The Usual Suspects (1995)

Lately I've been setting myself up for films that have huge expectations, and in turn, huge expectations about my writing about them. The Usual Suspects is no exception, people were literally shoving me (think Elaine from Seinfeld) with insistence to see this movie. Alongside Breathless and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, I have to carve a hard path through these viewings.

SPOLER ALERT, If you haven't seen this one, don't read from here on down.

I'm sure my friends who claimed that it was the most unpredictable ending ever in a film will think Im being sarcastic when I claim that Verbal was my first guess for Keyser Soze. I thought that it would be a good twist if that were the case, but later into the movie I started to second guess myself. After all, from what I had heard, this film didn't just have a good twist, it had a amazingly unlikely twist. So then I started to focus heavily on the possibility that it could actually be special agent Kujan. Silly me. Another reason for the shift away from Verbal is because I figured it would be a little unbalanced if one of the ensemble were chosen as Soze.

Anyway, I don't know how I figured the movie could rationalize agent Kujan being the villain. I didn't think that far ahead, but by my standards, that would have been the amazing twist. Verbal was a good one, but simply by the fact that he is crippled is enough to make him the most likely candidate for a "good twist," and therefore the most likely one.

One thing that crossed my mind is that when the movie came out there may not have been a thriller so daring. There are plenty of movies that have been made since that have influences from this one. Perhaps I was unknowingly jaded by the movies that have drawn heavily from this one, such as Swordfish.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

I was surprised at how quickly disappointment set in for me with this film. Interestingly, its been almost nine years since release, so I can't chalk it up to the film falling short of the huge buzz that it generated during the record breaking two years that it took to shoot it. Normally it takes much more effort and consideration for me to tear down a movie, especially one directed by someone with the reputation of Kubrick. With the exception of the cult scenes, Eyes Wide Shut looked like a made-for-tv movie, more specifically a soft-core pornographic Cinemax movie. There were too many parts of this film that weren't quite right that soured the experience for me. So strap in for a disjointed nitpicking response to this film!

I'm not as anti-Tom Cruise as many of my friends, but he really seemed miscast in this movie. He simply just does not have the look or sound of an uptown Manhattan doctor. Though he only wields limited authority in comparison to the cult that he crosses paths with, he looks out of place in his apartment, especially when he comes home and takes a nice cold Budweiser out of the fridge. Knowing Kubrick, there are probably reasons for this, but I just don't get them.

Nicole Kidman's delivery was no better. Why is she talking so frustratingly slow? She seemed borderline psychotic, yet if that were true it would simply distract too much from the story. Her inquiries and small doses of honesty with her husband were supposed to kickstart a whirlwind of unforeseen trouble, yet with her psychotic looking delivery it starts to look like she herself will be the whirlwind of trouble. I honestly thought she might murder her husband.

What about the simplistic and transparent way in which Todd Field's character, Nick Nightingale, presents Dr. Harford with his great secret about his blindfolded concerts. I began to wonder if there were some sort of sinister conspiracy involving Nick. Something was too forthcoming and neat about his explanation. Considering that he really was giving away the secret of the cult, this doesn't say much for the cult members' ability to drive the point home about secrecy. On a side note, I thought it was interesting that two other acclaimed directors, Sydney Pollack and Todd Field, were cast as actors in this film.

Now on to the mise en scene. This movie created a New York City that I cannot relate to. Since when is a cab ride from Manhattan to presumably Westchester only 75 bucks? Something seemed totally silly about the way the gang of kids were taunting Dr. Harford. It seemed a little more like suburban tomfoolery than the more hostile New York style confrontations. Only moments later, Dr. Harford meets an unlikely call-girl: she looks like a supermodel, only costs 150 dollars, can afford to live in Manhattan, what universe is this? The fictional NYC locations such as the Sonata Lounge also did not feel like New York. Something was too clean and camera-friendly about these sets.

