1998

Dark City Review

January 24, 2017 by JD Hansel

READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE SEEING THE FILM

For what it’s worth, I really tried to watch this movie the right way. I had been warned that the film has an opening voiceover (added by the studio due to concerns that humans are stupid) which gives away many of the biggest surprises, reveals, and twists. So, I did my filmic duty and muted everything up until the opening titles, which is what everyone who sees it ought to do. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had the closed captions turned on, so I still had something important spoiled for me, but it wasn’t much more than had already been spoiled by the guy who had informed me about the voiceover in the first place. I think the best way to avoid this issue is to just watch the director’s cut, which does not spoil itself at the start and remains more true to what the film was meant to be. I eagerly look forward to watching the director’s cut for myself, if only because, in spite of its problems, I actually greatly enjoy this movie – so much so that I started watching it again from the beginning almost immediately after it ended. No matter how many times the movie explains itself (and it is a lot), it manages to stay surprising and interesting, holding my attention from start to finish.

One of the things that makes it so captivating is the editing, which is incredibly fast. When I started watching the movie from the beginning for a second time, it felt normal to me, but during my initial viewing, it threw me off with its rather awkward speed and tight transitions, throwing out so much of the space to catch one’s breath between cuts/scenes that other films offer. It’s obviously visually outstanding – that’s arguably the point of the film – but I think there’s more to it than that. Yes, it’s about getting lost in another world and exploring a strange, anxiety-inducing place, but it also makes an argument for how the human mind/soul works, and it makes it well. Its story may be nothing remarkable, but that doesn’t matter – It’s still one of the most thrilling films I’ve ever seen. If not for the film’s inability to keep its mouth shut and let me figure it out for myself, and if not for the film’s disinterest in making me feel emotion, I would be hailing it as practically perfect and as one of the all-time greatest movies ever made.

You’ve Got Mail Review

November 4, 2016 by JD Hansel

I’d like to take a moment to focus on a film called The Shop Around the Corner. This is a classic Ernst Lubitsch comedy that I highly recommend. It’s very funny and clever, and it established certain stylistic elements of the romantic comedy that have continued to this day. In short, two employees of a furniture store don’t get along well, but then one of them discovers that the other has been his pen pal, with whom he’s anonymously been exchanging love letters. It features a great cast of actors, many of whom I recognized from other films of the era (including the great and powerful Frank Morgan), and the plot is captivating from start to finish. It becomes particularly interesting when the protagonist, played by James Stewart, starts to use the knowledge he has of his correspondent’s identity to mess with and manipulate her, before ultimately making her fall in love with him.

This leads me to the film that follows in its footsteps, You’ve Got Mail. This film is very smart in that it takes full advantage of the new technology of the time – the personal email – to tell a new kind of story, while at the same time recycling elements of a classic story. The characters are very likable, and the story is captivating enough, but the moment that absolutely blew me away is when the film suddenly turns into a line-for-line remake of a scene from The Shop Around the Corner. It’s one of the greatest homages in history simply because it’s a movie doing an impression of its father, which is hardly ever seen. That being said, the movie’s main problem seems to be how it is too much like its predecessor: it follows the old story of a man who’s mission is to manipulate the woman until he gets what he wants from her – a story of masculine domination. Since the film is coming from a female director, I would hope for some sort of a creative break from this old formula, rather than a film that follows along with Hollywood’s boring old habit of making the formation of the couple synonymous with the psychological battle of a man conquering a woman’s mind. It’s actually very strange to see just how forgiving Meg Ryan’s character is of Hanks’ after he’s completely destroyed her family business, when he could have saved it just by stopping the development of the Fox store’s children’s section and establishing a partnership between the store and the shop, essentially making her store the Fox children’s section.

Now, I’ve spoken many a time before about the ‘80s charm – the special power that ‘80s movies have over me even when I know they’re stupid (or perhaps especially when I know they’re stupid). I am, however, a child of the ‘90s, so I also get nostalgic about this period as well. When something strikes me as extremely ‘90s, it can have about the same effect on me as something extremely ‘80s has – it’s emblematic of just how cute we humans are when we think our trends, fashions, technology, music, and life-choices isn’t really as absurd as it will seem in the future. I think sometime around Vietnam we see American culture hit its mid-life crisis as a result of the country’s depression, so Americans wore their hair long and made over-the-top music and acted more sophisticated than they really were and did everything in their power to embrace a new American value: individuality. We dragged the rest of western culture into the pits of idiosyncrasy with us, and borrowed from what Europe had that already fit this philosophy: the avant-garde, David Bowie, Python humor, Expressionism, and so on and so forth. We are still in this crisis today, but while we’re waiting for our kids to dye their hair purple for “2010s Day” at high school, we can just enjoy how charming the sights and sounds of ‘90s cinema can be. You’ve Got Mail is one of the greatest examples of the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with a trip back to the ‘90s, and everything from its leading lady’s hairdo to its title to its soundtrack (especially that song by the Cranberries) makes the film into a perfect time capsule.

