Review: Extract (2009)

Dear Michael Rotenberg,

Every time I go to conventions, nerds won't leave me alone about Office Space. That horrible experience earns me more praise than Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill combined, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. Usually, it's the broad caricatures that win people over in mass droves, not the accurate, tight-knit commentary on paper-pushers. This, and a weird reverse-marketing phenomenon caused by 20th Century Fox's burial of Idiocracy leads me to believe that my name alone has enough Cult Pull to make a third comedy on a modest budget. I was thinking about something a little quieter, a little easier to do; I want to make an ensemble piece, what would be like Altman's Short Cuts, but funnier or whatever.

I have some scripts for short films, left over from when I went to college. To summarize, they are:

1) A story about a guy who loses his balls in a freak factory accident.
2) A guy who pays somebody to seduce his wife so he can cheat on her guilt-free.
3) A couple lives next to a neighbor who won't leave them alone, and when they finally snap on him, the neighbor dies of a heart attack (this will be funnier when you read the script).
4) A guy tries to get out of smoking weed with his friends because he gets paranoid, but he ends up smoking some anyway. Then he gets punched in the face (this will be funnier when you read the script).
5) A hot girl cons people out of stuff because she's hot.
6) Gene Simmons is a lawyer.

Blending these together in the right way can create a life-is-hell, people-are-dumb theme that has worked so well for me in the past, and the ensemble nature means we don't have to rush anything.

Let me know what you think.

-Mike Judge

YO MIKE:

That ensemble thing sounds stupid, and nobody likes those. All the rest sounds great tho! I dont know how you can get all of these elements to work in ONE STORY about ONE GUY, but you can pull it off i'm sure without making it seem like a total clusterfuck of stupid ideas! We can cast the Arrested Development guy to really reel in those Cult suckers, even if you cant make it work Fuck em they'll see anything.

Love Michael Rotenberg

P.S. last night's episode of the Goode Family was great!

4.8/10

Review: Avatar (2009)

Continuing 2009's trend of movies that don't deserve to make as much money as they do but do so because a large amount of people are very fucking stupid, we have Avatar, James Cameron's first technical theatrical release in over ten years. What did Cameron do before that? Well, he did a student film I have never seen, a terrible low-budget sequel to a barely watchable Joe Dante film, pissed Harlan Ellison off, pissed Ridley Scott off, made an environmentalist-agenda film used as an excuse to show off special effects, the greatest action film of all time (probably), a good action film, the best 3-D film of all time (to this day), a good romantic drama, a what-the-hell-is-this-thing, Dark Angel, ruined Solaris, made an uninteresting documentary, another fucking Titanic documentary jesus shut up already, a weird thing that doesn't appear to be available anywhere, and- oh, we're caught up. Before Avatar, Cameron was also somewhere in my top five directors, but... we'll get to that.

Avatar begins with a barrage of information about this world we are about to enter. PLEASE PUT ON YOUR THREE-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATORS NOW. Apparently important information (i.e. informaton that pertains to nothing plot important, really) is that hypersleep sucks ass, Jake Sully's twin brother is dead and it is very sad, and that he has inherited a high-profile and extremely expensive project without doing all the hard work. He gets an all-expenses-paid trip to dangerous planet Pandora and, hey, because he's a cripple and gots nothing better to do, let's do it, semper fi.

All of this is told through a voice-over that, one would think, would either continue throughout the film or end as soon as they show the reason behind it: his first video log entry. SHUT OFF VIDEO LOG, FADE IN TITLE. But nope, you can expect it to appear sporadically when the storytelling gets lazy.

Information left curiously absent includes details about the Avatar Project that Jake has been thrust into. Instance: If resources are scant then how can this project exist if both military personnel and the corporation funding the operation on Pandora find it useless? Fuck you, you don't get to know. There is absolutely no other way to communicate with the Na'vi or collect plant samples other than using these engineered Blue Things? Fuck you, no. If you die in the Matrix, do you die in the real world? Fuck your mouth shut, stupid, and watch the pretty things that are behind the other pretty things.