Another qualm I have as far as plot details, how on earth did Dr. Harford get a costume that seemed to fit so well with the cult's costumes? This is a finer point, but it doesn't look as if he gets more of a description of the party other than "There are beautiful women and people wear cloaks and masks." Somehow he gets the right type of mask and the right color cloak, this doesn't say much for the supposedly exotic rituals of the cult. What if Dr. Harford accidentally showed up in a red cloak and suit? Boy, that would have been embarrassing!

Nitpicking all of these details seems beside the point, but they add up to make an unconvincing story that doesn't have me feeling the gravity of the situation. I wasn't expecting this from a director that has been known to obsess over these types of details. If we use 2001, A Space Odyssey as the benchmark, this movie fails in comparison.

Now for the redeeming qualities, the cult scenes are haunting and magnificent. Kubrick is amazing at creating surreal scenes on film. The steadicam shots and the sound are two technical aspects that stand out in these scenes that make a very eerily smooth environment. The lighting is also reminiscent of Barry Lyndon, which to say it is very low amber lighting. Given that it's a Kubrick film, I was not surprised to see 3:4 aspect ratio. Kubrick used a film stock that Kodak no longer manufacturers, presumably in order to capture low-light situations, and facilitate the unique processing they did to the film in order to get a higher color contrast. The film is also quite grainy in comparison to modern films. Considering this, it's hard to imagine that this is a 1999 film that opened number one at the box office. It also makes for yet another Kubrick movie that doesn't look clear on DVD!

Sydney Pollack was an excellent casting choice for Victor Ziegler, and plays a very important role in interpreting the film. Everything about Ziegler's character is perfectly balanced between having a down to earth realism mixed with larger than life status. This is apparent in the billiard room scene, where Ziegler gives a human face to the literally faceless cult. Pollack's delivery entices the idea that the cult's threats could have been idle. Maybe the cult is all smoke and mirrors. Perhaps Mandy overdosed on drugs and wasn't killed. He also serves as a great contrast from the cult's illusive image, that really under the masks these are normal people. Zeigler is comically at odds with the type of women that he meets through the cult. When Mandy is strung out drugs, he tries to explain to Dr. Harford what she took: "Speedball or snowball or whatever the hell they call it." I half expected him to go on a rant about "kids these days..." Interestingly Woody Allen was considered for this part, could you imagine?

An odd slice of reality in the otherwise surreal scene. Does that synth have an auto-chant effect too?

Similarly, there is a single shot of Nick Nightingale playing the organ during the cult rituals. This is subtly comical because it abruptly grounds the music into reality. At first the nebulous soundtrack seems non-diegetic, but then it briefly cuts to Nick with a large effects rack, mixer, and synth keyboard. Suddenly this mysterious music has a source, and it looks like a Casio.

More than one person has told me that Kubrick films are the type to continually offer more with each viewing. On this relatively featureless DVD, Steven Speilberg recounts in an interview how he hated The Shining at first viewing, but eventually grew to love it. I am hoping that such is the case for Eyes Wide Shut, and I will certainly watch this movie again sometime in the future.

Breathless (1960)

What can I say about this movie? It changed the way film makers and appreciators saw film, and changed attitudes towards editing. I take this on faith from what I have read, but I think that to truly understand what this movie stood for (or more accurately stood against), I need to take a look at some films of the 50's. I also have The 400 Blows(1959) on the shortlist, because I'm interested in the ways that Truffaut and Goddard are different even more than how they are alike.

In the meantime I will point out a few things that I noted:

-When Michel pretends to fire his gun while driving, we hear a non-faithful blast of a real gun: a sound representing something that does not happen in the environment of the movie. In the six months that I've been studying movies, this has happened twice on screen. In Malcolm X (1992) Malcolm and Shorty are playing cops and robbers using their hands to gesture gun blasts. However, we hear the non-faithful sound of a real gun blast, as if to foreshadow violence to come. In Mean Streets (1973), Harvey Keitel's character Charlie gestures with his hand and pretends to shoot his girlfriend. We also hear a real gun blast, which was even more jarring because it was an abrupt cut, and there was no change of scene.


