Embracing the Melodrama Part II #114: The Wrestler (dir by Darren Aronofsky)

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m always a little surprised by how much I like the 2008 film The Wrestler.

Actually, to be honest, I’m more than a little surprised. I’m a lot surprise. First off, The Wrestler takes place in the world of professional wrestling and that’s a world that I not only know nothing about but which I also have very little interest. (My cousin Gustavo — Hi, Gus! — loved the Rock. That’s about the extent of my knowledge.) Add to that, The Wrestler doesn’t take place in the world of televised pro wrestling. (I may know nothing about wrestling but I do know a lot about television.) Instead, this is a world of backroom matches, broken dreams, and fading lives.

Secondly, The Wrestler features, as its hero, a man in his 50s who is still a total and complete fuckup. The character of Randy “The Ram” Robinson (played, in an Oscar-nominated performance, by Mickey Rourke) is perhaps epitomized by the fact that, after going out of his way to try to reconnect with his daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), and setting up a dinner date so that they can finally talk and get to know each other, Randy ends up getting consumed with self-pity, getting drunk, getting high, getting laid, and ultimately standing up his daughter. And whenever I see that part of the movie, I hate Randy just as much as Stephanie does because I know exactly how she feels. Stephanie can’t forgive Randy and neither can I.

And yet, oddly enough, I still care what happens to Randy. Randy is a former wrestling superstar, a guy who was big in the 1980s but now lives in a haze of obscurity and self-pity. He now wrestles on the weekend, works a demeaning job at a super market deli, and occasionally plays an old video game which features him as a character. His only real friend (and source of strength) is Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), a stripper who knows what its like to get older in a profession dominated by the young.

Randy does have one final chance at a comeback, when he agrees to an exhibition fight against his former nemesis, a “villainous” wrestler known at The Ayatollah (Ernest Miller). (It’s interesting to note that, outside of the ring, “bad guy” Ayatollah seems to be everything that “good guy” Randy is not, i.e., responsible, stable, and content with his life.)

However, there’s one problem. Randy has a heart condition and he has been told that continuing to wrestle could kill him. Will Randy give up the only thing that he’s ever been good at or will Randy potentially sacrifice his life to have one last chance to hear the cheers of the crowd?

Randy Robinson is another one of director Darren Aronofsky’s obsessive protagonists, a character who is so obsessed with something that he’s sacrificed everything else to pursue it. Fortunately, Aronofsky is a master of making these type of characters sympathetic. Over the course of the film, Randy fucks up so much that you really are tempted to just give up on him but Aronofsky directs the film with such compassion and Rourke gives such a vulnerable and emotionally raw performance that you find yourself giving Randy another chance despite your better instincts. The film’s melancholy ending is effective because you know that it really is the only way that Randy’s story can end.

I’m always surprised to like The Wrestler.

But I do.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #113: Gran Torino (dir by Clint Eastwood)

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is a grumpy man. And by that, I mean that he’s extremely grumpy. Remember how grumpy Bill Murray was in St. Vincent? He’s got nothing on Walt Kowalski.

Walt served in the Korean War and, five decades later, his experiences still haunt him. After the war, he lived in Detroit and he worked on an assembly line. He’s since retired but he still loves his old Ford Gran Torino, a car that he could very well have helped to build. His wife has recently passed away and his children are eager to move him into a nursing home. Walt is slowly smoking himself to death and the only person who visits him regularly is an earnest young priest (Christopher Carley, playing the ideal priest).

Just as Walt’s life has changed as he’s gotten older, so has his neighborhood. The neighborhood is now dominated by Hmong immigrants. When Walt catches Thao Vang Lor, a 16 year-old Hmong, attempting to steal his car, it leads to an unlikely friendship between Walt, Thao, and Thao’s sister, Sue. When the same local gang that put Thao up to stealing Walt’s car subsequently attacks Sue, Thao wants revenge but Walt says that if Thao kills a man, it’s something that he’ll never recover from. After locking Thao in his house, Walt goes off to confront the gang on his own…

And, since Walt is played by Clint Eastwood, you’d be justified in thinking that Walt’s confrontation would amount to a lot of quips and violence. But actually, it’s the exact opposite. Gran Torino does not find Eastwood in the mood to celebrate violence. Instead, the film is a meditation on both the cost of violence and the impossibility of escaping one’s own mortality.

