The main reason that I enjoyed the 1997 Clint Eastwood film Absolute Power was because it features a murderer who also happens to be the President. As someone who dislike the idea of any one person having absolute power, I always get annoyed by the attitude that authority is something that has to be automatically respected. Instead, I’ve always felt that all authority should be distrusted and continually questioned.
Just take President Alan Richmond (Gene Hackman) for example. At the start of Absolute Power, he’s a popular President. He’s quick with a smile. He’s quick with a memorable line. I imagine that excerpts from his State of the Union speech would probably be very popular on YouTube. However, at the start of the film, elderly burglar Luther Whitney (Clint Eastwood) witnesses President Richmond getting violent with Jan Levinson-Gould. When Jan resists him, two Secret Service agents (Scott Glenn and Dennis Haysbert) run into the room and shoot her.
Okay, technically, the victim was not really The Office‘s Jan Levinson-Gould. (They both just happen to be played by Melora Hardin.) Instead, her name was Christy Sullivan and she was also the wife of one of Richmond’s top financial supporters, Walter Sullivan (E.G. Marshall). After the murder, President Richmond and his chief-of-staff, Gloria Russell (Judy Davis), attempt to frame Luther for the crime.
Absolute Power is pretty much your typical Clint Eastwood action picture. In the role of Luther, Eastwood snarls his way through the film and never dispatches a bad guy without providing a ruthless quip. (When one bad guy begs for mercy, Luther replies that he’s “fresh out.”) Luther has an estranged daughter, a lawyer named Kate (Laura Linney) and, despite the fact that she’s helping the homicide detective (Ed Harris) who is trying to capture him, Luther still pops up to look out for her. In the end, Luther’s not only try to prove that the President is a murderer but he’s trying to be a better father as well! Awwwwwww!
Again, it’s all pretty predictable but the film is worth seeing just for the chance to witness Gene Hackman play one of the most evil Presidents ever. As far as soulless chief executives are concerned, Alan Richmond makes Woodrow Wilson look like a humanitarian! And Hackman does a good job embodying the affable type of evil that could conceivably translate into an electoral landslide.
Absolute Power may not be a great film but it’s a good one to watch whenever you need an excuse to be cynical about the absolute power of the government.
“Oh we must be doin’ somethin right to last 200 years…”
— Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) in Nashville (1975)
The 1975 Best Picture nominee Nashville is the epitome of an ensemble film. It follows 24 characters as they spend five days wandering around Nashville, Tennessee. Some of them are country music superstars, some of them are groupies, some of them are singers looking for a first break, and at least one of them is an assassin. The one thing that they all have in common is that they’re lost in America. Released barely a year after the resignation of Richard Nixon and at a time when Americans were still struggling to come to terms with the turmoil of the 60s, Nashville is a film that asks whether or not America’s best days are behind it and seems to be saying that they may very well be. (That’s a question that’s still being asked today in 2015.) It’s appropriate, therefore, that Nashville both takes place in and is named after a city that everyone associates with perhaps the most stereotypically American genre of music that there is.
Nashville follows 24 characters, some of whom are more interesting than others. For five days, these characters wander around town, occasionally noticing each other but far more often failing to make any sort of connection.
Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) is a veteran star, a somewhat comical character who sings vapid songs about home and family and who smiles for the public while privately revealing himself to be petty and vain. His son, Bud (Dave Peel), is a Harvard graduate who acts as his father’s business manager. Oddly enough, Haven is an unlikable character until the end of the film when he suddenly reveals himself to be one of the few characters strong enough to keep Nashville for descending into chaos. Meanwhile, Bud seems to be a nice and modest guy until he takes part in humiliating another character.
Haven’s lover is Lady Pearl (Barbara Baxley), who owns a nightclub and spends most of the film drinking. Much like Haven, she starts out as a vaguely comical character until she finally gets a chance to reveal her true self. In Pearl’s case, it comes when she delivers a bitter monologue about volunteering for Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
Haven’s lawyer is Delbert Reece (Ned Beatty), an obsequies good old boy who is married to gospel singer Linnea (Lily Tomlin). They have two deaf children. Linnea has learned sign language. Delbert has not. Over the course of the film, both Delbert and Linnea will be tempted to cheat. Only one of them actually will.
And then there’s Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), a mentally unstable singer who has come to Nashville with her manipulative husband/manager, Barnett (Allen Garfield). Almost every character in the film wants something from Barbara Jean. A mostly silent Vietnam veteran named Kelly (Scott Glenn) claims that his mother knows Barbara Jean. A nerdy guy named Kenny (David Hayward) comes to Nashville just to see her perform.