So what's with this, is this some sort of film cliche that I'm unaware of? I wonder if it started with Breathless. In the commentary for Malcolm X, Spike Lee makes no mention of it appearing in any other movies, but talks about it as if it were an original idea that evolved from the scene on its own.

-The movie has a pushing and pulling effect with its unique editing. It feels as if the viewer is following the plot through an intense magnifying glass that scans over the course of events, pinching some, and expanding others with a focus that has little priority for the major turning points. When Michel shoots and kills a policeman, or when he sees a deadly car accident, the events are brief and abruptly cut away from. Yet the "in-between" ordinary moments of Michel's getaway are expanded, we see several minutes of essentially pillow talk between Michel and Patricia.

The editing might draw attention to itself, and on the surface has little concern for realism, yet what it ends up depicting are the most natural parts of daily life put to screen. All the while, the typical Hollywood intrigue that Goddard has been known to admire, is reduced to the backdrop.

-Michel's death is rather unusual from what I've seen on film. He receives one shot to the lower back, and rather than keeling over in finality, it is unclear if he has been fatally hit as he tries to make an escape. It always interests me when physical movements of characters happen in odd ways, it makes it seem so much more real. This reminds me of the line "She Fell Funny" from The Departed, except that was more about the character's dialogue than the action.

-I like the music, but I didn't like the way it was used in this film. I can assume that Goddard would rather not manipulate the viewer by changing the music to fit the mood, but still why the constant film noir music that doesn't seem to fit?

I came into this movie expecting not to understand any of it. While the film is enigmatic, after viewing a few modern movies after this viewing, I've began to understand its appeal in hindsight. It's definitely a neat movie, and one I will inevitably return to.

What's around the bend

So I've been watching movies at a good pace lately, so I have some grandiose plans as far as upcoming posts:

-I promised myself that I would watch Breathless (1960) before watching the controversial Lumet film Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007). Well, last night I completed the first leg of journey, so now onto some much anticipated Lumet. Then I will finally be able to weigh in on the previous posts about Lumet's movie on this blog.

*UPDATE*

I've watched Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and now I've realized that only about 20 seconds of the movie can relate to Breathless. Oh well!

-This one will probably never happen, and also it would be foolhardy to do, but I'm interested in doing a 10 block movie comparison of movies with the titles of one through ten. So for instance the first three could be:

One (2001)
Two (1974)
Three (2005)
ect...

After searching on IMDB, it appears that my options are not limited to one movie per number, and in fact I have a choice of up to 5 or 6 movies on certain numbers. This is a huge undertaking, but I would feel alright with glossing over each of these movies in a paragraph, simply because they just don't look that great. I'm most interested in trying to guess which number I'll like the best. I wonder if we could all place bets on this?

Helvetica (2007) and Wordplay (2006)

I have been talking up a storm about Helvetica, so it donned on me while watching Wordplay recently that these movies might make a good pair to write about. Both films incite those two bugging questions: "How can someone make a full-length movie on something so minuscule?" and "Who would watch such a movie?"

Helvetica (2007)

When my mother recommended a movie called Helvetica, my response was "You can't possibly mean the font, could you?" She handed me the Netflix disc and in the familiar courier font there was the title "Helvetica (2007)" I laughed instantly and pictured a docu-drama conspiracy around a printing press. "Helvetica: It Must be Stopped."

Firstly, yes the movie is about the font, but it serves as a platform for a larger debate. At the heart of this film is the battle between the formalist tenets of design versus more expressionist design.

I found a wonderful connection between this movie and Madmen, AMC's series about late 50's era Madison Avenue ad execs. In Helvetica one designer describes the shift in ad designs to a more bold and minimalist approach using Helvetica. When ads like these start showing up in magazines in Madmen, the ad execs are perplexed and disturbed at this new style. (Where's the content? Is this a joke?). I wonder if they will adopt Helvetica in the new season!

