Reel Thoughts

Under discussion:

Little Miss Sunshine  (2006)

I admit it.  I was a movie-watching freak this weekend.  It was cold and snowy, after all.  In addition to consuming some Robert Rodriguez flicks and that awful Little Shop movie, I also began my own road to Oscar-fun.  As the leader of the Oscar group, my personal philosophy about the show is to try to watch the five Best Picture nominees, at least, before the broadcast.  If I make it through those, other films are just icing on the cake, but there are quite a few movies that I have grown interested in seeing this time around, and I'm looking forward to taking them in if at all possible.

I started with Little Miss Sunshine because it's one of the only ones I can rent right now.  I'd heard good things almost universally, so I was probably most excited to watch this one of all the nominees available (best picture or no).

I must say, I'm happy with this choice.  It may be the frontrunner, and I wouldn't be disappointed if it won.

Obligatory plot summary: little Olive (Abigail Breslin), runner-up in a state beauty pageant, gets the call for the larger-scale competition in California.  Trouble is, her slightly dysfunctional, blue collar family, including her "in transition" self-help program-developer father (Greg Kinnear), her mom (the most normal of the bunch, Toni Collette), her brother deep in a vow of silence and Nietzsche-inspired despondency (Paul Dano), her crass drug-addict of a grandfather (Alan Arkin), and her suicidal gay uncle (Steve Carell), all have to ride along with her due to financial and other circumstances.  Add to that a 1969 VW Bus that's lost its clutch, and you have a chaotic family thrown into an unbelivably chaotic adventure.

If there is anyone who did not understand this picture or find its nugget of sweetness, I would proffer this viewpoint: you must not be able to relate, at least on some small level, with this family.  The first thing I noticed while watching this movie is that there is so much truth to it!  Anyone who thinks that this family can't exist in real life is sheltered and ignorant.  As I watched this movie, I found elements of me or my family in this family, with the exception of the most extreme dysfunctional symptoms (suicide, heroin use...).

The second thing I noticed was the performances.  They were simply breathtaking!  It's no wonder Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin received their Oscar nods in the supporting categories.  Who I was most impressed with, however, was Steve Carell.  Gosh, everytime I see him, I'm just amazed that this is the same guy who started off on the Daily Show once upon a time.  This performance was nothing like anything he'd done before, and he captured the nuances of this tortured character so well.  I know that suffering genius in real life, who may have exhibited some of this character's other tendencies to boot.  I was just so blown away by it, I really feel that he should have received an Oscar nod too.

The third thing I noticed was the score on this.  Now, why didn't this score get nominated?  It was so original and so unique to the film, I might go visit the Best Movie Soundtracks group and say so there too.

My biggest complaint about this movie, and there's really only one, is the ending.  It was really very abrupt.  You see this family finally band together, for one brief moment, around Olive's inappropriate pageant talent ("Super Freak"? I almost died), and then they're in the bus, rolling it in neutral, and then that's it.  On the one hand, I get why the ending was abrupt: this film is all about moments.  Toni Collette's character kept saying, "We're family, and we're all we've got."  And that's true.  No matter how much a family frustrates and bickers at each other and flounders in general dysfunction, there are moments when even the most dysfunctional family can abandon those impulses to band together as family.  There may not be any long term good feeling there, but those moments occur when they need to occur, and that's reliable and comforting in its simple truth.

On the other hand, perhaps if just one more shot of the family in the bus on their way home had been filmed, showing their individual reactions to what had just happened at the pageant, I would have felt more of a sense of closure.  After all, the entire film until they arrived at the pageant revolved around this family's interconnections, verbal and silent, as they drove hundreds of miles from New Mexico in this equally dysfunctional vehicle.  It would have been nice to see whether they were happy or frustrated or angry or returned to those states they were in prior to entering that hotel.

I think I would have to rate this film a 9 for perfectly entertaining.  It's not a perfect film, but I enjoyed it, and I think, over time, I would forget that the ending left me slightly unfulfilled.  In terms of the test, I think it passes.  I would buy this because it really is a very sweet movie with a lot of heart, evidenced by this family's united determination to see Olive arrive at the pageant and to compete (despite her odd talent) and then to rally around her and protect her from embarassment when her program did not fit in with the other contestants', all despite the family members' obvious differences.  I do not think it is an exploitation of the "loser phenomenon" but rather a study in facing adversity, even when the adversity seems insurmountable.  I think this film also reminds us that our lives may not be as bad as they seem, and even if they are, there are ways to triumph and to move on with whatever support we have.  In that way, this movie was also profound in its sweetness and was its own little ray of sunshine.

Under discussion:

Once Upon a Time in Mexico  (2003)

So, now we come to it.  Immediately after a second viewing of Desperado, I plunged into this film, mostly for the sake of my beloved Johnny Depp.  I should have known that if I wasn't crazy about the first movie, I probably wasn't going to be crazy about this one either.

