Movie Reviews, Aug. 17, 2006

You Are Who You Watch (Printable Version , E-mail to a Friend )
(my editor at the paper comes up the the titles, not me. This one, for instance, I think sucks donkey balls.)

As a professional movie critic, I keep up with the trades. Don’t be me wrong. I don’t read Variety all the time (the sticker price is a bit on the high side for my purposes). But I do keep up.
 
For the last two, three weeks, I’ve been hearing that World Trade Center isn’t a typical Oliver Stone movie. By that I mean it’s not provocative, misleading or conspiracy theory-minded. That’s unusual for the guy.
 
But it’s been just five years since 9/11. Is it yet time to go making movies about it? I know I asked that question earlier this year when United 93 came out. I’m asking it again. Is it too early to be making films about 9/11?
 
I still say yes. I still say it’s kind of tasteless. But there’s money to be made—and for Hollywood, if it’s legal (or at least borderline defendable), the attitude is “let’s exploit it!”
 
Big budget movies aren’t a memorial to anything. They may say stuff like “This movie was dedicated to . . . ” at the beginning or end of the film, but you know what? Those are just pretty words they put up for the filmmaker’s edification.
 
Maybe that’s the intent of the writer or director, but studios don’t put out movies to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy. They do it to put people’s butts in the seats and make money. It’s just like an actor feeding you the business about wanting to work on his “craft.” Bollocks. Actors, in big-budget films, want to get paid. They want the fame and they want the money. Not saying I blame them, mind you, I just don’t believe anyone in a major Hollywood studio is in the least bit altruistic.
 
So honestly, it appalls me movies are being made about 9/11. To my mind, it’s disrespectful to the victims and their families. Children of victims of the attack are still children. Five years isn’t such a long time. We’re still in retaliation mode. Isn’t that, allegedly, what the current war started out about?
 
Did I go see World Trade Center? No, I didn’t. I can’t sit here and call them wrong for making the film and then go and watch the thing, now can I? That’d be like condoning it.
 
Of course, it would seem I’m being inconsistent. I did go see United 93, after all. Maybe I don’t cut Oliver Stone the same slack I do other directors. Maybe I’m less inclined because Flight 93 had no “name” actors and a budget four times smaller than World Trade Center. Maybe I should cut Stone some slack. I just don’t want to.
 
So what did I see? Maybe this is punishment for not attending last weekend’s “good” film, but I sat through Pulse, which was a sack of crap. I also pre-screened The War Tapes, which opens August 22 at The Circle, and Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, which opens this weekend at the AMC.
 
Pulse first, because I’m feeling feisty and perhaps vindictive. Total garbage. And maybe I should’ve expected that because it had Wes Craven’s name on it. I know he’s made some decent horror films, but more often than not, his stuff has sucked. Truth is, I didn’t realize it was a Craven movie until his name showed up on the credits. I might’ve actually gone to see World Trade Center.
 
I actually thought Pulse might be entertaining from the trailers. Should’ve known better. Studios are better at selling films than making them. Really, when has the film lived up to the promise of the trailer? It’s a rarity.
 
Story: A college kid/hacker named Josh (Jonathan Tucker), who looks like a strung-out junkie, goes to the library looking for someone. Josh is paranoid. He’s twitchy. He’s jumpy.
 
Not for no reason. Whereever he walks, the lights flicker. And things seem to be following him, though he can’t see them. Then something comes out of the stacks, grabs his head and sucks out his soul.
 
Mattie (Kristen Bell), Josh’s sorta girlfriend, is both annoyed with and worried about him. No one’s seen him for days. He hasn’t returned her calls. Or email.
 
Then he leaves a cryptic message. She decides to go investigate and shows up at his crummy dorm room/apartment (if it’s a dorm, he ought to be mad, cause it’s a slum). She finds him sitting behind a plastic curtain in the dark doing nothing. He mumbles something about not being himself anymore, tells her to wait there, then goes down the hall and hangs himself.
 
She’s a little freaked out. She and the rest of the Scooby gang are consoling each other on IM when they get a message from Josh. He’s asking for help.
 
As they start to look into the weird message, at first thinking it’s some sort of weird glitch with Josh’s computer, things start getting weird on campus. There’s a “suicide” epidemic.
 
