Curiosity Inc.

You know those moments when you look around at where you are and wonder how the hell you got there? I’m having one of those moments right now.

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Ah, Paul Thomas Anderson. First he takes part in a heated Oscar race, ultimately losing to the Coens and No Country for Old Men. Then he made the absolutely brilliant The Master, which got pretty much entirely shut out of the Oscar race.

And now we have Inherent Vice, another film with tremendous critical acclaim and very few Oscar nods to show for it. But of course a Paul Thomas Anderson film with such an amazing cast would be worth seeing anyway. And while I personally feel that the movie is a touch overrated and not nearly as good as some of Anderson’s other works, it’s still a very good picture.

We set our stage in 1970, somewhere in the Los Angeles area. Our protagonist for today is Larry “Doc” Sportello, played by Joaquin Phoenix. He appears to be a gynecologist by trade, though his office is mostly a front for his private investigator business. Also, it’s a great place to get high on laughing gas. Read the rest of this entry →

In the past, I’ve published more than a few rants about flimsy movies made for pandering to black audiences in the wake of Tyler Perry and The Blind Side. I’ve also said my piece about movies that proclaim “racism is bad” in overly simplistic and dichromatic terms, like that’s enough to constitute something new and provocative.

A biopic about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could easily have been more of the same, but Selma intrigued me pretty much immediately. The trailers showed a film that used the racial protests of the ’60s in a way that strongly resembles the protests of today. From class inequality to police brutality (and yes, demonstrations for and against bigotry), it seems like there have been no shortage of grievances to publicly vent. Not a week seems to pass without word of some new march on the streets and the efforts to try shutting it down. As such, a film that examines the power of non-violent protest could not be more relevant right now. And exploring the subject by way of Martin Luther King — a man who came to be deified for his non-violent methods — was frankly quite brilliant.

But oh, gentle readers, Selma is relevant in so many other ways, and it’s a far superior movie for it.

The film gets points right out of the gate for being a movie that explores a short period of time in depth, rather than some decades-long affair that spreads itself too thin. In this case, Selma begins as Martin Luther King Jr. (played here by David Oyelowo) accepts his Nobel Peace Prize in October of 1964. So MLK has already made a name for himself and segregation has been outlawed by this point. Of course, some Southern states have to be dragged out of Reconstruction kicking and screaming, so there is no shortage of problems facing Negroes in the former Confederacy.

One of those problems is that even though black people are now technically allowed to vote, the southern states put so many obstructions in the way that it’s borderline impossible for black people to register. This naturally has a ripple effect, since white politicians have no incentive to serve the citizens who can’t vote for them. Moreover, because only registered voters are eligible for jury duty, this means that getting a conviction for racially motivated crimes against Negroes is next to impossible.

Thus MLK and his colleagues choose their next battle, going to President Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) to demand additional legislation, ensuring that voting rights for all are protected and enforced. But old LBJ isn’t keen to revisit a problem that’s technically been addressed already (especially since ending segregation in the first place was such an uphill battle), and he’d much rather move on to the Vietnam War, fixing poverty, and a whole nation’s worth of other problems. So denied, King turns his attention toward the town of Selma, Alabama, where racial tension is hot and the infrastructure for a protest is already set.

Because this film is based on a true story, I don’t mind spoiling that these marches eventually result in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The very same act that was struck down by the Supreme Court a couple years ago. Given that occurrence and the call for new Voter ID laws that seems to come up every few years, this reminder of why we ever needed the Voting Rights Act could not be more timely.

Though the movie does have its share of two-dimensional racist assholes and of course race is a huge part of the discussion, the film is far more concerned with the concept of expression. It’s about our freedom, our right, and our obligation to make our voices heard in spite of all those more powerful than we are who would keep us silent to preserve the status quo.

This brings us to the matter of non-violent demonstration and why anyone would want to take part in it. To start with, it beats the alternative. Protesting with violence and shows of force against more powerful opponents is a losing proposition, with consequences that would only result in more bloodshed on both sides for years to come. And of course, doing nothing isn’t an option either.

