BigJeffLebowski

Under discussion:

Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections  (2007)

"No one has yet explained to my satisfaction the difference between a conspiracy and a long range business plan."    -Teresa Hommel

Uncounted, a documentary by David Earnhardt about the deeply flawed and easily maleable American electoral process, is a difficult film to review.  Especially on the eve of such a noteworthy -- and ultimately disheartening and fatiguing -- presidential election, any analysis of the film is likely to degrade into not merely a discussion of its thesis but an impassioned diatribe on the sorry state of our system politic.  But given that this is essentially the point of the film, I will press on.

Focusing primarily on the 2004 and, to a lesser extent, the 2000 presidential elections, Uncounted paints a harrowing portrait of a deeply corrupt system fueled by partisan interests, unaccountability, clandestine operations, and pernicious manipulation.  That the mainstream media largely ignores this issue and the American public is for the most part complacent speaks just as poorly of us as it does the politicians who benefit.

The film's primary target is the voting machine itself.  Electronic voting has been viewed with some degree of skepticism since it was introduced, and subsequent elections have done nothing to asuage the doubtful.  Firstly, there is the matter of machine failure.  Just like any other computerized system, voting machines are prone to crash, lose information, or hiccup in any other number of ways, and have with an alarming frequency.  Additionally, the security on voting machines isn't nearly as comprehensive as that of even a home video game system like XBox or Playstation 3 leaving them susceptible to tampering by even a novice programmer.  Machines can be -- and have been -- programmed to invert, multiply, discard, or otherwise manipulate vote totals.  Even without touching the machine itself, a power outage could prevent voters from participating or it could lose all of the votes already tabulated.

Most of these problems could be addressed by instituting a paper receipt which the voter would verify and then deposit into a lockbox.  The hard copies could be counted to verify the electronic counts should they be lost or contested.  After all, Diebold, the leading manufacturer of electronic voting machines, has designed all of their ATM machines to produce a similar receipt.  Yet the only person to actively spearhead a campaign to install this safety feature was Athan Gibbs, whose company TruVote closed its doors when Gibbs was killed in an automobile accident just as his invention was gaining momentum.  That any kind of business is done without a paper trail, especially something as significant as electing the president, is ludicrous in this day and age; there is no reason to oppose these steps unless you have been manipulating the system to your advantage.

The film goes on to explain Diebold's partisan ties and lawsuit for illegally tinkering with their machines.  It also highlights some of the greater discrepancies between exit polls and vote tallies that occurred throughout the country.  What it doesn't address, however, is the electoral college itself, an equally flawed system in dire need of retooling or -- if we are to buy in to the sentiment that every vote counts -- of retirement.  While this helps the film maintain focus and not overreach, it does present only part of the problem.

The film also focuses on the human aspect just enough to temper its facts and statistics, which is wise since so much of its statistics are based upon public opinion, intent, and awareness.  It is also very careful to not present a liberal bias; although any viewer would likely deduce that Uncounted was produced by leftward minds, the film is conscientious to maintain that it seeks accountability on behalf of the voting public rather than a particular party.

It is however unlikely that anyone watching this film isn't already aware of the conditions it illustrates and does tend in that regard to fall into the trap of many political or message documentaries of preaching to the converted.  This shouldn't make its points any less valid, and one can only hope that as many people as possible see the film and are made aware of the capricious disregard with which American democracy all too frequently regards their voices.

Under discussion:

A Clockwork Orange  (1971)

The Godfather  (1972)

Unforgiven  (1992)

Heat  (1995)

X-Men  (2000)

Memento  (2001)

X2: X-Men United  (2003)

Superman Returns  (2006)

Spider-Man [Film Series]  (2002)

Iron Man  (2008)

The Dark Knight  (2008)

The Dark Knight, the most anticipated picture of the year for myself and innumerable others, has finally arrived following a trail of hype that would crush almost any film.  But miraculously, just as Moses wielded his stone tablets, Christopher Nolan has handed us a true gift from the cinematic gods.  His second Batman is so visceral, so propulsive, so maddeningly perfect in its execution that it should come with a warning; you do not simply watch The Dark Knight, you surrender your pulse to Christopher Nolan.  And even if an intended triptych has been tragically cut short (as Mel Brooks might contend those aforementioned commandments were) what remains is wholly qualified to stand on its own not as a great Batman film, not as a great superhero film, and not as a great action film, but as one of the most distiguished pieces of filmmaking of its generation.

This decade, more so than any other, has seen comic-to-film adaptations mature from vacuous thrills to serious art.  Sam Raimi gave them their candy colored coming-of-age angst with his Spider-Man series; Jon Favreau gave them their sociopolitical meta-narrative with his first Iron Man; and Bryan Singer has alternately given them their conflicts of appearance/intention and assimilation/assertion (X-men, X2) and their visual and tonal poetry (Superman Returns).  But by taking one of the most psychologically rich and practically feasible comic book heroes and stripping him of all remaining contrivance and camp, Nolan has arguably bested them all by instilling his Gotham -- and its inhabitants -- with a gritty realism that absolutely demands as much emotional and technical veracity as an escapist action-adventure will allow.

Perhaps Nolan's greatest asset as a filmmaker is his unwavering dedication to making his characters' actions and emotions utterly believable within the constricts of his chosen narrative.  One needn't look any farther than Nolan's breakthrough sophomore film, Memento, to see that what sets him apart from almost every other filmmaker working today is his complete command of both the internal and external machinations of his characters.  Rarely, if ever, do you see a writer-director working in Nolan's genres with such an assured and astute grasp on human emotion and interaction.  His application of binary opposition in both plot and theme is unmatched in today's cinema.  There is a constant tug of war in Nolan's films, a philosophical debate between chance and fate, between reason and impulse, between light and dark, etc.  Any screenwriter can set up archetypes and let them stand in contrast to one another, but the beauty of a Nolan script is that the true conflict lies inside the characters.  Nolan understands that the line between friends and enemies is moveable, based more on circumstance than on the people themselves.

And what people they are.  Christian Bale's Batman has become beautifully economic in both word and action.  Gary Oldman's Lieutenant Gordon is an even stronger edifice of morality and decency.  Maggie Gyllenhaal's Rachel Dawes is a noteworthy trade-up from the first film, with composure, confidence, and sexuality in equal measure.  Michael Caine's Alfred is humane, silently compassionate, and so much more than the stuffy butler to which he is all too often reduced.

But Heath Ledger's Joker.

I'm really not sure what I can add to the innumerable accolades already heaped upon this utterly unnerving, raw, feral, fearless, unshakeable performance.  Nothing is done out of vanity, nothing for cheap thrills.  True, I feel the talk of Oscar gold is both premature and hyperbolic, but I would be surprised to not see Ledger on the list of nominees.

The Dark Knight is that rare genre film that changes the vocabulary of its genre -- no small feat given the leaps and bounds comic book films have already taken over the past few years.  That The Godfather, Heat, A Clockwork Orange, and Unforgiven have all been cited as influences on the film is no surprise; what all of these exceptional pictures share in common with one another is an intellectual maturity that nonetheless refuses to compromise entertainment for intelligence.

Whether or not the few muffled criticisms that the film is too long, too packed with characters and information, too frenetic, or too climactic are valid is up to the viewer to decide on an individual basis.  While I will agree that the film is denser and more earnest than its peers, I refuse to accept that this is to its detriment.  Nolan has taken a lofty gamble, and we have all walked away from the table with more chips than we can carry.