Above: The Coke ad that designer Michael Bierut loves. Below: The VW ad that stirs controversy in Madmen

Wordplay (2006)

I'm always appreciative of people who devote their lives to such arcane interests like puzzles. More than one puzzle solver said in the movie is even in poverty they will still devote themselves to puzzles. The idea that being dedicated to something so arcane that can bring someone such joy is why I know I'll never be bored or unhappy with life. There are so many things to become obsessed with!

I never liked puzzles all that much for a very superficial reason. Strictly for the concept that technically nothing new has been created. The answers are somewhere, and you can get them, but solvers really want to make it difficult for themselves. When they're finished, all they did was complete the puzzle like everyone else that finished. The end product of what these solvers are trying to attain all looks exactly the same; a finished puzzle that can only look one way. Of course this is short sighted, because it's easy to debate that what is created happens not in the puzzle, but in the solver's brain. Also, the creativity is not in the end product, but how they got there. Nonetheless, I still have an aversion, especially to jigsaw puzzles.

I am an ideal sample viewer for this film. I have no interest in puzzles, and I don't know anything about crossword puzzles. If movie's goal was to get me prepared and excited for the climax of the movie, then it was a success.

I would also like to paraphrase Josh, because I loved his comment about this film. He basically said that the film felt as if it were directed by the font itself. I suppose he means that everything in the film is modern and crisp, like the font. One thing I noted was a lot of the movie was shot on grey, overcast days.

I still haven't seen a documentary that I haven't liked. It is very hard for me to critique these movies because I like learning about new things and documentaries all expose me to these things. I get too lost in learning to analyze the movie.

I particularly liked the use of CGI to organize and display all of the raw data behind the puzzles and the competition. However I can imagine some people would still argue that it is too much visual information to interpret and it's distracting. Especially for those who saw it in the theater.

I wonder if the regulars of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament now resent this movie. Many of them were sentimental on screen about coming back to the Stamford Marriott where it was hosted for almost 30 years (and during the time that this movie came out). As soon as the movie came out the previously niche competition exploded in popularity, and was moved to a much larger venue here in Brooklyn. (closer to me, woo!) Ironically the movie itself most likely took away the more intimate communal experience that it shows.

This is also the second movie that has had funny clips of John Stewart in his office, the first one being The Aristocrats (2005).

So overall I enjoyed myself, was inspired, and now people think I'm completely boring when I tell them that the last two movies I saw were about a font and a crossword. With all these heroes, villains, gangsters, robots, zombies, and aliens that I write about it was nice to deal in the ordinary for a change. I reminded once again that there is an art to everything!

The burning question

I'm at work now, and judging this first day of heat, I am starting to wonder if I have to take some of those hard drives holding all of my movie images out of the computer and to someplace cooler. Just to recap, I have about 500 movies stored at full disc size (about 8gb per DVD) over 5tb of hard drive space. The summer heat should make it even hotter inside that computer tower, so I may have to organize the images so that I can use only one hard drive at a time, instead of 7 or 8. Maybe I should make a drive with 50 or must-see summer films and store the rest. The burning question is, what goes to storage and what stays in the computer?

UPDATE

The hard drives have now been removed from my tower, and I've been swapping them in and out of a dual enclosure. I also added another terrabyte into the mix, craziness! I now have to go back into each drive and add to my catalog the location of each DVD. I have my work cut out for me.

THX 1138

The only other George Lucas movies I had seen prior to THX 1138 were the Star Wars movies and American Graffiti. I was much younger when I saw AG, so I hardly remember anything about it, but I do remember liking it for one reason or another. (Sometimes when I've gotten a ticket I still want to stuff it in the glove compartment labeled "CS") As for the Star Wars movies, I loved them as a kid, but their novelty soon wore off, never to redeem themselves again. I never really considered the prequels serious films since they were released in such a consumer franchise driven environment. The first thing I noticed about George Lucas when I looked him up on IMDB is that he hasn't made nearly as many films as I had thought. It's almost as if Star Wars crippled his career, because since 1977 the only thing he has directed has been Star Wars movies.

