R

Burn After Reading Review

November 6, 2016 by JD Hansel

It’s always a little bit embarrassing for me to say that I don’t “get” a certain kind of humor. In general, the inability to understand a joke that others find humorous is often a sign of a lack of understanding of the world as a whole – a sign of immaturity. It usually shows that the person who does not laugh is “out of the loop” and does not have the perspective (or intelligence) to understand either the mechanics of the joke or the nature of the joke’s subjects. This is why I have always hated to reveal that I “just don’t get it” when I watch a film by the Coen brothers. Burn After Reading, much like the small fraction of the rest of their work that I’ve seen, simply doesn’t do it for me, and I have a hard time explaining why.

Some might think that I am making too big a deal out of a simple matter of differing tastes, but I don’t think that comedy is quite as subjective as the public believes. I think that appreciation or depreciation of certain jokes or certain kinds of comedy can be indicative of a level of thoughtfulness or intelligence, and the comedy of the Coen brothers is generally thought of as a more sophisticated kind of comedy. I think that this sense of sophistication comes from the fact that they do comedy that is not explicitly comedic – the actors don’t go too far over the top, don’t wink at the camera, don’t crack jokes, don’t engage in funny physical comedy, don’t release a steady stream of witty one-liners the way Woody Allen does, and don’t have the sense of “putting on a show” that is nearly always a part of the comedic aesthetic. The comedy is in how uninteresting and pathetic these people are, but even the traditional comedy style of England, which is known for focusing on the uninteresting and pathetic people more than the fun, wisecracking comic type that America has celebrated, tends to “play up” the comedy much more than the Coen brothers do. I think the subdued nature of the comedy creates the sense that the comedy is a bit harder to find, perhaps to the point that someone could walk into the film mid-way and believe it was a drama for a few minutes. This in turn creates the sense that the comedy must only be visible to those who are smart enough to see it, but I think this is illusory – I know that it’s supposed to be funny that Clooney’s character has so little control over the way he’s wired to behave that he can’t help but find a new woman to have a secret affair with the moment that his current secret lover looks like she’ll become his wife, but it’s only funny to the point of making me roll my eyes. I’m not interested in laughing at people who are just pathetic, annoying suckers – I’m just annoyed with them because I’m surrounded by the same kind of annoying people every day, and their loss is more of a cause for a sigh of relief than for a laugh.

This film is an example of how the Coen brothers simply fail to understand how to properly walk the tiny tightrope that is the comedy narrative. The comedy film is such a difficult thing to do well because of its inherent contradiction: cinema is, as Roger Ebert rightly noted, an empathy-generating machine, while comedy and empathy are forever at odds. The audience can’t care too much about the characters or else it won’t be funny when something bad happens to them – it will be dramatic – but they also can’t be too apathetic about the characters or else they will have no interest in the plot. It is finding the type of character that is amusing, interesting, and somewhat likable, without seeming so real or relatable as to be taken seriously, that makes comedic entertainment possible. From what I’ve seen, the trick seems to be to make the characters relatable through childlike naivete, while still keeping them irrational and foolish. Consider Cookie Monster – he is forever obsessed with cookies, and we laugh at both his inability to obtain them and his inability to see how absurd his obsession is, but we still feel happy for him when he does get a cookie. We laugh at early Hermione Granger when she is saddened by the news that exams have been cancelled, but when she is saddened by being a disliked outcast, this is played as drama, showing the way the two kinds of misery function. Very often, this need for a character to “straighten out her priorities” is enough to make for the “adorable loser” type of character that we enjoy in the work of Henson, Chaplin, and other comedic greats, but the work of the Coen brothers doesn’t fit into either category of misery, and doesn’t work for me.

What does work for me, however, is the ending. The cuts to the men at the C.I.A. who are trying to figure out what on earth is wrong with all these crazy people are delightful. While I’ve never been a huge fan of either version of The Office, I do very much agree with Rainn Wilson’s observation that the show’s awkward moments are not as funny as the reactions of the other cast members in response to those moments. The look to the camera is funny because it relies on the other way that comedy functions in narrative – instead of enjoying the silly misery of the adorable loser, we enjoy the fun that one of the characters is having observing people being fools or losers. Burn After Reading could have worked if it had some sane characters appearing throughout who recognized the absurdity of the other characters, but the characters are just not funny enough on their own. They are annoying and stupid and boring and they made for a tedious film. It took me a very long time to watch it because I couldn’t stomach it all in fewer than three sittings, and frankly I feel like it was time poorly spent.