But how does non-violent demonstration accomplish anything? Well, the movie seems to argue that the demonstration itself does nothing. However, it does stir things up so that someone will hopefully make a mistake and give some room for leeway. And usually, that “mistake” means violence. Specifically, violence against the protesters who (in theory) don’t fight back. So basically, non-violent protesters are volunteering to be martyrs, putting themselves at risk of injury or death, never mind imprisonment.

And wow, does this movie portray violence in a heartbreaking manner. Director Ava DuVernay shows us every beating, bombing, and shooting with a kind of visceral punch that I haven’t seen since The Hurt Locker. She tends to rely quite heavily on slow-motion, granted, but slow-mo was practically made for scenes of falling debris or blood hitting the floor. Perhaps more importantly, DuVernay makes sure to show the rest of the country watching TV and reading the papers, to see how people of all races all across the country are being moved and affected by the atrocities happening in Selma.

Every protester who takes such a monumental risk — even for something as crucial as a basic American right — is a hero, and the film makes sure to let us know it. Yet the movie also shows us James Forman (Trai Byers), co-leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who is every bit as fervent about voting equality but doesn’t want to stick his neck out that far. He has other reasons, of course, but it mostly has to do with Forman’s own ego, his lack of trust in Dr. King’s methods, and his skepticism that anyone who marches with him will come back alive. It’s tough to blame him, really, especially since it’s not like he’s been sitting on his ass doing nothing all this time.

But let’s move on to the film’s portrayal of Dr. King himself. “Believe the hype,” that’s all I can really say. I’ve seen David Oyelowo in a few movies here and there, but he never registered as much more than a competent supporting player. In this movie, Oyelowo proves himself a bona fide superstar, taking this legendary persona and bringing it to the screen with aplomb. No joke, Oyelowo brings such fire and charisma to this performance that I honestly believed I was watching one of the greatest orators in this nation’s history. Whether MLK is inciting a protest or soothing the bereaved, Oyelowo sells it in a way that looks completely effortless.

Yet the movie takes considerable pains to show what MLK is like behind the scenes, when he’s composing his sermons or conked out on a couch after a long day. His marital infidelity is addressed, ditto for the strain that his activism puts on his family. Basically put, the film shows Martin Luther King not as a saint or a demigod, but as a man who believes in this greater cause so strongly that he’s put it before his own life. And to that end, he’s shouldered a far greater load than any human being can physically, mentally, or emotionally bear. King may have been a crucial part of the movement as a figure to rally behind (so he couldn’t quit even if he wanted to), but the film makes it clear that he was still only one man who was leaning on so many others to help accomplish what he couldn’t alone.

(Side note: I was sort of amused to recall that Oyelowo previously had a supporting role in Lee Daniels’ The Butler, in which he played the son of Oprah Winfrey’s character. Winfrey also appears in this movie, borderline unrecognizable as voting activist Annie Lee Cooper, and she also produced the film through her Harpo Films shingle.)

The black supporting actors in this movie all do superbly well, in large part because they all do such a great job of blending into their characters and there are so very many of them to help carry any given scene. It’s hard to single any of them out, though Carmen Ejogo more than earns some recognition for her portrayal of Coretta Scott King. Ledisi Young also has a brief but memorable scene as Mahalia Jackson, and Cuba Gooding Jr. appears just long enough to contribute a few lines without embarrassing himself.

The white actors in this movie, I’m sorry to say, don’t fare nearly as well.

Let’s start with LBJ. There’s already a lot of backlash against this movie where LBJ is concerned, claiming that this film made the president out to be the villain of this story. There are accusations that the film portrays President Johnson as a backstabber and an adversary rather than the staunch ally to MLK that he was in real life. I’m pretty sure these accusations are coming from people who saw a very different movie than I did.

