Ken Russell: Gothic/Lair of the White Worm

As this retrospective comes to an end, I thought it appropriate to review these two low-budget horror efforts by Ken Russell together (I understand that this may seem like an arbitrary stopping-off point, but this is the conclusion I feel the retrospective has led itself to). Both Gothic and Lair of the White Worm are two very different types of horror films – the former is cerebral and fantastical like the best of Russell’s work while the latter is lazy b-level filmmaking that is not reminiscent of Russell at all – that Russell ended up making because he needed money. Russell, coming fresh off an unsuccessful two-film run in America (read about those here and here), came back from his American sojourn looking to get back to small, non-studio films. However, what he really was looking to do was bankroll some more films with low budget horror flicks that he thought he could get to make him some money. The result wasn’t anything that catapulted Russell back into the forefront of experimental cinema (although he did experiment a lot with home video stuff), and, sadly, kind of ended his career more as “that guy from Big Brother” than one of the most amazing auteurs of the 70s. 

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Four Years of Blogging and 2011 (sorta) in Review

There’s this tendency in the blogosphere that if one doesn’t move quickly -- whether that's with their thoughts on the latest movie or by the amount of posts they produce -- they’ll be rendered insignificant. Now, granted, this may all be made up in my own mind since I am a person that prefers to view films and post about them at my own speed, but I think there is this general feeling that if your site isn’t getting hits – and isn’t getting hits about the latest releases – then you’re doing something wrong. 

No, this isn’t one of those posts where I proclaim that I just can’t do this anymore – because, seriously, how much of a chore is it really to watch and write about movies – no, the thing I constantly have to come to terms with are the droughts – the three or four month periods of time – where I go without having the time to really watch or write about anything. That, for me, is the hardest part: finding a balance between work and life and hobby. I suppose I could do the Twitter thing to share my initial thoughts about things, but I would hate to replace this blog with 140 characters or less. So, considering this is the blog’s fourth anniversary, I think I’m going to do something different this year for my year-end post. One reason is I haven’t even begun to make a dent on my viewing list for movies released this past year. I think I’ve seen maybe 25 movies, tops. I only went to the theater five times this year – three of those were to see The Tree of Life – and my queue at home has grown when usually I’ve pared it down to a just a couple of films by this time of the year. So, I can’t do a traditional list this year because there’s still so much for me to see (as you’ll see late on in this post), and I just didn’t have the time to see everything I needed to (or even write about the films I did see, for that matter…there’s still about 10 half-assed capsule reviews on my flash drive that I don’t think will ever see the light of day). Instead, I think I’m going to piggyback off of an idea that Jim Emerson linked to in a recent post.

Before we get to what Emerson has to say, though, I should say a few things about the 2011 films I did see...

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Catching up with 2011: Moneyball

“Nobody reinvents this game.”

– Joe Morgan, ESPN sportscaster and baseball dinosaur

This quote comes at the end of Bennett Miller’s Moneyball – his adaptation of the highly successful, highly controversial look at the inner-workings of the Billy Beane run Oakland Athletics during the 2002 season from the point of view of author Michael Lewis – a frustratingly mediocre film that gets one thing absolutely right: the dichotomy of the old pro scouts (the dinosaurs who don’t think the game can be re-invented) of baseball versus the new, “geeky” sabermetric system (the kids). If it weren’t for this element – and my general love and enthusiasm for all things nerdy about baseball statistics – there wouldn’t have been much to enjoy about Miller’s prosaic film.

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Catching up with 2011: Hugo

As I’m sure everyone is aware by now, Hugo is the PG-rated Martin Scorsese film that is unlike anything he’s ever made before, but represents the things that are nearest to his heart. The film is a family film, yes, but it is also a labor of love for; a 130 minute infomercial for film preservation designed to arouse (I tried to think of the cleanest way possible to say that) cinephiles everywhere with its references to early film and re-mastered footage. I am admittedly not a huge fan of 3D – I often have to remove the glasses and rub eyes for a minute or so before I jump back into the “experience” – but Scorsese does it about as perfectly as the medium could hope. If there are going to be new films being done in 3D (three out of the five previews at the showing I attended were for re-releases in 3D…lazy and lame), Scorsese has provided the template. I love the film’s opening with its sweeping images of the train station (Scorsese wisely films this opening as almost a short film to give the audience the setting of the film, but also to get the audiences eyes acclimated to the 3D action without missing the story) and the way it showed just how beautiful (and subtle!) 3D can be. Once the film’s plot kicked in, I was surprised by how engrossed I was with the film, and really I only felt the need to remove my glasses a few times in the beginning parts of the movie, but after that, I didn’t even realize I was watching a 3D movie.