Under discussion:

Half Baked  (1997)

Being John Malkovich  (1999)

Arrested Development [TV Series]  (2003)

Smiley Face  (2007)

Bickford Schmeckler's Cool Ideas  (2006)

If Smiley Face were directed by Spike Jonze, it would have been a masterpiece.  Its script, by Dylan Haggerty, is consistently entertaining, frequently hysterical, and occasionally quite inventive in how it depicts a day in the life of its stoner protagonist.  Perhaps even more importantly, it understands the episodic, tangential logic of the pothead.  The specious associations, the noncommittal detours of thought and action, the staunch belief in the nobility of your quest, the disparity between what you mean to say and what actually comes out of your mouth; all are rendered with a knowing clarity that will be commended by the herbal enthusiast and will, hopefully, prove enlightening to those members of the square community who wouldn't know from personal experience.  But just as brilliance borne of bong hits tends to collapse upon itself in sober language, so too does Haggerty's script in the hands of director Gregg Araki.

The tones of the script and the direction are strangely at odds with one another.  Haggerty, it seems, envisions Smiley Face as a Kaufman-esque romp a la Being John Malkovich.  Araki, on the other hand, appears to be aiming for Half Baked.  It's actually quite the anomaly.  There are many great scripts which have been diluted by pedestrian direction, but it's rare to see premise and presentation duke it out so heatedly.

Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas, for instance, boasts one of the greatest independent screenplays of the decade; its direction, unfortunately, is not of the same caliber.  But where the sublime Bickford's occasionally weak presentation can be attributed to budgetary restraints and writer-director Scott Lew's inexperience behind the camera, Smiley Face is wrong by design.  With another script, the certainty with which Araki creates his vision would be commendable.  Here, however, his steadfast commitment to his vision is to the detriment of the overall film.  I am more inclined to forgive a director who can't quite get it perfectly right than one who gets it purposefully wrong.  (I'm looking at you, too, Paul Haggis.)

This is not to say that Araki doesn't do anything right.  The irony -- and what is ultimately most frustrating about the film -- is that the cast and crew pretty much nail what Araki asks of them.  But his allegiance is to his vision of the screenplay, not to the screenplay itself.  Rather than make a film about silly things, Araki has simply made a silly film.  Being John Malkovich, as an example, works because the characters are not in on the joke.  In Smiley Face, however, everyone is painted with too broad a brush.

Everyone, that is, except Jane.  Anna Farris, to whom I am usually indifferent, proves herself a comedienne of immeasurable skill and intelligence.  If Lucille Ball got high, it would look something like this.  Everything she does -- the drawn out pauses, the abrupt shifts, the incongruity between tone and content -- rings both funny and true.  It is a bold, boisterous performance that demands attention.  Unfortunately, it also demands a straight man to play off of, something the film does not provide.  John Cho is the kind of dry, deadpan foil Farris needs, but he is onscreen for a scant two scenes.  Under a more confident director the love-struck Brevin Ericson could have filled this quota.  But Araki, seemingly afraid to let so much as a single shot go by without a gag, directs John Krasinski to play Brevin as a Napoleon Dynamite when the film really needs a Michael Bluth.

On "Arrested Development," Jason Bateman played Michael Bluth as the audience surrogate, assuring us that, yes, it's all nonsense and these people you're watching are not normal; without him we would feel lost, as though we were missing part of the joke, which is pretty much how you feel through much of Smiley Face.  Which is a shame, because the jokes are phenomenal, even when they aren't executed to their fullest.  (Jane's logic behind framing a portrait of President Garfield as a short-hand way of saying she likes to eat lasagna is particularly inspired.)

Having seen the film several times, I can assure you that it does reward repeat viewings; granted, this may be because it takes that long to fight your way through Araki's direction, but Haggerty's script and Farris's performance yield enough moments of inspired stoner glory to justify the effort.  And please give a raise/promotion/Oscar to whoever is responsible for the unlikely yet inspired casting of Adam Brody as Jane's dealer.  That was totally awesome, man.

Under discussion:

Monty Python and the Holy Grail  (1974)

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life  (1983)

Take the Money and Run  (1969)

The Life of Brian  (1979)

Monty Python's Flying Circus [TV Series]  (2005)

"If you haven't seen it, please do."

-Richard Dawkins, parenthetically discussing Monty Python's The Meaning of Life in his book The God Delusion.

If Monty Python's The Meaning of Life is remembered less fondly than their earlier classics Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Life of Brian, this is not to say that the film has fewer laughs or that the point of Monty Python's satire has in any way been blunted.  Granted, the humor is arguably the Pythons' most vulgar and can at times come across as crude.  But watching The Meaning of Life a quarter of a century after its release, what remains shocking is not the wealth of projectile vomit, naked breasts, or children singing about sperm; what continues to alienate and to offend is the film's surprisingly direct attack on what it considers a terribly misguided society.  And the worst offender?  Christian ideology and rhetoric.

The Pythons -- Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin -- were always practitioners of silly sophistication, and their combination of the intellectual and the low brow is one of the many factors that has assured them a wide and varied audience.  Few performers have the confidence, the skill, and the intelligence to pull off this Trojan Horse; Steve Martin's signature arrow-through-the-head belied a deeply philosophical bent, and few would find in Take the Money and Run evidence of the mature filmmaker Woody Allen would become over the next decade.  But it can be argued that no one has been more innovative, more inspired, and more inspiring than Monty Python.

It is in The Meaning of Life, their last film, that the Pythons most fully indulge their dual passions for both silliness and sophistication.  It has been argued that by this late point in their career, the Pythons' well was running dry; of this I remain unconvinced.  To its credit, The Meaning of Life is the most technically proficient of the Monty Python films, and though its momentum does wane due to its episodic nature, revisiting the sketch format of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" allows the film to throw a few punches it may have pulled were it constrained to a plot.

Also to the film's credit, even without a single unified narrative running through it, The Meaning of Life is no less thematically coherent than Holy Grail or The Life of Brian.  Lurking beneath the anarchic surface is an unexpectedly intelligent and barbed attack on consumerism, religion, and other modern social maladies that ultimately clutter, confuse, and complicate our lives.  What materializes through the grotesquerie is a strong call for logic and science; I believe that this subtly didactic tone and blatant disdain for abuses of commerce and faith (which could be misread as elitism) is the main reason The Meaning of Life is so often overlooked in the Python oeuvre.

Granted, this film doesn't mark the first time the Pythons have levelled some blows at organized religion, but it may be the first time they have allowed a whiff of malice to creep in.  It would not be entirely erroneous to reason that if an anti-Christian sensibility were solely to blame for The Meaning of Life's somewhat besmirched reputation, then the near-universally praised The Life of Brian should have similar detractors.  While there are those who consider The Life of Brian a deeply insensitive and offensive work, they are considerably fewer and represent a much smaller, much more specific demographic.  Why is this?

Whether consciously or unconsciously, the Pythons seem to have been using The Life of Brian as a test to see just how much they could get away with.  It is clearly their most crafted film, a necessity given its subject matter.  But while The Life of Brian may represent the culmination of a lot of the Pythons' subtextual themes and deals far more overtly with the Christian mythology, it does so in a largely joking, nudging way.  If one were so inclined, he or she could easily watch and enjoy The Life of Brian without subscribing to (or even acknowledging) its critical, subversive ideology.  Perhaps this is the key to great satire, to be able to hide your teeth in a smile.  Regardless, it would be far more difficult for a devout theist to enjoy The Meaning of Life, which frequently seems dissatisfied merely pointing out the faulty logic of pious rhetoric, preferring instead to (literally) sing and dance around the point.  There is no context to soften the blow as there is in The Life of Brian; you can almost hear the Pythons laughing at their audience even as they laugh with them, insisting, "You think this is nonsense?  You should see yourselves!"

To this end, what many find offensive I find refreshing.  I respect an artist who can make big ideas palatable for the general public.  While many young people may not know of Russell's teapot, they may have instead heard of The Flying Spaghetti Monster or The Invisible Pink Unicorn.  What these two symbols of modern day Atheism/Skepticism have in common with Monty Python is a belief that the manifestations of religious fundamentalism are so ludicrous, so fantastical, and so willfully offensive to logic that they can only be responded to with nonsense of equal measure; anyone who ignores reason will not be swayed by it, no matter how sound.