Granted, there’s one scene in which it’s implied that LBJ tacitly allowed J. Edgar Hoover (played by Dylan Baker with his unique brand of sliminess) to go ahead and try blackmailing King. It’s unclear whether Hoover really was acting with presidential approval against King, but putting that scene (and not even a scene, just one line!) in this film was a bad move, completely at odds with how President Johnson is portrayed in the rest of the movie.

The character puts it best when he says that he’s a politician and MLK is an activist. President Johnson’s responsibility is to try and keep everybody happy, and he can’t do that by devoting all of his time to a single cause the way King has the luxury of doing. And it’s not like Johnson is entirely opposed to King or the cause of racial equality; quite the contrary, he shows a great amount of respect for both. He would just prefer it if this whole issue settled itself quietly and peacefully so he can turn to other matters.

Moreover, King repeatedly insists that LBJ could fix this problem at any time with a stroke of his pen when of course that’s not true. The whole process of crafting legislation is huge and unwieldy, specifically designed so that no one person can pass any law they want at any given time. Then again, the film might have done a better job of making that point if it had shown more of the President struggling to write something that Congress can work with. Hell, there’s a scene in which King and his colleagues are bickering over which voting-related issue to tackle first, trying to decide which obstacle to Negro registration takes priority and how that obstacle can be fixed with legislation, and none of them find a conclusive answer. If they can’t accomplish that in a few hours, how is Congress supposed to do it in the same amount of time? But of course that’s not the story the filmmakers were trying to tell.

If any liberties were taken in portraying the relationship between MLK and LBJ (as they most probably were), I suspect that they were taken for the purpose of showing the president as a man with a tremendously difficult job, trying to balance several different agendas coming from so many different people who say “oh, the president could fix this so easily if he wanted to,” like he had any control over what Congresspeople and citizens can do or think. If this was indeed the filmmakers’ intention, then chalk up another parallel to modern-day politics.

(Side note: President Johnson was well-known for taking his aides with him to the bathroom, not content to let bowel movements interrupt his responsibilities as president. Mercifully, this quirk of the Johnson administration was not included in the film.)

All told, I think that LBJ’s portrayal in this movie wasn’t quite as nuanced as the filmmakers might have liked, but still enough to get the point across. He’s certainly not the villain of the movie — that distinction goes to Alabama Governor George Wallace, played by Tim Roth. He’s played in this film as your standard ignorant, white trash, bigoted fucktard without the slightest hint of anything the least bit redeemable. This despite the fact that the real George Wallace was endorsed by the NAACP for speaking out against the KKK in 1958, and lost that election in a landslide. He then took a hardline racist stance, famously proclaiming “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” in his 1963 inaugural address. That attitude lasted right up until his final term as governor in the 1980s, when he set the record for black appointments to state offices and cabinet positions. And while all of that was going on, he tried and failed four — count ’em, four — presidential campaigns.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the record of a man who firmly believes to the depths of his dark and withered soul that racism is good and just. These are the actions of a career politician who will say and do anything to get elected. This is a guy who would willingly leave a hundred non-voters (of any race) for dead if it meant getting the approval of a single voter. Someone who is so desperate to hold onto office and keep from getting a real job that he would fight for the most evil and despicable deeds that he thinks his constituents want.

Doesn’t that sound so much more interesting than the same cartoonishly evil racist stereotype we’ve already seen umpteen billion times?

The other white characters are mostly unremarkable, though Jeremy Strong does quite nicely as the martyred James Reeb. Aside from him, we’ve got Giovanni Ribisi wearing the worst bald cap I’ve ever seen, Dylan Baker playing his brand of creepy for all of one scene, and Martin Sheen appearing far too briefly.

As a final miscellaneous note, it’s worth noting that the FBI serves as our narrator, delivering bits of information to the audience by way of intel they’ve gathered on Dr. King. This was a stroke of genius. Not only is it so much more creative than your typical voice-over or title card, but it keeps the FBI as a constant off-screen presence and serves as a reminder that King is under perpetual scrutiny. It’s a great touch.