With all this in mind, I can still say that I appreciate the film greatly, even if I find it rather hackneyed, trite, and overly submissive to tired patriarchal tradition. I can also say that I’m tired of the old stereotype of the male romantic lead always being an obnoxious jerk at the beginning, but this I am also willing to forgive. Ultimately, the film wins me over because it’s story is fascinating (even if we know how it’s going to play out), it made me care about the characters, and it has a special kind of charm about it. I tip my hat to Nora Ephron for creating such an impressive and enjoyable contemporary film classic.

A Night at the Roxbury Review

June 26, 2015 by JD Hansel

I thought it would be interesting to follow up my review of Blues Brothers with a review of another SNL spin-off, so I chose Roxbury since I enjoy the old “What Is Love” sketch. I went into the film expecting a weak, virtually plotless story about detestable characters, and perhaps it was my low expectations that allowed me to kind of enjoy the film. I could tell I was watching no masterpiece, but it was surprisingly easier to watch than Blues Brothers. Why? It was simple.

I’m all for movies that get a bit complex in terms of story structure and details, such asCLUE in terms of a detailed screenplay or Pulp Fiction in terms of a unique story structure. The problems occur when a movie is more wrapped up in details and complexity than it is in showing/telling the plot. The Dark Crystal suffers from this, although I still respect it deeply, and I wonder if Blues Brothers is in a similar category. Blues Brothers is hard to follow only because it seems to forget where it’s going, and there is something unsettling about following an unfocused movie. After all, a filmmaker is, to a large extent, the tour guide through an unknown world, and it’s a little disrespectful to the tour group to wander about aimlessly instead of focusing on what the tourists came to see. (I am unwavering in my conviction that audiences don’t go to theaters to see films, but rather to experience stories, so I naturally propose that the story ought to be the focus of nearly every movie.)

While I do not mean for this to become another review of Blues Brothers, I think the comparison is important to me because of how much easier it was to watch Roxbury, if only because it was more focused. I know on an intellectual level that Roxbury is a weaker film, but it felt easier to watch, and I think that’s where simplicity and focus come into play. It’s pretty clear from near the beginning that the story is simply two idiots trying to get into a nightclub, and I suppose Blues Brothers has a story with about the same simplicity. The difference is that Roxbury is only about 80 minutes long, whereas Blues Brothers, which could have been the same length, is over two hours long. Roxbury was kind enough to get to its point … the problem is, it doesn’t have much of a point.

It’s severely lacking in humor, and some critics have gone as far as to say that the film only has one joke: the protagonists are idiots. I contest, as I think the butt-touching gag was fun, but it’s not good when the best joke in the film is butt-touching. I didn’t hate the protagonists as much as I thought I would since there seems to be some kind of innocence about them. They clearly just never grew out of middle school, and they very much reminded me of my younger self, so I was able to empathize with the characters. I honestly was routing for them, wondering how the story and conflicts would all be resolved, which I suppose means it didn’t fail as a movie. It just failed as a comedy, and certainly did not reach the heights of the comedy films I most enjoy. I certainly don’t hate the film, since it is basically harmless; I just think it’s best for the viewer to be doing something else to keep his/her mind busy while it’s on, lest the mind be weakened by the stupid.

Ever After Review

May 8, 2015 by JD Hansel

Do you know how often I give a movie four and a half stars? I’ve done over 50 movie reviews and I only gave such a rating to two of them … but today you can make that three. To be honest, I probably should have given this rating to a couple other really good movies I’ve reviewed, such as Annie Hall, but I really wanted to save such a high number for the absolute best of the best. For this reason, it is odd that I would choose to give this rating to a film that stars one of my least favorite actors in the lead role. (What, you don’t see why I don’t like Drew Barrymore? I can’t really explain it, but I find her voice pretty annoying, and the roles she plays are often the kind of characters that seem like they were written just to bug me.)

Here’s the thing: that’s pretty much the movie’s only flaw. Everything else, from the story to the dialogue to the performances to the visuals to the music, was done right. The world of the film is enchanting, the characters are delightful, and the story manages to capture all of the best elements of the story upon which it is based, Cinderella, while carefully adjusting what does not hold up. The story of “Cinderella” is a timeless one, which means it does not need an update unless something extra special will be added. Rather than adding anything too terribly brilliant or different, this film adds the basic thing that “Cinderella” lacked – a love story that’s actually a love story. And it’s a good love story at that.

The movie owes much of its success to the main character, and while I think it was the writing that made the character great, Barrymore’s performance was really not bad. The character could have been ruined by someone who lacked talent, but Barrymore’s acting talent allowed for the character to shine through in exactly the way it needed to, making aCinderella that the audience really cares about. It helped that she was doing an accent, but what really helped was the way the dialogue was written. It was done in such a way that the character is strong, smart, independent, and brave, without seeming like an annoying know-it-all. This is a fine example of the type of character I would like to see more often in cinema.

If I may note one other thing, and I do believe this is key, I think it helps to have the writer be the director, or at least have some additional control over the project so his/her vision gets across. Many of the other movie’s I’ve reviewed that I enjoyed the most had Woody Allen as both the writer and the director, or at the very least as both writer and star. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles came very close to getting four and a half stars out of me, and Silver Linings Playbook succeeded in doing so. Both of those had the writer direct as well. Perhaps this is just the wishful thinking of a screenwriting control freak, but I want to see this become common practice.