Category: Commentary

Defining Greatness

Is The Avengers a great movie? In this day and age, what sets a movie apart from being great and being culturally relevant?

Do you know what a great movie is?

“The Avengers” is not it. If you think it is, I’m starting to think it is not that you are wrong but that you are sadly naïve. Maybe you have a good reason to defend why it is great, why it is worthy of its praise, why it is a cultural landmark, but more likely, you had fun.

It is admirable that you have fun at the movies. A critic’s job should be to encourage the joy of going to a movie theater and watching with an enraptured audience. And fun and entertainment is inseparable from art. This much is obvious.

Hopefully my reason for targeting “The Avengers” is clear too. I don’t mean to attack those who had fun at it specifically. In fact, I did as well. But it’s the movie of the week, and those defending it have somehow convinced the world of its importance. It is not enough that this film is popular and fun, for the audience that loves it most feels it cannot have detractors either. It cannot be seen only as a popcorn movie or as something other than a landmark achievement, and those who dislike it do so because they don’t respect the art of comic books.

I’ve heard Michael Uslan, the producer of every Batman movie ever made, opine twice in person that comic books deserve a place in the canon of American folklore and great art. And yet when you see a movie like “The Avengers” raking in the record weekend high of $207 million domestically alone (it made even more last week overseas), it’s hard to see how any comic book fan can still call their culture neglected. Continue reading “Defining Greatness”

Why I’m bitter about ‘The Avengers’

Airing some last minute skepticism about “The Avengers” before the movie premieres and some frustration with Marvel.

Look, I’m seeing “The Avengers” tonight at midnight, and my thoughts will definitely be completely changed after its two 2:20 runtime. I will be able to judge the movie as a movie and not by its ravenous fans.

But I’ve been bitching about this movie for too long with no one listening, so I had to get my thoughts down on paper at some point before this evening.

If I’m not on the same page of enthusiasm for “The Avengers,” it’s because I haven’t bought into Marvel’s ad campaign for the last three years. Yes, “The Avengers” is the final product of a massive hype machine that Marvel has executed perfectly since Day 1. Continue reading “Why I’m bitter about ‘The Avengers’”

Four years of ‘Cine’cism

My final column for the Indiana Daily Student explores how I’ve grown less bitter about the movies.

This column originally ran in the IDS WEEKEND on Thursday, April 26. As a senior, this is my final column for the IDS. I’ve been writing my column ‘Cine’cism for three years and have been writing for WEEKEND for all four years of my college career.

Why is my column called ‘Cine’cism?

When I started seriously reviewing movies for my high school paper, I had friends tell me I was being negative because I didn’t like certain films.

“Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to think about?”

That’s an argument I’ve defended numerous times, even then. What I took away from those interactions however were that somehow thinking made me cynical.

But now after four years of writing reviews for my blog, agonizing over my column, editing stories in WEEKEND and devouring the work of professional critics, I’ve come to realize there are people much more cynical than me. Continue reading “Four years of ‘Cine’cism”

My Night at the Drive-In

Photo by Steph Aronson – IDS Weekend

“First time? Seriously? What fake version of the Midwest did you grow up in anyway?” – A tweet from my friend and colleague Brad Sanders, @bradscottsand

Brad is referring to my first visit to a drive-in movie theater. It does seem like something I would’ve done with my family years ago and something every Midwesterner should do at some point in their lives. It’s probably also a must for a film critic trying to grasp an old sense of movie nostalgia.

But if I haven’t been, it’s because no one is going to say seeing a movie at a drive-in is ideal for any movie buff. The sound and picture quality is poor, the weather can be a nuisance, the number of distractions is larger and the choices are limited. Why see “The Hunger Games” on a bizarre double bill with “Mission Impossible: 4” when there are so many other options available?

And yet I must recommend it, because the drive-in movie theater gave me a sense of movie magic I simply don’t feel anymore at the multiplex. Continue reading “My Night at the Drive-In”

Movies vs. TV

I’m grappling with the idea that it’s cooler to be a TV fan than a movie buff.