As usual, I have seen some references or influences from THX1138 before actually seeing the film itself. In the first level of Hitman Contracts, you play as Agent 47 (who looks a bit like Robert Duvall as THX 1138). You awake in a room that is very similar to the wall-less jail, white and seemingly endless, until you reach a doorway.



Also, many elements of Star Wars have recognizable roots in this film, including many of the sounds. Light Saber sounds are used for the batons that the robots use, and the distorted harmonic voices that are used to communicate from ship to ship in Return of the Jedi are also in THX 1138.

I'm always surprised to see when movies are set so far into the future. The 25th century is a little ambitious considering what we see on screen (the cars for instance all dressed up 60's Lolas), but maybe that's 21st century hindsight talking.

SPOILER ALERT, don't read after this point if you haven't seen this film...really! It's not the Sixth Sense, there's still a chance that you could be surprised!

The film's ending is so straightforward and final. It wasn't exactly what I expected. The last moments of the movie show a little bit of inner conflict with THX1138 as he is climbing his way out to the forbidden outer shell. (a.k.a nature), but it rests solely on a few glances that Robert Duvall makes, and his body language. This is one of those delightful situations in film where a character is left without any companions to whom he can communicate what he is thinking verbally. It really isn't developed any further than slight suggestions, and there is no fanfare. At first I hated this, I felt that the ending should have been developed more. For that matter, THX should have returned to the custody of the robots, so he could at least see LUH again, if this is a story about the persistence of love. However leaving this last minute struggle as such a minuscule detail, it makes me wonder if perhaps if it was my imagination. It's much more ambiguous this way. One clue that suggests that THX really almost went back underground is the timing of the budget for his capture running out. He was so close to making a clean break, that even if the robots didn't have to turn around because of budget constraints and continued to pursue him, he was far enough ahead of them to still be able to leave. But with the budget running out at that moment, it offers up the moment when the robots stop chasing him and ask him politely for the last time if he would come back with them. This really gives THX a moment to react and contemplate over that, if he does at all.

Brazil

Hi everybody,

I'm back from Austria, unfortunately I didn't have any time to write about movies for the last week and a half. I was so busy that I didn't even have time to watch any of the great movie suggestions that were given to me via comments from my last post. I do promise to watch a few of the suggested movies though, I am still curious as to why some of them were chosen.

Anyway, getting back into the swing of things, I am writing a mid-term paper about Brazil for my film class, so I might as well write on the blog about it too. It was only a matter of time before I wrote about this movie in some form, seeing as it was an instant top ten on my list.

The most striking thing about Brazil is its odd mix of intent. It is chilling, funny, sad, intellectual, and suspenseful all at once. Shots composed right next to each other evoke these very different feelings. For instance early in the film, we see the stormtroopers raid the Buttle home in a terrifying blitz. Yet once the dust clears, an officer in a silly hat brings Mrs. Buttle a receipt for the raid which she must sign for, and the comedic "Department of Works" (reminiscent of Monty Python) arrive on the scene with their oddly ineffective ceiling plug.

Terry Gilliam is a very unique director to say the least. If the director acts as the mediator between the films message and its audience, then Terry Gilliam is like a mad professor. The choices he makes don't always help the overall design of the movie, but I like them anyway.