An unfortunate reality is that disciples will not always take the right lessons from their masters.  Just as the church often perverts the religion it sets out to uphold, so too have subsequent filmmakers and comedians taken the Pythons' willingness to push the boundaries of taste but have ignored or left behind their intelligence and sense of purpose.  The Pythons are a bright bunch and are undoubtedly reluctant fathers to the gross-out school of comedic one-upmanship which has flourished in their wake.  And so before you criticize The Meaning of Life for excess, for vulgarity, and for abuse of power with deleterious intent, consider first that its targets are guilty of the same (and to a much greater degree).  At least Monty Python have taken the time and the care to look behind the curtain before it is hung.

Under discussion:

Clean  (2004)

It would seem that society is increasingly embracing the present and the past.  For all of the market testing, advance polling, and research analysis which has reduced so many of our figureheads to puppets caught in the winds of popular opinion, there is a growing lack of restraint and forethought in the actions of many of our celebrities.  Chalk it up to the information age if you'd like, to the ubiquitous surveilance we are under from the totalitarian slanted government, the predatory press, and every schmuck with a camera phone; perhaps we have no choice but to wash and dry our dirty laundry in the public eye.  Still, the sea change in how information is delivered seems to have resulted in decisions made for the short term becoming far more prevelant than they ever were before.  We needn't look any farther than Lindsay Lohan's latest attempt at respectability after several stints in rehab: posing as Marilyn Monroe in New York magazine.  It's mind-bogglingly embarrassing.  Let's let the analytic take a break and eschew the subtext.  Let's not mention that the photos of Marilyn were taken while she was drunk and several weeks before she died of an overdose; let's also not mention that splaying your nude body before the camera does little to increase your respectability as an actress or as a woman.  Let's ignore all of that.  Let's just look at the fact that she looks terrible.  At twenty-one, she looks twice as old as Marilyn did at thirty-six.  And those freckles?  Firecrotch indeed, Mr. Davis.  There is simply a lack of what strikes me as common sense.  Now, I have never been one to project too far into the future (probably why I continuously languish as a novice chess player) but I can't help but look at society today and wonder how much of what goes on is going to be deeply, deeply regretted by those involved when it shows up on a tasteless VH1 special designed to manufacture nostalgia for a time that was insufferable the first time, let alone revisited in endless syndication.

The reason I bring this up is because Clean is a rare film in that it shows someone whose life has fallen apart publicly and who, not always with ease or pleasure, realizes that it is more advantageous to look to the future than to the present.  Maggie Cheung plays Emily Wang, a former television personality whose common-law marriage to aging rockstar Lee Hauser (James Johnston) ends with his death from a drug overdose.  Arrested for possession, but cleared of any charges related to Lee's death, Emily emerges six months later jobless and in debt -- check the boxes of both money and karma -- and with a young son, Jay (James Dennis), now fatherless.  Lee's father Albrecht (Nick Nolte), who has been taking care of his grandson in the absence of both a mother and a father, is granted legal custody and kindly asks that Emily keep her distance for several years.  Motivated to do right by her son, she embarks on a journey of self reflection and improvement that will take her through several jobs in several countries, sustaining herself by the generosity of the few remaining friends who don't blame her for Lee's death.

Much has been said of Cheung's performance, and deservedly so.  She has a combination of poise, determination, fragility, and uncertainty that effectively communicates all of the details that the film only briskly and implicitly states.  Nonetheless, the most surprising performance of the film is that of Nick Nolte.  Nolte is an actor whose reputation and whose name precede his performances; in his later roles, he seems to have perfected a gruff, woozy, willfully aloof character whose charm just makes up for his lack of refinement, tact, and prudence.  In Clean, he conducts a thrilling sneak attack.  What begins looking like another one of Nolte's wonderful messes ends up being a surprisingly thoughtful, resolute, avuncular gentleman with more heart than luck.  If he looks haggard and worn down, it is only because he is emotionally and physically spent from caring for his ailing wife, his troubled daughter-in-law, and his fatherless grandson, not to mention mourning his deceased son.  His is the kind of selfless, pragmatic forward thinking that Emily recognizes she must emulate, even if she does not say so explicitly.

Still, the film is not without its flaws.  I would have sacrificed some of the drawn out third act for a little more of the first, which deftly navigated the world of mid-level rock and roll (with cameos from Metric and Tricky for added credibility).  The performance of James Dennis as Jay is also tonally at odds with the rest of the cast, but I've come to accept that not every child actor is going to be a revelation along the lines of an Abigail Breslin. Regardless, I praise Olivier Assayas for delivering a film that is surprinsgly -- and thankfully -- short on cheap sentimentality and which rewards practicality and pragmatism over impudence and audacity.

Under discussion:

Let the Church Say Amen  (2003)

There are many people who will find David Petersen's documentary Let the Church Say Amen inspiring.  I am not one of them.  This is not to say that there are not individuals portrayed in the film whose personal crusades are inspiring, but I am not of the school of thought that the benefits of religion -- specifically organized religion -- outweigh its detriments.

The film follows the proprietors and congregants of the World Missions for Christ Church in Washington DC.  Battling poverty, hunger, drugs, violence, and mass dismissal by the affluent, these people fight a never ending crusade to help themselves and their brethren rise above their regrettable situation.  Many of these individuals have stories which are touching, but their militant theism is alienating.  It is not enough for Pastor Bobby Perkins and his brothers and sisters to help the destitute; all the good in the world it seems must be done by and for Jesus Christ.

The old saw that "God helps those who help themselves," is possibly the greatest example of a pernicious, self fulfilling prophecy ever recorded and the most transparent proof of organized religion's gleeful appropriation of autarchic acts of altruism and chance; that theists will still use this expression unironically baffles me.  And this is what upsets me the most about institutions such as the World Missions for Christ Church.  Why must the benevolence of these groups be so rooted in religious fundamentalism?  I am of the opinion that organized religion -- and the concept of the afterlife, specifically -- developed as an empty solace for those who wondered, What is the point of this after we die?  Rather than embrace the temporal nature of life, and in doing so value every choice and every action that much more, so many of us prefer to believe that there is an eternal reward waiting for us on another plane.

I could argue (as I have frequently to many people) that the question of an afterlife is irrelevant.  All of our knowledge comes through our physical experiences, experiences which are filtered through our five senses.  Without our physical bodies, we would experience the afterlife in ways we cannot even fathom now; we would be entirely different beings in an entirely different context with no relation to who we were before our death.  This seems self evident to me.  It also seems largely hypothetical, as I don't believe in an afterlife of any sort.  But regardless, I am still hard pressed to understand why so many people in our world need the hollow comfort of organized religion.  I am not one of those agnostics who will attack religion on all fronts; rather, I accept and appreciate the good that it does for those who live better lives for it.  What bothers me is the inability of those people to accept an objective, relativist view of life and act generously to their fellow men for reasons that are not self serving.  For ultimately, isn't all of this a little selfish?  Aren't we all just trying to secure ourselves a spot in heaven with the angels?  And escape eternal damnation and hellfire?

I admittedly haven't said much about the film, which is a competent, if somewhat uneven documentary.  But when you're shouting at people with megaphones and singing "We're gonna kick the devil's butt!" with the fervent zeal of a man possessed by some unholy spirit, you can surely understand having a reaction more than a response.

Under discussion:

The Bridge on the River Kwai  (1957)

Casablanca  (1943)

The Sound of Music  (1965)

Spartacus  (1960)

Gladiator  (2000)

Crash  (2005)

Million Dollar Baby  (2004)

The Departed  (2006)

Underdog  (2007)

Little Miss Sunshine  (2006)

Juno  (2007)

In the January 14th issue of Time, film critic Richard Corliss eschews reviewing the week's releases (it is January, after all) to instead pontificate on the state of the Oscars ("How to Save the Awards Shows").  As many are wont to do, Corliss offers his suggestion on how to improve the Oscars.  He throws out the notions usually bandied about in bids for cheap audience thrills, and suggests something that he considers self-evidently simple: give the awards to popular movies.