Today’s most critically acclaimed TV shows are also the most buzzed about in circles that don’t revolve around Chuck Lorre sitcoms. “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” “Downton Abbey” and “Community” are just some in the mix of what’s both cool and smart.

But movie critics are all jumping to see “The Turin Horse.” It’s the final film by the aging Hungarian master Bela Tarr. It’s slow, depressing, in black and white, has little dialogue and is bound to be this year’s art house masterpiece. It’s not exactly a blockbuster.

I love movies for their artistry, abstractness and technical wizardry. What’s frustrating to me is that people groomed on TV neglect those points because TV, much as I watch it, possesses none of these.

My goal now is to address these gaps without condemning TV as a whole.

TV is not a visual medium

The image of Luke Skywalker stepping outside to watch Tattooine’s two setting suns burns vividly in my mind. The wedding from “The Godfather” is there too, along with E.T. riding a bike in front of the moon or Lawrence of Arabia standing victoriously on a raided train.

I have fond memories of many of television’s finest moments, but I can hardly visualize any of them.

TV lacks iconic visual moments. A Google image search will prove me right. Search any good movie last year, even one you haven’t seen, and familiar images will still be there.

You may get Walter White standing in his underpants with a gun if you search a TV show, but you’ll mostly get cast photos and promos.

Many of these shows are gorgeous in HD with rich set dressing and costumes, but the nature of television requires cinematic simplicity and familiarity.

If one episode of a show looks too radically different from the next, people get wary. So directors develop patterns when shooting on a set, including reused establishing shots and lots of close up, over the shoulder conversations.

Rarely then do we stand back and marvel at the beauty or craft of an individual shot. Often film has the luxury of larger budgets and a longer shooting schedule, but there are dozens of indies that do away with HD cameras and are still more visually stimulating.

In fact, TV is not a visual medium. Its closest relative following World War II was radio, which likewise evolved TV into an art form that valued story over style.

TV is all about story

Any film school will tell you the three most important things a filmmaker can focus on are story, story, story.

Students then crank out a concept driven show like “Lost” with a million different narrative threads and an intricate web of clues that’ll add up by the season’s end.

But what that neglects are either shows with elegant, artistic simplicity or shows that are truly surreal.

And when something like “The Tree of Life” comes along and is a visual and emotional feast rather than a narrative one, people flip out.

“What does it all mean,” they cry, as if analyzing a string of lottery numbers that’ll key in the secret behind an island and smoke monster.

There’s a reason it’s called an “unconventional narrative.” Often, there’s not a complex answer to unravel because it’s anything but conventional. It’s art, beauty and expressionism for its own sake, and anyone who has seen the films of Bunuel, Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Tarr, Fellini, Malick and countless others would know that.

TV is never ending

If I ask to watch “Lawrence of Arabia,” you cringe at its length. But you won’t bat an eye at a TV marathon.

If I don’t get into a show it’s because I can watch a dozen movies in the time it takes to watch just one season on Netflix.

And if I get behind on a new, must-see TV show, the moment has already passed. There’s no catching up with so many other things to watch.

But TV thrives on its endless narratives. In fact, TV is the only art form that can actually change between episodes and seasons as people watch and debate.

This is so true that TV now encourages live discussions on Twitter through strategic hashtags, whereas doing so in a theater is plain rude.

If I was an old fashioned troll I could say that a work of art should stand alone with one artist behind it, and a TV series with a million contributors on social media is intrinsically not that.

TV is not film

Everything I’ve argued could also be a reason for why TV is so special.

The strength of TV is that it’s not film’s bastard child. In the last decade alone it has learned to tell stories in a way no other medium can and dispelled most rumors that TV is nothing but a trashy wasteland.

And there are even exceptions to my rules. “Louie” is a show that represents what television could be if it chose to follow that path. It’s a program that uses a serialized format to its advantage to create essentially short films. “Louie” is not only well made and often surreal, but individual episodes can stand alone as art. Not to mention, Louis C.K. is TV’s closest example to an auteur.