Selma has some problems, sure, but it’s still easily one of the year’s best films. It approaches the Civil Rights Movement — a period that’s already been done to death — from a very new angle to comment on modern politics in a new and insightful way. Thus we have a film that’s powerful and moving without pouring on the white guilt or making the viewer uncomfortable (I’m looking at you, 12 Years a Slave). It’s ultimately a film that celebrates freedom of expression, arguing that each and every one of us has the power to affect the greater system for good or ill. That’s an uplifting message, delivered in a way that can be appreciated by all colors and creeds.

If nothing else, Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo both turn in superlative work that deserves to get them recognized by the Academy and/or the A-list, ASAP. The rest of the film around them is just fine, but those two alone are enough to merit the price of a ticket, paid at your earliest convenience.

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For more Movie Curiosities, check out my blog. I’m also on Facebook and Twitter.

In my Disappointments list yesterday, I said that it was going to be my most controversial year-end list of the three. That’s how it generally is every year. But looking over this next list, I’m starting to think things may be different this time.

The “Wild Rides” category was conceived as a way to recognize those films that were all-around good times at the theater, without necessarily bringing artistic merit into the equation. There were so many films this year that were a blast to sit through, and some very difficult judgment calls had to be made. Moreover, a lot of the movies listed here have already earned massive followings and I have no doubt that there will be many disagreements about the decisions made here. I know this because my correspondents have already roasted me alive for my initial reviews of such movies and I’ve apparently l Read the rest of this entry →

I have a rule when it comes to reviewing movies: If there’s absolutely no chance that a movie will be good, I don’t watch it. I can’t afford to waste my time and money on a movie that I already know I’m going to hate. This is why I never write “Worst of” lists — I can’t in good conscience write such a list when I know I haven’t seen the worst that this year has to offer.

Still, just because a film has a stellar pedigree or even mass critical praise doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s any good. Hence today’s list, the greatest Disappointments of 2014. It’s always the hardest list for me to write, and it’s always the one that pisses people off the most, so get your torches and pitchforks ready.

Most Benign Disappointment

For those just tuning in, a “benign” disappointment is a movie that I personally didn’t like, even though many others seem to like it for perfectly valid reasons. This could be a film (such as Interstellar or Tusk) with a highly polarized reception and I just happened to fall into the “hate it” pole. Of all the films I saw this year, I don’t think a single one exemplified the concept like The Rover.

The very first time I saw this movie, it shot straight to the top of my Disappointments list this year. It was a plodding, boring, mean-spirited mess that seemed specially designed to piss me off. This has pretty much everything in a movie that I hate watching to the depths of my soul. But then a correspondent invoked the name of Cormac McCarthy, which prompted me to watch the film a second time. And I still hate it. I can bring myself to understand the film’s appeal and appreciate its artistic merit, but I’m sorry, I still hate this goddamn movie.

Dumbest Waste of a Cast

We now move on to the “stupid” disappointments. These are the movies that had every right and every opportunity to succeed, if it wasn’t for someone who — by accident or by incompetence — cocked it all up. As with every year, there are many such failures in many different kinds to choose from.

In this case, do we go with The Judge, a film with Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall leading an all-star cast and still manages to (quite literally) shit itself? What about Fading Gigolo, in which a bored-looking John Turturro directs Woody Allen acting as himself in a film that dares to pretend like Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara would have any trouble finding a man for a threesome? Or maybe The Monuments Men, in which George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, and a whole slew of extraordinary actors are all painfully wasted?

No, at least those films had a few sympathetic characters and amusing moments. That’s far more than I can say for This is Where I Leave You, which was a crowded and annoying mess. It broke my heart to see Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Adam Driver, and so many other proven comedic talents drown each other out with tasteless juvenile humor while playing hopelessly unfunny characters in this tedious flop.