Now, with all respect to Mr. Corliss, I agree that the Oscars don't have the finest track record for nominations, let alone for awards.  But if I may be granted my say, the problem with the list is that it usually slants too commercial.  Does anyone really think The Departed was the best picture of 2006?  Or Crash the best picture of 2005?  Or Million Dollar Baby the best picture of 2004?  Or... well, you get the idea.

Granted, these are not bad films.  (Okay, Crash is a bad film.)  But they are populist films.  And whether or not they make as much money as unsophisticated comedies or franchises or sickeningly saccharine schmaltz is regardless.  These are films with big names both in front of and behind the camera, with money to spare on production and promotion.  By now, they even have a subgenre of their own: Oscar-bait.

Corliss points out that "In the old days, the Best Picture prize went to box-office hits like Casablanca, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Sound of Music."  Is anyone really going to debate that Casablanca and The Bridge on the River Kwai are classics in all senses of the word?  (Let's not debate The Sound of Music; as far as I'm concerned, that's one of the most erroneous awards the Academy has ever given.  But I digress.)  There's a difference between saying Gladiator is in the spirit of Spartacus and saying that Gladiator is as good as Spartacus.  There's an intelligence, a tastefulness, and an artistic merit in a Spartacus that is lacking in favor of the bombast and the superficial showmanship of a Gladiator.

I am of the opinion that Little Miss Sunshine, though brilliant, was overpraised.  I do not feel it was the best original screenplay of the year, nor do I believe that it was among the five best pictures of the year.  But let's put that aside and consider not the film itself, but what it meant within the context of its fellow nominees.  Little Miss Sunshine was "the little indie that could," a film that could have gone straight to DVD and had a small devout following, but because of early critical praise and festival buzz, worked its way up to the Oscars.  How precious.  No one seemed to notice that Steve Carrell is one of our most bankable stars at the moment, not to mention the presence of other big name players such as Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, and Greg Kinear.  No one that would necessarily pull a record breaking opening based on their name alone, but this isn't an indie in the Jim Jarmusch sense of the word.  (Or -- excuse me, I forgot I was on Spout for a moment -- the Joe Swanberg sense of the word.)

I would love to see Juno nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, and Ellen Page nominated for Best Actress.  To my delight, if the pre-Oscar buzz is to be trusted, there's a strong possibility of this coming to pass.  But, as Karina has so eloquently pointed out on her blog, Juno is, like Little Miss Sunshine before it, not an indie.  But if/when it gets nominated this year, it's going to be this year's "little indie that could."  There will be those who champion it for it's decidedly outsider aesthetics and subversive attack on the general public; there will be those who lash out against it, saying it was only nominated to fill a quota.  Both of these camps are wrong, and I find each one equally disheartening.

Until the Academy is required to sit down and watch every film that comes out over the course of a year -- Oscar bait or not -- their awards are always going to be slanted and biased.  Now, I'll admit that I don't think it would hurt if someone lost their copy of, say, Underdog, but once again, this is a slippery slope.

I think back to my halcyon days of working video retail, when a precocious teen could stand behind the register, content and safe in his sense of cinematic superiority.  I had a phrase, a credo if you will, for why I would never let a customer blindly refuse a letterbox edition of a film.  "Educate, don't placate," I would say, as I took out a piece of (approximately) 2.35:1 paper and demonstrated, "This is how a movie is shot, but this is all you're getting to see," while ripping the paper in half.  (I also had diagrams I would draw, but that would take too long to explain.)

I would like to instruct the Academy to do the same thing: don't simply placate the masses who want validation that the films they paid to see are good.  Chances are, they're not.  No offense.  Educate them on some of the better films they may have missed or not bothered to see.  The film critic is always going to be hated by the populace, who routinely declare "I always disagree with reviews."  There's no reason for intelligent, discerning people to sacrifice their integrity and pander to a constituency that isn't going to listen to them either way.

EDIT: A very truncated version of this rant was printed in the Letters to the Editor section of the January 28 issue of Time magazine, several pages away from an interview with Woody Allen.  I plan to gloat that Woody Allen and I were both published in the same issue of Time for many years to come. 

Under discussion:

X-Men: The Last Stand  (2006)

Arrested Development [TV Series]  (2003)

Hard Candy  (2006)

Superbad  (2007)

Juno  (2007)

There are so many wonderful things I would like to say about Juno.  That its cast is impeccable, that its soundtrack conveys the perfect emotions, that its details ring both true and hilarious.  But most of all, I want to say how good -- no, how GREAT -- watching it made me feel.

Ellen Page plays the eponymous sixteen year old heroine with a startingly endearing blend of precociousness, arrogance, cynicism, feigned independence, and aloof self-determination that is so right in so many ways, I cannot help but declare -- after having seen her only in this, Hard Candy, and X-Men: The Last Stand (in my reviews for all of which I've swooned for this girl) -- that Page is going to be among the greatest actresses of her generation.  It would have been so easy for a film like this to degrade into silliness or ugliness, and yet somehow, Diablo Cody, Jason Reitman, and Page have colluded to create one of the greatest cinematic outcasts and one of the most unique, interesting, beguilling, and utterly irresistable coming of age films I've ever seen.  It's a winner, and it's a classic.

Juno (both the film and the character) has an interesting sneak attack, a way of skittering into your heart through the back door and falling asleep on the couch before you're even aware of its/her presence.  And it's aware of this.  There's an effortless charm, an intrinsic inveiglement that stems from being so awkward and so ill at ease that there is no alternative (excluding self destruction, a masturbatory martyrdom that this film is miles above) other than to fully embrace that which is uniquely you.  Page nails it.  Cody nails it.  And Michael Cera has built an entire career upon it.  Anyone who doesn't like Cera has deep seated issues which they need to resolve on their own terms.  From Arrested Development to Superbad to Juno, Cera has shown an interesting arc as an actor.  Every line of dialogue and every action is utterly believable; Cera may play variations upon the same character, but he invests that character with everything he's got and plays it like his life depends upon it.

And that's the charm of Juno: these characters know who they are and where their boundaries lie.  They are not ones to be bogged down by relativism or morbidity.  Instead, they celebrate their quirks, their limitations and their passions, without regard for what others may think.  The film's greatest moment, which unabashedly put a lump in my throat and a misty coat over my vision, is when Juno tells Paulie Bleeker (Cera) that he's the coolest person she's ever met without even trying to be, and he confides "I try really hard, actually."  It's a moment of honesty that few films -- hell, few people -- would dare.  These are people who understand they are not mass-marketable.  They will appeal to their small coterie of friends, and they will cherish them for all their flaws and failings as much as for their virtues.  But if they're going to be disliked by the world at large, they're going to be disliked on their own terms.

Characters like these could travel one of three roads: they could try to fit in with the so called popular kids and feel the sting of rejection, they could actively alienate people to prove a point, or they could become irrepressibly themselves in spite of the social acceptance they may forfeit.  To many, the last two options may seem like the same thing in different words, but anyone who appreciates this film with their heart in addition to their brain will know that one will leave you empty whereas one will leave you edified.  And those are the people who will champion these characters and smile uncontrollably during the film's indefectible finale.

Under discussion:

Hotel Chevalier  (2007)

If Hotel Chevalier is any indication, Wes Anderson's forthcoming The Darjeeling Limited should be a welcome return to form after the disappointingly flat and oddly uninvolving Life Aquatic.  Anderson's stamp is all over the film, from the judicious use of obscure pop music to the ornately framed shots, from the allusions to unseen past events to the precision taken in selecting every prop and piece of wardrobe, and it is a stamp which has regained its credibility and its luster.