As it turns out, this movie was a complete yawnfest with bad storytelling and no innovation.  The two cardinal rules of sequels are 1) Recycle as much as possible and 2) More is better.  This movie leaned heavily on the first rule and not so much on the second.  While it is impressive that Robert Rodriguez took on not only writing and directing but also editing and scoring, it wasn't enough to make me appreciate this sequel or the series as a whole.

Let's start off with the ridiculous plot.  Johnny plays a rogue CIA agent looking to profit from an inevitable coup d'etat of the Mexican presidency by a drug cartel run by a man named Barillo (Willem Dafoe).  In order to set a plan in motion that will not only derail the coup but also result in money for him, he goes about hiring El Mariachi, whom he learns about from some guy played by Cheech Marin.  Here's my first problem.  Cheech died in the first movie.  He was the bartender in the bar where Buscemi (Steve Buscemi) first tells the story of El Mariachi.  Yet, I guess he has a twin brother or something because he's back this time around.  Was that supposed to be funny?  It wasn't.

Now cut to El Mariachi and Antonio 8 years later.  His hair is shorter, and he's hiding out in a village because apparently, him and Carolina, who he married and had a daughter with, caused quite a stir as some sort of deadly Bonnie and Clyde vigilantes attacking drug cartels and their members, including one run by a General Marquez.  Well, the good general didn't like this, so he ended up killing poor Carolina and their young daughter.  Thusly, El Mariachi is again despondent and ready to seek revenge, and lo, Agent Sands presents him with the opportunity.

It really is all downhill from there, with a good deal more recycling of things we saw in Desperado.  None of the gun battles were more impressive than in Desperado, which boggles my mind.  The payoff was even less satisfying.  The peripheral characters, such as Billy (the guy with the dog), cluttered the whole thing up, and the acting was not good.  Antonio didn't have many lines to work with, so I don't fault him.  In fact, the actor who did the most talking was Johnny, and while I appreciated his quirky interpretation of this character (he even said savvy...was this released before or after the first Pirates of the Caribbean?), it didn't do anything to help this movie other than a few funny lines, such as, "Are you a Mexi-Can or a Mexi-Can't?"

All in all, I really don't know what this movie was supposed to convey other than offering a new vehicle for El Mariachi, but apparently, he can only be motivated by revenge from the death of his loved ones, which makes the character extremely uninteresting, and as I hinted at in the last entry, two-dimensional.

This movie, therefore, I rate a 3.5 because I don't think the idea was a good one, but it wasn't quite so preposterous as to be given a 3 (otherwise known as the WTF rating).  In order to get a 4, the idea would have to be intriguing, even if the movie was not, and this idea was not intriguing.  So, I plant it squarely in the middle (see, I am capable of giving low ratings).  Obviously anything I rate a 5 or less has absolutely no chance of passing the test (unless it was Matrix Revolutions, but that's another story).  In the end, I really did not enjoy this series...but, of course, I already said that.  I guess I just can't say it enough. 

Under discussion:

Monster House  (2006)

I borrowed this one, again from my co-worker.  She is the fount of all movies I see practically and buys them frequently. I'd heard good things about this movie, so I asked to watch it.

I know quite a few people found this one to be good.  I expect it to get nominated for an Oscar for animated feature.

From my standpoint, the animation was top notch, and the concept somewhat original in the sense that the house comes alive in a most frightening way.  I was entertained for at least some of the movie.

Yet, this movie was ultimately a harmless fright fest for children with lots of explosions and interesting things to look at that really did not hold my attention.  And, as animated features go, Cars is sure to win, as it already has two awards.

The plot is simple: a scary house in the neighborhood that young DJ has been watching is actually inhabited by a spirit and comes alive, particularly at Halloween, to feed off the energy of the living.  DJ and his friends Chowder and Jenny get involved in the stopping of said house.

I was most impressed by the level of animation employed in this movie.  It really has come along, and it was interesting to watch all the details.  Facial features, movements, the details of the house when it took on its alive persona: all were simply amazing.

Yet, there wasn't much to the plot or to the character development, and it catered mostly to its target audience: children.  Not young kids, mind you, because I think they would be scared by the house.  The movie was perfectly contained within an exactly 90 minute running time, and there was lots of slapstick and silly humor that kids would find funny but not much in the way of intelligent humor to keep adults' attention, at least not mine.  The funniest part was Nick Cannon, who played a rookie cop who was just a little too rookie.  Mostly, I find that my head aches after watching this movie.

Cars was superior on every level because it had something for everyone, the plot was more well developed, the message clear, the humor spanning all levels and types, and the animation is still superb.  Pixar is a juggernaut to be reckoned with in the CGI field, but the story development is so much more advanced.

All in all, I think I would rate this movie a 6 (cute).  The plot is not necessarily a recycled one, but it was thin, and the theme I believe it was trying to convey was a bit too subtle, especially since the target audience is children.  This movie, further, does not pass the test.  I couldn't buy it to watch it again.  I was somewhat entertained, though, and if I had kids, I would probably buy it for them to watch particuarly around Halloween.  Otherwise, it wasn't as good as I thought it would be.