Whenever people talk about the 2008 Oscar race, the focus always seems to be on the snubbing of The Dark Knight. However, I would say that Gran Torino (among other films) was snubbed even more than The Dark Knight. After all, The Dark Knight may have missed out on best picture but it still received 8 nominations and won an Oscar for Heath Ledger. Gran Torino, on the other hand, received not a single nomination.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that Gran Torino deserved a best picture nomination. It’s a fairly predictable film and some of the symbolism, particularly during Walt’s final confrontation with the gang, gets a bit too heavy-handed. (Any time a character spontaneously strikes a crucifixion pose in a movie, you know that things are starting to get out of hand.) But I would argue that Clint Eastwood definitely deserved a nomination for best actor. In many ways, Walt is a typical Eastwood character but, right at the moment when we’re expecting him to behave like every other Eastwood character that we’ve ever seen, Walt surprises us by doing something completely different. As a director, Eastwood subverts our expectations of Clint Eastwood as both an actor and a character. As a result, the audience is taken by surprise by Walt, if not by the film’s plot.

I remember, at the time the film was released, there was some speculation that Gran Torino would be the last time we ever saw Clint Eastwood onscreen. That proved to be false, as he subsequently starred in Trouble With The Curve. However, even if it wasn’t his final acting role, Gran Torino still serves as the perfect monument to Eastwood’s unique screen presence.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #112: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (dir by David Fincher)

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2010 will always be considered, by many of us, to be the year that Oscar journalism first jumped the shark. That was the year that a group of self-styled award divas (which Awards Daily’s Sasha Stone being the most obnoxious culprit) went batshit crazy over a film called The Social Network.

From the minute that David Fincher-directed film premiered, the Sasha Stones in the world not only declared it to be the greatest film ever made but also insinuated that anyone who disagreed had to be stupid, crazy, and evil. It actually got rather silly after a while. That is until The Social Network lost best picture to The King’s Speech. Suddenly, what was once merely enthusiastic advocacy transformed into fascistic fanaticism. Suddenly, these people started to view the 2010 Oscar race (and each subsequent Oscar race) as a rather tedious battle between good and evil. For these people, David Fincher represented the forces of good. And Tom Hooper, the director of The King’s Speech, represented all that was evil. They took this to such an absurd extreme that they not only subsequently heaped undeserved praise on Fincher’s bastardization of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but also unnecessary scorn on Hooper’s Les Miserables.

Of course, what was forgotten in all of that drama was that — before Hooper and The King’s Speech came along, the 2010 Oscar race was predicted be some to be a rematch between Fincher and Danny Boyle (whose 2010 film, 127 Hours, was indeed nominated for best picture, alongside The Social Network, King’s Speech, and Black Swan). When Fincher and Boyle previously competed during the 2008 Oscar race, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire defeated Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

And indeed, the case of Benjamin Button was curious one!

Loosely based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button told the story of a man who aged in reverse. When Benjamin is a baby, he has the wrinkled face of an elderly man. When he’s a teenager, he’s walking with a cane. When he’s middle-aged, he looks like Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall. (In that regard, it helps that Benjamin is played by Brad Pitt.) And when he’s an old man, he’s a baby. Though the film, wisely, refrains from offering up a definite reason why Benjamin ages in reverse, it hints that it could have something to do with a clock that was built to run backwards as an anti-war statement.

Benjamin is born in New Orleans in 1918 and raised in a nursing home by Queenie (Oscar nominee and future Empire star Taraji P. Henson). The love of Benjamin’s life is Daisy Fuller (Elle Fanning when young, Cate Blanchett as an adult), a dancer who also loves Benjamin but who, unlike him, is not aging in reverse. For this reason, Benjamin and Daisy cannot be together. That’s the way tragic love works.