Dumbest Waste of a Premise

Before I Go to Sleep would be a solid candidate, if only because it took a potentially fascinating amnesia premise for a mystery thriller and then wrapped it up in the most trite and predictable way possible. Such a damn shame. But while that movie waited until the third act to throw away its premise, Belle was a waste from the word go.

Here we have a movie based on the true story of an illegitimate half-black child born into a powerful family in a time when black slavery was still legal in England. This premise offers so many opportunities to deal with race, class, and identity in powerful and creative ways, yet the movie actively seemed to avoid anything remotely resembling creativity. No, here was a tenth-rate Jane Austen ripoff that dared to say “racism is bad!” like it invented the concept. Throw in a plot that creaks along on rails for how tedious and predictable it was, and there’s nothing left to ask except why anybody bothered.

Dumbest Waste of a Franchise (reboot or pilot)

Robocop (2014) gets a lot of flack for being a completely unnecessary and mishandled reboot — and yeah, it totally was — but I personally see it as a new and theoretically valid take on the character that didn’t work in practice. Compare that to Maleficent, which abused the character’s brand recognition to completely ruin the Mistress of All Evil and make her the only halfway-competent participant in the entire soulless and godforsaken film.

But then we have Dracula Untold, the movie that tried to launch an entire superfranchise by turning a horror icon into a superhero. The film that tried to make a PG-13 four-quandrant movie by constantly ripping off 300, one of the most bloody and unrepentently R-rated movies in recent memory. I have absolutely no idea what Universal could possibly have been thinking with this one, other than “let’s rip off Marvel and make a whole lot of money!” This movie, coupled with Universal’s dogged insistence to make a Universal Monsters superfranchise in spite of this failure, is proof that the company is desperate for a hit and fresh out of ideas.

Dumbest Waste of a Franchise (sequel)

While the previous category wasted brand recognition to make an ultimately useless movie and/or franchise, these films at least had a solid predecessor to work from and still managed to fail. A great example is The Muppets: Most Wanted, which basically threw its arms up in the air and let the Muppets do whatever they wanted while the villains ran the entire show. And then they took Kermit the Frog out of the equation for whatever impossibly stupid reason. Similarly, the people behind 23 Jump Street evidently decided that the best way to follow the success of the original was to throw the script out a window and let the actors stumble through the film blindfolded with their arms outstretched, desperately grasping for anything that resembled a joke.

But this is the Disappointments list. This is about the movies that didn’t live up to their potential or promise. And of all the films released this year, none of them over-promised and under-delivered like The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

This was an impossibly bad year for Sony, and that’s in large part because this trainwreck made them look like a bunch of clowns. Remember, Sony could have taken over some African country for how much this movie cost to produce and promote. They desperately wanted and needed for this to be an Avengers-level hit, to justify their far-reaching plans for this property and the cinematic universe they were building for Spider-Man. And all they could manage was a jumbled mess void of any creativity, taking on so many goals only to fail at all of them, more concerned with setting up a sequel than telling a story of its own. This was Sony’s opportunity to expand the sandbox built in the previous film, and that potential was recklessly squandered. Such a shame.

Biggest Waste of Ambition (The “Epic Fail”)

This year presented us with two movies that desperately tried to be the next great Biblical epic, on par with the Charlton Heston classics of yesteryear. They both failed. Exodus: Gods and Kings was probably one of the highest-profile embarrassments of the year, with Ridley Scott further proving that he’s washed up, A-lister Christian Bale playing a laughably ineffectual Moses, and Joel Edgerton playing a Pharaoh without the slightest hint of charisma.

Still, at least Exodus provided CGI destruction on an epic scale, to provide some shallow entertainment. But while Exodus left me bored, Noah seemed to actively hate me. Between the misanthropic Noah, the despicable Tubal-cain, and the bland supporting characters, the most sympathetic character in this whole morose debacle was the handheld camera. It’s a movie that has its head stuck firmly up its ass, which doesn’t make for anything fun or uplifting.

