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Attack of the Giant Amphibian!

Jim Emerson

“Run away! Run away!”

From my review of “The Host” on RogerEbert.com:

A horror thriller, a political satire, a dysfunctional family comedy, and a touching melodrama, Bong Joon-ho’s “The Host” is also one helluva monster movie. It’s the recombinant offspring of all those science-fiction pictures of the 1950s and ’60s in which exposure to atomic radiation (often referred to as both “atomic” and “radiation”) or hazardous chemicals (sometimes also radioactive) results in something very large and inhospitable: “Them!” (giant ants), “Tarantula” (giant spider), “Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People” (giant fungi), “The Amazing Colossal Man” (giant bald guy), “The Giant Behemoth” (giant behemoth — both giant and a behemoth, but more precisely a radioactive ocean-dwelling Godzilla clone), “Frankenstein Conquers the World” (giant Frankenstein’s monster atomically regenerated from the beating heart of the original monster after the A-bomb is dropped on Hiroshima), and so on.

In “The Host” (a k a “Gwoemul”), the mutagen is a simple aldehyde, HCHO (possibly even a radioactive variety). The movie opens in the year 2000 at the Yongsan U.S. Army base in Seoul, where an American mortician (the always superb Scott Wilson, clearly having fun) orders a Korean subordinate to dump dusty bottles of “dirty formaldehyde” into the sink … which empties into the Han River. When the underling objects, the American insists, “The Han River is very… broad, Mr. Kim. Let’s try to be broad-minded about this.” Had Al Gore been present, he would have made a persuasive counter-argument with colorful charts and graphs about the dangers of poisoning our fragile planet, but an order is an order, so down the drain the noxious stuff goes.

(This scene is based on a notorious incident involving Albert McFarland, an American civilian mortician at the Yongsan military base, who in 2000 ordered his staff to pour 120 liters of formaldehyde into the morgue’s plumbing. Although the chemicals passed through two treatment plants before reaching the Han, source of Seoul’s drinking water, the scandal sparked an anti-American uproar in South Korea.)

At the movie’s center is the Park family, a clan no less eccentric than the Hoovers of “Little Miss Sunshine.” (Think “Little Miss Sashimi.”)…

The creature — just like (spoiler warning) the Moroccan kids who accidentally shoot the American employer of the Mexican nanny with the rifle formerly belonging to the Japanese businessman with the deaf daughter who is sexually provocative in “Babel” (end of spoiler warning) — unknowingly precipitates an international incident. And in the ensuing pandemonium, the Parks are forced to fend for themselves….

Continued at RogerEbert.com…

Whiplash: Indiana Jones and the Lowered Expectations

Jim Emerson

View image “Welcome to the Cannes Film Festival, kid.”

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” screened all over the world yesterday — on a Sunday afternoon, roughly in synch with the gala unveiling of the picture at the Cannes Film Festival. The usual film-festival and press-screening review embargoes were promptly ignored, so although the movie opens May 22, many outlets ran full reviews on their websites immediately. Because… well, because they could, I suppose. Variety even posted a preview of the review that its reviewer was about to write, in case, after 19 years of anticipating the next “Indiana Jones” movie, you couldn’t stand waiting one more minute while he took the time necessary to process and record his thoughts about the film he’d just seen. Not because he believed it was great or a disaster or even because he had anything in particular he wanted to say about it right away, but because… well, Daily Variety knew its readership simply could not do without knowing instantly that the movie “begins with an actual big bang, then gradually slides toward a ho-hum midsection before literally taking off for an uplifting finish.” OK! Doesn’t that just whet your appetite for the full-course review?

As Roger Ebert noted on his blog Monday, he saw the film in Chicago and loved it, but at the time he filed his review he suspected he might be going against the critical tide, if there was one:

Take Mulholland Dr. to the Lost Highway, Inland Empire exit…

Jim Emerson

“I’m there right now”: The lost highway goes down Mulholland Drive and through the Inland Empire…

It is possible that many people would not describe David Lynch’s movies as “straightforward,” but they’re really pretty simple to grasp if you think of them as meditations on states of consciousness rather than chronological narratives (or, uh, “straight stories”). They still have beginnings, middles and endings and they take you from one place (or way of seeing) to another. “Inland Empire,” for example, is about a Hollywood actress (who may or may not be unfaithful to her husband — but is that the actress or the Southern gal she’s playing or someone else?), a suburban wife married to a former animal handler in a Polish carny, a mistress, a Polish whore… And all of them appear to be aspects of the same woman, played by Laura Dern. Or, perhaps, all these women are aspects of one another: the actress feels like a whore, the wife is also a mistress, the whore is also an actress, the actress’s character is having an adulterous affair, and so on and so on.