One of Anderson's myriad stengths is building and sustaining a feeling of emotional repression.  The awkward stagey-ness which too many viewers are too quick to criticize works in Chevalier for the the same reasons it worked in The Royal Tenenbaums; there is a sense of history, of a past which is both memorable and regretable.  There is arguably no director better at creating those beautiful, heartbreaking moments of both joy and sadness, of both hope and regret, and it is in films like Chevalier and Tenenbaums where this strength is put to its best use.  In moments where past and future collide in an uncertain, pregnant present, Anderson excels where few other filmmakers even tread.

Recall Gwyneth Paltrow stepping off of the bus in Tenenbaums: about to see her step brother, with whom she is secretly in love, for the first time in years, Paltrow and Luke Wilson's trepidatious, awkward reconcillatory embrace is loaded with thoughts unspoken.  Now consider Hotel Chevalier, in which two former lovers share an increasingly awkward several minutes before erupting into the throes of passion.  One of Anderson's calling cards is his ability to portray those moments when the past comes rushing back to us with such immediacy that we can no longer recall if we miss it or regret it, and for good reason.  His protagonists are almost always at a crossroads at which they must reconcile their past and their future, face their regrets, and decide if they will be defined by their failures or press on in spite of them.

In Hotel Chevalier, the protagonist, played with masterful reserve by Jason Schwartzman, awaits an unexpected reunion with an ex girlfriend (Natalie Portman).  Such an encounter is rife with pyschosexual tension, especially in Anderson's hands.  We do not know why they parted, nor why he is on what appears to be a self-imposed exile in a posh Parisian hotel.  But when Schwartzman answers his phone and hears Portman's voice, you can feel his world freeze.  His gentle resignation to his conflicted emotions is illustrated with beautiful economy:

"Wait a second."

"What?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm here."

"I didn't say you could come here."

"Can I come there?"

(silence)

"Okay."

The rest of the scene plays out in a fashion that will be familiar to anyone who has found themselves still in love with someone who has hurt them beyond repair.  The masochistic, self-spiteful, self conscious, pageant that plays out does not scar, nor does it heal.  It's damaged individuals hoping to put themselves back together by revisiting the traps which broke them in the first place.

The paradox of nostalgia is that as much as it is a celebration of beauty and of happiness, equally is it a reminder that everything we know will one day disappear, ourselves included.  Could there even be beauty if the world were not temporal?  Surely, the salvation that Anderson's characters seek would be meaningless if they were immortal; with eternity, they could be everyone they ever wanted to be.

All lovers of the cinema should rejoice in the works of Wes Anderson.  That a director can create films of such sincerity using tools of such blatant artifice is reason enough, but to speak so directly to the often conflicted inner torments of those individuals who are stranded in their own lives is a true cause celebre.

Under discussion:

Great World of Sound  (2007)

There are precious few fortunate people who do not know the fine balancing act between moral righteousness and paying the bills.  If we were to dissect our present and previous employment -- dissect it down to the basic tenets of capitalism if need be -- almost every one of us would have some ethical quibbles with what we do to keep ourselves out of debt.  Few of our jobs, however, present us with as much of a moral dilemma as that of Martin (Pat Healy), a nice enough guy with the misfortune of applying for the wrong job.  Teamed with Clarence (Kene Holliday), an outspooken, affable middle aged fellow similarly in need of the biggest paycheck in the shortest span of time, Martin travels from hotel to hotel auditioning acts to sign to Great World of Sound Records.  The acts aren't particularly good, but neither is the company's offer.  The fine print of a GWS recording contract is that the artist is required to put up a percentage of the costs himself, usually over one thousand dollars.  Perhaps because he's a gullible guy, or perhaps because he wants so desperately to believe in what he is doing, it takes Martin most of the movie to realize he is part of a scam.

Great World of Sound is essentially a two character comedy-drama set in hotel rooms and lobbies, in airport terminals and in very poor excuses for offices.  As such, the film could have succeeded or fallen apart based upon the lead actors alone, and Healy and Holliday nail their parts.  Healy is great at internalizing, and creates a character who doesn't decide to stand passively beside what he believes may be injustices to both himself and others, but has stood idly so long that he has forgotten he can speak up.  Avoidant and weedy, he frequently falls into the background both at work and at home.  Holliday, however, is charismatic and larger than life.  He doesn't care whether what he does is immoral; he knows what his job is, he does it well, and he doesn't let himself think very far beyond that.

Zobel and his cowriters give Martin several ocassions to test his moral mettle before throwing him into the biggest ethical dilemma he has ever faced.  In this, the film's strongest moment, Martin befriends a bartender so good hearted and so talented that he cannot stand to "sign" her to their record label.  As the scene progresses, however, what at first seemed altruistic becomes disingenuous, and Martin must decide which -- and how many -- of his convictions he is willing to eschew.  It is here, towards the end of the film, that Healy truly shines.  Holliday, as well, is given a brilliant monologue in which he tears down Martin's false illusions of fairness and reciprocity.

The film feels small and occasionally claustrophobic, but never like it would be better suited to the stage.  The constant flow of musical acts enlivens what would otherwise be two men talking, and Martin's wife adds a nice dimension to both Martin as a character and to the film as a treatise on art vs. commerce.  Ultimately, the film is enlightened to that age old dilemma, and offers no simple solutions.  If it is possible to realize that those who lie and cheat are more often than not the ones who win, yet still maintain that an ethical core is a strength, if not a necessity, in surviving this lifetime, then this is the film to champion that dichotomy.

Under discussion:

Ten Canoes  (2007)

Ten Canoes occupies an unusual middleground between entertainment and anthropology, and as such, doesn't fully succeed as either.  Telling two stories, neither one of which engaging enough to sustain a feature, the film employs a cast of Aboriginal Australians speaking their native tongue.  This is one of the film's three interesting points.  The other two are how they actually made their canoes, and how they built makeshift tree houses to live on the swamp while they were in transit.  The actual story of the film, which revolves loosely around a young man coveting the youngest of his older brother's several wives (and his older brother telling a story about a young man coveting the youngest of his older brother's several wives) fails to fully connect.  Perhaps it is the convuluted storytelling, or perhaps it is the interjection of the more tactile and practical aspects of Aboriginal Australian life, but the romantic lives of these characters don't carry enough suspense or detail to hold the audience.

The location photography is beautiful, and the insight into the culture is occasionally fascinating, but it all adds up to a piece of fiction that one cannot help but feel would have been far more engrossing as a straight documentary about these people and their way of life.  At one point in the film, Dayindi, the younger brother, is asked if he has learned anything from his older brother's story.  He responds: "Only thing he learned is Minygululu take long time to tell a story."  At the risk of sounding reductive or disinterested, I left the film feeling largely the same way.

Under discussion:

Superbad  (2007)

Playing out like a smarter, funnier, and all around better American Pie or Can't Hardly Wait, Superbad just might be the comedy of the year.  Apatow and company's Knocked Up was undeniably one of 2007's best films so far -- comedy, or otherwise -- and is assured a spot in the pantheon of comedy classics it's okay for the critics to love.  Superbad would seem destined to be its absolutely gut-busting, crude, puerile younger brother.  Bringing (relatively) the same amount of heart and integrity to the procedings, Superbad succeeds as a teen comedy that feels uncommonly genuine, without as many broad strokes as the aforementioned films it calls to mind.

Jonah Hill and Michael Cera are an impeccable team.  Both are awkward, but where Hill is obnoxious and quick to vulgarity and anger, Cera is diminutive and dorkily sweet.  Christopher Mintz-Plasse is being called the film's secret weapon, but while he is undoubtedly a great discovery as the utterly pathetic, yet utterly believable Fogell (nay, McLovin), the film belongs to Hill.  In previous films, Hill has been occasionally brilliant, if somewhat inconsistent; in Superbad, he hits it out of the park.  Nearly everything he says is gold.  (You may need to change your pants after the delivery and context of a line as innocuous as "I have your information.")