Dumbest Attempt to Be Smart

Oh, Lucy. With every attempt to try and make some grand existential statement about humanity’s place in life, the universe, and everything, Luc Besson only proved how laughably out of his depth he was. Seriously, when the starting point of your film is an old wives’ tale that could easily be disproven by all but the most gullible, START THE FUCK OVER.

But then we have Transcendence, which features a group of computer geniuses so pitifully stupid that even Cyberdyne executives would call them out on their shit. In fact, it seems like the whole world in this movie has suddenly gone stupid, considering that a supercomputer pulls all sorts of illegal stunts on a scale large enough to take over the entire fucking planet and not a single government agency steps in to intervene. The plot to this movie is so thin and so contrived that it can only stay intact by aggressively beating IQ points out of the characters and the audience. And it wants to have a serious discussion about the potential dangers of advancing technology? Forget about it.

Most Malicious Disappointment

Finally, we come to the “malicious” disappointment. Films of this level are relatively scarce — I’ve only seen one or two come out every year. These are the films that had so much potential yet crashed so hard that it had to have been done on purpose. This is failure of such a monumentally disastrous level that it could only have been the work of sabotage or career suicide.

Don’t believe such a thing is possible? Then how do you explain The Interview?

While the film itself is a perfectly acceptable trifle of a comedy, it was heavily affected by the colossally foolish circumstances of its release. The major theater chains of this nation were given a satisfactory movie, all ready and waiting for release, with millions of potential box office dollars to be made, and they threw it all away for a threat that was clearly hollow. In the process, not only did they look like cowards out to protect whatever dirty secrets another hack might expose, and not only did they shame this country by letting (allegedly) foreign powers censor our movies. They also shot themselves in the foot by implicitly endorsing independent theaters and VOD services, giving moviegoers a reason to seek out those services in a bid to hasten their own obsolescence. And even if Sony eventually backed out of their announcement to cancel the film, the damage was done. They still inspired Paramount to pull its copies of Team America: World Police, and the Pyongyang thriller that Fox was developing is still scrapped, last I checked.

The decision to limit the release of The Interview was a completely unnecessary fiasco with immediate repercussions that will continue to affect Hollywood for years to come. Not only is it a textbook definition of a malicious disappointment, it’s easily the greatest cinematic failure of the year.

This Year in Review will conclude tomorrow as we look back at the Wild Rides.

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For more Movie Curiosities, check out my blog. I’m also on Facebook and Twitter.

Another year gone, and good riddance. 2014 may not have been quite as bad as that godawful 2013, but I’m still quite glad to be rid of this year as we all move on to (hopefully) greener pastures. But first, it’s that unfortunate time of year when we look back at the highlights and failures of our latest trip around the sun.

In previous years, my Year in Review articles have been comprised of Top Ten lists, like most critics write. But this year, I’d like to try and get a little more creative. Though my articles will still be roughly divided into my usual “Masterpieces,” “Disappointments,” and “Wild Rides” lists, my selections will not be ranked.

No, I’m giving out “awards” this year. I’ve devised a list of 24 “categories” (8 in each list) for the films of 2014. The viable candidates will be listed and I’ll try to make a case for why I’ve selected one of them to be the “winner.”

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On January 26th of 1996, John du Pont — scion of the American du Pont dynasty — went to the house of Dave Schultz and fatally shot him on his driveway. In front of Schultz’ wife, no less. Du Pont then locked himself inside his mansion, negotiating with police over the phone. When police cut the power, du Pont went outside to fix the heater and he was captured after a two-day standoff. Du Pont was convicted of third-degree murder on account of “mental illness” and sentenced to 13-30 years’ incarceration. Schultz’ widow filed a wrongful death lawsuit against du Pont and accepted an undisclosed settlement. Four years ago this December, du Pont died in prison.

Doesn’t that sound like an interesting story? Too bad! That’s not the one we’re getting tonight.

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