Fight Club

I found the fighting pretty boring in FIGHT CLUB, despite how revolutionary it supposedly was at the time. I can't speak to that, but as a fan of Fincher while also believing that he's been on an ascent as a filmmaker, I find this film to be pretty damn good, but I also find myself unable to embrace it. In the film, an unnamed narrator (the great Edward Norton) is an insomniac who goes to grief groups to get off, and compartmentalizes his life into a series of odd habits like this. One day, his apartment is blown up and he moves in with a soap salesman he met on a plane named Tyler Durden. Tyler and the narrator eventually come up with an idea for a fight club where men just get together and fight. But mainly, there's an anti-consumerism undercurrent to their fun that takes place so outside of the realm of a society based on consumerism. What I most love about FIGHT CLUB is the idea that the narrator and Tyler change the world, and that they create an alternate world based on the repressed ideas of men. Still though, there's something awry with FIGHT CLUB, and that might exist in central mystery / reveal that the film offers. I feel as if it's unnecessary, or at least, taken too seriously when it actually happens, and that it should of been handled how the rest of the film was. Isn't the world changing purely based on these men's ideas a reveal of its own? But that is handled in an almost deadpan fashion, as the supposedly major reveal should have been. Also, now that that reveal is as commonly known as the end of the SIXTH SENSE, the suspense that leads up to it is kind of anti-climactic. Still good, but compared to what Fincher does nowadays, I couldn't call this the masterpiece it wants to be.

★★★ out of Five

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Directed by Jim Jarmusch, GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI is about an inner-city black man named Ghost Dog who lives his life by the way of the samurai. He lives on top of a building with a horde of carrier pigeons, works as a hit-man for the mob who demands pay on the first day of autumn, and only communicates with these employers via the pigeons. Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) only talks to a little girl at the park, and a Haitian ice cream man with whom he cannot communicate. The separation between cultures though, is seemingly transcended by fate. Ghost Dog, for instance, follows an ancient method that no longer really exists. His Italian mafia employers, according to Ghost Dog, follow a similarly dying way. Disenfranchised by the world, apparently, Ghost Dog follows this way anyway. There's this weirdness to the entire film, and really, for me, it didn't chock up to a single narrative, but to a series of very good or very interesting and well thought out ideas. In one scene for instance, the gangster who employs Ghost Dog has to explain the oddities of his hit-man to the boss. "What kind of name is that?" says one of the gangsters. "They all got names like that, comes from rappers," says one of the others, before mentioning him as some nigger, and then following that by quoting some Flavor Flav line. But at the heart of GHOST DOG is a lot of conflicting culture and history, sprinkled with acts of violence in the middle.

★★★★ out of Five

Boondock Saints

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS is a film that goes nowhere. Telling of a couple of Irish, inexplicably skilled crooks, the film employs a myriad of showy scenes, but the style behind those scenes only comes out of the same wantonness that created the plot of overly-religious, crazily skilled Irish vigilantes. Sprinkled with scenes of Willem Dafoe operatically overacting to the crime scenes the Boondock Saints leave behind, each of these scenes, which consist of the shoot-up by the Saints upon some obligatory bad guy, and then Dafoe's crazed re-staging of the crime. What the film lacks though is any intent. The Saints are doing what they're doing because it makes for some cool (but repetitive) scenes, but those scenes aren't centered around anything tangible. It's like a continual, vicious cycle of intent. The shoot-up scenes exist because the Dafoe scenes need to, which exist because the filmmakers have to have showy scenes, which exist because the Saints are vigilantes, which exist because there needs to be shoot-up scenes. Beyond that, the film is weak, for its shoot-up scenes aren't good enough to stop the film from being pretty boring and predictable, devolving into a formula, and eventually, a transparent attempt at copying other, better films with off-key characters. The thing is though, you actually have to be skilled in order to create a convincing loon. These characters all look too dumb to exist.
Boondock Saints: ★1/2