What we’re left with is a war between two completely different art forms and two sets of preferences. It’s black and white, but we’ve been comparing two shades of gray.

That’s why I’m scared when movie theaters are losing business to a digital age, episodic film franchises dominate the market and Netflix moves closer and closer to just being HBO.

Film is becoming the cultural dinosaur, and TV is thriving in a way that threatens to make interesting movies extinct.

The MPAA is a bully

The MPAA is being a bully. It teases us with misleading ratings and then pummels us with violence. It saps all the fun and meaning out of naughty words. It dangles interesting and important films just out of reach. And it holds a stubborn grudge when anyone thinks to complain about it.

Never have we been more irritated by the MPAA’s annoyances than recently with the upcoming documentary “Bully.”

“Bully” captures middle and high school students in their everyday social lives in an effort to point out the cruel behavior of teenage bullies that led one of its student subjects to suicide.

It was bound to be controversial, but the MPAA bestowed the film with an R-rating because it contains “some language,” effectively restricting it from the under-17 teenagers it depicts.

School field trips have been cancelled, teen advocates have generated petitions, producer Harvey Weinstein has threatened to abandon the MPAA, and critics have thrown around as many four-letter words as those used by the kids in the movie.

And after similar controversies with films like “The King’s Speech” and “Blue Valentine,” the latter of which initially received an NC-17 rating, effectively banning it from most movie theaters, it has become clear the MPAA rating scale needs rethinking. Continue reading “The MPAA is a bully”

Project X and Modern Exploitation Films

The marketing for “Project X” suggests a new wave of exploitation films.

If I wanted a movie with a flimsy plot, crazy stunts, low production values and a lot of hot women in a softcore porn setting, wouldn’t I usually go to a shady, straight-to-DVD bargain bin?

Then why is a movie like “Project X” screening at multiplexes everywhere this Friday as though it were the next “Hangover?”

Watching “Project X,” a horrible, offensive and sexist film, I realized a lot of the adjectives I used to describe how much I hated it also applied to cheesy fun exploitation films from the ‘70s.

But I was convinced the exploitation genre was dead. I interviewed film scholars studying the genre who explained that most exploitation films today have either migrated to video and DVD starting as early as the ‘80s home video boom or are now self-referential parodies of older films, like the ones Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez crank out.

And that audience who craved a unique form of action and other pleasures has transferred over into cult fans for graphic novel based movies. One such example is “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” which ironically or not shares co-writer Michael Bacall as a screenwriter for “Project X.”

My question is, did the exploitation genre morph or evolve into found footage films without anyone noticing? Continue reading “Project X and Modern Exploitation Films”

2012 Oscars Recap

Image courtesy of guardian.co.uk and Getty Images

We love the movies. That’s why we watch the Oscars.

Did I mention that we love the movies? And did I mention that Billy Crystal loves the movies? Oh yeah, we love the movies, the old classic ones that aren’t all really classics, but some new ones too that definitely aren’t classics but people might actually recognize.

But rather than show you how much we love the movies with actual funny jokes or parodies, we’ll just tell you how much we love the movies and play it real safe all night. That way you’ll watch next year so long as you didn’t completely hate us, right? And how could you hate us when we all love the movies so much?

Sunday night’s Oscars were eye-rollingly mediocre, and part of the reason for that was an adamant position on not doing anything that might be too risky, too offensive or even too gaudily awful of a joke or skit that might alienate people from changing the channel. Continue reading “2012 Oscars Recap”

The Importance of Being Oscar

What will we say about 2011 as a year for movies when the potential Best Picture winner quite literally doesn’t say anything at all?

“The Artist” was once the controversial contender for Best Picture. Not since the first Oscars in 1927 had a silent film won, and it was doubtful this French crowd-pleaser would be the one to change that.

The narrative even fit the tumultuous Academy landscape with the lop-sided number of nominees and changing rules in other major categories.

Now however, ‘The Artist” seems like the safe bet, and in just a few weeks since the nominations, the race has lost its energy as obvious frontrunners make their way ever closer to the podium.