The film does come close to crossing the line of believability, and were it not for its emotional center, it would.  But the sincerity of the script and of the characters somehow makes even the more outlandish segments seem natural and believable.  Kevin Smith should actually take note: the male-male bonding between Hill and Cera has a dynamic not unlike that of Dante in Randall in Clerks 2, but instead of tacking it on in platitudes at the end, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's script establishes it early and develops it throughout the film, resulting in a more satisfying conclusion that foregoes trite conflict resolution in favor of a more open ending which implies a happy ending without having to go down the gooey, saccharine route of, again, films like American Pie and Can't Hardly Wait.  Because let's face it, at that age, every small conflict resolved is tantamount to a towering success. 

Under discussion:

Anytown, USA  (2005)

I made a note early in the film Anytown, USA which read “I doubt it’s a coincidence that the pattern of his tie matches the pattern of the chair in which he’s sitting to be interviewed.”  The “he” of whom I was speaking is Steve Lonegan, the mayor of Bogota, NJ, one of several mayoral candidates in the 2003 election, the subject of Kristian Fraga’s 2005 documentary.  Much later in the film, Fraga shows Lonegan shopping with his mother for an ensemble to wear on election day; “Do I have a charcoal grey pinstripe suit?” he calls home to inquire, before explaining to the cameras that “the tie’s important, it has to be a great tie.”  Were I a less cynical man -- or, hell, maybe even a more cynical man -- I would laugh.  Instead, I shake my head at this tiny metaphor for everything that is wrong with politics: no one who cares about anything other than being elected will ever hold an elected office.

In the case of Anytown, USA, we have a small town in northern New Jersey with a two term incumbent candidate (Lonegan) seeking reelection.  His recent budget cuts -- specifically those which affected the local high school and, in particular, its athletic department -- have put him out of favor with many of his citizens.  He has a relatively strong record otherwise, but he cannot hide his disregard for Bogota as a community, nor does he try too.  He is aloof and dismissive, self righteous to a fault, mistaking his opinions for facts, and of the belief that Bogota High School -- whose Bogota Bucs are the maypole around which the town near-universally rallies -- is more of a financial burden than it is worth.  His policies, as far as the film illuminates them, are of the stereotypical Republican school: financially somewhat admirable on paper, but impersonal, without regard for the populace, and geared more toward the town than the townspeople.

So what does a community in revolt do?  Well, just like any self respecting democratic republic, they throw in a couple other candidates.  Fred Pesce, an amiable enough man, emerges as the democratic candidate.  A former member of city council, he is, to put it mildly, past his prime.  He denies rumors that he will drop out of the race due to health concerns, but he frequently appears as though he should.  Pesce would be great as your Italian uncle, leaning over the grill with a spatula in one hand and a cigar in the other, but as a mayor?  Well, he always looks tired, moves lethargically, and never really seems to grasp the concept that in order to campaign, you have to... well, you have to campaign.  It seems as though no one in the town knows Pesce’s stance on any of the issues, including Pesce himself.  When asked what he brings to the debate, he simply says he is passionate about several issues; when asked to name a single one of them, he is silent.

Not much competition, right?  Enter Dave Musikant, the ostensible hero of the film.  A former Bogota High football star, Musikant is legally blind as a result of a brain tumor he had removed almost a decade earlier.  His outrage at the direction his beloved town is taking is infectious; he doesn’t resort to name calling or petty attacks, he actually wants to discuss his town.  His care is what’s missing from Lonegan, and his passion is what’s missing from Pesce.  What he lacks, however, is any kind of political experience.  We find ourselves rooting for Musikant, partly because he is the underdog and partly because we can see how deeply he cares for his town, but never because he comes off as the most qualified.

It’s also worth noting, if only for irony’s sake, that Lonegan is nearly legally blind.  But, he insists, “The only handicap I have, really, is that I’m a republican in a democratic district.”  (I wish I could end that quote after the word “republican,” but my journalistic integrity apparently trumps my political partisanship.)  As if it weren’t enough that Musikant is a legally blind write-in independent candidate, he’s attempting to unseat a nearly legally blind incumbent.  It’s completely irrelevant to the election, and yet it’s emblazoned all over the local papers (and, subsequently, the literature for the film).  This is important.  Ever since Kennedy debated Nixon on live television, politics has been a totally different animal.  Appearance is every bit as important as content.  Oh, who am I kidding, appearance is more important than content.

The other historically significant change in politics that is relevant to discussion of Anytown, USA is the idea of the eternal campaign, a term -- and school of rule -- coined in the Reagan administration to reflect the increasing amount of attention given to polling and its effects on how a campaign -- and a term in office -- is run.  When an elected official is in office, how well he or she performs will determine whether or not they are elected to another term.  This seems simple and logical, right?  It is.  Until it is taken to an extreme, at which point his or her term becomes nothing more than a campaign for their second.  And third.  And ad infinitum.  “How are you doing?” a citizen asks Lonegan.  His response of “That’s what I’m here to find out,” could seem indicative of a greater concern for his town and his people.  After watching Lonegan roll his eyes, cross his arms, and scoff at the slightest hint of dissent, it comes off as what it is: a last attempt to win an election that has been moving increasingly out of his favor.

It’s just about this point in the documentary that we realize this election is not among candidates, but between The Republican and Everyone Else.  “Most people like him.  Mostly democrats don’t,” an interviewee claims of Lonegan.  “He’s splitting the anti-Lonegan vote,” another protests of Musikant’s campaign.  And it’s just about this point in the review that I stop talking about the film and instead launch a tirade about politics in general.

What are the stereotypes?  Republicans are pernicious, spurious, misguided bullies.  Democrats are lazy, unfocused, and define themselves by what they oppose instead of what they support.  Independents are -- well, the whole system is designed to shit on independents, so it doesn’t really matter what they are.  And I hate to admit it, but the film fully supports every single one of these generalizations.  As my anthropologist friends assure me, stereotypes have to come from somewhere; just because they don’t reflect the totality of a group, don’t be so diplomatic as to deny they often reflect a majority.

Al Gore’s latest book, The Assault on Reason, directly addresses many of the same topics found in Anytown, USA.  Where the film only alludes (it is quite diplomatic, doing its darndest to steer clear of partisan bias in any direction) Gore points and shouts, lamenting the shift in public consciousness and how it is shaped.  It’s been said countless times that politicians are corrupt; I can’t help but wonder how many entered politics because they were corrupt compared to how many have become corrupt because they entered politics.  Even Musikant, that pillar of small town ideology, succumbs to The Game.  He has to.  Hiring Doug Friedline, political consultant to such underdog candidates as Jesse Ventura, was a wise step.  No doubt the fraction of the vote Musikant received, as small as it may have been, would have been negligible if not nonexistent without Friedline’s help.  Friedline’s organization not only brings a modicum of respectability to Musikant’s otherwise amateur DIY campaign, but allows Musikant to stay at least partly out of the ugly muckraking inherent in politicking.  Regardless, Musikant gets off on his rising visibility and power.  To his credit, only when pushed does he have harsh words for his opponents, although he does use Pesce’s failing health and the rumors of his withdrawal from the race to his advantage.  (He did not start the rumors, and he claims he never brought them up first as a talking point, but the film is more ambiguous on this matter.)  It’s hard to overlook the irony, however, that the Musikant campaign’s “secret weapon” has nothing to do with Musikant’s personal or political ideology.  It’s a man in a pencil suit.  Yes, it’s a man wearing a pencil suit, waving his arms at cars passing by, urging them to vote for “the write-in candidate” Dave Musikant.  It’s a good secret weapon, I must admit.  I smiled.  A lot.  And if I were undecided, it might have been the kind of gamble that would tilt me in his direction.  But at the end of the day, it’s still a seven foot tall pencil.  With arms, legs, a smiley face, and the name “Musikant” in big, purple letters.