Both Kelly and Kenny end up getting to know Mr. Green (Keenan Wynn), a rare Nashville resident who doesn’t seem to care about music. However, Mr. Green’s spacey niece, L.A. Joan (Shelly Duvall), is obsessed with having sex with as many musicians as possible.
Among those being targeted by L.A. Joan is Tom Frank (Keith Carradine), one-third of the folk trio Bill, Mary, and Tom. Unknown to Bill (Allan F. Nicholls), Tom is sleeping with Bill’s wife, Mary (Cristina Raines). Unknown to Mary, Tom is sleeping with almost every other woman in Nashville as well. When Tom takes to the stage at Pearl’s nightclub and sings a song called I’m Easy, the audience is full of women who think that he’s specifically singing to them.
Another one of Tom’s songs, the appropriately titled “It Don’t Worry Me,” is frequently sung by Albuquerque (Barbara Harris), who spend the entire film trying to get discovered while hiding out from her much older husband, Star (Bert Remsen).
Another aspiring star is Sulleen Grey (Gwen Welles), who is a tone deaf waitress who suffers the film’s greatest humiliation when she agrees to perform at a political fund raiser without understanding that she’s expected to strip while singing. Trying to look after Sulleen is Wade (Robert DoQui), who has just been released from prison.
And then there’s the loners, the characters who tend to pop up almost randomly. Norman (David Arkin) is a limo driver who, like everyone else in Nashville, wants to be a star. The hilariously bitchy Connie White (Karen Black) and the bland Tommy Brown (Timothy Brown) already are stars. (The character of Tommy Brown is one of Nashville’s oddities. He’s listed, in the credits, as being a major character but he only appears in a few scenes and never really gets a storyline of his own.) There’s the Tricycle Man (Jeff Goldblum), a silent magician who mysteriously appears and disappears throughout the film.
And, finally, there’s Opal (Geraldine Chaplin), an apparently crazed woman who is wandering around Nashville and pretending to be a reporter for the BBC. (It’s never specifically stated that Opal is a fake but it’s fairly obvious that she is.) How you feel about the character of Opal will probably determine how you feel about Nashville as a whole. If you find Opal to be a heavy-handed caricature, you’ll probably feel the same way about the rest of the film. If you find the character of Opal to be genuinely amusing with her increasingly pretentious musings, you’ll probably enjoy Nashville.
There is one more very important character in Nashville. He’s the character who literally holds the film together. He’s also the reason why I’m including Nashville in this series of reviews about political films. That character is named Hal Phillip Walker and, though he’s never actually seen in the film, he’s still the driving force behind most of what happens. Walker is a third-party presidential candidate, a man who seems to be universally admired despite the fact that his campaign appears to just be a collection of vapid platitudes. Walker’s campaign manager, John Triplette (Michael Murphy), comes to Nashville and sets up the Walker For President rally. That’s where Nashville reaches its violent and not-all-together optimistic climax.
Reportedly, Nashville is a favorite film of Paul Thomas Anderson’s and you can see the influence of Nashville in many of Anderson’s films, from the large ensemble to the moments of bizarre humor to the refusal to pass judgement on any of the characters to the inevitable violence that ends the film. Also, much like Anderson’s films, Nashville seems to be a film that was specifically made to divide audiences. You’re either going to think that Nashville is a brilliantly satirical piece of Americana or you’re going to think it’s a self-indulgent and self-important mess.
As for me, I think it’s great and I think that, after you watch it, you should track down and read Jan Stuart’s The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece. It’s the perfect companion for a great film.
Much like Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola seems to divide viewers and, in many ways, for the exact same reasons. You either get her films about upper class ennui or you don’t. Everyone seems to love Lost in Translation but viewers and critics seem to be far more polarized when it comes to rest of her films. It seems the people either love them or hate them. Well, you can count me among those who love her films. (Yes, even Somewhere.) To me, Sofia Coppola is one of the most consistently interesting filmmakers working today and the dismissive reaction that many (mostly male) critics have towards her films has little do with her talent and much more to do with her gender and her last name.
So there.
In The Virgin Suicides, Coppola tells the story of the five Lisbon sisters. They live in an upper middle class suburbs in the 1970s. Their parents — math teacher Ronald (James Woods) and his wife (Kathleen Turner) — are devoutly Catholic and very protective. The Lisbon sisters are rarely allowed to leave the house and, as a result, the neighborhood boys are obsessed with them. (Though the film centers on four unnamed boys, there’s only one narrator, voiced by Giovanni Ribisi, who continually refers to himself as being “we,” as if all four boys are telling the story in the same voice.) When the youngest Lisbon daughter commits suicide, Ronald and his wife become even more protective.
At the start of the school year, the oldest daughter, Lux (Kirsten Dunst), meets and starts to secretly date the wonderfully named Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). Lux is even allowed to attend the homecoming dance with Trip but, after she breaks curfew, Mrs. Lisbon reacts by pulling Lux and her sisters out of school and basically making them prisoners in their own home.
