The slow burn. It's a lost art in most film genres, let alone horror. Right now most horror consists of getting in, killing people quickly and shoving a few sudden appearances by the bad guy in your face. The art of suspenseful horror is one that is steadily fading from practice. This is why, among a plethora of other reasons, Paranormal Activity is one of the best modern horror films ever made. It doesn't coat the screen in blood or try to pounce on you with a sudden violin shriek. No, Paranormal Activity is a slow burn, building up terror over its entire running time until you're actually afraid for the couple the film follows to go to bed each night -- and once you leave the theater you're afraid to go to bed that night.
If you haven't heard of Paranormal Activity it is quite the Cinderella story. After being made for only $11,000 (though it doesn't show it in any way ) the film made the festival rounds winning instant cheers (or more likely screams) and was eventually picked up by Paramount, which was simply planning to do a very limited release in major cities, but due to the film's ever growing popularity the company has now decided to keep it running and add it to more cities.
That's the story behind the film, but it's the story in it that makes it so interesting. The film takes place entirely in a California home inhabited by couple who has recently moved in together. Katie, the female of the couple, has been haunted by something since she was a child, but the hauntings are getting worse. Micah, the male, decides that he will buy a video camera to record them as they sleep and see if they can capture anything. He of course records almost every other part of their life as well.
The film presents itself as home video from a real event that was put together by Paramount, and it adheres to this religiously. The opening is simply a few words of text thanking the police for the cooperation in putting the film out and the movie ends with no credits whatsoever. Of course by the end you're a little too creeped out to notice much other than the lights coming up. The film is so well paced (except maybe at the end) and put together that you start to wonder if it isn't all real. Both actors perform admirably in roles that must have been immensely challenging to even get into let alone pull off convincingly.
However, most of the film's horror credit must go to first time director Oren Peli who masterfully weaves together their story into one of the scariest things on the screen despite the fact that the creature is never seen, there is no score and the entire film takes place in a perfectly normal suburban house. Peli basically splits the film up between two parts: daytime and nighttime. Nighttime consists of the camera being placed on a tripod and watching the couple sleep and daytime consists of everything else. Nighttime is when the film gets really scary, and yet it's only about a fourth of the move. It doesn't matter though, every time the film cuts to the couple sleeping your heart instantly starts jumping and your eyes start frantically scanning the screen for anything.
Then it happens. A shadow moved or there's a thump. Small things that could happen in any house, making them all the more scary. The two sleepers might not have even noticed it, but you did and the girl next to you screaming did, and every night it gets a bit worse, a bit scarier and bit harder to pretend like you aren't freaked out every time the film cuts to the shot of the couple sleeping in bed. There's hardly anything that jumps out at you. There's barely much action other than tossing and turning, but you're scared the entire time that something is going to happen, and that's true fear and great horror. When a movie can do nothing and still be scary, you know it's doing something right.
As I said before, Paranormal Activity is an immensely slow burn. The daytime scenes are spent watching the couple attempt to understand what is going on and slowly crumble as their sleep is terrorized. It's almost normalcy for most of the movie. It's like a safety buffer between the parts where your palms start sweating and your heart picks up again. This is horror done not for the sake of gore and death, but to actually create fear. Not just fear inside the theater, fear after you leave and as you're going to bed. This isn't a horror film, it's a a lesson in how to build fear.
'Swingers' guys are all growds up
It happens to every comedian. They get older, and their comedy veers from that of the youth to that of the not so youthful. Couples Retreat is the epitome of this. The guys who made Swingers, possibly one of the most iconic male relationship movies of the 90s, have grown up and made a movie not about picking up girls, but about settling down and falling in love. For those of us who were weened on the idea that we're all "money, and we don't even know it" it's a little difficult to see, but is it bad? Not entirely. It's not entirely good either.
Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau have once again teamed up to write the screenplay for a buddy guy film. This time, however, the guys are mostly married and staring 40 in the face. When one of the guys and his wife feel that their marriage is falling apart they convince the rest of the couples to head to a marriage counseling resort with the promise that the marriage counseling is optional. Turns out it isn't, and all the couples go through questions about their marriage and life. Now the idea of Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman and Fazion Love trapped on an island doing hilarious things while accompanied by Kristen Bell, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis and Kali Hawk (all in bikinis) sounds like one of the greatest ideas on earth for a bunch of various reasons -- it sadly is not.