Animal House Review

October 31, 2016 by JD Hansel

When I was a wee lad in the humble state of Delaware, I was a big fan of a certain kind of film – a kind that usually took the form of made-for-TV film. Because I spent my whole childhood overwhelmed by the fact that I was forced to remain a child for years to come, and therefore would have no say in any decision-making and would never be able to get anyone to listen to me, I loved the films about kids who banded together to solve the problems adults couldn’t or wouldn’t, always in creative ways. I think the best example of this is Max Keeble’s Big Move, but others include Recess: School’s Out and Gunther and the Paper Brigade. It’s a cute genre that generally does not age well (in the sense that adults don’t like them as much as kids do), but it stays near and dear to my heart. College comedies that try to offer the same experience to adults rarely interest me as much because they generally lack the same spirit or charm. The one exception to this, of course, is Animal House, which both fills my heart with nostalgic warmth and fills my head with adult filth.

While the story is rather loose and the screenplay gives one the feeling that the film can be summed up as “stuff happening,” this is a solid piece of entertainment. It manages to present very pathetic, stupid, un-relatable characters and still make them likable. The performance from Belushi obviously steals the show, but Karen Allen brings the charm to the film, and Donald Sutherland blew my mind with how perfectly he was able to embody the epitome of nebbishness even though I’m used to thinking of him as an intimidating figure. This movie kept impressing me with the depths to which it was willing to go just to be stupid, as was clearly demonstrated when it first established its cliché “weirdly extreme villain with the weak, dorky sidekick” dynamic. The music is good too, as are most of the stylistic elements, and Landis proved himself once again to be a great cinematic craftsman. The very end of the film felt a little weak, as there was really no resolution, but it did seem appropriate. It may not be as pure as Some Like It Hot, but it still deserves its status as one of cinema’s finest comedies to date.

Terminator Review

October 29, 2016 by JD Hansel

MINOR SPOILER ALERT

Oh, how I love the ’80s. The ’80s developed the styles of particular cult ’70s musicals into a New Expressionism – one that emphasized deep, vivid colors and bright lights flashing through dark, gray cities. This mix of warm grays, cold blues, and hot reds spread across theatrical sets was complimented by over-the-top acting of Lloyd, Fox, Moranis, Curry, and others, bringing a theatrical quality to cinema that had not been seen since the days of German Expressionism. The use of electronic music made everyone feel like the future was just around the corner, but whether that future was exciting or dystopian depended on the movie. There is, of course, a spectrum to ’80s cinema, and much of it was very light and clean and harmless, but the darker end of the spectrum was home to the dark, dystopian action films: Blade Runner, RoboCop, Aliens, Batman, and perhaps the most emblematic of them all, Terminator.

Regrettably, I didn’t love Terminator quite as much as I’d hoped. I liked it just fine, but since I’m not usually a big fan of an action movie for action’s sake, I found it somewhat lacking. Its characters could have been a little bit more interesting, although Schwarzenegger was about as fun to watch as I had expected, and the story could have been a little bit more dramatic or devious. The ending left me a bit unsatisfied because it means that very little was actually accomplished apart from that which was necessitated by the rules of time – all of the events of the film (that take place in the ’80s) are already predestined, and couldn’t have possibly gone any other way. The ending would have been more satisfying if their actions in the ’80s somehow prevented all the horrible robot wars of the future or had caused all of the horrible robot wars, but as it was it felt weak. I don’t really consider this film to be a disappointment, however, because it was exactly what it needed to be – an excursion into fun science fiction with that beautiful ’80s charm.

Mad Max Review

September 16, 2016 by JD Hansel

What . . . the what? I’m very confused about what on earth this movie is supposed to be. The entire selling point of Mad Max – and the story synopsis on the back of the DVD case – is Max’s revenge plot. But this plot is just the third act. The entirety of acts one and two is spent setting up a conflict, rather than following one. I’m not saying that every film must follow the standard Hollywood narrative format, but the best deviations from this format are the ones that deviate to saturate the conflict, not distract from it. In comparison to my expectations, most of Mad Max just feels dull and pointless.