(In one of the film’s best moments, we flash forward to see present day Trip talking about his date with Lux. Needless to say, Trip did not age well.)
With the Lisbon sisters even more isolated, the neighborhood boys become even more obsessed with them. One day, the boys get a note from the girls, asking for their help in escaping. The boys go to meet the girls, leading the film to its haunting conclusion…
Full of themes of sin, sexuality, repression guilt, redemption, and martyrdom, The Virgin Suicides is one of those films that you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate but it probably helps. James Woods, Josh Hartnett, and Kirsten Dunst all give good performances while Sofia Coppola fills the movie with dream-like and sensual images, all designed to challenge the viewer’s perception of whether or not we’re watching reality or just the idealized memories of someone still struggling to comprehend a mystery from the past.
The Virgin Suicides is the perfect movie to end with the 90s on.
When Paul Greengrass completed The Bourne Ultimatumit looked like a perfect ending to the Bourne Series. Despite an ending that could be seen as a way to leave the door open to continue the series most people were content with the series ending as trilogy. That sort of thinking never enters the mind of studio executives who saw the success of this particular trilogy as still bankable even if it meant the filmmaker (Greengrass) and the series’ lead star (Matt Damon) weren’t going to participate.
What we ended up getting was a new lead in Jeremy Renner as another Treadstone-like agent, but one who didn’t have all the glitches that Jason Bourne had. Let’s just say that Renner’s character Aaron Cross would be Jason Bourne 2.0. I wasn’t convinced that a Bournefilm minus Greengrass and Damon would work, but after seeing this latest official trailer from Universal Pictures I’m quite excited about this latest film.
With the success of The Avengersand Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocolwhere Renner had substantial roles in it looks like this latest film in the series could get a nice uptick in the amount of interest it gets from the public. The sort of action Renner’s character goes through in this film one could easily call this Hawkeye: The Early Years. All his character would need would be a nice hi-tech bow.
The Bourne Legacyis set for an August 17, 2012 release date.
There have always been films through the years which will garner extreme reactions from its audiences. These reactions will always take two sides on the film. People who see these films will either love them or they will hate them. There is to be little to no middle ground reaction when it comes to these films. In 2009, we had James Cameron’s epic scifi Avatar which had two sets of fans. Those who loved it to the point that it transcended simple fandom into something these people thought as important. Then there were the vocal minority who absolutely hated the film. Whether both fans were right in their opinions was (and continues) to be irrelevent. All that mattered to these people was that they’re right and the other side was wrong.
2011 is entering it’s second season and a film finally arrived which seem to have elicited the same sort of reaction from people who have seen it. Sure, there’s some who saw it merely as entertainment and left it at that, but there’s a growing rift between those who loved the film and those who hated it. The film which seem to have caused this is the action-fantasy film Sucker Punch.
To say that Zack Snyder’s latest visual extravaganza would create discussion amongst filmgoers would be an undertstatement. Sucker Punch has arrived to much genre fandom fanfare. This was a film that seemed to take genres from all corners like scifi, fantasy, anime and manga and mashed them all up into something new and serving it up to the legion of fans who love those very things. Zack Snyder has made his reputation as a filmmaker as a visual artist. His entire filmography from the Dawn of the Dead remake all the way up to his adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel Watchmen have all been very strong visually. His grasp of narrative structure continues to grow and improve but it’s always been his handling of dialogue which has tripped him up.
Sucker Punch is a tale within a tale about a young woman we come to know as Baby Doll (played with an almost angelic quality by Emily Browning). The film opens up with the curtain rising on a theater stage and we soon become witness to a dialogue-free opening sequence of the events which transpired to bring Baby Doll to the Lennox House mental institution. This entire opening sequence is a great example of Snyder as a master of creating a montage of striking visuals sans dialogue with only music to break the silence. It helped that the music chosen to accompany this scene was a haunting rendition by Emily Browning herself of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)”. Just like in Watchmen‘s own intro title sequence, Snyder was able to convey the beginnings of the story without the need for dialogue and do it so well that we as an audience understand fully all that’s transpiring on the screen.
Once this prologue ends we move onto the main setting of the film where Baby Doll gets put into the care of the Lennox House’s resident boogeyman in the form of Blue as played with slimy charm and panache by one Oscar Isaac (last scene chewing up the English countryside in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood). The audience sees what Baby Doll sees as Blue gives her the tour of the facilities which finally ends at the “Theater” where all the female patients act out their problems and fears through the guidance and help of Doctor Gorski (played by the lovely and return Snyder performer, Carla Gugino).