The film itself features a framing device. Daisy, now an elderly woman, is dying and gives her estranged daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond), the diary of Benjamin Button. As Caroline reads, Hurricane Katrina rages outside. I’ve never really been comfortable with the way that the film uses Katrina as a plot point, for much the same reason that it bothered me when Hereafter used the real-life Thailand typhoon and London terrorist bombings to tell its story. The real-life tragedy of Katrina feels out-of-place in a story about Brad Pitt aging backwards.

As for the rest of the film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is … well, it’s a curious film. Visually, it’s definitely a David Fincher film but, at the same time, there’s something curiously impersonal about it. You almost get the feeling that this was Fincher’s attempt to show that he was capable of making a standard big budget Hollywood film without getting too Fincheresque about it. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett have chemistry and they look good together but Fincher has never been a sentimental director and his heart never truly seems to be in their love story. (Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl feel more like a natural couple than Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett do in this film.) There’s only a few scenes, mostly dealing with the more morbid aspects of Benjamin’s odd condition, towards which Fincher really seems to feel any commitment.

As a result, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button becomes a curious misfire. It’s a film that struggles with the big picture but is occasionally redeemed by some of its smaller moments. (The scenes with the elderly Benjamin as a dementia-stricken baby are haunting and unforgettable.) Ultimately, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is probably the weakest of the five 2008 films nominated for best picture but it’s still an interesting film to watch.

Christopher Lee, R.I.P.

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The picture above is Christopher Lee in the 1998 film Jinnah. In this epic biopic, Lee played Muhammad Ali Jinniah, the founder of modern Pakistan. Up until yesterday, I had never heard of Jinnah but, after news of Lee’s death broke, Jinnah was frequently cited as being Lee’s personal favorite of his many roles and films.

Consider that. Christopher Lee began his film career in the 1940s and he worked steadily up until his death. He played Dracula. He played The Man with the Golden Gun. Christopher Lee appeared, with his future best friend Peter Cushing, in Laurence Olivier’s Oscar-winning Hamlet. He played Seurat in John Huston’s Moulin Rouge. He appeared in both The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit trilogies. He appeared in several films for Tim Burton. He even had a small role in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. He appeared in two Star Wars prequels. He appeared in the original Wicker Man (and reportedly considered it to be his favorite of his many horror films). He appeared in Oscar winners and box office hits. And, out of all that, Christopher Lee’s personal favorite was Jinnah, a film that most people have never heard about.

Unless, of course, you live in Pakistan. When I did a google search on Christopher Lee, I came across several Pakistani news sources that announced: “Christopher Lee, star of Jinnah, has died.”

And really, that somehow seems appropriate. Christopher Lee was the epitome of an international film star. He worked for Hammer in the UK. He worked with Jess Franco in Spain and Mario Bava in Italy. He appeared in several movies in the United States. And, in Pakistan, he played Jinnah. And I haven’t seen Jinnah but I imagine he was probably as great in that role as he was in every other role that I saw him play. Over the course of his long career, Christopher Lee appeared in many good films but he also appeared in his share of bad ones. But Christopher Lee was always great.

It really is hard to know where to begin with Christopher Lee. Though his death was announced on Thursday, I haven’t gotten around to writing this tribute until Friday. Admittedly, when I first heard that Lee had passed away, I was on a romantic mini-vacation and had promised myself that I would avoid, as much as possible, getting online for two days. But, even more than for those personal reasons, I hesitated because I just did not know where to start when it came to talking about Christopher Lee. He was one of those figures who overwhelmed by his very existence.

We all know that Christopher Lee was a great and iconic actor. And I imagine that a lot of our readers know that Lee had a wonderfully idiosyncratic musical career, releasing his first heavy metal album when he was in his 80s. Did you know that Lee also served heroically during World War II and, after the war ended, helped to track down fleeing Nazi war criminals? Did you know that it has been speculated that Lee may have served as one of the role models for James Bond? (Ian Fleming was a cousin of Lee’s and even tried to convince Lee to play Dr. No in the first Bond film.) Christopher Lee lived an amazing life, both on and off the screen.

