ChrisThilk Blog

Let me start off by saying this: The Foot Fist Way is a lot funnier than its marketing campaign made it out to be.

The primary source of the comedy in the movie comes from the fact that no one is acting like they’re in a comedy. Everyone plays it completely straight and the performances actually have more in common with a drama than anything else. In fact it would only take a small tweak to everyone’s take on their characters to turn this into that potential drama. That means no one is over-playing how ridiculous their characters are but instead let the humor naturally flow from the ridiculous situations they find themselves in.

Danny McBride stars as the head of a Tae Kwon Do studio who fancies himself as some sort of noble master. His ego is completely outsized to what he actually does. All the insane goings on inside the studio, whether its his interactions with his students or something happening in his personal life, are completely deflated by the occasional shots of the exterior, which positions the studio in the middle of a bland, generic strip-mall.

The movie follows McBride’s character through some tumultuous times in his life. He’s having problems with his way-too-hot-for-him wife and finds himself pursuing a chance to meet his professional idol, a meeting that winds up not turning out how he expected it to on a number of levels. It’s never out and out funny in an obvious way, but the humor comes unexpectedly and, in most case, awkwardly as you watch a collection of relative idiots bumble their way through their lives trying to be bigger than they really are.

In honor of Burn After Reading hitting theaters last week I decided my latest mini festival was going to be some of the Coen Brothers movies I have in the library. There are some notable omissions from that collection that I don’t have a good excuse for but I did want to rewatch some of the ones I’ve picked up.

First up was Barton Fink, my first introduction to the Coens way back when it was first released. I’d seen bits of Raising Arizona but never really gotten into it. Fink, though, sucked me in and turned me into a fan of the brothers. The darkly comic tale of a writer who migrates from New York to Los Angeles in the mid-40s is always a treat on a number of levels. Not only are all the performances pitch-perfect, but the scene where Barton finally figures out what he wants the wresting picture he’s commissioned to write to be about and he winds up essentially re-writing the play we see in the movie’s opening always kills me. It completely undermines everything that we’ve seen about the character up until that point, that he’s some genius just overflowing with talent. Instead he winds up doing the only thing he knows how to do - repeat himself.

Next was Fargo, which is so good on so many levels it defies most descriptions. Trust me - As good as this movie’s reputation is, those reviews don’t come close to describing how well made it actually it. It’s a bit scary.

Finally I snuck in Intolerable Cruelty, which might seem like an odd choice but I like it. Catherine Zeta-Jones gives what might be called her usual performance and is more than a little funny, but she just doesn’t know what to do with the Coen’s style and so comes off a bit stilted. Compare that to George Clooney in his second Coen outing, who knows exactly what to do and how to sell his character. He’s the only one who seems to know what to do and what the Coens were doing in the movie, which is admittedly not one of their top-tier films. Still, it’s breezy and enjoyable and worth checking out or re-watching with a fresh perspective if you’ve previously dismissed it.

There’s no question that the original Ghostbusters is the superior of this pair, though it’s certainly arguable that the Ghostbusters 2 at least manages to hold its own and certainly doesn’t, as some sequels do, degrade from the enjoyment of the original.

The original is one of those films that I’ve literally grown up with. Released in 1984 when I was all of nine years old, I’ve watched it several times a year more or less regularly since then. So it’s aged with me, never far from my mind and still acting as a source of quotes when I need a response to someone saying “Chris, I need to let you know about something…” (The proper response, of course, is, “What did you do, Ray?”)

While GBII  contains a lot of the usual sequel contrivances (it’s once again Dana Barrett being harassed by the spooks) it does so in a very believable (so far as these things go) way and manages to bring something new to the characters beyond the usual rehashing of the first movie’s plot.

There’s only the barest of plots that runs through Shoot ‘Em Up, the violent comedy with Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti. It’s really more “excuse” than “plot” when it is there and doesn’t amount to much, though the movie is by and large so much fun that doesn’t even wind up mattering. 