And that's one word that is mind-numbingly appropriate for Avatar: pretty. Cameron took great pains to make the movie 1) beautiful, 2) well-designed. Everything about Pandora wildlife looks like it actually exists. For certain, Cameron is finally putting all that underwater study to good use... making a movie that won't take the time to create three-dimensional characters but create three-dimensional special effects. Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen.

It's not early on that the movie falls apart. We have a silent explanation for Jake accepting the Pandora Job: solely so he could drive a Thing with legs. While it's over quick and effectively eliminates any interesting dilemmas developing in the future by making his eventual betrayal an OBVIOUS CHOICE, it alone serves more a purpose than what the film then uses him for: running around with curiously one-dimensional Sigourney Weaver Blue Thing, looking at plants and collecting specimins. Uh... why do they need Jake again? Oh right, shut up, I remember.

Well, what you can do is force the movie to make sense by bringing a bunch of information to it, if that helps. Weaver brings in Jake to fill the Blue Thing body so her budget isn't cut, keeping up a false pretense to keep her position on the planet and satisfy the also-curiously-one-dimensional Giovanni Ribisi. Fine, but imagining that this is the case makes me think of a better movie that just didn't happen, a movie that spends its time giving me pertinent information, rather than wasting it as much as it wastes its talented actors. That's called RATIONALIZING, my psychologist girlfriend tells me.

Sully becomes a valuable member to both sides, to the military for providing strategic information, scientific information to the scientists, and... uh... cute comic distraction to the Blue Things, I guess. All the while we wait for Might-As-Well-Be-A-Racist-Tornado Military Man to do something heinous or shifty-eyed science nerd to betray Jake. The runtime goes up and up and the 3-D glasses hurt more and more as you try in vain to see Zoe Saldana's Blue Tits. By the end, everything has built to this point at the end that makes all the previous two hours an excuse... an excuse to have a large, effects-driven battle between two easily indentifiable sides, the villains being the biggest, easiest targets in any film (besides Nazis): human (American) CEOs, human (American) military. These two groups will always fuck things up and no one will care when their ranks die horribly, because hey, they spend 24/7 being huge dicks.

So... this formulation is obvious because we have seen this story before, haven't we? Yeah... King Kong. Peter Jackson's King Kong. The millions of dollars spend on facial capture technology, fantastical locale created entirely on bluescreen, an unfocused script that goes all over the place, one-dimensional characters, environmentalist message brought to you by a giant hammer that doesn't stop hitting you in the face, and an overwhelming amount of praise by the audience. Good lord, both even have a director that was a whole lot better in the 90's! I'm onto something.

Slightly softening the blow of James Cameron dipping so low after being so high for so long is not revisiting Titanic, considered by some to be one of the most overrated films of the 90's, but revisiting another film of Cameron's that is most similar to Avatar: The Abyss.

Like Avatar, The Abyss showed a conflict between benign scientists, hardened marines acting irrationally, and a third party of unknown lifeforms caught in between. Its third act makes a large case for environmentalism and points a big accussing finger at the human race for being just s'darn destructive. And of course, like Avatar, its final theme-push is a big anti-human statement that says 'you are only best as you are about to die.' Both movies are also overly-long and masturbate to the point of chafing, but what The Abyss does in the details makes it marginally better than Avatar. For one, Michael Biehn's character isn't a racist tornado, meaning he isn't 'just an asshole.' The story thinks up a reason for his sudden irrationality quite nicely, and as the film goes on, it becomes clear that the only way to solve this matter is to ice his ass. GOOD. What's better is that his role is only an obstacle. The story is still all about first contact with an unknown lifeform, and Biehn's insanity is secondary to that goal, and doesn't disappear once he is gone. Overall it's a tighter narrative and a more effective story (except for the ending, which sucks).