Ladies and gentlemen, if I’m being too obtuse, I offer you the following equation: Giant Pencil Man = War on Terror.

Elections are not won by credentials, policies, plans, blah blah blah, so on and so forth.  The unfortunate truth, which is illustrated with frightening clarity in Anytown, USA, is that candidates are products.  They are developed, researched, tested, marketed, market-test-researched, rebranded.  An election is like a weekend, and each candidate is like a film opening that weekend.  The “issues” are the trailers, posters, full page color advertisements with cherry-picked critical quotes; the issues, or rather their presentation and packaging, are the trifling ephemera used to hook the audience.  And just as advertising frequently misrepresents the products it advertises, so too will candidates alternately emphasize or downplay aspects of their character and their ideology in favor of a wider base of support.  To return to my analogy, chances are, the film with the best advertising is going to sell the most tickets.  If you’re reading my reviews, chances are you agree with my filmic tastes; if you agree with my filmic tastes, chances are you rarely think highest grossing means best.  If you’d like, you can extend my analogy past opening weekend, but I will end here.

If my vitriolic rants are as transparent as I imagine they are, you can assume who won the election.  It’s no surprise to the cynic, and disheartening to the idealist.  Not because of Lonegan’s policies (the film is deliberately judicious in dispensing this information) but because of his rhetoric and his techniques.  It does seem defeatist to say that within our version of democracy, the best candidates are unelectable.  Regardless, one cannot deny that the game must be played; a politician’s ambition often comes at the expense of his integrity, and it has bred no shortage of jokes at their expense.  I will not say that there is no solution, since films like Anytown, USA and books like The Assault on Reason are raising our consciousness of the flaws within our government.  But I will also not resort to speculation or sermonizing.  A century from now, America may very well be written of in the history books as a failed experiment.  Works such as these can either steer us away from that fate or illustrate how it befell us; it’s entirely up to us which it will be.

Under discussion:

You're Gonna Miss Me  (2007)

It's easy to minimize the influence of Roky Erickson on the music world.  Unless you were among his ardent fans and followers, he was ostensibly a one hit wonder who promptly disappeared from the music industry, only to return several times with diminishing results.  At its best, his music was carnal, raw, and fierce, as such luminaries as Billy Gibbons, Thurston Moore, Gibby Haynes, and Patti Smith attest in Kevin McAlester's documentary You're Gonna Miss Me.  But at other times, Roky's music was meandering, lacking in direction and cohesion, and -- at least lyrically -- downright silly.  It was hard to tell when Roky was being irreverent and when he was being serious, and the same can be said about the Roky Erickson of McAlester's film.

When we first see Roky, he resembles the addled recluse he is: with scraggly hair, long yellow nails, and a spotty beard, he is fascinated by a half assembled Mr. PotatoHead doll and impressed that Publishers Clearing House would so generously offer him money.  He spends most of his time wandering through his cluttered house, keeping comprehensive logs of his mail -- both incoming and outgoing -- whether it be junk mail and advertisements, or letters to the late Alfred Hitchcock, which he never sends.  His sleep ritual is not unlike something from a David Lynch film; with TVs, radios, baby monitors, and all other sorts of white noise blaring cacophonously, he sits at the head of his bed, and putting on a pair of sunglasses announces that he will now be going to sleep.  Awake, he will only answer the door or the phone for his mother, who spends four hours a day with him, trying to make sense of her son's life -- and through her efforts, validate her own.

Roky's mother Evelyn becomes his de facto guardian, which is a point of contention among Roky's brothers, who feel Roky should have access to prescribed drugs and rehabilitation, of which his mother is skeptical.  This conflict is where McAlester chooses to focus his camera, framing it within Roky's storied history, which includes his early abuse of LSD, arrest for marijuana possession, nervous breakdown, diagnosis of schizophrenia, and three year stint in Rusk Maximum Security Mental Hospital, where he regularly received shock treatment.  The film wisely avoids supposition about the causes of Roky's mental state -- was it the drugs? the shock treatment? natural proclivity? sexual abuse as a child? -- keenly accepting that within the insanity of Roky's life, there is no way of discerning which factors weighed most heavily upon his psychological health.  "Roky chose to go crazy," notes his brother's therapist, "for him it was a solution."

It may have been the only solution.  His family was particularly volatile, driving at least two of the Erickson sons to therapy, most notably the youngest, Sumner.  Evelyn, however, prefers religion and yoga to science and medicine, and tries to lead Roky down a similar path of recovery.  To explain her distrust of psychiatry, she alludes to "Frasier," noting how Frasier and Niles, both therapists, are unable to solve their own problems, never make mention of a "supreme being," and are "another example of knowledge not being turned to wisdom."  Her catharsis comes from giant collages of photos, paintings, newspaper clippings, and other such ephemera which she constructs as a kind of autobiography of her life, to convince herself of her worth as a human and, specifically, as a mother.  Rather than attempt to reconnect with her children and discuss their growing rift, she elects to make a fairy tale film called "The Five Kings" as a metaphor for her relationship with her sons.  A great deal of her skewed sense of context and especially her packratting can be seen in Roky and his mess of a home, but Sumner vocally wonders if this is the healthiest environment for a man who claimed to hear voices and would travel to the beach to "literally have the sense knocked into him" by the crashing waves.

This is not to say that Sumner is a bastion of sagacity.  His home is an eyesore, a great, big box of windows and primary colors -- yellow and red, mostly, both inside and out -- that would stand out anywhere, but does so doubly in the Pittsburgh suburbs; his therapy teeters precariously on the edge of new-agey poppycock.  Nonetheless, he provides a sturdier ground for Roky, and when the film flashes ahead one year, we immediately see a change in Roky, both in how he carries himself and how he interacts with his environment.  He is sharper, keener, and his sense of wonder about the things around him is decidedly more childlike than the skewed rantings and blatant misconceptions we have seen from him up to this point.  But still, when Roky picks up his guitar today and plays a song for his brother and his therapist, the wide-eyed glance he gives to his audience is still somewhat amiss, and begs the question: For someone who, as a youth, only seemed happy playing his guitar, and as an adult walked away from music entirely for no apparent reason and without any remorse, is the joy in his face from the music itself or from pleasing his audience?  If Roky comes off as anything in You're Gonna Miss Me, it's a man at the mercy of those around him, a man being pulled in several directions, unable to cope with the stresses of his family life and his fame.

Under discussion:

Grand Hotel  (1932)

American Dreams [TV Series]  (2002)

Bobby  (2006)

Factory Girl  (2006)

I admit a bias when it comes to the 1960s.  It's a time I wish I had been able to experience.  The music, the films, the literature, the art, and the very real belief that an individual could make a difference; I don't try to hide that I tend to get sweeped up and carried away by my romanticized notions of my father's era.  Bobby plays to this nostalgic sensibility, though more in content than in form.  Unlike Factory Girl, which was released the same year and concerns roughly the same time period, Estevez's film doesn't try to disguise itself as a product of the times it illustrates.  Save for one scene which attempts to visualize an acid trip (which is, coincidentally, the film's worst segment, featuring Ashton Kutcher giving the film's worst performance) there are no true-to-the-period behind-the-camera histrionics.  Instead, Estevez rips a few pages from the books of Robert Altman and Grand Hotel in an effort to define an era through a series of portraits all relating tangentially to Robert Kennedy's assassination.

In fact, the film's closest relative is the unjustly overlooked and shortlived TV series "American Dreams," the first episode of which concluded poignantly with the other Kennedy assassination five years earlier.  Like that show, Bobby presents us with an array of characters, each representing a different aspect of the 60s, ranging from the draft to the civil and women's rights movements.  Unfortunately for Estevez, he doesn't have three seasons to develop these characters; instead, he has two hours, and as such, few of the characters become more than archetypes.