The first 15 minutes of this film was pretty much a basic set-up of what Snyder will use as his blueprint for the rest of the film. All the different levels of fantasy Baby Doll will imagine and inhabit throughout the film is rooted deeply in this initial sequence of events which begins the film. The clues as to who the story is truely about could be found in this intro if one was paying attention to the film instead of being distracted and mesmerized by the visuals Snyder crafts to start the film. While it won’t become apparent until the reveal at the climactic events of the film. Once all are the cards were revealed, so to speak, the beginning of the film begins to make sense. From the curtain rising, the silent film-like scene to begin and the narration to open things up, all those give a hint to what the answer to the question the film’s narrative really asks: “Is what we’re seeing truly real or is it all just fantasy?”
Sucker Punch becomes a sort of a trip down the rabbit hole a la Alice In Wonderland once the film establishes Baby Doll’s predicament upon arriving at the Lennox House (she’s to be lobotomized in 5 days). The film moves from the gray and depressing confines of the Lennox House to the fantasy world centered on a burlesque establishment where Baby Doll is an orphan sold by a decadent priest (the form her stepfather takes in this fantasy) to Blue, the proprietor of this house of ill repute where orphaned young women become burlesque dancers and worst to the clientele. It is in this place we meet the rest of the gang Baby Doll will befriend to help her try to escape the place and thus avoif the “High Roller” who will come to collect her in 5 days.
The film shares something similar with Christopher Nolan’s Inception in that both films deal with different levels of reality or fantasy (depends on how one sees the different worlds shown in both films). Where Nolan’s ideas seem more rooted in what he would consider as more grounded to reality as much as possible Snyder goes the other way and takes the leashes off of Baby Doll’s imagination. This third level Baby Doll goes to as she begins her dance to distract the men of the burlesque house is her mind unfettered and where she’s not helpless but has power not just to protect herself but do so better than the men who inhabit this fantasy world of steampunk zombie soldiers, orcs, dragons, alien robot machines and many other scifi and fantasy tropes which define geek culture through the decades.
If there’s one reason to watch this film it would be just to bear witness to Snyder letting his imagination as a visual filmmaker take over. Some people may not like this and want a strong, structured narrative to balance out the visuals. I, too, would’ve liked to have seen something stronger in terms of story and plot, but there are just instances when the visuals are so striking and wildly imaginative that one just marvels at the scenes unfolding on the screen. If any, Snyder as a visual artist helps prop up the weakness in the story. Snyder would’ve served this film better if he went even further and turned Sucker Punch into an avant-garde silent film of the digital age. That beginning in the film just unfolded so strongly despite no dialogue that the rest of the film could’ve been done in the same manner and be the better for it.
Which brings me to what was the film’s near fatal flaw. A flaw that many of the film’s detractors have taken as the rallying cry to denounce the film as horrible and Snyder as a hack. The interesting thing is that these same people were also the ones who had been praising of Snyder prior to this film. Even those who begrudgingly gave Snyder his props for having some semblance of talent because of the very handling of the visuals that he has now have become much more vocal about how they always knew Snyder was never that good.
I would say that Snyder is not the second coming of Ridley Scott as some of his supporters have anointed him or is he a hack filmmaker who is all flash and no substance. I think he’s somewhere in the middle and still finding his true voice as a filmmaker. I’ve always seen Snyder as being weak when it comes to handling the slower scenes of dialogue and most visual filmmakers tend to be the same when starting out. The dialogue seem to get in the way of what they really want to do and tell the story through striking visual sequences. They’re like painters who don’t need words to convey the emotions they wish to convey. Sucker Punch I believe suffered from Snyder trying to combine his strength on the visual side of the equation with his handling of story through the dialogue which he still hasn’t mastered. If someone else had written, or at the very least, fixed and strengthened the script, I do believe that the film wouldn’t be getting so ripped and trounced by those who had been so excited to seeing one of Snyder’s personal projects.
The performances by the cast ranged from good to just being there. There really wasn’t anyone in particular who performed badly. Everyone from Emily Browning to Oscar Isaac all the way to Abbie Cornish did well enough with the material they were given. Oscar Isaac as both Blue in the insane asylum and as the pimp in the burlesque house did particularly well playing up the fun role of the villain in Baby Doll’s different levels of reality/fantasy. Of the ladies in the film I must point out the performance of Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish as sisters in the second level. While we only get a glimpse of Cornish’s Sweet Pea character in the Lennox House, once in the burlesque setting she becomes the anchor by which the rest of the women in the cast held onto. Jena Malone as the younger sister Rocket who still dreamed hopes of escape was a nice complement to Sweet Pea.