I've been convinced recently that Avatar also needed a nuke, somewhere.

It sounds dismissive to bring up all this 'environmentalist agenda' stuff, like that's what is bothering me. It isn't. The best example I can think of is Princess Mononoke, a movie that couldn't be any more anti-industry, pro-nature if it tried. However, Princess Mononoke doesn't preach, it demonstrates a struggle between two sides that have their merits and their failings. Its villain is barely a villain, one whose goal is understandable and, depending on where your values lie, preferable. Mononoke has an environmentalist message, but it's one that I can live with, because it makes its case. Avatar insists that its own message is self-evident.

But try telling all this to someone who loved the movie. They won't listen, or they'll shrug and say something like, "I'm a girl, I like pretty things." The current hysteria is baffling (note: as of writing this, Avatar is #37 on IMDB's 250 highest ranked films; Mononoke is at #120), and is incredibly frustrating that I have to keep talking about this fucking thing, politely. It's all I can do to keep from grabbing people by the throat and yelling "The Emperor doesn't have clothes! LOOK!"

Because he doesn't, y'know.

5.4/10

Review: Primer (2004)

I'll admit that I have two weakness. The first: Chocodiles. Those things are fucking delicious. The second: Time travel. (If you were going to say my second weakness was "connecting ideas" then you're an asshole).

Time travel as a subject (or a subsubgenre) has the power to elevate any material from boring to not-quite-as-boring, from romantic comedies to, uh, other things. Not to say there haven't been bad time travel films; there are at least a couple. Time travel has, however, yielded more benefits than detriments. It began a more mature era of Harry Potter films, the best action film ever made, an okay-by-me Van Damme film, a Terry Gilliam film that *gasp* made a profit, at least one good Supernatural episode with TWO DEAN WINCHESTERS, and in fiction, Steve Aylett's best book and the return of the good Palahniuk novel.

But until I saw Primer, I hadn't really seen ANY grounded science in the mix. Being a largely theorhetical/impossible concept, it was more of a speculative excuse for the average man to wield power, or fix his life, or have wacky time-related deaths-by-paradox. Primer is an injection of adrenaline in a long-atrophied muscle.

After a dark sign of things to come in the form of a gruff voice over coming in on the receiving end of a telephone line, Primer showers us all in a technobabble bath, one that doesn't actually stop until the movie ends. Nearest I can tell, most of the technobabble in the first 15 minutes is useless to the time travel element and functions only to establish that the two main characters and their friends test things in their garage and are attemtping to create something innovative and most importantly, profitable.

In what is perhaps unique to time travel films, there is nothing obviously wrong about the main characters' lives. They have well-paying jobs, one of them has a wife and a house, and they enjoy a steady social life outside of work. Once they stumble across the time travel formula, there's no real incentive to meddle with the continuum outside of 'Let's see what happens.'

At the risk of ruining the plot (the film is only 77 minutes long so any specific detail is dangerously close to spoling the entire thing), I will just say that 'Ho man do they ever see.' Er, 'What happens, that is.' Even Primer's trailer has to resort to being incredibly misleading in order to sidestep ruination.

Being totally in the dark to the film's nuances is part of the experience, or in my case, continuing experience. The issues in sound design and acting quality, largely due to the budget, are unfortunate but not totally damaging. I love it. Carruth has created a complex story that refuses to hold my hand or promise an easy solution. Good.

Review: Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

Darren Lynn Bousman is a goddamn cunt and I hope the guy from Buffy fucks him to death.

Whoa. I'd better start over.

I DO NOT LIKE DARREN LYNN BOUSMAN'S FILMS BECAUSE I DO NOT THINK HE IS A GOOD DIRECTOR.

There we go.

Thankfully, after somebody told him that he was the Joel Schumacher of the Saw franchise (and left it in the hands of probably somebody worse, I don't know), he decided to pursue other projects. Bousman's first choice was an off-Broadway opera (operetta?) where, if the movie is anything like the stage production, every lyric of dialogue is belted out in the same monotonous rhyme pattern and features lines like "Cursed by my genetics!!!" Did she mean genes?