But, whenever one reads about Christopher Lee and his career or watches an interview with the man, the thing that always comes across is that, for someone who played so many evil characters, Christopher Lee appeared to be one the nicest men that you could ever hope to meet. Somehow, it was never a shock to learn that his best friend was his frequent screen nemesis, Peter Cushing.

Christopher Lee is one of those great actors who we assumed would always be here. The world of cinema will be a sadder world without him.

Legends together

Here is a list of Christopher Lee films that we’ve reviewed here on the Shattered Lens. Admittedly, not all of these reviews focus on Lee but they do provide a hint of the man’s versatility:

Sir Christopher Lee was 93 years old and he lived those 9 decades in the best way possible. As long as there are film lovers, he will never be forgotten.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #111: Slumdog Millionaire (dir by Danny Boyle)

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A few thoughts on the 2008 winner for best picture, Slumdog Millionaire:

First off, whenever I think about Slumdog Millionaire, it’s impossible for me not to think of that episode of The Office where Holly and Michael do an homage to the film at the Dunder Miflin company picnic and, along with traumatizing all of the children in the audience, they also manage to accidentally reveal that half of the employees at the picnic are about to get laid off. If you need to know just how successful Slumdog Millionaire was here in the United States, just consider that it was popular enough to be parodied by Michael Scott.

Secondly, as I sit here thinking about what I want to say about the film itself, I find myself wondering if it’s really necessary for me to rehash the film’s plot. I mean, everyone’s seen this movie, right? It was released 7 years ago. It won a bunch of Oscars. It’s on cable constantly! I mean, everyone already knows what happens, right?

Oh, really? Okay, apparently there’s one person out there who has never seen Slumdog Millionaire.

For his benefit, I will reveal that Slumdog Millionaire is a British-made film about India. Jamal (Dev Patel) is an 18 year-old telemarketer, who works from India and calls people in Scotland, reading from a script and saying things like, “I really love Sean Connery.” When Jamal is selected to compete on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, he shocks both the audience and the show’s producers by getting every answer right. However, before he can answer the final question and potentially become a millionaire, he is taken into a backroom and tortured by the police, who are convinced that a “slumdog” like Jamal couldn’t possibly know all the answers. As Jamal explains how he knew each answer, the film flashes back to Jamal’s childhood in the slums of Bombay.

It’s during these flashbacks that we see how Jamal — and thousands of other poor children like him — were forced by local gangsters to work as beggars. (In one extremely harrowing scene, a child is blinded specifically so he’ll be a more sympathetic beggar.) While Jamal eventually escapes this life, his brother Salim (Madhur Mittal) and his childhood love, Latika (Freida Pinto) remain under the power of a cruel crime boss (Mahesh Manjrekar).

So, that’s a relatively spoiler-free plot outline of Slumdog Millionaire. You’re welcome.

Now, personally, I love Slumdog Millionaire but a lot of people don’t. It seems to be one of those films that always gets mentioned when certain people talk about unworthy Oscar winners. Some of that is because Slumdog Millionaire won best picture the same year that The Dark Knight was not even nominated. In the eyes of some, being upset over the snubbing of The Dark Knight means that you’re also required to insanely resent every film that was not snubbed. (Looking in your direction, Sasha Stone…) But even more of the anti-Slumdog sentiment seems to come from the fact that the plot of Slumdog Millionaire revolves around an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. They feel that Slumdog Millionaire is essentially a feature-length commercial for a game show.

However, I think those people are overlooking one very important detail. In Slumdog Millionaire, How To Be A Millionaire is not portrayed in the most positive light. The whole plot of the film, after all, is that, as a result of doing well on the show, Jamal was taken into a dank room and tortured! You have to wonder what went on behind the scenes on the American version of the show.