And then they start seeing stuff on their computers. People killing themselves. Someone somewhere figures out ghosts of some kind are coming through the computers, through the wi-fi and through cell phone networks. Someone let the dead get in.
 
Golly. It’s soooo scary. Yeah, not really. It’s not even very entertaining. It’s paced slow enough to make you think about how uncomfortable your theatre seat is. When you have that much time to think about a movie, you’ll start noticing all the stuff that doesn’t make sense, which is never a good thing. About the only thing it had going for it was Kristen Bell, but if these are the kinds of movies she’s going to make, you won’t be seeing much of her. I guess she’s still got Veronica Mars.
 
Skip it. Maybe it’s a renter, but I wouldn’t even really recommend that.
 
 
Tunesmith’s Tale
 
 
Because I like to save the best for last, let’s chat about Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. More or less, it’s a documentary bio-pic about singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen.
 
It comes in three parts, really, intertwined. There are interviews with Cohen where he talks about his life. He talks about his childhood in Montreal, about being Jewish. He talks about time he spent in New York. Mostly he talks about his craft. It’s clear he thinks of himself more as a writer than a singer.
 
The second part of the film is composed of interviews with musicians he’s influenced, such as Bono and Edge of U2. I always find it interesting to see the different ways an icon has influenced other people, as it varies from person to person. In this case, Nick Cave had very different things to say than Bono.
 
The third part of the film is a Cohen tribute show in Sydney, Australia. I could’ve done without this part entirely. It’s not that I didn’t want to hear the man’s music. I did. I think it’s important to experience examples of an artist’s art when you’re learning about them.
 
But I wanted to hear his music performed by him, not a bunch of random artists who claim to have been influenced by Cohen. Sure, they’re well intentioned, but hearing him at the end, I’d rather have had the real deal. Most of the music was nearly intolerable. To me.
 
If you’re a huge fan of Cohen, this film’s for you. Unfortunately, I think this film is just for you. And no one else. I might’ve been up for it had I been a fan of his ahead of time, but as it stands . . . I’m going to vote “not for general consumption. Cohen fans, this one’s for you.
 
War Is . . . Confusing
 
Lastly, The War Tapes. In 2004, three National Guard soldiers got to take video cameras with them on their tour in Iraq. I guess they got the footage home and then a director spliced it all together?
 
The whole premise of the thing is a little fishy. The film is full of stuff you never see in the news. Humvee’s running over Iraqi civilians in the middle of the night. Footage of the aftermath of an IED. Footage of soldiers openly criticizing the way the war is being carried out.
 
It’s a very interesting and powerful film, and in the end, I had trouble deciding which side of the political fence it came down on. I hesitate to say neither, but . . . The film just lets the soldiers tell their own tales.
 
The three men are Sgt. Steve Pink, Sgt. Zack Bazzi and Specialist Mike Moriarty. Pink, who keeps an extensive journal and studied journalism in college for awhile, works as a carpenter in the real world. He’s much more expressive in his journal. His on-camera commentary is more sarcastic and detached.
 
Bazzi, a Lebanese-American college student, came to the States with his parents when he was 10. He’s a bright guy and has always gravitated toward leadership positions, such as having been class president in high school. He tells you he always wanted to be a solider, but he’s the most outspoken against the reasons for this war of the three. He’s the one of the bunch that re-ups at the end of his contract.
 
Moriarty is a father of two who decided after 9/11 he needed to serve. He joined the Guard and told his recruiter to assign him to whatever unit was heading to Iraq. He has a pretty bad time of it.
 
And actually, it’s not an experience easy on any of them. Two of them have post-traumatic stress syndrome when they get back. Which is understandable. Their job was to ride escort on Halliburton/KBR supply convoys. The guys all spend time talking about how much money is being made by Halliburton.
 
The film appears honest, visceral and real. It’s fascinating and horrifying. The three men are charismatic in different ways, and articulate narrators of their experiences.
 
It’s a solid, insightful film, whether you’re for or against the war. I highly recommend checking it out.
 
I won’t lie to you. It had an impact on me in no small part because my father is in Iraq right now, and I know he at least has spent some of his time over there riding shotgun for convoys. I won’t let my mom watch this movie.
 
And that’s all I have for this week. Later.