The dialog in this movie helps to develop the characters, but doesn't have the structure (or what some people would call formulaic) that is in many studio flicks. It's unbalanced, sometimes we peer into the life of Mr. Helpman, Mrs. Lowry, or Jack Lint. One of the major criticisms of the movie is not developing one of the film's few female characters, Jill. Even though this is a love story between Sam and Jill, more screen time is given to interactions between Sam and Kurtzmann. According to Gillaim, the script originally had a more developed relationship between Sam and Jill but had to be cut in editing. It seems as if the development of characters in Brazil is incidental to one thing only, developing the idealogical message of the movie. Even a "bad guy" henchman gets a precious moment in the chase scene when Sam and Jill are fleeing. After the troopers crash and their vehicle burns up, we see one burning up while running from the wreck. In a two hour film, every edit counts and in Brazil, nothing is done purely for the sake of character development.

Another interesting feel of the movie are the props. Many of the machines or devices we see in this movie don't even make sense. Many of the devices, such as in Sam's apartment do not work as they should (a point unto itself), but then later we see industrial design that is totally outrageous. They indicate a sense of invasiveness, isolation, or technological decay, but yet they are too silly looking too really pose a threat. Quite contrary to any other dystopian film. In a movie that is trying to make a serious point, it has an interesting sense of humor about props. Not surprising, however, for a Gilliam film.

While these choices don't have as much structure or design, it makes the movie a more personal piece. I've heard more often of directors' choices being guided by the movie as a greater whole, as if it is an organism beyond anyone's control, rather than to directly serve the idealogical perspective of a director. Here Gilliam seems to make choices on intuition. In the commentary he has said two things that ever since have resonated with me:

1. "I dont want to do 'Committee Films' I dont want to do it that way, I dont want democracy to rear its ugly head when it comes to film making...That's why I dont have preview screenings, because I feel like a lot of the principal is that democracy is part of the process"

2. "When I make a film, I don't do it very intellectually, I don't approach it in an intellectual way or analytical way I'm doing it as an emotional expression of something, it's only afterwards...that I've realized what I've done...I want to keep doing that, I don't want to be too self aware...when you do, you start getting clever...you start worrying about the wrong things."

I think as an artist I am definitely guilty of "over thinking it." And as someone who really values other people's opinions, (sometimes too much) I fall prey to the democratic process of art. This commentary really changed the way I look at the creation process.

You Can't Take Them with You

Some of you may already know that I'll be traveling to Austria for ten days starting on Friday. I will be able to write posts while abroad, but of course if I do find the time to watch a film, my options will be limited to what I can fit on my PSP.

So I'm making this a democratic process, I'm less interested in picking the movies to take with me to Austria myself, and more interested to see what suggestions people with come up with. If you had to leave somewhere and could only take five movies with you, what would they be? Be creative! There's the obvious route of choosing your favorite movies, but I'd really like to see some themes here, whether it be traveling, movies related to Austria, or movies about the type of global issues that I might be discussing at the Salzburg Global Seminar.

So let's assume I can take five movies with me, and write the list as a comment! I read them all, and no suggestion will be glossed over, I promise!

Perhaps I will offer a special yet-to-be-decided prize (maybe a bronze Austrian owl statuette?) to each person who I take a movie suggestion from!

Before the Devil Knows Your Dead

Sidney Lumet is a living legend. He has made some great films and my favorite will always be Prince of the City. Dog Day Afternoon is a close second. His latest film, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead is another soon to be classic. Lumet knows how to get a great performance out of every actor he works with. He was a theatre director and he brings that aspect to each and every film he directs. The film's plot has been done before but the way Lumet presents it brings something new to the concept. Two brothers try to rob their parents jewerly store, but are confronted with too many problems. Ethan Hawke gives a tour de force performance as Hank the nervous brother. This may be Ethan Hawke's best performance on screen. Philip Seymour Hoffman is incapable of giving a bad performance I believe. The plot is told from the seperate perspective of each character. It puts you in the mind set of these characters which also includes Charlie, (Albert Finney) their father. The film is set in New York, which Lumet loves to use and I personally love to see New York on film. The characters are so realistic that you feel their pain. This reminded me why I love films. It reminded me of the gritty films of the 70's which were character driven. And finally it reminded me why I hope to be a filmmaker someday. On April 15th make sure to see this film when it is released on DVD.