The film actually starts out amazingly well, especially if you've been judging its comedy from the trailers. It seems Favreau and Vaughn (accompanied by Dana Fox) still have some comedy gold in their pens. It's not as quotable as their previous efforts, but there some great lines in there. As the group gets to the island and starts counseling the comedy is sharp and entertaining. It's looking like this is going to be a far more enjoyable movie than the standard rom-com trailers made it out to be. Vaughn, Favreau, Bateman and Fazion all seem to be on some good comedy 'A' game, even if some of the slapstick is pretty cheesy. The ladies, who play a much larger part than women in previous Vaughn/Favreau films, handle much of the comedy extremely well despite the fact that the boys get all the best punchlines.
Then things take a turn for the worse. As the actual story of the film starts to unfold the comedy falls flat, like it was sprinting down the white sand beaches pictured in the film and hit the ocean to fast causing it to fall over. As the comedic scenes dry up so that we can have some romance the film completely loses its charm until it feels like a romantic comedy from hell replete with a Guitar Hero showdown of epically stupid proportions and all four couples magically working everything out at the exact same time in the exact same location. Gone is the actual quality humor of the first hour and it's replaced with the kind of stuff you expect to find in a romantic comedy about married couples going to an island.
And so we are once again left with the question of why good comedians start making terrible movies as they get older. Is it just something that happens? Once you're past 35 or so you have to start making films that have lost their edge entirely. Are they that out of touch with what is funny? If that is the case then Couples Retreat mike actually show us the exact moment when this happens to Vaughn and Favreau.
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Zombieland has one flaw, and its so minuscule that it's almost not worth mentioning, but for any zombie movie lover it is important. See, it should really be called "Infectedland" as, according to the main character's narration, the flesh eating creatures are infected by a disease which causes a zombie like state and are indeed not actually the walking dead. That's the one flaw. Otherwise Zombieland is a bloody, gorey, funny, over-the-top, zombie slaughtering piece of perfection.
The premise of the film is that America has pretty much been overrun with zombies (we're going to call them that even if it's wrong) after a zombie apocalypse has occurred. Like any good zombie apocalypse there are survivors. Four, in fact. Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a nerdy college student; Wichita (Emma Stone), a hard-edged babe; Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), Wichita's little sister; and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a zombie killing, one-liner spouting, badass cowboy. If the setup sounds a little contrived, it is, but it's what the movie does with it that makes it so awesome. The four meet, and after a little controversy decide to head toward an amusement park in California where the girls have fond childhood memories. Zombie killing ensues.
In an immensely smart move, and one more and more zombies films are taking, the film completely glazes over the arrival of the apocalypse and plops right down in the middle of it. The movie runs a blood soaked 80 minutes, and it's the perfect amount of time to run in, kill some zombies, throw out some brilliant jokes and then kill some more zombies. It might be unclear, but there are a lot of dead zombies (not in the redundant way, in the "shot through the head" way) in this movie and they all die in ways too creative to ruin here by mentioning them.
If the screenplay and directing were any sharper it would slice through its own zombie's necks. Normal comedies don't usually make you laugh this hard, let alone ones involving copious amounts of blood and guts. Harrelson's Tallahassee is particularly a joy to watch as he decapitates and dismembers zombies in some of the most creative ways out there. On top of this Columbus's narration and strict set of rules he follows (Rule #2: Double tap all zombies) make for the perfect parody of the classic zombie film. It's refreshing that these four survivors seem to have actually watched a zombie movie in their life and know not to be an idiot, except near the end when they light up an entire theme park like a giant zombie beacon.
They do that, however, in order to remain human (spiritually), and it's that part of the film that really shines through. It's not just blood and guts, but there's a solid storyline with character development and actual human choices, which are often far, far away from movies that involve zombies. Of course no one paid a ticket for that stuff when they came to see a movie called Zombieland so let me reassure you that the film has some of the greatest zombie kills I've ever seen. In fact it's a point of pride for the movie and its characters to come up with the best ways to eliminate zombies, and director Ruben Fleischer's use of slow motion to an epically overused point fits the film perfectly. There's probably more slo-mo shots than 300, but they're gloriously well done or campy.