Bringing Out the Dead

Here is one of the most under-appreciated films Martin Scorsese has ever made. It is practically unmentioned in his legacy of films, and yet it is one of his best and most modern. Starring Nicholas Cage as an ambulance driver with insomnia, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is haunting and beautiful, every shot calculated to a pastel work of color, night lights and striking power. I love this film. Cage's Frank Pierce is the modern version of De Niro's Taxi Driver. Both characters traverse the streets of New York City, and both have a deep and intense hatred towards the people of the city. Both work at night, and both were thought up by Paul Schrader and Scorsese. Pierce sees specters of the people he failed to save on every streetcorner, there's a gross routine to his work, and a number of illuminating characters. Shot with great charisma, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD considers Pierce's failures and the role he plays with them. These ambulance drivers avoid their duties, but in telling gestures. The hatred of people is most intriguing, Pierce is disgusted with a sort of immorality within his world in the same way that the taxi driver was, but he is stagnated and unable to act. BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is more frightening because it represents a constant stewing but never a boil.
Bringing Out The Dead: ★★★★

eXistenZ

Pulling from the probable, frightening future, and the less-probable, fantasized future (e.g. flying cars), David Cronenberg crafts in the punctiliously titled: eXistenZ, a great modern dreamscape, and a great science fiction film. The premise seems simple: a virtual reality gaming system exists in a future where biotechnology is king. At a focus group testing facility, the new game "eXistenZ" is being tried out. It has been developed by the greatest game designer in the world: Allegra Gellar (Jennifer Jason Leigh). An attempt on her life is made from a strange gun constructed from bones. Gellar picks up a friendly face as a bodyguard who turns out to be just an analyst named Ted (Jude Law). The duo traverse the futuristic world which is trashy and sordid, coming across game-obsessed roughs and questionable friends. Cronenberg's ideas here are strange and unconnected, but as in so many other manipulative films, these are intentional oddities. Cronenberg also allows for the obsession with the games to come out of eXistenZ. Roughs who are obsessed with the games, Ted and Allegra's sexual escapades consisting of vaginal-like "body-ports", and a brilliant ending accentuate the idea that the people in this future have an unhealthy obsession / fetish with video gaming.
eXistenZ: ★★★1/2

Being John Malkovich

Puppets are an odd form for art to manifest. But for Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) they are his livelihood. He has no job, but carries out his obsession with puppets dancing to sad music on the streets of the city. His puppets are too dark for passerby to enjoy very much, and he is eventually convinced to take up a filing job at a strange company. His girlfriend Lotte (Cameron Diaz), a lover of animals, aids him in this reluctant decision. She herself is a strange woman with hair that looks like it has seen too much wind. Craig, on his first day of work, looks for the 7 1/2 floor where the company is, and is forced to stop the elevator between floors 7 and 8 to find it. At work, he encounters a sexy, but cruel woman named Maxine (Catherine Keener). He pines for her, but she is content with toying with him. Amongst this situation, Craig discovers a portal in his office that leads directly into the head of John Malkovich. The snide Maxine takes this as a business opportunity, and soon she and Craig are at the head of a secret, middle of the night company that allows people to be inside of John Malkovich's head. Here, Craig's obsession with puppets comes through, for he has a sneaky idea that as a puppetmaster, he might be able to control Malkovich in the same fashion. Business, however, is good, but Lotte becomes obsessed with being Malkovich. Besides this story, there are many subplots and oddities along the lines of a 7 and a half floor in a building. This can be attributed to the odd, occasionally pretentious writing of Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman's ideas, which are wonderfully original and creative, are handled deftly by director Spike Jonze. Despite quite a few unlikeable characters, the ideas the film puts forth slides it through. Although, perhaps, the filmmakers should have made some solidly likeable character, or at least finished the film of nicely to support the joy I felt at the ideas presented. Still, this is a worthy film.
Being John Malkovich: ★★★1/2

The Iron Giant

THE IRON GIANT could almost be called the first Pixar movie. It comes from Brad Bird, who later directed THE INCREDIBLES and RATATOUILLE. Unlike the Pixar films, the animation is pretty indiscernible, but in story content, it stands above. The film begins with a raging meteor from space plummeting towards earth and falling into the sea. A local fisherman is lost in the sea, and as he radios for help, he spots a couple of lights, which reveal themselves to be eyes. The film has already established a sense of familiarity, placing the Iron Giant of the title, who had to inevitably reveal himself, in a low-key setting. Rather than playing everything up with a monster in a large city, rampaging through skyscrapers and city streets, the giant is placed into a small town, with smallminded people. The fisherman who saw the giant is dismissed because he's a drunk, but the giant becomes a mysterious figure of schoolboy lore in his short time in town. One boy, Hogarth, who watches monster movies late at night while his single-mom is at work, decides to investigate. He goes off into the woods, and discovers the giant. Because this is a children's film, Hogarth befriends the giant, hiding him from G-Men who invade the small town in search of the giant they view as a weapon. But the Iron Giant is no monster, and from the kindly Hogarth he discovers that he has a choice over who he can be, despite his prerequisites. This is a simple moral, but one that is handled with ease. It's a fine film, never preachy or patronizing to any of its characters.
The Iron Giant: ★★★1/2