This film raises the usual questions that I struggle to answer when writing on a film I don’t like:

Is it a good film even though it’s not my cup of tea?
Can it be held accountable for not living up to its marketing if the film’s marketing is the problematic part?
And is it really a bad thing when a film does not make it clear how it should be approached/read?

To answer the first question, I do think it is possible for me to recognize films that have many positive elements, even if I don’t particularly like them. I have spent far too much time writing about Pan’s Labyrinth because I know that it is a very impressive film, yet somehow I hate it immensely. I’m not sure that this movie is the same kind of situation. Mad Max does not strike me as remarkably well-crafted, even for what it’s trying to be, regardless of whether or not I happen to like what it’s trying to be. Perhaps the problem is that I cannot tell what it is that I was supposed to be getting out of it, but now that I know what the movie is about and what it spends its time focused on, I still don’t think I’d appreciate it more on my second viewing. Its story is simply lacking.

For the second question, I don’t think I have a good answer. If a movie’s marketing is really bad, but the film itself ends up being spectacular, I don’t think I could fault it much for the marketing. After all, the marketing is not necessarily apart of the film itself, and is generally not really controlled (or even influenced much) by what the director and producer say. On the other hand, if a film gives me less than what the marketing had me expecting, that’s a negative thing. It shows that there’s potential there for a good movie, but the filmmakers didn’t make something as good as what the film could have been. On the other other hand, what’s especially difficult here is discerning when a film is just “different” from its marketing, but not particularly better or worse. With Mad Max, it’s clear to me that all of the time spent “world building” in the first hour could have been spent on an exciting plot that properly mixed in the world building, sort of like The Princess Bride, and that would’ve been far more entertaining (without deviating from what was advertised or what the movie promised).

The last question is perhaps the most controversial, and what could easily make me seem like an idiot to a heck of a lot of people. I’m going to answer this question with a yes, but I’m not sure that it’s a yes in every case. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my review of Pulp Fiction, which I have come to disagree with over time. It seems to me that I only liked the film because I had heard Tarantino explain in an interview how to approach and/or process it. I have come to recognize that, without an explanation of how to approach it, I couldn’t have understood it. Not only that, but I couldn’t have understood how to understand it. That, I think, is the key – I don’t need a filmmaker to hold my hand and explain everything to me, but I need to know what language I’m seeing before I can read it, or what game I’m playing before I can win it; the difficulty of the game is irrelevant.

I don’t really know if this review will make sense to anyone else. I’m not even sure that it makes sense to me. My goal has simply been to explore why I feel the way I do about this movie, and hopefully to understand myself (and cinema) better for having done so. Mad Max is certainly a special film that has some value to it, but the vast majority of the film did not grab me, and I was left wanting much, much more. Perhaps my problem is not so much the film as it is the glimpses it shows of what it could have been.

Colonia/The Colony Review

July 30, 2016 by JD Hansel

Note how my title for this article accounts for two alternate titles for the film. When I watched this movie through the library not too long ago, it had yet to be released in theaters in the United Kingdom. It was being promoted as The Colony in the UK, but on IMDb, its title was listed only as Colonia, without any reference to the title being promoted across the pond – not even in the page’s “Also Known As” section. At first I wasn’t entirely positive that they were the same movie since IMDb didn’t say they were, which is obviously undesirable for the film’s marketers and distributors. After the film’s UK release, at the time I’m writing this, the page has been updated to show The Colony as the official title at the very top of the page, and Colonia as the “original title” in smaller letters underneath The Colony. Now the “AKA” page is confused, with Colonia listed as the international title, even though that’s not the official title at the top of the main IMDb page. I mention all this nonsense to highlight the fact that this film matters so little to people that nobody has bothered to agree on what the official title is, because nobody cares about it in the slightest – hence why it only made about 60 bucks at the UK box office during opening weekend.

That is just a darn shame.