What snagged me and near-filled me to the brim with hope is the plot: In a future where organ failure is an apparent constant concern due to pollution (message), healthy organs from the GeneCo are a recession-proof addition to the market. Payment plans are available for those with low-income, but if you miss a payment, they send the Repo Man to cut you the fuck open and reappropriate the liver, the lungs, penis and what-have-you.

It sounded radical! But Bousman's involvement in directorial capacity still incited some concerns; he's a child throwing dark watercolors at a canvas in a way that SORTA KINDA MAYBE looks like it would work when fitted into the full landscape. "Who cares though, just get the smoke in there and light it with some flourescents and we'll fix it later even though we probably can't. Put it on the fridge, ma." He can't even imitate a directorial style, so how in the name of Barny Juno can he carry his own film?

Answer: He can't, and probably never will.

The rigid driving force of any musical, follow me, is the music. Characters can monologue and converse and lament about how they are cursed by an entire scientific field -- it is all accepted if the music is adequate, better if it is good, best if the scenes themselves aren't treated like they are set to rules in actual theatres. Since Repo! fails effectively at all three, there is little that can be reappropriated. (And I read somewhere that Bousman did direct some Repo! stage performances... really?!)

The plot is pure convoluted Shakespearian tragedy that has been obsolete for a very long time, so very fucking long, I'm not kidding, I fucking mean it. If every character has to die, surely there are ways that aren't caused by LACK OF COMMUNICATION and INCESSANT BITCHING. I really do want to care about these people, and if they all deserve it, you're wasting my fucking time.

If not the story, the characters, the directing or the music, what then? ... Violence? Sure, who doesn't like violence. The thing is, gore with Bousman is plentiful, but never effective. Any makeup artist worth half his weight in Geldons can get the blood the correct color and skin the correct consistency, but if you treat these gifts like a chew toy, it will not come across. Violence is an involved and intimate practice, and in a film where the main character is opening people up and stealing vital components of their continued existence, often while they are still conscious, it should hurt to watch. Even in hyper-reality I can extend some empathy if the movie obeys its theme. Something that rips off Phantom of the Opera so heavily in that department, I should feel guilt directly after sympathising with the Repo Man. I do not.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is a masters course on what not to be, how not to act, and better than Bryan Singer could have ever taught you, how to not make a good film.

4.0/10

Review: Duplicity (2009)

I'd like to briefly point out a small phenomenon that only I find interesting.

Billy Ray, a screenwriter skilled in writing quickfire military/industry-speak, shot a moderately-budgeted but kickass biopic, proving his ability to direct a film. His second film contained elements that made the first film good, but was mostly a palpable step down.

Tony Gilroy, another screenwriter skilled at writing quickfire military/industry-speak, also hit the streets with a great debut and proved his worth. His second film (not to ruin the forthcoming review) was also a step down, this time a considerable gap in quality to the first one. (Asidenote: weirdly, Gilroy and Ray both wrote the script for State of Play, which is exactly why I am avoiding it).

The above formula does not bode well for Rian Johnson, who parallels closer to Tony Gilroy only in that Johnson's second film is also 1) a con film, and 2) a comedy. But here's hoping the poor kid doesn't somehow reverse the prestige built by Brick, har har

Anyway, enough of that. Duplicity (by Gilroy, remember) begins with a 'years earlier' subtitle and since this is a spy slash con film, that means 'PAY THE FUCK ATTENTION' in my language. Note the location, the attitudes, the background characters, and Clive Owen's broken leg filling the frame. Note especially every word he says to Julia Roberts since this is their first meeting. This technique is taught at the David Mamet school of filmmaking, films that will pull a con on you WITHOUT YOU KNOWING YOU WERE EVEN WATCHING A FILM ABOUT CONS and the like. Hell, watch The Sting and you'll get it: collect the pieces, put them in order before the film does it for you and makes you feel like a mowgli.