I think “Lost Highway,” “Mulholland Drive” and “Inland Empire” are (“Twin Peaks” aside — that’s in a realm of its own) Lynch’s strongest work, and they also feel like extensions of one another. The saxophonist played by Bill Pullman and the mechanic played by Balthazar Getty, the actresses played by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring, the actress played by Laura Dern — they all seem like variations on similar ideas. (“Mulholland Dr.” is basically “Lost Highway” in reverse.)

In Lynch’s book “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity” he describes “Lost Highway,” for example, in a way that seems perfectly clear when you watch it:

At the time Barry Gifford and I were writing the script for “Lost Highway,” I was sort of obsessed with the O.J. Simpson trial. Barry and I never talked about it this way, but I think the film is somehow related to that.

What struck me about O.J. Simpson was that he was able to smile and laugh. He was able to go golfing with seemingly very few problems about the whole thing. I wondered how, if a person did these deeds, he could go on living. And we found this great psychology term — “psychogenic fugue” — describing an event where the mind tricks itself to escape some horror. So, in a way, “Lost Highway” is about that. And the fact that nothing can stay hidden forever.

(The fact that Robert Blake, who appeared as the chilling Mystery Man in that film, was latter tried for the murder of his wife, adds another sinister dimension to the film, or the atmosphere surrounding it.) Dave McCoy, Editor of MSN Movies, has summarized the movie this way: “It’s about a guy who kills his wife and is so horrified by what he’s done that the only way he can deal with it is to become another person… and a character in a film noir, no less, where women are evil and violence can be easily rationalized.”

Hey, what more do ya need? A map? Just remember: DON’T YOU EVER F—IN’ TAILGATE!!! I’m sorry about that, Pete, but tailgating is one thing I cannot tolerate….

Opening Shots Pop Quiz: Answers

Jim Emerson

Here goes. For the time being, I’m just going to offer up the answers to the Opening Shots Pop Quiz, without further elaboration or analysis in most cases — because these shots are so great they deserve full Opening Shots treatments of their own. (And you, by the way, are welcome to provide them if you are so inclined!)

‘The Descent’: A horror-thriller for movie freaks

Jim Emerson

Poster image for “The Descent.”

Neil Marshall’s “The Descent” is the most exhilarating and exciting psychological horror-thriller I’ve seen in years. I call it a “psychological horror-thriller” because I don’t know quite how to fit it into a genre. It belongs somewhere between “Deliverance,” “Alien” and “Jaws” — the story of six women for whom a cave-diving expedition becomes a descent into the abyss. This poster expresses the sensibility of the movie brilliantly (click “Continue reading” for a look at the classic Surrealist image that inspired it).

I’ve seen ads that promote “The Descent” as being “from the studio that brought you ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel'” — but what makes it so powerful is that it’s not another piece of literal-minded torture porn. It’s a smart movie designed for people who love movies, and it’s full of clever and effective, ingeniously integrated references to other memorable thrillers, concentrating on classics from the 1970s (like the titles mentioned above). “The Descent” is an adrenaline work-out for anybody, but especially thrilling for movie buffs.

WARNING: Do not look up this movie on IMDb or other movie sites. Some have spoilers right there on the main page!

Back up and running

Jim Emerson

Comments (and publishing capabilities!) are working again. Hope to catch up today!

Moments later: Now comments submitted say “Text is wrong.” Whatever that means.

The Social Network: A short film that’s also a trailer

Jim Emerson

Normally I don’t like to watch trailers because they have come to consist of all the high points of the movie condensed into a big spoiler package. I don’t recommend watching them for anything you might want to have the opportunity to discover for yourself. But this one (shown before “Inception” this weekend) is more than just a collection of clips from David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” about the founding of Facebook. The use of a choir singing Radiohead’s “Creep” over images from Facebook pages is inspired: an angst-ridden, self-loathing (but aspirational) song about a self-described “creep” yearning to be accepted.* All of us tailor our identities for particular audiences (it’s called “living”), and in its first 30 seconds or so this mini-movie encapsulates something poignant (and, perhaps, somewhat sinister) about that process in the era of the online “social network.”