So, we have a film in Sucker Punch which seem to have strength on one side of the filmmaking equation and a major weakness on another. This is the kind of film that I would, in the past, have dismissed as another attempt by Hollywood to pander to the geek crowd with its mash-up of different scifi and fantasy imagery. But this time around I actually enjoyed the film both in a visual sense and how Snyder was able to play with the audience’s personal observations about the themes his film is trying to explore. It’s these very themes which have split audiences into two camps. While the gender politics and stereotypes people have brought up in discussing this film have made for some lively debate I refrain from adding my views on it in this review. I think I’m not well-qualified to debate such discussions.
For me, Sucker Punch succeeds more than it fails because Snyder didn’t play it safe with how he wanted to make his film. He was able to tell the film’s story through the different visual styles for each world the cast played in and did it quite well. While most of the time I wouldn’t give a film a pass for a weak narrative and average dialogue with this film I felt like the experience one gets from experiencing the visual canvas Snyder continued to paint with from beginning to end was enough to balance out the negative. It’s really a film that one must experience for themselves and make their decision on that experience instead of listening to other’s opinions (both good and bad) about the film. One may end up hating the film like some, but then again they may end up like me and forgive Snyder for trying to reach for the sun and failing to do so, but at least tried to with panache instead of playing it safe.
Last Friday, I went and saw Zack Snyder’s new film Sucker Punch with my sister Erin and a group of our friends. Sucker Punch was a film that I had been looking forward to seeing for a while and not even all of the scathingly negative reviews that I read before leaving for the theater could dampen my enthusiasm. Somehow, I knew I would love this film (despite the fact that Zack Snyder is, usually, one of my least favorite directors). And you know what? I did love it.
The plot has been criticized for being both overly complicated and not being complicated enough and I actually think that a case can be made for either one of those complaints. The film opens in the 1950s. Teenage Babydoll (Emily Browning) is sent to a mental asylum by her evil father. Her father has made a deal with an orderly named Blue (Oscar Isaac) to have Babydoll lobotomized. (By the way, this was actually a pretty common thing back in the 50s. I shudder to think what would have been done to me if I had been born five decades earlier.) As Babydoll waits for her lobotomy (scheduled to occur at the end of her first week as a patient), she is subjected to the therapy of Dr. Gorski (Carla Gugino) who plays music and encourages her (all female) patients to find peace by controlling their fantasies.
Suddenly, we’re in a fantasy (just who exactly is having the fantasy is one of the film’s mysteries that’s never really explained but is actually kinda fun to debate). In the fantasy, the insane asylum is actually a brothel/dance hall that is owned by Blue. Gorski is a choreographer. The patients are now all lingerie-clad dancers/prostitutes. Babydoll is the latest girl to be put into service in the brothel and she is being held over for “the High Roller” who is expected to show up in five days.
(The fact that the movie explicitly compares forced lobotomy to rape is one of the many interesting facts that the majority of negative reviews have chosen to ignore.)
Babydoll soon discovers that 1) she’s such a good dancer that when she does dance, men can only watch in stunned silence and 2) whenever she does dance, she finds herself transported into a fantasy world where, along with getting advice from the Wise Old Man (Scott Glenn), she also battles (and defeats) everything from giant Samurai to dead Nazis who have been reanimated by “steam power” to a dragon. These battle scenes, as odd as they are, are actually pretty exciting. Say what you will, Snyder knows how to direct a battle scene and Browning and the rest of the almost entirely female cast all seem to be having a blast getting to do the type of things that usually, only boys are allowed to do.
Anyway, as a result of her fantasies, Babydoll comes up with a plan to escape the brothel. She quickly recruits four other girls into her plan — Amber (Jamie Chung), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), the free-spirited (and really, really cool) Rocket (Jena Malone) and finally Rocket’s older sister, the world-weary Sweatpea (Abbie Cornish). In order to escape, they need to steal four different items. While Babydoll distracts their captors by dancing (and therefore going into one of her battle fantasies), the others steal whatever is needed. And everything works out just fine. Until it doesn’t….
Sucker Punch is a glorious mess of a movie and, perhaps because I’m a glorious mess myself, I loved it. In fact, it’s probably my favorite film of 2011 so far. In this regard, I know I’m going against the majority but so what? Throughout history, if one thing has always been consistent, it is that the majority sucks. Yes, Sucker Punch is a deeply flawed film that runs on for at least half-an-hour too long. And yes, I think it can be argued quite convincingly that this film is ultimately a happy accident, a film that’s strength comes not from directorial design but instead as the result of a few random elements that resonate in the subconscious. But no matter — happy accident or not, I loved Sucker Punch and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Hmmm…that’s a familiar pose.