The Oscars remain the last important awards ceremony, but the movies nominated need to reflect their significance.

Consider for a moment that of all the films nominated for Best Picture, not one is a dark, feel-bad movie like “Drive,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” or “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

There is also only one film, “The Help,” which grossed over $100 million at the box office.

And of those, only “The Descendants” or “Moneyball” can be called 21st Century films.

There is still something to be said about a silent film winning Best Picture, namely that a movie, in this case a foreign film that would typically be Best Picture poison, can be universal.

But the problem is that “The Artist” will not inspire a wave of silent films from young, aspiring filmmakers. It may temporarily generate some fascination in the silent era, but the nostalgia of Michel Hazanivicius’s film, as well as the many other backwards-looking films in 2011, is fleeting.

If something like “The Tree of Life” could win, heads would really turn. Films like “No Country for Old Men,” “The Hurt Locker” and “The Lord of the Rings” are all masterpieces in their own ways, but Terrence Malick’s film carries with it the aura that still belongs to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Rarely is such an important film this close to being recognized as such by a populist voting body.

Short of ensuring that the best films always win, I’m struggling to think what the Oscars still need to do to remain relevant.

Many have criticized that the Oscars can seem like an old man’s club, and this year is no exception. The average age of the nominees in the Best Supporting Actor category is 62.6, and even the Best Director field is stacked with aging masters.

The Oscars could very easily slate younger if only they nominated Shailene Woodley, “Bridesmaids” or included performances by “The Muppets,” but part of what makes the Oscars special is that they are distinguished and made to be taken seriously. If the Oscars are anything, they are not the Grammys or the MTV Movie Awards.

There’s the thought to go back to five nominees, but even if nominating “Inception” and “Toy Story 3” meant little in terms of ratings, a changing, broader field of films has kept movies like “The Tree of Life,” “Bridesmaids,” “Tinker Tailor,” “Drive,” “Dragon Tattoo” and even “Harry Potter” or “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” in the conversation for long enough for them to actually be recognized.

Even if the nomination for “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” was infuriating, it at the very least created some buzz and actually got people out to see the damn thing.

Fixing the Oscars may not come easy, but it’s clear that something must be done to address the Oscars’ problems. They’re too important to just ignore.

Oscars 2012: Will Win (Part 2)

See my picks for the remaining categories along with analysis, here.

Movies are an art, not a science. And yet The Academy, save for a few eye rolling hiccups each year, operates like clockwork. Predicting the winners at the Oscars is as simple as playing the horses at the track, so here’s your betting form for the big race on Sunday night.

Best Picture

The Artist: 80%

I was once in the camp that a silent film, no matter how good, could never win Best Picture in 2012. But now my odds hardly reflect how one-sided this race has become. Even though it’s a French film, “The Artist” is universal. It’s a crowd-pleaser, a star-maker, and the only Best Picture nominee filmed in Los Angeles. From the Golden Globe to the Director’s Guild to the surprising BAFTA win, the question is not if “The Artist” will win but how many Oscars it will win.

Hugo: 8%

Actually trumping “The Artist” in nominations and taking its cinematic nostalgia trip one step further, “Hugo” and a sweep of technical awards may propel this film to a Best Picture win.

The Descendants: 7%

Be it “The Social Network” or “Up in the Air,” critics and Academy voters respond to the 21st Century darling of the year, and Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” is that film.

Midnight in Paris: 1.5%

The Help: 1%

The Tree of Life: 1%

Moneyball: .75%

War Horse: .5%

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: .25%

To address the remaining nominees, I don’t want to say they don’t stand a chance, but who am I kidding? If you had five nominees this year, your contenders outside of the top three would be “Midnight in Paris” and “The Help,” maybe “Moneyball.” So that says something for their chances. The other completely outside chance would be “The Tree of Life,” an important film that a number of critics have made a case for to win the Oscar based on how significant such a victory would seem in terms of cinema history. I don’t want to make any sort of case for “Extremely Loud,” but being here was its first big surprise, and winning could be its second. Continue reading “Oscars 2012: Will Win (Part 2)”