The film’s poster refers to Slumdog Millionaire as being “the feel good film of the decade.” I don’t know if I’d agree with that description. It’s a fun film to watch because Danny Boyle is one of those hyperactive directors who can make anything fun. But, at the same time, Slumdog Millionaire is a pretty dark film. Happy ending or not, the majority of the film is about children living in extreme poverty and being exploited by rich sadists.

For those who would complain that Slumdog Millionaire gets a bit too melodramatic for its own good — well, can you ever really be too melodramatic? Along with everything else, Boyle meant for Slumdog Millionaire to serve as an homage to the famously melodramatic cinematic conventions of Bollywood and he largely succeeds.

And, of course, there’s the final dance number!

Seriously, how can you note love that?

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #110: Atonement (dir by Joe Wright)

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Whenever I think back on the 2007 best picture nominee Atonement, my first thought is usually, “Oh my God! Benedict Cumberbatch is in this movie!”

And, indeed, he is. However, I’m kind of glad that I didn’t know who Benedict was when I first saw this film because, if I had, I doubt I would have ever been able to look at him in quite the same way again. (Fortunately, I had somehow forgotten that I had previously seen him in Atonement when I first saw Benedict in Sherlock.) Benedict’s role in Atonement is not a large one but it is pivotal to the film’s plot. He plays Paul Marshall, a man who has made a fortune as a chocolate manufacturer in pre-World War II England. Paul is handsome, charming, and rich. After all, he’s played by Benedict Cumberbatch. He’s also a rapist who, later in the film, marries one of his victims specifically to make it impossible for her to ever testify against him in court.

Atonement is one of those films where the British upper class meets the lower class and forbidden love and tragedy follow. Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) is the oldest of the Tallis sisters. Her family is rich but she’s in love with Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the son of the housekeeper. One night, Robbie attempts to write a love note to Cecilia and, growing frustrated with his inability to come up with right words, he writes an over-the-top, sexually explicit letter as a joke. (And the audience gaps, “Oh my God! They used that word in the 30s!?”) He then goes on to write a more standard love note. However, when he asks Cicilia’s younger sister, 13 year-old Briony (Saorise Ronan) to deliver the note to Cecilia, he accidentally gives her the wrong note. Briony reads it to her cousin Lola (Juno Temple) and, already jealous of Robbie and Cecilia’s flirtation, she decides that Robbie must be a “sex maniac.”

Briony, who writes plays in her spare time, later spies on Robbie and Cecilia as they have sex for the first time. Briony, who has a crush on Robbie, grows more and more jealous. Later that night, while looking for Lola’s twin brothers, Briony sees a man running through the woods. When she goes to investigate, Briony discovers that the man has raped Lola. When asked by the police, Briony lies and says that Robbie was the man running in the woods. She also shows everyone the “joke” letter that Robbie wrote, proving, in their eyes, that Robbie is guilty. Robbie is sent to prison. Of the Tallises, only Cecilia believes that Robbie is innocent. Angered over their quickness to accuse Robbie, Cecilia cuts off all contact with her family.

As the years pass, Briony comes to realize that Paul was the rapist and she struggles to deal with her guilt. When World War II breaks out, Robbie is released from prison on the condition that he join the army. Meanwhile, Briony volunteers as a nurse and tries to come up with a way to bring Cecilia and Robbie back together.

I didn’t really appreciate the film the first time that I saw it but, with subsequent viewings, I came to appreciate Atonement as an intelligent and well-acted look at guilt, forgiveness, and redemption. James McAvoy and Keira Knightley both have amazing chemistry and Saoirse Ronan is amazing in her film debut. You can see why Atonement‘s director, Joe Wright, subsequently cast her in Hanna. Compared to the other films nominated for best picture of 2007 — No Country For Old Men, Juno, There Will Be Blood, and Michael Clayton — Atonement is definitely a low-key film. But it definitely more than deserved its nomination.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #109: There Will Be Blood (dir by Paul Thomas Anderson)

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You know how there are some films that you really want to love and that you know that, given your taste in cinema, you probably should love but yet you somehow just cannot bring yourself to actually love?