Let’s start with a few obvious points. As even those who hate this film seem to be admitting, it’s visually stunning. The battle scenes are kinetic and exciting, the film’s over-the-top production design (a mix of German Expressionism, 50s film noir, Bob Fosse choreography and old Zack Snyder films) is always a blast to look at, and the soundtrack kicks ass. Like other films in the so-called “Girls with Guns” genre, Sucker Punch allows its actresses to be something other than just scenery or helpless damsels.
Interestingly enough, for a film that takes place mostly in the world of fantasy, there’s no attempt to really make this film’s version of “reality” come across as anything other than an elaborate fantasy as well. The film’s opening scenes are played out in slow-motion and the film’s asylum (which, like most movie asylums, appears to have been borrowed from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) is so gray that the film might as well be in black-and-white. Blue and Babydoll’s father hold a melodramatic conference while standing directly behind Babydoll, their three heads filling the screen like flashes of manic paranoia. As such, the film — at times — becomes a fantasy taking place in a fantasy taking place in a fantasy. It takes a while for the viewer to get used to this and, at times, it can seem like there’s really nothing to give the film any sort of grounding. However, for me, the opening sequences are not meant to be “real” as much as they serve as a reflection for the way that the real world can imprison anyone but women in particular. As women, we know what its like to look up and suddenly realize that our entire world has somehow become gray and cold without our knowledge. Throughout history, when everything else has been taken away from us, fantasy has been our escape and salvation, our imagination being the one of those precious things that our fathers, our husbands, and our bosses would never be able to deny us.
One problem I did have with the film is that, for all the talk about how Babydoll’s dancing is essential to the escape plan, we never actually see her dance. Instead, we see Browning start to sway a little, her eyes cast down and then suddenly, we’re transported into a fantasy involving zombie Nazis or giant samurai. Once this fantasy mission has been completed, we’re suddenly back in the brothel where we see Babydoll ending her dance while her audience applauds.
To a large extent, I actually agree with Snyder’s approach here because I know, for me much as with the characters in this film, dance always presented an escape from the grayness of being. When I was dancing, I was literally living a fantasy and this seems to be the case with Babydoll as well. However, from simply a cinematic point of view, the constant talk of the importance of Babydoll’s dance leads the audience to naturally expect that they’ll get to see at least a little bit of the dance in question. When you don’t, it’s hard not to feel as if you’ve been teased. (I have to admit, as well, that all this dance talk got my competitive streak going as well. As I whispered to Erin, “They should see me dance.” “It’s a movie, Lisa Marie, not a challenge.” Erin replied.) Snyder, as a director, certainly probably has a strong enough visual sense that he could have found a way to make any dance that Emily Browning came up with look impressive and other worldly.
Oscar Isaac
As Arleigh has pointed out on both twitter and this site, Zack Snyder is a director who concentrates almost all of his effort on producing memorable visuals. That’s how he tells his stories and gets the whatever response he wants from his audience. Characters and dialogue are often kept simple so that they don’t get in the way of his visuals. Typically, I hate films like this and I’m hardly a fan of Snyder’s previous work. However, it didn’t bother me so much here, perhaps because I could relate to the overall theme of feeling trapped and needing an escape. (More on that later.) As with previous Snyder films, the performances here are mostly in service of the visuals. The actors don’t so much perform as much as they just pose against the stunning backdrops. As such, Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jamie Chung don’t really get much of a chance to make an individual impression. Playing sisters, Abbie Cornish and Jena Malone don’t have a lot to work with but they both are strong enough personalities that they manage to bring some life to their characters beyond simply serving as figures on a landscape.
(I should also mention — and Arleigh had the same reaction — that Cornish and Malone and their character’s relationship reminded me a lot of my relationship with my older sister, Erin — especially all the times that Rocket attempted to keep things fun and interesting just to be told, by Sweetpea, that she wasn’t being boring enough. I definitely related to that. Erin, for her part, says that she related to all the scenes where Sweatpea nearly got killed “because her bratty, little sister did something stupid that made absolutely no sense.”)
Abbie Cornish and Jena Malone (or Erin and Lisa) In Sucker Punch
I also have to mention Oscar Isaac and Carla Gugino, both of whom seem to understand just how far they can go with their characters without descending to the level of camp. Gugino — after this film, Sin City , and Watchmen — has got to be the Queen of digital filmmaking. She’s also the closest thing that American film has to an old school femme fatale right now. As well, as I told Erin as we watched the film, I can only hope that my tits look that good when I’m 60 years old. And speaking of looking good, Oscar Isaac certainly does look good here. Even when he has dark circles under his eyes and sports a glowering scowl, I would still throw Isaac on the ground and lick his face. Plus, he and Gugino contribute a great performance of Love Is The Drug which plays over the end credits.