If none of this has convinced you that Zombieland is worth the price of admission (and rewatching with beer when it comes out on DVD) then let me just throw one more nugget at you. Zombieland contains the greatest cameo put to film since Neil Patrick Harris stole Harold and Kumar's car and started snorting coke after a strippers butt. Go now, and enjoy.
'Whip It' whips up the girl power
If you're famous in Hollywood and you want to direct the chances are it's going to happen. Film companies love putting name actors' names on their movies so when one wants to direct it usually happens. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn't. Whip It is Drew Barrymore's directorial debut and she chose a girl power/indy comedy/sports film starring Ellen Page to do it with. Three genres, one first time director, a young actress; what could go wrong?
Evidently, not that much, but just enough to miss the mark. Whip It goes down and indy with the world of roller derby, a sport that was kind-of big in the 70s and is actually seeing quite the resurgence at the moment. It's not really about that though, it's really about Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page), an indy rock girl trapped in small town Texas looking for a way to truly express herself. Her overbearing mother forces her into beauty pageants and her father is a push over. She has one best friend and gets made fun of by the "cool kids." Then, on a shopping trip to Austin, she discovers roller derby and falls in love. After trying out, and discovering she's actually really fast on a pair of roller skates, she makes the team.
Of course she hasn't told her mother or father about any of this, she's underage for the league and she's falling for a boy in a rock band. If you think you've heard it before, you probably have as the film is both a bit cliche and based on a book by the same name. However, the film's story (by far its strongest point) weaves around all out sports movie/coming-of-age-story cliche by mustering up its girl power message over all else. Bliss's mom is not an evil creature, simply a protective mother. The girls on the roller derby team aren't just gags, but women and the whole relationship thing takes a decidedly refreshing turn for a movie of this type. Yes, Whip It is definitely bathing in the pools of cliche, but it's making enough waves to make it hard to tell.
Barrymore on the other hand is hardly splashing at all. Unfortunately it shows that this is her first time directing, and it shows bad. The film feels almost slapped together from the random parts she was lucky enough to capture and the actual scenes of roller derby competition are seriously lacking. Now this is the first time I've ever seen actual roller derby put to the screen (Rollberball doesn't count, I assume), so maybe it's a really tough sport to capture, but I doubt it. There's no flow to her games and it's often hard to tell what is going on. In fact it would be impossible if Jimmy Kimmel wasn't narrating the entire match as the announcer. It's too bad as more cohesive roller derby sections could have really tied the film together.
On the plus side, all the actors seem to get what is going on. Page is at once likable and plucky and Kristen Wiig, as team captain, is once again enjoyable (she seems to be the new go to comedy gal). The overall "we're so trendy" vibe of the movie doesn't ruin it either, but it sure as hell is there. Of course, when you're filming in Austin it's most likely hard to avoid that, and Bliss's mother perfectly offsets it in a very human way. Somehow, through her muddled directing, Barrymore captures some actual truth.
As a whole Whip It can entertain and is a rare girl power film that is actually about girl power. While it has its many flaws, those either in love with roller derby or just looking to have a girls night out aren't going to come out of the theater disappointed. Whip It is good, it just needs to be whipped into better shape.
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In the future, when interplanetary space travel is required because earth is about to be destroyed and we need to find a new planet, if the ships that are built are huge hulking things of metal with iron gratings and black tubing everywhere and cryogenic freezing is necessary I'm going to stay on earth to die. Enough space horror films have taught me that traveling in a ship like that is just bad news. The ship is either going to be attacked by an alien, have the computers turn on the crew or have the crew turn on it itself and go insane. Science fiction horror has taught us well that this is what will happen.