To a certain extent, that’s the way I feel about the 2007 best picture nominee There Will Be Blood. It’s a film that I greatly respect, as I tend to respect all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies. He’s one of the best director working today and also one of the most consistently interesting. (He’s also probably the only contemporary filmmaker who would actually base a two and half hour epic on the first 150 pages of a forgotten novel by Upton Sinclair.) And I think that There Will Be Blood is a well-made and well-directed film. I also think it’s well-acted, though I do think Daniel Day-Lewis goes a bit too far over-the-top at the film’s conclusion. (If anything, Paul Dano is the one who actually deserved to win an Oscar for his work in this film.) There Will Be Blood is an original work of cinematic art. I’m thankful that it was made and that Anderson stayed true to his vision.

But, with all that in mind, it’s never been a film that I’ve been able to love. Unlike Anderson’s earlier Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood holds the audience at a distance. We remains outsiders looking in. As a result, the film engages intellectually but not emotionally. It’s a film that earns respect without necessarily winning the audience’s love.

Speaking of respect, that’s something that you have to give to both Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson. From the start of the film, Daniel Plainview (played by Day-Lewis) is a cruel and self-centered bastard and that characterization remains consistent throughout. Briefly, it does seem that Plainview might truly care about his deaf, adopted son but, by the end of the film, Plainview has even proven that to be wishful thinking on our part. (The only other character to whom Plainview is consistently pleasant is a young girl named Mary but Day-Lewis plays those scenes with such a corrupt twinkle in his eye that the subtext becomes increasingly creepy.) Give Anderson and Day-Lewis credit. They commit to portraying Daniel Plainview as being an almost Satanic character and, at no point, does either one of them waver in that commitment. As we watch Plainview ruthlessly buy up all the land and drill all the oil that he can find, we wait for him to have some moment of redemption. It took guts for neither Anderson nor Day-Lewis to allow him one.

Paul Dano plays Eli Sunday, an evangelical preacher who stands in the way of Plainview’s efforts to buy up all the land around the Sunday family farm. The film presents Eli and Plainview as being two sides of the same coin. Plainview hides his moral emptiness behind his money. Eli hides behind his religion. The two characters hate each other because they alone truly recognize what they truly are. Dano, who also plays Eli’s brother, gives a mesmerizing performance, one that unfortunately has been overshadowed by Day-Lewis’s work.

It all ends, as all things must, with violent death in a bowling alley. I know that a lot of my fellow cineastes think that the bowling scene is the highlight of the film but, to be honest, this was the point where the film lost me. To me, this was the scene where Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance crossed the line from being flamboyant to shrill. The end just did not work for me.

However, two things that did definitely work for me: Johnny Greenwood’s wonderfully ominous and atmospheric score and Robert Elswit’s amazing cinematography, which made the film’s landscape appear both beautiful and threatening at the same time. The mix of Greenwood’s music with Elswit’s cinematography created some truly haunting moments.

In the end, There Will Be Blood is a lot like Daniel Plainview. It is powerful, memorable, unpredictable, flamboyant, overbearing, and at times a little frightening. And, again much like Daniel Plainview, it’s a film that’s easy to respect and difficult to love.

Katniss is back! Here’s the Trailer For The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2!

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Katniss Everdeen returns in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2! If that title seems to be a little long and unwieldy, why not just do what we do hear at the TSL bunker and call it, “The Hunger Games: Jennifer Lawrence Kicks Ass…Again.”

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #108: The Brave One (dir by Neil Jordan)

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For our next entry in Embracing the Melodrama Part II, we take a look at Jodie Foster in the 2007 film The Brave One. And…

Well, how to put this delicately?

I hate hate hate hate HATE this movie, with every last fiber of my being. I hated it the first time that I saw it and I hated it when I recently rewatched it and right now, I’m hating the fact that I even decided to review this damn film because it means that I’m going to have to think about it. I’m going to try to get this review over with quickly because, with each minute that I think about this film, I doubt my commitment to cinema. That’s how much I hate this movie. If I’m not careful, I’m going to end up joining a nunnery before I finish this review…

So, in The Brave One, Jodie Foster plays Erica Bain. Erica lives in New York and hosts one of those pretentious late night radio shows that are always popular in movies like this but which, in real life, nobody in their right mind would waste a second listening to. Erica spends her time musing about life in the big city and hoping that we can all just love one another and expressing a lot of other thoughts that sound like they’ve been stolen from an automated twitter account.

