Movie Reviews, May 4

The Real and the Unreal (Printable Version , E-mail to a Friend )
This week, a sampling of what is and what could be in Hollywood

In all honesty, I’d rather just forget bothering to review Stick It altogether and just spend this whole column talking about United 93.
 
But since I wasted the time watching Stick It, I might as well waste yours with the review. And to think what my weekend would’ve been like if I’d watched R.V.
 
I can’t even remember why I was going to watch R.V. at all. It shouldn’t have been in the equation. My two movies shoulda been Akeelah and the Bee and United 93. Instead, I picked Stick It and R.V.
 
The hell is the matter with me? Ah, well, glad I fixed at least half of it.
 
Haley Graham (Missy Peregrym) has a problem with authority, which is fairly typical for a biker who breaks into new homes and rides in the new pool.
 
When a stunt goes awry and she’s busted by the cops, she’s given two choices: a military or gymnastics academy. She picks the military academy. The judge chooses the other.
 
Haley used to be an elite gymnast, but she quit in the middle of the world championships. It cost her teammates a shot at the gold, and her an entire life.
 
At Burt Vickerman’s (Jeff Bridges) academy, she’s got a chance at redemption.
 
And that’s the story, pretty much. She rebels, then finds some team spirit and then everything ends happily ever after. There’s a bunch in there in the middle about the unfairness of the gymnastics judging system, which is funny, I thought. You don’t try to make a statement in what amounts to little more than a comedy.
 
Sure, it’s got some funny lines. And sure, there are lots of shots of girls in leotards. And maybe there’s some good gymnastics, but I’d have no idea about that.
 
I’ll tell you what, it’s no Bring It On, that’s for sure--Holy crap, did I just use Bring It On for quality comparison?
 
Stick It somewhere else and save your money.
 
Let’s get on to the good stuff.
 
Real To Reel
 
When I heard about United 93, one of the planes from 9/11, well, let’s say I thought it was a bad idea.
 
Build a monument. Light a candle. Donate some money.
 
But make a movie? It’s hard for me to perceive the filmmakers’ motives as altruistic. If they were donating all the proceeds of the film to the families of the victims of 9/11, then maybe . . .
 
Just the thought of it turns my stomach, to be honest. Hollywood doesn’t deal in reality. Its stock and trade is melodramatic pandering. The most disrespectful thing I could think of toward the memory of 9/11 is a film about it. A fictionalized film of it.
 
Here’s the truth about Hollywood, about movies: They don’t portray real life. Things characters say in films are not words spoken by people in real life because those situations generally do not occur that way in real life. Real life is more abrupt. Unplanned. Organic.
 
I know, I know. Fiction is not supposed to be real life. But fiction skews more toward the written word than film. And there again, theatre, film, are what they are, stylized reflections of our world; our hearts, our dreams, our fears and imaginations.
 
In the real world, being on the right side of an argument can have as much to do with where you were born as it does your moral stance. The real world rarely shows its colors as merely black and white.
 
It’s rare then, and perhaps unrealistic, to think that a film could accurately reflect the real world. But with a film such as United 93 it has to try, else why make it?
 
You know the story. It only happened a little less than five years ago. September 11, 2001 . . . Muslim religious extremists, terrorists, hijacked four planes. They flew two of those planes into the World Trade Towers, another into the Pentagon.
 
The fourth plane, United 93, crashed to the ground outside of Shanksville, Penn. It did not destroy its intended target, our nation’s capitol.
 
This is because of the efforts of the passengers, and United 93 is their story.
 
The film isn’t like other films. It plays almost like a documentary. The characters have no names, just roles. The story takes place in airports, traffic control towers, military air control stations and the plane itself.
 
There are no stars, and the actors do not appear to be acting.
 
What you get is almost real-time reenactment of the events of that morning. You see the air traffic controllers pushing tin. You see United 93 passengers going through Newark Airport Security.
 
You see the hijackers preparing to carry out their plans. They do not wear military gear or appear to be angry men. They are not the garish stereotype, the Islamic terrorists, Hollywood has perpetuated.
 
Instead, they are pious. Devoted. They have loved ones. And they are afraid.
 
Showing this isn’t to create sympathy for them or their cause. It’s to show that they were, in fact, people, however misguided.
 
The events of the film unfold as they did in real life. The confusion is all there. Remember that morning as we watched CNN and saw the second plane fly into the tower, listened as they told us information, much of which was incorrect.
 
You get to be in the FFA traffic control center as they get reports from the various airports. You spend time with the traffic controllers as they try to figure out what’s going on with the planes.
 
You get to watch as the military tries to figure out what’s going on and what its response can and should be. You get a sense of the military’s feeling of helplessness, trying to make sense of the late and often incorrect information.
 
And all that in addition to the events on the plane itself. When the hijackers take the plane, it’s quick and bloody. When the passengers revolt, it’s chaotic and violent.
 
Then there’s the end of the film itself. There’s no other ending it could’ve had, of course. This isn’t Hollywood, after all. The story really happened. You can’t change the truth.
 
You’ll feel as though you’ve lived through something. You might be emotional. You might want to cry. You might just feel numb. But you won’t be ambivalent about what you just experienced. It’s powerful and--real.
 
I’ve never seen another film like it. The characters have no names. They have no monologues. They just interact and react. There’s no “acting.”
 
And there are no back stories. One of the things I always hate about movies, and books to an extent, is the amount of exposition they pile on you.
 
My senior creative writing teacher always said, “Show, don’t tell.” Exposition in film is usually ham handed. Two characters, friends ostensibly, will have a conversation and one will conveniently fill in the back story of the other by asking some question to which a friend in real life would already know the answer.
 
Thing is, the audience doesn’t need to know all that up front. They might not need to know it at all. I think they are perfectly capable of figuring stuff out on their own. That, or there’s a better method for getting that information into the story. Hence, show, don’t tell.
 
Here, the show method is very effective. The audience is dropped right in. Of course, the writer didn’t need to give the audience the background.
 
We all know the story.
 
We know the pain and the frustration and the futility of it all. We’re still dealing with the aftermath, and that’s why a movie like this could’ve gone horribly wrong.
 
Instead, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s one of the better movies I’ve ever seen. That’s not to say I could watch it over and over again.
 
United 93 is powerful stuff. It’s what movies should be, and if you’ve got the stomach for it, you should go see it. I understand if you have some reservations and would rather not. But don’t abstain because you think it’s not any good or disrespectful.
 
It’s a fantastic piece of cinema.
 
And that’s it.
 
 
Now Playing
 
    Mission: Impossible III: Tom Cruise can suck it, but I enjoyed the first Mission: Impossible, if not the second. I think this one could be kinda cool. I hope so, anyway, as it’s the first summer blockbuster. It’s always good to kick the season on right.