The movie builds past the opening scene and wheels into the 'current time' subtitle with Clive Owen following some guy (take notes) and brandishing a small Rubik's cube (take particular note). He finds out that his contact is Julia Roberts, gets upset, and has a slightly-clever-yet-extremely-long verbal throwdown with her. They reluctantly decide to work together. Next, cue long expositional scene of what exactly they are working on: hostile corporate backstabbings over the secret formula to some miracle product (take a fuckload of notes). Clive goes home and the film reveals a not-at-all surprising plot twist and another tedious flashback ensues (take notes, just in case). In 'current time' Clive and Roberts put their plan into motion, attempting to get their hands on the miracle formula and sell it while the two companies sue each other into oblivion. Everything is going according to plan until Clive does something stupid and Julia gets angry, casting a small ineffective seed of doubt into the mix. Bad jokes about baldness. Another tedious flashback. Bad jokes about pizza. (Take notes out of habit). Some time passes and the climax happens, which without any reason to give a shit, resorts to loud music to increase the tension. The con fails... except that it doesn't. And then it does. OR DOES IT? Throw all of your notes away, they apparently don't mean fucking anything.

So... what just happened? Fucking shit happened. Some asshole orchestrated a con offscreen, before the movie began, used two unlikable spies as pawns to make some other asshole look like a mowgli for his own amusement. That's all. And what better way to tell the story than from the perspective of characters who have so little to do with the main action of the story. Like if R2-D2 and 3-PO never left the frame while Luke and Han shot down TIE Fighters nearby.

OR all of this was a metaphor for the inherent anger and mistrust in real-life relationships, that whether you're fucking in a hotel in an idyllic foreign country or spending a bunch of time stealing a secret formula by using the wire-tapped photocopier in an office building when you could have TAKEN A PICTURE OF IT WITH YOUR FUCKING PHONE THE ENTIRE TIME, as long as you're doing it together, that's what matters.

Never mind that Mr. and Mrs. Smith did that exact same shit, but funnier. And with GUNS.

Review: Twilight (2008)

Math question: Is a vampire still a vampire if he 1) no longer feeds on humans, 2) is no longer killed by sunlight, 3) cannot shapeshift into any desired form, be it animal or swollen fog, 4) can still bite someone and not necessarily turn them into a vampire?

Twilight asks this question without ever asking it directly. It presents the term 'vampire' as a vague representation, a blanket that can cover whatever it wants, some of which are sexual aspects popularized by Anne Rice, others that are inventions of the author probably due to some unresolved and improperly tended fetishes.

In any art form, it is not a requirement for the material to conform to the formulas set by previous works. Isabella Swan, the main character played by Kristen Stewart who is for once not being terrorized in a house, arrives at a new school in the Pacific Northwest, pale, bulemic and smack dab in the middle of a painful 3-parent situation (how tragic). In spite of being crippled by what could be an obvious dramatic device, she has no problem making friends or attracting members of the opposite sex. She isn't bullied by teachers or her fellow students. Her father is the soulful, quiet chief of police, the furthest thing from an asshole or a creep. He buys Bella a truck and mostly leaves her alone, only attempting once or twice to connect with her.

Bella's first meeting with Edward (equally pale) is watching him rush out of class after she steps in front of a revolving fan. Other than this, there is no obvious indication that vampires are about to occur. The slow buildup to the revelation of a larger world underneath the normal one is actually (and surprisingly) well done. A rational, non-supernatural explanation is offered for every strange thing that Bella sees about and around Edward until he saves her from being crushed by a van. Then, it is only inevitable that she finds out: he is one of them 'pires.

It pretty much goes downhill from there.