Also, instead of telling you the whole story of the feature film (much of which is already well-known Internet history), these two and a half minutes pack more emotion — related to friendship (in several senses of the word), ambition, success, betrayal, rejection, revenge — than most features. Rather than simply condensing the juiciest bits into a quick sales pitch, it poetically (and cinematically) suggests what the movie might be… something that combines an entrepreneurial success story with a legal drama and a portrait of a (sociopathic?) misfit who achieves… what? You’ll have to see the movie to find that out.

TIFF 2007: Coen Brothers update

Jim Emerson

Re: “No Country for Old Men.” I just want to get this out of my system right now, between movies: Fantasticsplendidsuperbterrificwonderfulamazingbrilliantmasterpiece. Unblurbable? If you’re not exhilarated by this piece of filmmaking, then I don’t know what you could possibly like about movies. More when I have a chance to organize my overstimulated, overstuffed eyeballs and brain. I’m only five seven movies into my festival, and not a dud in the bunch, which is most unusual. A sight for sore eyes, indeed….

New Message from Roger

Jim Emerson

It’s great to hear from Roger Ebert, who has this message at RogerEbert.com:

It’s been some time since I checked in to let you know how I’m doing. I had hoped to be back in my seat in the balcony alongside my partner Richard Roeper, but the surgeons tell me they will have to take a staged, multi-phased approach to getting me back in shape. To borrow from the Chicago Bears, we tried for the long pass, but now we’re going for a series of shorter passes until we score a touchdown.

Although I won’t be able to conduct my red carpet interviews at the Academy Awards, I plan to conduct my “Outguess Ebert” contest in the Sun-Times, and I intend to work with WLS/ABC 7 to make my predictions for the Oscars. In fact, I am eagerly awaiting watching the Academy Awards like a regular spectator for the first time. And Richard and the guest hosts will carry on our tradition on “Ebert & Roeper” of telling who they think should win.

For the rest of Roger’s letter, and an update on what he’s been doing, click here.

The micro and the macro

Jim Emerson

Jonathan Lapper of Cinema Styles, who’s also a valued contributor in comments here at scanners, takes me to task for my recent analyses (or over-analyses, if you prefer) of clips from “The Dark Knight” (“Is that any way to review a movie?”). I’ll answer that question myself: No, and I wasn’t claiming to be writing a review of the movie. But here’s what Jonathan wrote:

Telling me the school bus escape doesn’t make sense doesn’t tell me “The Dark Knight” is a bad movie. It tells me that particular scene doesn’t make sense. In the meantime, I’ve learned nothing about the rest of the film. I’ve learned nothing about the themes of the film. I’ve learned nothing about the story, the characters or the plot’s development. In short, I’ve learned nothing except that the critic publishing the piece knows how to pick a scene out of a film to suit his or her purpose. That way lies sophistry. And that’s no way to review a movie.

Ouch. I have to say, if that’s what I had pretended to be doing I wouldn’t have approved of it, either. But I feel my method and intent have been misinterpreted (largely because I think I botched the approach myself), so I’d like to try, at least, to set the record straight here (as I also did in Jonathan’s comments):

(Again: This post is entirely self-serving. If you want to go through this with me once more, please click; if not, please don’t.)

Losing control, or ceding control, or not…

Jim Emerson

Mr. Lazarescu pukes blood strings on his living room rug. He is not at all well.

Critics, filmmakers and pundits have been writing quite a bit over the last few years about what “digital” means for the future of cinema, and about the sorry state of the audience for foreign language films (not just distribution and exhibition, but demand) in the United States in the age of the DVD. Much of this speculative writing has been hopelessly vague and rather dismal — and, in some cases, I don’t think the writers really understand what they’re talking about. But for every dozen “digital doomsday” observations, there’s a concrete insight that’s worth considering.

I’d like to take excerpts from three recent pieces and follow a thread that I think connects them:

David Denby, The New Yorker (January 8, 2007):

In a theatre, you submit to a screen; you want to be mastered by it, not struggle to get cozy with it. Of course, no one will ever be forced to look at movies on a pipsqueak display—at home, most grownups will look at downloaded films on a computer screen, or they’ll transfer them to a big flat-screen TV. Yet the video iPod and other handheld devices are being sold as movie-exhibition spaces, and they certainly will function that way for kids. According to home-entertainment specialists I spoke to in Hollywood, many kids are “platform agnostic”—that is, they will look at movies on any screen at all, large or small.

