. Like I’ve said before, no other statement in a movie or in real life will so easily certify a person as a Grade-A moron. What is Johnny Woo’s golden advice: “Do be a doer. Don’t be a don’ter.” This mantra will be repeated throughout the movie to justify kidnapping a millionaire, torturing him in a warehouse for several weeks, forcing him to sign over all his assets, and then attempting to murder him. And then doing it again to an unluckier soul once the original money is all gone.

Nobody has played dim more successfully in more good movies than Mark Wahlberg has (Boogie Nights, The Other Guys, Ted) and I’m trying to phrase that in a way that sounds like a compliment to his acting ability. After all playing stupid convincingly requires the intelligence to know why what you are doing is stupid and the humility required with the knowledge you are doing is something stupid. Tack on that the many scenes where Wahlberg is either shirtless or in a kiss the cook apron and I think you can say this is a pretty brave performance. The role of Daniel Lugo could have very easily taken a dark turn and in doing so sacrificed much of the humor in this picture. For instance at one point Daniel Lugo decides it is a good idea to take back a malfunctioning chainsaw to Home Depot for a refund. The chainsaw is malfunctioning because human hair has gotten stuck in the chain. Only halfway through the conversation with the return desk cashier does Lugo realize it might not have been a good idea to return a chainsaw with human hair and blood on it. The scene is macabre but Wahlberg’s performance never allows Lugo to be a more frightening presence than he is a laughable one.

Of course stealing scenes left and right is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in what is perhaps the first and only decent role he has landed in his entire movie career. He plays the third and most innocent wheel of the Sun Gym Gang: a body builder of enormous size and recently sober and born again Christian. He is roped into helping Lugo and his partner Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) because he really needs the money and is dumb enough to believe Lugo when he promises there will no be violence in the operation. The man is a huge contradiction but then again so is Dwayne Johnson, which is at least my theory as to why he has never had a good movie role before. The man is incredibly hard to write for. Because he is such a huge guy, you would think that he would be perfect for action blockbusters. The problem is that he does not have a tough looking face. In fact, it can be described as angelic, which would explain why he has done a lot of children’s movies. So the perfect role for this guy would seem to be a really shy body-builder. And guess what? Pain and Gain is one of those rare movies that contain such a non-cliché character. Dwayne Johnson plays his character with as much humility as Mark Wahlberg. In fact, I would say the action sequences are better characterized as physical comedy routines, especially when Johnson tries to rob an armored car and the bank bag explodes green slime in his face in the midst of a crowded beauty salon. That was funny.

This is Michael Bay’s best movie. It is not totally without flaw however. You may at several points think to yourself, say isn’t this movie running a bit long. Such is always the problem with Michael Bay. He generally does not understand that simply because he can do something with a camera, that it does not mean he should. Each shot taken as itself looks good but there are too many superfluous scenes that taken in whole extend the movie at least a half hour past where it should end. I am still of the belief that one of the best things Michael Bay has done was achieved when he still made commercials. He is after the creator of the first “Got Milk” commercial; a true achievement in how much information can be conveyed in a one-minute time frame. The important thing about this movie though is that Michael Bay limited himself to 25 million dollars and almost no special effects. As such, the movie is far more interesting to watch than the epics of catastrophic proportions known as all his other movies. I swear the more limitations put on the man, the better his movies will be. When he gets several hundred million to make his movie and creative control as well they turn into three hour long gargantuan messes. Pain and Gain succeeds where his other movies fail more because of what he is not doing (focusing on robots and special effects) than what he is doing (characters and story). I hope he makes more small movies in the future.

It is at a time like this when the death of Roger Ebert comes into full focus. Ebert never wrote better reviews than when they were aimed at a Michael Bay feature. I would have loved to read his review of this movie. Perhaps we can imagine his surprise when he found out he did not completely hate it.