Edward has heightened senses, super strength/speed, and a thirst for blood (which he sates by feeding on animals, calling the practice "vegetarian"). He sparkles in the sunlight like a Christmas ornament, but cannot shapeshift. He controls his filthy vampire urges enough to keep from biting his classmates. For fun, he plays vampire baseball with his family set to the inappropriate tune of Supermassive Black Hole by Muse.

It is exactly as stupid as it sounds.

Other than struggling with this relationship that is a poorly-concieved metaphor for relationships IN THE REAL WORLD, Bella spends much of her time fitting into her new life in the Pacific Northwest, which is still the most interesting part of the film but which is now a flaw due to the bullshit surrounding Edward, his family, and the arrival of some one-dimensional neck-feeders. When shit hits the fan and the third act kicks in, it is abrupt, awkward, and resolved in ten minutes. Then a couple of more scenes happen and the movie finally ends with a criminal misuse of Radiohead's 15 Step.

There is also promise of werewolves at some point, because the marriage of those two has always worked out so incredibly well.

The math equation above is a simple one to solve, like when the CDC suddenly discovered that zombies can run. The question is no longer "Is a vampire still a vampire?" but "Is a vampire still interesting?"

... No.

4.6/10

Review: CJ-7 (2008)

Stephen Chow's movies have an odd comedic sensibility that I didn't notice before seeing CJ-7. Sure, I squirmed at how tough it was for the team to triumph in Shaolin Soccer and I cringed as the hero's face was punched (literally) into the ground over and over again in Kung Fu Hustle, but I didn't give those feelings much thought. These moments of sudden, grisly violence were spread well over the course of the stories, and seemed natural in their setting. My unease only indicated that the scenes were effective.

The plot of CJ-7 is something out of The Fucking 1980's; a poor kid who lives in a junkyard with his father finds a cute alien lifeform, and whimsical wackiness ensues. As if Chow watched E.T. and thought "I can do that!" Upon hearing the plot, my own thoughts were "Okay... but how will he fit martial arts into the story?"

After much time is devoted to establishing how miserable father and son are at both school and work, the kid finally discovers the alien. For reasons not indicated, the kid decides to hide it from his father. The father (played by Chow himself, by the way) finds it, but thinking it is a toy, then decides to test how resilient it is by twisting it in every direction and then hitting it with a frying pan while the alien screams in obvious pain.

It was here I noticed that something was very, very off.

Well anyway, with the ruse intact, the boy takes the thing to school to totally rock the socks off of everyone who has bullied him this far. The pins of Act I have been set up, and Act II is here to knock them down. Crazy, hilarious shit happens, the bullies get their comeuppance, the kid rights those who have wronged him, and finally gets a bit of happiness in his life.

And it's all a dream.

Oh, but not the alien part, mind you. The kid wakes up, happy and full of bushy-eyed hope, and actually takes the alien to school. This time, it goes horribly awry in such a way that is both highly predictable and palpatably painful. It is cruelty so harsh that it breaks free from the film and inflicts itself on anyone watching.

And suddenly it all makes sense. Chow in Shaolin Soccer trains like mad but cannot win until an element totally outside of his control comes in to save the day. Likewise, Chow in Kung Fu Hustle abandons a way of life that has caused him nothing but pain and misery... until the very end when it suddenly works. More than Chow's method of storytelling, this is his sensibility. So naturally a cute space alien is not the primary method for bringing happiness to a father and son. Happiness for Chow, it seems, only comes in the last five seconds, by something arbitrary or something that is taken for granted. The rest is rife with punching, squirting blood/shit, and pee jokes (and is thus hysterical). He didn't think "I can do that!" after watching E.T. He thought "Here's what would have happened if it were me." He must have had one fucked up childhood.

Things do ultimately work out for the best... sort of. The characters learn "valuable" lessons, but at dire costs to the cute, hapless schmoo, and not before father and son commit awful, despicable acts that aren't the least bit endearing. And one scene in particular, watching the son chase the alien around with the honest intent to kill, I couldn't help but want to do the same thing to Stephen Chow.

5.2/10