In the case of Pandorum it's the latter issue. After awakening from a cryogenic sleep, Cpl. Bower (Ben Foster) finds himself on a darkened, powerless spaceship of the type described above. He remembers almost nothing as cryogenic sleep will evidently do that to a person, but he knows the ship is on an important mission (to colonize an earth like planet because we destroyed earth), and that something isn't right. Lt. Payton (Dennis Quaid) comes out of his sleep about an hour later, but the two are stuck in the room and thus Bower must climb into the air ducts to try to get power back to the ship. Unfortunately, the ship has been overrun by deadly hunting creatures with pale skin and super strength. A few of the non-crew who were on the ship also seem to have survived by fashioning weapons and running constantly from the creatures who have been hunting humans as they randomly wake up from their cryogenic sleep. Clearly something has gone wrong. Bower meets up with two of the ships survivors and the group attempts to make it to the reactor core before the ship explodes, while Payton seems to be steadily losing his mind (what the film calls pandorum) holed up in the room that he and Bower woke up in.
All the ingredients are there for a solid space horror. There's a worrisome mental breakdown, fast moving creatures that keep to the shadows and a deadline before everyone dies. Believe it or not Pandorum bakes those ingredients into a pretty decent space horror pie, and works a bit of originality into it as well. Quaid delivers a particularly disturbing performance, especially as the film comes to its climax, and while the idea of one man being trapped alone in space is hardly new for the genre the film does treat it very well, throwing a dash of space psycological thriller into the horror film exterior.
Meanwhile, on the outside of Payton's solitary confinement the attacking creatures offer up some very solid scares and even more impressively some decent action. While the monsters do keep to the shadows, this isn't a film where you don't see the big bad until the end. Hand to hand fights with the creatures take place early and often, and the sort of tribal weaponry of both the few survivors and the creatures themselves makes for some very cool fights. It's a very slight twist on the classic theme of being trapped on a ship with predators after you, but it makes the movie far more interesting.
Pandorum is interesting. While director Christian Alvart has some issues directing his fight sequences, and even worse his horror sequences, he still manages to deliver some immensely taught moments and a couple of genuine scares. It helps that Travis Maloy's screenplay isn't dumb as dirt and keeps everything moving at a decent pace. This means that while Alvart is needlessly chopping up a scene the story is moving forward enough to make the viewer stay locked in with the characters despite the poor editing and directing. There are parts of the film where Alvart does well, experimenting with montage and visual effects, but for the most part these fall through or are rampantly cliche (Why does a blurry screen and echoing voices always equal space insanity?).
For fans of the genre I can't see Pandorum disappointing. It literally has it all. Is it of the pedigree of Aliens or Event Horizon (note: these two films themselves are not of the same pedigree)? No, but it's far better than most films involving these themes, and actually attempts to do something interesting with the story it has. In a genre that has pretty much stayed stagnate for years (for better or worse) that's worth seeing alone.
'Surrogates': good idea, poor execution
Surrogates is possibly the most metaphysical film ever made. Not that it is trying to be, but it definitely could be. See Surrogates is about a world where humans basically live their lives through surrogate robots that they control from the comfort of their own home. Everyone is shiny, glossy and beautiful on the outside, but their souls - the interesting parts - are stuck back at home. Everything and everyone is shiny and pretty, but it takes away what makes humans interesting. In much the same way the film itself puts a shiny action movie gloss over an incredibly interesting concept - obscuring its soul.
Surrogates is based upon the graphic novel of the same name, and the concept behind it is brilliant. Even its story could actually be immensely interesting if it was pulled off right (the graphic novel most likely did this). In a world where everyone is living their life through surrogate robots murder has disappeared and everyone can be exactly who they want to be. However, someone figures out a way to kill people through their surrogates and that is when Detective Greer (Bruce Willis) is called onto the case. He is dragged into a conspiracy that eventually leads him into the underground world of a group of people who shun surrogacy and are led by a man named The Prophet (Ving Rhames). Not only this, but Greer is dealing with issues of a dead son and a wife who has become addicted to her surrogate (as much of the world has). A foot chase and car chase ensue.