Finally, Scott Glenn — looking a lot like the late David Carradine — plays the “Wise Old Man” who pops up as a father figure of sorts in Babydoll’s fantasies. Glenn does okay with his role though I wish his character had been a bit more clear. To be honest, simply from the point of view of empowerment, I kinda wish his character had been known as the “Wise Woman” and had been played by Cate Blanchett.
One huge issue that seems to be coming up a lot when people talk about Sucker Punch is the issue of “empowerment.” Does this film, which indulges in a massive schoolgirl fetish even while portraying girls kicking ass, empower or degrade women? Well, first off, I would suggest that the question itself is an inappropriate one because to argue that a film is either “empowering” or “degrading” and nothing else is basically the same as arguing that all women are going to have the exact same response to what they see regardless of their own life experiences or personal outlook. Quite frankly, because of some of my own personal experiences, I find the infamous, much-maligned 1970s rape/revenge film I Spit On Your Grave to be very empowering and I’m not alone in that regard. At the same time, I also know many very intelligent, very strong women who would consider that film to be anything other than empowering. It’s simply a matter of perspective.
I think the same can be said about Sucker Punch. To me, Sucker Punch was a very empowering film and, honestly, that’s the main reason that I loved it even with its flaws. First off, I think that any film in which women are allowed to do something other than stand around and panic until they’re rescued by a man, is going to be empowering because, far too often, we are taught that waiting for the right man to arrive is the only option available to us. As well, the main theme of Sucker Punch was the theme of escape, whether that escape was physical or mental. While I won’t presume to speak for all women, I can say that for many of us, escape is the usually the root of all fantasy and, at least to some extent, the ultimate goal. As I watched Sucker Punch on Friday night, it seemed to me that, for far too many of us, life is a series of prisons and asylums in which the walls are constructed out of the harsh judgments of patriarchal society. We allow ourselves to become trapped by the need to be a mother or a wife or a nurturer or a seductress or a whatever it is that society says a good woman has to be on any given day. The women in Sucker Punch are imprisoned because they’ve gone against the expectations of society and now, whether being lobotomized or sacrificing their bodies in the fantasy brothel, they are allowing their role and personality to be defined by men. Therefore, when Babydoll and her crew fight for their freedom, we can relate to them because that’s what we have to do every day of our lives.
My Dream Is Yours
But, the argument goes, how this be considered to be empowering when all the female images in the film are so hyper-sexualized? And it’s true that even when the film is supposed to be portraying reality, the camera does linger over the bodies of the actresses. In the brothel sequences, the film often looks like an outtake for some anime-inspired Victoria’s Secret fashion show. (Seriously, this film has a major lingerie fetish but you know what? So do I. Lingerie is fashion poetry and when I’m wearing something pretty, I feel like a poem.) Finally, there’s the image of Babydoll fighting her enemies and dodging explosions while flashing her underwear to the viewer. Many have argued that this is a degrading image, that it encourages male viewers to leer and to ogle.
Well, the fact of the matter is that this film was directed by a man and often times it is obvious that we’re watching the action through a male gaze. But, so what? Just as I believe that women should not be ashamed of their sexuality, I don’t see why men should be expected not to look. (Looking is not the problem. It’s the assumption that the right to look also gives one the right to judge.) And ultimately, I would argue, that being sexy is empowering because society, with its fucked up view of human sexuality in general, is so quick to tell us that the ideal woman is unaware of her sexuality or, at the very least, she should either hide it behind a facade of demure humility or else flaunt it to such an extent as to suggest that it’s all actually a sign of some deeper neurosis. What is rarely given as an option is the idea that we might want to show off a little just as a matter of pride. Men are applauded for showing off their muscles yet we are still expected to blush if we show a little cleavage. Being sexy is not degrading. What’s degrading are the conditions that society has attempted to impose on the right to be sexy. To me, it’s very empowering to see strong, independent women standing up for themselves and looking good while doing it.
Sexual Empowerment
And therefore, for me, Sucker Punch was a very empowering film. It’s entirely possible that this empowerment could be the result of a happy accident and that Snyder had no idea he was actually making a film that celebrated third wave feminism. In fact, I’m sure that’s probably the case.
Even with as much as I enjoyed Sucker Punch, I’m still not really sold on Zack Snyder as a director When his films work, they almost work despite his directorial flourishes than because of them. The slow-mo action thingee was kinda fun at first but now, everyone’s doing it and it’s hard to see why it was so exciting in the first place. Add to that, whenever I hear his name mentioned, I think about the Zach was on both seasons of Paradise Hotel and who, at one point, did this priceless drunken monologue about how he was apparently descended from lawyers. Seriously, he was such a tool. Well, why take my word for it? Here’s a clip of Zach that I found on YouTube…
But anyway, what about Zack Snyder? As I’ve mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of people right now who are gleefully hating on Sucker Punch in general and Zack Snyder in specific. What’s really odd is, to judge from twitter, a lot of these haters are people who previously loved Snyder’s more male-centric films. Which just goes to show what I’ve always said — men suck. Well, that and nothing breeds contempt quicker than success. The fact of the matter is that it was time, in the eyes many, for Snyder to take a fall. Personally, I think Zack Snyder could be a truly noteworthy director but his style — the slow-mo action and all that — is running the risk of becoming less a storytelling tool and more of a nervous tic.