What carries the film up to its powerful final third is the discord between the intangible sense of hope which lingers above all of the characters and the heartbreaking conclusion which the audience knows is inevitable.  Bobby is clear in its intention to be about the murder of Kennedy rather than about Kennedy, but there are long stretches when the film seems to exist just outside of the events at its core, and it isn't until halfway through when the results of the primaries start coming in and Kennedy himself starts to become a more concrete element in the film that it really picks up steam and pulls you along with it.

This isn't to say Bobby is a bad film.  It's handsomely executed in nearly every way, and it's obvious that Estevez has a great fondness for his subject.  But that fondness is one befitting someone who was only a child when Kennedy was assassinated, and consequently, the film is more about the ideas and the feelings than about the people and the events.  In spite of that -- or maybe even because of it -- the film's last 15 minutes are a knockout.  Depicting the murder itself, and set to Kennedy's own words, the film's conclusion is an emotionally resonant, affecting reminder of a time when the American people believed they had something worth fighting for, and that their efforts would not go unnoticed.  The film is a loving memorial not only to one man, but the very idea of One Man, when a person's individuality and his solidarity could exist in harmony for the betterment of a nation.  Politics may have always been dirty, but there's no harm in viewing the past with a little less cynicism than we view the present.

Under discussion:

Separate Lies  (2005)

Expanding upon his usual theme of deception among the British upper class, Julian Fellowes's directorial debut Separate Lies is a film with enough intelligence and insight to make up for its few technical and structural deficiencies.

Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson give strong performances as James and Anne Manning, a couple who have let the silences in their marriage overtake their passion.  James is an esteemed London solicitor ("He's very expensive," Anne condescendingly tells a friend who asks if James is good at his job) who has let reason and pragmatism bleed from his professional life to his personal life.  Anne, frustrated and exhausted from the standards to which James (perhaps unknowingly) holds her, begins an affair with Bill (Rupert Everett), a well-to-do friend of the family who has recently returned from a stay in New York.  Their romance entangles them legally as well as emotionally when the husband of the Manning's maid is injured by a passing car, a hit and run whose investigation calls upon all three as witnesses.

The film, adapted as well as directed by Fellowes, finds occasional moments of domestic tumult which shatter the Mannings' precarious tranquility with surprisingly strong effect; one scene in particular makes food preparation more suspenseful than I had ever thought possible, climaxing with a plate shattering with such resonance that the world outside could explode without the Mannings -- or the audience -- so much as flinching.  That Fellowes is able to wring such intensity from these tiny moments makes the film's failings that much more upsetting.  What I assume are meant to be revelations occur so early in the film that they play more as plot developments than as twists, robbing them of some of their impact.  And by the last 20 minutes of the film, months and years pass so quickly that Fellowes resorts to telling the passage of time in voice over.

Still, the film contains a wealth of the dark, dry British humor for which Fellowes is renowned.  Take for instance the scene in which an argument about Bill's role in the hit and run leads to Anne's admission of infidelity:

"F*** Bill."

"That's the thing.  I do f*** Bill."

Even more enjoyable, however, is how the psychological and social dynamic of infidelity is illustrated.  James, of course, appears at first as the more noble of the two, but his skills as a solicitor reveal themselves in several scenes in which his careful navigation of marital spats leads his wife to suggest the actions she would likely dismiss were they proposed by James.  "You said it yourself," he adds afterwards as an aloof rejoinder.  It takes her a while, but Anne does realize her deceptions are being met blow for blow by James'  machinations.  "I fail every test you set me," she tells him, "yet you keep setting them.  Why?"

But James's journey is the most interesting aspect of the film, as he rediscovers his love for Anne and, rather than snipe at her, takes the moral high ground and offers his support of her choices.  His pragmatism allows him to see every situation from several viewpoints, and his harsh judgment of Anne cannot help but make him reevaluate himself.  "We're all wreckers," he concedes at one point, "we make choices, we make them for the best and most loving reasons, but we don't see the damage we cause."  It is lucky for the characters of Separate Lies that they learn the damages they have caused before it is too late for them to mend appearances and salvage their lives as well as their dignity.

Under discussion:

The Quiet  (2006)

I'm not sure if someone should have told director Jamie Babbit to lighten up or told co-screenwriters Abdi Nazemian and Micah Schraft to start taking themselves seriously.  Whichever it may be, at some point in the production of the curiously confused The Quiet, all three should have gotten onto the same page.  This is not to say it is a bad film -- it actually succeeds fairly well in spite of itself -- but there is a strong sense of a director and cast trying desperately to raise their script from camp to gravitas which ultimately makes The Quiet feel disjointed with several too many unintentional laughs.

The Disfunction Lurking Beneath the Idyllic Suburban Facade film is a genre unto itself, and Nazemian and Schraft's script does little to shroud or surpass its cliches and limitations.  Instead, it makes several sloppy attempts at metaphor and similitude.  The two girls, for instance, share a desire to be closer to their fathers which most likely stems from the absence of a mother.  While Dot's died when Dot was only seven, Nina's becomes increasingly soporific thanks to a worsening drug dependency begun while she was recovering from an unexplained injury.  As the film goes on, these desires lead both girls to act abnormally in ways ranging from bizarre to depraved.

It's this longing for both physical and emotional connection -- and the inability to express it satisfactorily -- which drives not only the two female protagonists, but also all the ancillary characters.  Nina's best friend Michelle prattles endlessly about screwing Connor, the high school basketball star, while meanwhile, in unguarded moments, she timidly attempts to breach the subject of her attraction to Nina and her repressed lesbianism.  Connor on the other hand, frustrated by not only his ADD and his virginity but also by an attraction to Dot which even he seems to find inconceivable, unfurls a seemingly endless supply of unflattering and off-putting admissions under the belief that she cannot hear him (and therefore cannot criticize him).  All the while, Nina the Bitch begins to collapse under her own weight, giving Nina the Abused Victim fleeting chances to make herself known.

Oh yeah, there's also some nonsense about Beethoven.  You know, cause he was deaf too.

What brings it all together in the end are the pair of surprisingly strong performances by Elisha Cuthbert and Camilla Belle.  While Martin Donovan and Edie Falco seem strangely misguided, Cuthbert and Belle have a pretty thorough understanding of their characters.  Cuthbert is rarely used as more than a pretty face on a prettier body, but aside from a few moments of maudlin melodrama, her Nina is surprisingly convincing.  Her ability to jump immediately from insubordination to adulation to affliction and back again is in itself revelatory for an actress usually asked to play one note to its fullest; even more impressive is the way she never lets it seem schizophrenic, but instead perfectly intimates the fleeting, disinterested whims of a teenager.

Belle, on the other hand, is an actress more adept at emoting through gesture and expression than through voice, and at the risk of making it sound like a diminutive compliment, the role of Dot is perfectly suited to her skills.  There is a stillness to her performance, yes, but not vacancy.  Belle has the enviable ability to convey thought on the screen, and you can see it in every glance, in every pause.  Though her character wishes to be invisible to the world, Belle demands your attention.  Her sporadic narration tells you what has happened to her, but her sloping eyes -- a dark, striking mix of sadness and determination that I defy you to look away from -- tell you how those events have affected her.  Simply put, hers is the kind of face for which close-ups were invented.

But ultimately, the contrivances of the film become too numerous and the half-hearted attempts at satire get in the way of what could have been a fairly engaging psychological thriller.  Babbit controls the mood of the film admirably, but she is easy on her writers; if she had pressed them to round out their characters and sketch out the film's subplots and subtext more fully, The Quiet could have been a real under-the-radar surprise.  Instead, it remains a curious oddity with too many goals and the wrong means for achieving them.