Seriously. That's it. After spending the first 30 minutes actually setting up and delivering an interesting world and plot line, the film goes into a foot chase and a car chase... and the obligatory twist. Maybe it's because the run time for the film was crammed down to 85 minutes for some reason, but after the filmmakers got all the exposition out of the way they just sort of stopped working. It's one of the most dreadful screenplays based on an amazing concept I've ever seen. You could literally feel the cool ideas begging to be released from the tepid screenplay binding them in.
If you simply saw the first 30 or so minutes of the film you would probably come away thinking you might be seeing a serious sci-fi success, with a slightly poor screenplay. Hints of Blade Runner pervade, though in a far brighter and cheerier world. The film teases at being a truly well done science fiction thriller, and then suddenly stops. Subtle hints at questions of humanity become clear lines between good and evil. Questions and ideals raised disappear into the clear cut definitions of Hollywood cinema. The film truly becomes a surrogate of itself: cold, removed and slightly off from what you know it should be like.
Speaking of the surrogates, they're awesome. If you've seen any film that features an actor made younger by digital effects you know the strange "too smooth" look they get. In Surrogates that look actually makes sense. The filmmakers and actors did a wonderful job of making the surrogates seem just that slight bit off. They're a bit too smooth, a bit too postured, a bit too uncanny. Almost everyone in the movie nails it, except for Ving Rhames, who was one of the worst casting decisions in years. The incredibly cool execution of the surrogates makes the film's last hour all the worse, as you watch the subtle hints of the surrogate's lack of humanity get replaced by speed running and massive jumps onto the roofs of speeding buses. I'm all for action, but not when it's at the cost of something that could have been truly special.
Thus we come to two conclusions. The first is that Surrogates is a brilliant art film that parodies and critiques itself by actually becoming a surrogate for its true soul. The second is that Surrogates is yet another film that got swallowed by the Hollywood machine and spit out the other side. It's a surrogate of itself, but it's hardly aware of that fact. Sadly, I believe the truth of the matter to be the latter.
Oh, and despite the bad review, Bruce Willis is still awesome.
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What an absolutely gorgeous and intriguing yet entirely underdeveloped and sadly shallow world the film 9 takes place in. It's like watching a painting come to life, and then realizing that the world of the painting is only as deep as its inks. Or, more aptly in this case, watching a perfectly good idea for a short film get stretched out into a full length movie and injected with a bit of Hollywood.
The latter is more apt because of the fact that this is exactly what 9 is. Adapted from the the Academy Award nominated short film of the same name, 9 is the story of nine living rag dolls (gamers out there will be reminded of LittleBigPlanet, though 9 came first) who find themselves living in an utterly demolished world where humans and machines have fought each other to the death leaving behind only the nine doll people, a cryptic message from a dead scientist and robotic dog-skeleton beast. The story begins with the awakening of the ninth rag doll and his exploration of the world he finds himself in.
He eventually finds the other nine dolls. The dolls, led by 1, are living in a church hiding from the creature (religious and Greek myths play a massive part in the film) until 9 comes along and starts to shake things up, eventually accidentally triggering the rebirth of the big, bad machine that builds all the other machines. The nine aren't sure why they exist or where they're from, but they do know that a big robot building machines that want to kill them is a bad thing, and so they go to destroy it.
The world the film takes place in is without a doubt one of the more creative ideas to come out of a movie in a long while. Director Shane Acker, who also created the original short, has a wicked imagination that leads to some pretty creepy robot creations. The nine rag dolls are also deceptively well designed and instantly likable. Acker's direction and pacing are also superb throughout the film, with action sequences being true edge-of-your-seat affairs and the movie being immensely well paced for the time it has. Acker has some true talent for animation, which makes 9 ring far deeper than normal animated film. While mostly acceptable for children, 9 is far more geared toward those who will understand its themes on life, the soul and mortality.
Unfortunately, those themes aren't presented in a very concrete world. The gaps in logic and plot are just too big for 9's good looks to overcome. By the time the film rolls around to its immensely disappointing and out of place ending it feels about as hollow as an unstuffed rag doll. There are all these great ideas floating around, but none of them ever come together to make a truly cohesive whole and the film suffers a death toll because of it. Maybe it was the forced Hollywoodization of the film or maybe Acker just didn't have enough ideas to go around, but the movie stops being as interesting as it could be around the exact time it needs to truly be interesting. In an ultimate twist of irony for those who have seen the movie, the film lacks soul.