Erica also has a boyfriend. His name is David and he’s played by Naveen Andrews. That means that he looks good and he has a sexy accent and when he first shows up, you hope that he’ll stick around for a while because otherwise, you’re going to have to listen to move of Erica’s radio monologues. But nope — one night, while walking through Central Park, David and Erica are attacked. David is killed. Erica is raped. And their dog is taken by the gang!

(And the film doesn’t seem to know which it thinks is worse…)

When Erica gets out of the hospital, she is, at first, terrified to leave her apartment. Or, at least, she’s terrified to leave her apartment for about five minutes. But then she does find the courage to go outside and, of course, the first thing she does is buy a gun. At first, she’s buying the gun for her own state of mind but, almost immediately after purchasing her firearms, she happens to stumble across a convenience store robbery.

Bang! Bang! Erica’s a vigilante now!

But, of course, she’s not really sure if that’s what she wants to be. Even though she eventually ends up sitting on a subway and waiting for a guy to approach her so she can shoot him, Erica is still never really that comfortable with the idea of seeking vengeance. And this is why I hated The Brave One. The film is so damned wishy washy about Erica’s motivations. Instead of allowing Erica to get any sort of satisfaction or emotional fulfillment out of her actions, The Brave One has her constantly doubting whether or not violence is the answer. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that violence is the answer. But if you’re going to make a film about a female vigilante who is out looking for vengeance, why don’t you at least allow her to get some sort of empowerment out of her actions? That doesn’t mean that the film itself can’t be ambiguous about what she’s doing. But by having Erica constantly questioning her actions, it makes her into a weak character and it lets the men who raped her and the ones who subsequently threaten to do the same off the hook. It allows them to be seen as victims, as opposed to products of a society where men are raised to believe that women will never fight back.

There’s a far superior New York-set film that has almost the same plot as The Brave One. The title of that film was Ms. 45. It was made for a hundred times less money than The Brave One and, at the same time, it was and remains a hundred times better. (I previously wrote about Ms. 45 and The Brave One in my essay, Too Sordid To Ever Be Corrupted.)

The difference between the two films can be summed up by the film’s tag lines. The Brave One was advertised with, “How many wrongs to make it right?” Ms. 45 was advertised with: “She was abused and violated … IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!” Ms. 45 features a vigilante who never doubts her actions and, as a result, she becomes a symbol not of violence but of empowerment. Meanwhile, Jodie Foster is so constantly wracked with guilt and doubt that the film almost seems to be criticizing her for not staying in her apartment and trusting the police (represented by Terrence Howard and Nicky Katt) to do their job.

Oh! And, of course, at the end of the film, Erica gets her dog back. Because nobody ever permanently loses their dog in a big budget studio film…

And really, that’s why The Brave One is such a failure. It takes a subject that was tailor-made for the grindhouse and attempts to give it the slick and self-important studio approach. And part of that approach is that no one can be offended. This is a film that both wants to celebrate and condemn at the same time.

And that’s why I say, “Give me Ms. 45!”

At least that movie knows what it wants to say…

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #107: No Country For Old Men (dir by the Coen Brothers)

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I love my home state of Texas and I love movies. Therefore, it has always upset me that most movies set in Texas get the state totally wrong. That’s not exactly shocking. Unlike the rest of the states, there’s actually a lot of variety to Texas. We’re a big state and we’re home to a lot of people. Unlike some place like Vermont, Texas is a world all its own and it’s not surprising that most outsiders are incapable of getting their mind around that and instead find themselves embracing simple-minded clichés and stereotypes. That’s perhaps why the best films about Texas tend to be ones that were actually made by Texans. If you want to see the real Texas — flaws and all — than I suggest watching the films of Richard Linklater or perhaps Wes Anderson’s Rushmore.