Rotten Tomatoes shows a score of 23% for this film, but critics ought to know by now how to approach a film of this kind in such a way that they can appreciate its stronger elements. The first obvious thing that everyone should be able to figure out from the trailer (and the poster) is that it’s pseudo-Oscar-bait. It’s got a lot of the elements of an Oscar winner – focus on an unrecognized oppressed people, historical drama, etc. – but is ultimately not thoughtful, artistic, or impressive enough for such an award. It’s a popcorn flick in disguise as something more meaningful. The second thing to recognize right off the bat is that most of it will not be creative or artistic in stylistic approach, instead aiming for a realism that will, in theory, emphasize the sense that these are real, historical events on screen. Third, and perhaps most important of all, is the fact that this is in no way striving for historical accuracy, and hardly even strives to honor those involved in the real events upon which it is based – again, it’s a popcorn flick that’s hiding behind a toupee and a monocle.

Once this is understood, now the film can be enjoyed for what it is. While I have very little patience for the kind of realistic style the film employs, I will say that I think the story is really good. For this reason, I propose that this movie is highly underrated – which is honestly the only reason why I felt the need to review it. The story has a number of elements throughout that are painfully predictable, but that’s partially because it’s hitting all of the notes it needs to in order to have the dramatic irony it seeks. Furthermore, the most important part of the story from an emotional standpoint – that being the fate of our two main characters – is not at all predictable.

I was on the edge of my seat, intensely concerned for what would happen to the protagonists, not only until the climax, but until the credits rolled. Yeah. That had to happen before I was sure of whether or not they’d make it, and that’s because it’s easy to make the case that either ending is adequately set up. While I’m not sure that it’s a positive sign that the ending was arbitrary from the standpoint of the story’s structure and what it necessitated, the effect was ultimately a good one – I got a thrill, and few movies can give me the kind of thrill that this one did. Consequently, I say the movie gives all it promises, and perhaps even a little more, so I say it passes.

This Is the End Review

June 27, 2016 by JD Hansel

I watched this film on my last night as a teenager because it seemed like a fun way to mark the end of an era, but it ended up reminding me of the end of a different era. Once upon a time, people made outrageous comedy films that broke new grounds of absurd, all without relying on needless expletives and gratuitous violence to keep the viewers’ attention. Duck Soup, Airplane, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Young Frankenstein, Gremlins 2, Sleeper, Seven Day Week, The Naked Gun, Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Silent Movie, Beetlejuice, CLUE, and of course The Muppet Movie are among the classic comedies that have impressed me by relying on unfathomable absurdity, stupidity, and impossibility to keep the audience entertained, rather than jokes about coke and rape and Michael Cera’s CGI butt-cheeks. Sure, plenty of the movies I listed above have jokes that get rather dirty, and some of them have a bit of language from which I prefer to refrain, but these are secondary to the inherent toony lunacy of the worlds they present. The fact that this movie starts off very realistically, creating the sense that what we’re seeing is meant to be taken as our world, puts the filmmakers in a corner from the onset by forcing them to make light of a situation they made serious.

Think about this: the world ending isn’t a silly concept. The world ending at the hands of a singing plant is a silly concept, and the world ending from an attack by a giant boob is a silly concept, and even the world ending because the U.S. accidentally lets a bomb get dropped on Russia is a silly concept. What’s the difference? It starts with the fact that these are the kinds of ideas that leave people dying to know how in blazes the filmmakers handled them. They’re weird ideas, and they’re hard to wrap one’s mind around. However, I do think that the concept of the world ending because … it’s just the end of the world, in a biblical style, could lend itself to lots of great comedy. The primary problem standing in the way of this is what I mentioned above – the weed of realism is choking the fun out of cinema, and it breaks my heart. All that being said, even though this film is very much in the genre of “just scream profanities” comedy, it has its fair share of clever moments. At the very least I’m impressed with the filmmakers’ ability to get a feminist icon to take part in a scene that essentially boils down to a rape joke (the audio commentary says their goal was to “make it rapey; make that the joke”) which I find ethically unsettling, but still artistically impressive in a mildly evil sense. Given the nature of the beast, it is a surprise that the movie is as clever, creative, and respectable as it is, so I’d give it a passing grade.