As the first attempt by a talented animation director, 9 is truly a pleasurable film, but as a whole it falls flat far more than it should. While creativity and great ideas might get a movie off the ground there has to be more there to really make it work. Hopefully in the future Acker will be able to piece it all together, because if that is ever the case PIXAR could finally have a fantastic rival for the digital animation throne.
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Sorry guys, no Gamer review as my screening was canceled. Hopefully I'll get to see it over the weekend.
Judge extracts the plot, leaves the comedy
It's pretty clear that at some point in time Mike Judge was a comic genius. Anyone who fails to see the satirical humor in Beavis and Butthead or who doesn't appreciate the comedic masterpiece that is Office Space is missing out on the best of modern comedy. However, since Office Space it's been a little more rocky. King of the Hill has its sweet spots and so did Idiocracy, but overall they've been far more uneven than his early work. In Extract Judge returns to the workforce, the question is does the magic return with him?
Extract doesn't quite approach the workplace the way that Office Space did if at all really. The film simply takes place in an extract plant and isn't about "working." The plant is owned by Joel (Jason Bateman). He's stuck in a marriage that has gone flat and no one seems to appreciate the wonder of extracts as much as he does. After a freak accident involving an employee losing a testicle Cindy (Mila Kunis) comes into town looking to con her way into the money that Joel's employee will get if he sues the company. Meanwhile, Joel hires a gigolo to sleep with his wife after his friend, Dean (Ben Affleck) convinces him its a good idea while Joel is drunk and stoned. Things then spiral out of control.
Or they should. Things actually never lose any control. In fact the entire film has almost no dramatic pull to it at all. The 90 minute running time keeps things so tightly confined that the only storyline that gets truly developed is Joel's love life, leaving Cindy and her conning relatively pointless to the main thrust of the film. It makes what should be a quick and punchy comedy into one that feels like it drags on far longer than it should. At the end of the film, when everything is being wrapped up in a convenient way, it literally feels like the film hasn't moved anywhere.
Thankfully, while Judge's pacing and storytelling skills are way off, his comedic skills still shine. The film would have been far better off as a series of humorous vignettes touching on topics from drug use, to sleazy lawyers to blue collar workers. There are some seriously funny scenes and a priceless cameo from Gene Simmons. However, the comedy doesn't quite hit the same perfect spot that his previous work has. It seems less genuine. You'll laugh, but it isn't from the smarts the film has, but from the stupid. The movie is funny, yes, but classic, no.
Of course expecting every film to be a classic is a little ridiculous, and you can definitely do far worse with your comedies. The main problem is it never really pops, and with a cast and writer that we know can actually pop, this fact is a bit surprising. Extract actually has to extract its laughs from the movie (pardon the pun), and that is something great comedy never has to do.
No issue with 'The September Issue'
There are two types of people in the world: those who know who Anna Wintour is and those who don't. The September Issue is a documentary that will easily be enjoyed by both these groups. Those who don't know who she is will find it interesting and humorous to learn about her and those who do know who she is will be able to discover the real woman behind the inspiration for The Devil Wears Prada, not to mention drool all over the copious amounts of Yves Saint Lauren, Louis Vuitton and other high end designers flung across the screen.
Yes, The September Issue is all about putting out the massive and iconic September issue of American Vogue, but this documentary is not just for the fashion elite. The film chronicles the five month lead up to the publication of the 2007 September issue and documents with incredible openness notorious editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's epic feat of putting it together. It also documents those who work with her to do this feat including American Vogue's Creative Director Grace Coddington who seems to be the one who butts heads with Wintour the most. The 2007 September issue was the largest in the magazines history with 840 pages and a weight of over five pounds. I say that's big, my fiancee describes it as wonderful. We come from different points of view on this, obviously.