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Catching up with 2011: The Descendants

The Descendants is a collection of entertaining – sometimes even great – moments that never comes together. It’s like I kept waiting for something to happen; that typical Alexander Payne-like swerve that throws the entire film under a new light, but it doesn’t happen. Nothing happens in this movie. And I’m not a person who needs something to happen in a movie for it to be entertaining or worth my time (one of my favorite movies is Stranger Than Paradise where not a lot happens), but there has to be some kind of mystery or intrigue or ambiguity about these characters that keeps us interested in following their journey. Everything just seems kind of telegraphed from the first moments of the lazy voiceover to the bedside emotional scenes that resound with a speciousness found in the worst offenders of the Oscar bait season. Payne seems more interested in holding the hands of the audience through every phony step of the way.

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Catching up with 2011: The Ides of March

If it weren't for Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March would feel more like a great episode of television than a movie one really needs to go out of their way to see. Gosling is, as everyone knows by now, one of the best young actors working today (alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon I'm hard-pressed to find three better young actors working right now), and he really saves this movie from being pretty, "meh." Don't get me wrong, though, Clooney (who stars, directs, and co-writes) is more than adept at making this kind of cerebral, political thriller. Loosely based on the Howard Dean campaign of 2004, The Ides of March fits neatly into the type of film Clooney the director seems drawn to: movies about men of high intelligence and energy (and are somewhat idealistic) who have their worlds close in on them until they reach their breaking point. It's not that The Ides of March is ineffective or even bad; it's just that in the end, it's wholly forgettable. The film doesn't tell the viewer something they don't already know about the soul-crushing endeavor of working on a campaign (and politics in general...it kind of reminded me of Charlie Wilson's War in this respect), but it is filled with great performances (the aforementioned Gosling, of course) from the likes of Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Marissa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, and Max Minghella. It won't make any end-of-the-year lists, but it's certainly worth your 100 minutes when it comes out on DVD.

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Catching up with 2011: 50/50

A disappointing movie for sure, 50/50 is only works on occasion and suffers, like most Seth Rogen vehicles, from a horrible small-minded view of women. The thing of it is, 50/50 – aside from being based on Rogen’s friend and screenwriter Will Reiser – shouldn’t have even been seen as a Seth Rogen movie (he’s barely in it), but here we are. It’s too bad because Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns in a damn fine performance that often steers clear of the dreaded “actor playing someone afflicted with cancer” clichés. I can’t say I can put myself in the shoes of the characters as the cancer plot didn’t really move me from a personal experience side of things. This left me focusing more on the lesser elements of the film – the elements that director Jonathan Levine seemed incapable of directing a different way – those moments that were so groan-inducing because they felt like they needed to be in a completely different Rogen vehicle, not one that tries to deal with the subject of cancer. Rogen’s character is so hateful in this movie. Not for a second does 50/50 take into consideration how someone having cancer affects those close to that person (it’s too tame and narrow-minded of a movie to think outside of its limitation), so when Levitt’s girlfriend (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) has conflicting emotions about being with her boyfriend who has cancer she’s labeled as a whore or a slut or even worse by Rogen’s character. I think the film wants us to side with the “bro” Rogen, but all it did was make me hate his character even more. His character was so ugly and distracting that whenever he popped up on screen, I tuned out. The scene that epitomizes this is when Rogen’s character catches Levitt’s girlfriend kissing another guy, and he yells at her as she tried to explain to Levitt that he caught her and that he has hated her forever and that now he has the evidence that she is a bad person; yet, he’s the one who comes off as a bad person…a horrible person, really, and if it weren’t for Howard acting the hell out of the scene, it would just sit there as a really nasty moment in otherwise forgettable movie.

The movie loses its teeth by the end, anyhow, so I don’t think even a good performance from Rogen (who immediately goes into Rogen mode when we first see him with lines like, “You smell like you fucked the cast of The View” when commenting on the way Levitt smells) would have saved it. I didn’t even bother writing down the characters names, and I don’t even feel like doing a Google search for them; I haven’t even gotten into how shitty romantic subplot in this movie is and how horribly stilted a performance the always coma-inducing Anna Kendrick gives (not that’s she’s given much a character to begin with). That’s how little I care about this movie. What a waste.

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