A.O. Scott, The New York Times (January 21, 2006):The [National Society of Film Critics] vote stands out a bit amid all this welter because its top three choices for best picture of the year were all movies in languages other than English. The third-place finisher was Clint Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima,” which is in Japanese; the runner-up was “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” a Romanian film directed by Cristi Puiu; and the winner, by a narrow margin, was “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Guillermo del Toro’s tale of magic and malevolence in 1940s Spain. [NOTE: Subsequently, the mostly-foreign-language films “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Babel” were nominated for Best Picture Oscars, while “Pan’s Labyrinth” received six nominations, including Best Foreign Language Film.]

The honors bestowed on those three movies, not only by the National Society of Film Critics, might be taken as evidence that foreign films are flourishing…. The movies are out there, more numerous and various than ever before, but the audience — and therefore the box-office returns, and the willingness of distributors to risk even relatively small sums on North American distribution rights — seems to be dwindling and scattering. For every movie that manages to solicit a brief flicker of attention, there are dozens that will be seen only at film festivals or on region-free DVD players.

David Lynch, in his book “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity” (published December 28, 2006): I’m through with film as a medium. For me, film is dead. If you look at what people all over the world are taking still pictures with now, you begin to see what’s going to happen. I’m shooting in digital video now and I love it. […]

How we see films is changing…. A tiny little picture, instead of a giant big picture, is going to be how people see films. And the good news: At least people will have their headphones. Sound will become, I think, even more important…. The whole thing is, when those curtains open up, and the lights go down, we must be able to go into that world. And it many ways, it’s getting very difficult to go into a world. People talk so much in theaters. And there’s a tiny, crummy little picture. How do you get the experience?

I think it’s going to be a bit of a bumpy road. But the possibility is there for very clean pictures — no scratches, no dirt, no water marks, no tearing — and an image that can be controlled in an infinite number of ways. If you take care of how you show a film, it can be a beautiful experience that lets you go into a world. We’re still working out ways for that to happen. But digital is here; the video iPod is here; we’ve just got to get real and go with the flow.

I think Lynch, Scott and Denby are all correct in what they say above. Although elsewhere in his piece, Denby oversells an idealized view of “the theatrical experience” (which “theatrical experience”?) as if all 16mm, 35mm and/or 70mm (or VistaVision or Todd A-O or IMAX) presentations were the same: The Best Of All Possible Ways To See A Movie. The most important thing, as I think all of us would agree, is that the audience feel able to submit to the film. We may fight it, we may be unwilling to go where the film wants to take us, but we should, as Lynch says, be allowed to “go into that world.”

Ten Movies That Shook The World

Jim Emerson

View image Emission accomplished!

“Ten Movies That Shook The World” (1977 – 1999), the semi-sequel to my piece on “How “Star Wars” Changed Everything,” is now at MSN Movies.

Excerpt:

“Beverly Hills Cop” (1984)

It’s a comedy. It’s an action movie. It’s a fish-out-of-water story. It has Eddie Murphy. It’s the ’80s in a nutshell! Here we have the quintessential example of the “high concept” movie that has lit the light which is green at studios from Burbank to Culver City. I saw it with Eszter Balint, the then-18-year-old Hungarian-American actress who played cousin Eva in “Stranger Than Paradise.” She told me afterward that she felt bad for the families of all the expendable characters who were killed in the gunfight and car chase scenes. With its (some would say rather callous) synthesis of comedy and violence, “BHC” (and Walter Hill’s “48 HRS”) brought a slicked-up exploitation-movie sensibility into the mainstream, paving the way in the 1990s for “Pulp Fiction” and its imitators.

“Top Gun” (1986)

A breakthrough in the portrayal of homoeroticism in Hollywood movies (we’ve all seen Quentin Tarantino’s monologue about how it’s the gayest movie ever, right?), as well as the apotheosis of the slick, MTV-style action picture produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (now just Bruckheimer, since Don Simpson OD’d on Tinseltown decadence). The deliberate, disorienting music-video cutting, the contemporary pop soundtrack, the shameless celebration of testosterone-injected buddy love — it’s all here, from Tony Scott (“The Last Boy Scout,” “Beverly Hills Cop II,” “Domino”) to Michael Bay (“Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor”) and beyond. One could argue that Adrian Lyne’s 1983 celluloid video about the lady welder who was “a maniac, maniac” for dancing under buckets of water at gentlemen’s clubs (aka “Flashdance”) deserves this spot, but it lacks the militaristic gay element that became so prevalent in popular movies. “Brokeback Mountain” may have been sired out of “Red River,” but “Top Gun” also blazed a trail for it.

Go here for the complete list and overview…