Owen plays a man of violence who unwittingly steps into a situation that finds him protecting a newborn baby from a gang of tough guys who wants that baby as dead as its mother. Giamatti is the head of the gang that’s just disposed of said mother and is after the baby, though the reasons why aren’t clear until the last 15 minutes of the movie and make little sense when they’re revealed, so don’t worry about it. 

The violence is completely over the top and largely unbelievable, but the performances by the two leads are so committed that they’re absolutely engaging. Owen seems to be out to prove that he could have handled the most outrageous stunts the Bond producers could have thrown at him if he had been tapped for that role. And Giamatti gives a wonderfully enthusiastic showing that makes it clear he’s having an absolute blast in a very shallow role but still bringing his usual level of excellence to it.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with The Promotion. It’s perfectly likable and non-offensive as a comedy about two guys slugging it out for the manager position at an about-to-open grocery store. But there are problems with the script that even the best efforts of the actors can’t overcome. 

Seann William Scott plays the current assistant manager at a supermarket who, upon finding that they’re opening a new location, decides the manager slot at the new store should be his. That job will let him and his wife, played by Jenna Fischer, move out of their small apartment and into a house of their own. But into the mix comes John C. Reilly, whose character is recently moved from Canada and who decides to put his hat in the ring as well. 

This would be a situation that seems ripe with comedic opportunity but it never really comes together. Reilly’s character is a recovering drug addict and is always portrayed as a sad-sack loser who seemingly knows nothing of American culture or of how to act in a public setting, which is a tad unbelievable. And Lily Taylor, who plays his wife, is completely wasted as an unnecessarily Irish lass who only appears on-screen for a handful of scenes and who never really gets a chance to do anything. 

Scott’s character just comes off not as someone striving to be a winner but just a mid-level dick and his attempts to undermine his rival seem half-hearted. He never really schemes or anything, he just takes advantage of the situations he’s presented with and tries to make Reilly’s character look like a stooge to the executives who float in and out of the store. Ultimately his victory is not so much because of bad light his opponent was shone in but because his actions drove Reilly’s character back to a destructive lifestyle - drugs. It’s all good, though, since the ending shows that it all worked out for the best. 

Fischer probably gives the best, most believable performance in the movie (other than Jason Bateman’s brief appearance as a team motivational coach). But that performance of hers is on a completely different beat - a funny one - than the rest of the cast is humming along to.

All in all The Promotion is moderately amusing but doesn’t live up to the buzz it seemed to have after it appeared on the festival circuit a while ago.

When I was watching the Prequel Trilogy I noted the film-to-film decline of wasted space in the movies, with Revenge of the Sith being pretty tight compared to all the unnecessary moments and camera shots in The Phantom Menace. 

Watching the Original Trilogy you’ll see an almost complete lack of those sorts of gratuitous moments. There’s little to no fat on these movies (a little in Return of the Jedi, but A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back are as lean as they come) and they move along at an incredibly brisk pace. They very much show Lucas’ edict of “faster and more intense” whereas the Menace is full of bloat and laziness.

I hadn’t watched these three in quite a while and so they wound up seeming pretty fresh to me, which is nice to have happen with movies that I’ve seen regularly in theaters, on VHS and then DVD over the last 30 years. I felt excited as the space battles progressed and was caught up in the adventure, just like I should have been. 

My review of August, a fictional cautionary tale of the Dot Com Bust’s irrational exuberance, is up at Spout.

The story of a young girl - later a young woman - who bounces back and forth to and from her home country of Iran, Persepolis is not necessarily an easy movie to watch but it rewards the viewer who does.

This is the kind of movie that could only really be told in animated form. The settings are too vivid and the violence too stark to be told as a live-action film. Animation allows for more interpretive visuals but also for more stark realism. If this were live-action it would actually come off as less-realistic than it does in animated form.

There are many moving parts in Persepolis that all come together, but there’s no fat on the film at all. The story-telling is lean and pointed, with meaning and sub-text behind every graphic element that’s on screen and every line of dialogue that’s uttered. It’s highly recommended if you enjoy movies that bridge the gap between exposing you to a serious subject and being truly entertaining.