The Virgin Suicides

It's a shame that the reason why Sofia Coppola's debut film is not very good is that it's based on a book. The film tells of the Lisbon family in an 80's-era faux-American milieu. They are all described as quite beautiful by the narrator of the film, who ominously talks of the terrible events that befell them. The narrator, it seems, was one of a group of teenage boys who admired and idolized the girls, and then were shocked at their suicide(s). There's a lot of understated blame within the film, which is always just in the form of a hint than in the form of a definitive statement on why. Possibilities include the constricting parents, but in other scenes the film seems to laugh that off. This adds to the eclectic quality in Coppola's film, utilizing old hippie-music, dances, frivolous narration, and contradiction. The contradictions seem to exist to make the answer of why the girls killed themselves to be unsure and unsolvable: it works here. What also works is Coppola's style, but the fact that its undermined by an essentially sappy story is what is disappointing. The milieu the film establishes is one that is juvenile and uninteresting. The narration by one of the boys seems essential in order to accentuate the idea of the idolization of the Lisbon family, but that same narration calls attention to itself by seeming secretly sarcastic, or as if the statements and musings made in the narration only deserve to be in this film. In fact, its as if those musings exist only to support the film's narrative, and not the events surrounding the Lisbons. I admit that Coppola's direction here is quite fine, but it is so squelched by the narrative, which is overbearingly pretentious using words like: The adults had the ingenious idea to throw an asphyxiation ball. This seems like indie-oddity trash. Coppola's direction, and her actors (including Kirsten Dunst as the primary Lisbon girl) didn't deserve such schlocky writing.
The Virgin Suicides: ★★

Magnolia

Magnolia is over three hours long, and yet, I never even for a moment found my mind wandering. Rather, I was completely captivated from the opening documentary scenes to the inexplicably strange and absolute end. The opening documentary I refer to is completely separate to the events in the story. Instead, it offers some explanation for life. It covers three strange events. The first: A man from Greenberryhill is killed by three men: Mr. Green, Mr. Berry, and Mr. Hill. The second: A man is lifted from the water while he scuba-dives by a fire control plane picking up water. The man conducting the plane got into a scuffle with the scuba-diver days earlier. He kills himself in confusion and depression after the scuba-diver's death. The third and most interesting: A man jumps from a building and on his descent is shot with a shotgun. The shotgun was shot by his mother. He loaded the shotgun days earlier hoping that she would kill his father. In his attempted suicide, he would have failed if not for the shotgun, for nets had been installed for window workers the previous day. The mother is arrested for homicide, and the deceased is named as an accomplice in his own death. After this, we are immediately thrust into the story, and a series of vignettes connect a group of around seven or eight people. There are a lot of great actors in the film: Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy to name a brief few. They act the film with such emotion, such poignancy. The entire film covers subjects from death to depression. The stories include a man who is dying of cancer, two women addicted to drugs, a whizz kid forced to compete on game shows, a middle aged man who thinks he needs braces, a cop, a sex motivational speaker. They all convene in themes of depression or some other form of connectedness. What occurs in the film is intriguing, but more intriguing is why what's happening to them is happening to them. In the last scene of the film, something extraordinary and unexpected happens. It surprises these characters and shatters their world. Magnolia is a complicated allegory for life. It exhibits the strangeness of life, and the importance of surprises. Great.
Magnolia: ★★★★

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

A lot of people hate this movie. It's seen as the major step down in quality and the selfish money-making venture for George Lucas (the original creator of Star Wars). Characters like Jar-Jar (who's pretty annoying) and the young Anakin Skywalker seemed silly to people. So, I approached this movie not really expecting much. I thought about how I had really enjoyed it as a kid, but then again, perhaps I had only liked it because my standards weren't very high. And when I was a kid, I was very interested in Star Wars and could tell you the name of every alien in the Cantina scene. However, I ended up being very pleasantly surprised by the visual mastery and fun of Phantom Menace. I very much enjoyed Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon-Jinn and I thought Ewan McGregor was very good as Obi-Wan. I did admitedly dislike the limited acting talents of the kids who plays Anakin Skywalker and I thought Jar-Jar was a pretty stupid addition to the storyline, but the entire movie is really fun. The battle sequences are great, the technology is cool, and the background made me really start to enjoy Star Wars again. It's a visual acheivment and as entertaining as any of the old Star Wars (although not as finely polished).
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace: ★★★1/2