In many ways, Sucker Punch is a happy accident, a film that works despite itself. I think that’s probably why so many male filmgoers are having such a negative reaction to it — in order to surrender to a happy accident, one has to surrender the illusion of control and men aren’t exactly good at that. (Of course, neither are most women but seriously, at least we’ll admit to being lost. I mean, goddamn, guys — if you don’t know where you are, you’re lost. Just deal with it.) I expect to have a lot of people disagree with me concerning my opinion of this film and I expect those same people will probably use Sucker Punch as some sort of code word for a “bad” or “disappointing” film from now until whenever David Fincher releases his Girl with The Dragon Tattoo remake. But I think, as time goes on, Sucker Punch will probably be one of the few Zack Snyder films to truly become a cult film. 300 will be forgotten but Sucker Punch will remain.
Still recovering from the SF Giants winning the 2010 World Series so my review of the pilot episode of The Walking Dead is still in need of completion. To show that I haven’t been slacking off on my postings (Lisa Marie’s really been on a posting tear these past couple days. So proud of her.) I decided that what better stopgap until the review is up than to post the newly released 2nd trailer for Zack Snyder’s upcoming fantasy film, Sucker Punch, that seems to be a who’s who of the industry’s hottest young actresses. It has Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung and (one of Lisa Marie’s favorites) Jena Malone. To help chaperone this quintet of hotness are the mature stylings of Carla Gugino and Scott Glenn.
This latest trailer gives a bit more of the narrative to Sucker Punch, but even with that the visuals may be what brings in the audience. Snyder looks to be the king of the hyperstylized visuals in Hollywood today. Whether that translates into a well-made product is still being debated, but one can never accuse Snyder of not having the eye for the spectacular.
The trailer shows more action with dragons, anime-style mecha, samurai, Nazis and zombies. Interestingly enough the trailer skimps on the Moulin Rouge-type sequence the Comic-Con trailer showed. I’m sure those scenes will be in the final film, but Legendary Pictures look to be using the stylized action to sell the flick. I’m for it either way. If sex doesn’t sell then cool violence does in Hollywood.
I’m wondering how much Legendary Pictures ended up paying Led Zeppelin to use “When the Levee Breaks” to score this trailer. It has to be some major coinage which tells me that the studio has high-expectations about this film succeeding and raking in even more coinage.
While I wasn’t able to attend San Diego Comic-Con 2010 I did try to follow it on-line as much as possible. From what I read through Twitter updates, film blog sites and everything in-between it looks like one of the highlights of the Con was Zack Snyder’s follow-up to Watchmen. His “Alive in Wonderland with machine guns” has been gaining major league hype and buzz since more details were released and shown during it’s panel.
An earlier posting I made showed the beautiful painted character posters for the cast of Sucker Punch. This follow-up post will now show the first trailer for this film which is set for a March 25, 2011 release. From what I could see in the trailer it looks like Snyder hasn’t lost his ability to put on film some gorgeous looking set-pieces. This is a man who definitely has a flair and talent for visuals. The question now (which the trailer didn’t answer in any way) is whether Sucker Punch can match it’s amazing visuals with a worthwhile story.
This film is Snyder’s first project not based on an adapted source. Maybe we’ll see his storytelling skills blossom with Sucker Punch.
Zack Snyder’s upcoming dark urban fantasy called Sucker Punch seems tailor-made for the Comic-Con crowd. It stars some of Hollywood’s loveliest young women like Emily Browning, Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung. It also stars fanboy favorite Carla Gugino who in past genre flicks wasn’t averse to baring it all for the sake of her art.
Sucker Punch has been described by Snyder himself as Alice in Wonderland but with machine guns, not to mention B-52 bombers, dragons, brothels. From some of the sneak-peeks into the production this particular Alice-themed flick also has zombie soldiers, a mecha-suit with a pink bunny painted on the armor not to mention some steampunk added into the mix.
Just in time for this year’s Comic-Con, Warner Brothers has released for this event some very great and stunning character posters. I am actually very curious as to which artist painted and created these character posters since they’re truly gorgeous. If I only had room in my room’s walls to frame and put them up.I also like the little details in the posters. I had to stifle a silly grin after I noticed the charms hanging off of Babydoll’s automatic pistol.
Through the Shattered Lens 