And yet, it took two outsiders to write, produce, and direct one of the best films ever made about Texas. The 2007 best picture winner No Country For Old Men was largely the work of two brothers from Minnesota, Joel and Ethan Coen. It’s not only one of the best films about my home state but it’s also one of the best films of the past decade.

Based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men tells the story of three determined men in South Texas whose lives are interconnected despite the fact that three of them spend almost the entire movie one step behind each other. In fact, despite a few brief encounters where their paths meet, it can be argued that, at no point, do any of them truly interact with each other face-to-face.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is the type of person that anyone who has ever lived in Texas will have met. He’s a hard-working, plain-spoken man, the type who drives a pickup, owns a gun, and likes to begin and end the day with a beer. He lives in a trailer with his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald, who may be Scottish but speaks here with an almost flawless Texas accent). Llewelyn’s not a bad guy but he’s not as smart as he thinks and, like a lot of folks down here, he doesn’t like the idea of being told what to do. In fact, he’d almost rather die for his trouble than admit to making a mistake. When Llewleyn comes across the aftermath of a drug deal turned violent, he takes off with a suitcase that contains $2,000,000. After barely escaping the remaining drug dealers (and the scene where Llewelyn is chased by a pit bull is a classic), Llewelyn sends Carla Jeans to stay with her sick mother and then he grabs the suitcase and heads over to the next county. It quickly becomes apparent, to the viewers at least, that Llewelyn has absolutely no idea how to get out of the mess that he’s found himself in.

And it’s quite a mess because Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) has been hired to track down the money. Perhaps one of the greatest movie villains of all time, Chigurh is an almost unstoppable force of death and destruction. Chigurh pursues Llewelyn across Texas, killing almost everyone who he meets along the way. Interestingly enough, just as Llewelyn continually makes excuses for his own greed, Chigurh also makes excuses for his murderous activities, seeming to obsess over the role of fate and chance. Whereas Llewelyn refuses to give up the suitcase, even though it means that he’s putting his own wife in danger, because he insists that he can figure out a way to keep the money, Chigurh occasionally dodges responsibility for his own actions by flipping a coin and putting the blame on fate.

And finally, there’s Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who is both the most decent and the most ineffectual male character to be found in the film. He’s an old-fashioned lawman, the type who, had this film been made in the 50s or the 60s, would have been played by Gary Cooper and would have both vanquished Chigurh and given Llewelyn and Carla Jean marriage advice as well. In the world of No Country For Old Men, however, Ed is almost always one step behind both Chigurh and Llewelyn. Instead of saving the day, Ed spends most of the movie shocked and saddened by the violence around him. As the film draws to its conclusion, he’s left to wonder whether any one man can make a difference. He’s left to literally wonder whether his area of South Texas has truly become no country for old men.

I recently rewatched No Country For Old Men on TCM and I was surprised to discover just how well this film holds up, even after repeat viewings. If anything, the film actually improves on repeat viewings. Once you know how the story is going to end (and, in a fashion typical of both the Coens and Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men does not have a traditional ending), it’s easier to see all of the things that you may have been too overwhelmed to appreciate the first time, like Kelley McDonald’s performance as Carla Jean and Stephen Root’s cameo as Chigurh’s shady employer.

However, for me, the main reason that I appreciate No Country For Old Men is because it is one of the few films that actually manages to get South Texas right. My mom was born and grew up in South Texas, in the town of Benavides to be exact. I’ve spent a lot of time down there. The portrait that No Country For Old Man paints of South Texas is not always flattering but it is largely accurate. No County For Old Men captures both the region’s terrifying violence and its natural beauty. It’s honest about the fact that there are men like Anton Chigurh but, at the same time, you occasionally meet an Ed Tom Bell as well. And, of course, there’s a Llewelyn Moss in every town. He’s the one who you meet and you hope — often against your better instincts — that he won’t get in over his head.

The Academy named No Country For Old Men the best film of 2007. For once, the Academy was right.