We can both agree that the movie is wonderful, though. Shockingly candid for a film about a section of the world that is usually closed off to most the movie deftly weaves not just through the production of the magazine, but the people who put it together too. Yes, much of what you see in The Devil Wears Prada is actually true. Wintour rules fashion with a powerful fist, and what she says goes. Unlike The Devil Wears Prada, Wintour doesn't come across like an ice queen, but more of a determined editor doing what she has to do to put together 840 pages of magazine involving a plethora of models, photographers, fashion designers and editors -- all of whom quake in their boots in hilarious fashion when Wintour is around. If you ever want to see some of the most high powered designers in the world shake like scared, little children arrange them a meeting with Wintour.
While Wintour is immensely interesting, especially the few parts with her daughter, who blatantly states she doesn't understand what her mother does and doesn't want to work in the fashion industry because people take it far too seriously, it is Coddington who steals the show both with her frankness and humor. Coddington puts a large portion of the photo shoots together and subsequently has them torn apart and cut to shreds by the discriminating eye of Wintour who she has worked with for the past 20 years. It is this give and take (and it's mostly take by Wintour) that envelops the entire development of the issue and truly makes the film interesting. Coddington is often livid with what Wintour does, but she's also respecting of the skill and power that she wields. It's an immensely interesting study of a work relationship, and also makes for one of the most entertaining documentaries in years.
This might also be because the film is surprisingly unpretentious for its subject matter. Director R.J. Cutler has woven together a film that neither denigrates nor hails its subject matter -- a feat that is no easy task. While the cameras and film crew are clearly there (this isn't some grasp at "real life" being documented) they never intrude to a point where one believes they are influencing the goings on to any great effect and when they do they do it in ways that show the nature of the characters (Coddington plays on Wintour's ego to raise the budget of a shoot by discussing it in front of the cameras).
What is most surprising about he film is just how entertaining it is. It isn't simply interesting to see how American Vogue is put together, but actually fun, humorous and insightful. Plus, Wintour is really a b**ch sometimes, and that is always good to watch.
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I was not alive to experience Woodstock, and since the hippie movement (or anything like it) doesn't seem to be coming back any time soon I seriously doubt I'll have the pleasure of ever experiencing anything like it. No, us twenty-somethings must rely on documentaries and stories from our parents to attempt to understand how important the concert was and exactly how it felt. It is then a little disappointing that Taking Woodstock simply scratches the surface of what Woodstock meant, fleetingly dabbling in true ideas while mostly staying light and airy.
The main issue seems to be that Taking Woodstock wants to be two different movies. One is a screwball comedy that plays off the antics of hippies, Vietnam vets and New York Jews and the other is a serious film about the changing world of the late 1960s. Sadly, making fun of the hippies and the culture of the 60s completely contradicts praising it and them, and thus the film unevenly wobbles between its own ideas, unsure if it wants to treat the generation of peace and love with reverence or as a bunch of cliche punchlines.
However, this doesn't make Taking Woodstock a bad movie. When it is on point about the culture and the festival it shines. Most of the time this is when the film is about its lead character Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin) and not about the planning of the concert and the hippies who invade the small town Teichberg lives in so they can come to Woodstock. Elliot and his parents own a motel that is on the skids, and so, Elliot invites Woodstock to town, and Woodstock comes. It's Elliot's story of love, finding himself and acceptance within the context of the concert that gets interesting eventually, but the slow pacing could definitely throw a few people off.
Of course it wouldn't be an Ang Lee film if it wasn't full of slow pacing. The director couldn't even make Hulk move quickly. Aside from the pacing though -- which may or may not be a bad thing -- Lee does some very solid directing. A drug induced trip is one of the better moments of the film where the movie seems to be actually taking itself seriously instead of simply sloshing its way through the stereotypes of hippies. This comes near the end, as does most of the powerful parts of the film, but the film's opening didn't attach viewers enough to the characters thanks to the levity and inconsistency and thus the scenes that should be powerful are simply a wash.
Again, it's hard to not enjoy aspects of Taking Woodstock. The film is indeed not bad. The acting is fine, the directing works well and the film's story is interesting enough to carry it through its over two hour running time. Thanks to its inconsistencies though it never truly seems to be about something and for a movie about a concert and a generation that was the epitome of being "about something" that is a terrible crime. Taking Woodstock is a fine film, it just isn't what it wants to be or what it should be.
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