By Eric Eisenberg
If the genre of science-fiction has an enemy, its name is technology. While some of the greatest movies of the genre were filmed during the 1970s and 1980s, watching them today is almost laughable. Computers have advanced so far in the past twenty years that movies like The Lawnmower Man or The Abyss look almost cartoonish in retrospect.
Today’s films are no different. As more and more CGI is used, no matter how lifelike it looks today, a few years down the line it will look rudimentary and hacky. Someday, Transformers will look like Clash of the Titans. The only way to combat the inevitable is to be subtle and not let special effects take over the film. It is for this exact reason that John McTiernan’s Predator remains a solid action film to this day.
Just in case you have forgotten, the film follows an elite team of commandos, led by a soldier named Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger), through the Central American jungle. While hired by the CIA for a rescue mission, they soon find themselves in a game of cat and mouse with an elite hunter hiding in the trees. As Dutch’s men begin to fall, they slowly learn exactly what they are up against.
Along with Schwarzenegger’s other films of the period, Predator is considered an action/sci-fi classic. Unlike today’s action films, such as this summer’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen or G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Predator actually has qualities that make a good film: suspense, plot, and restraint.
Watching the film for the first time is years, it became immediately clear what action movies from the 1980s had that somehow got lost in the fold: catchphrases and witty dialogue, and Predator is chock full of it. Be it Jesse Ventura scoffing at an injury, claiming he “ain’t got time to bleed” or Schwarzenegger, after the alien removes its mask, calling it “one ugly motherfucker,” the lines stick with the audience and make notable scenes rememberable. Perhaps the habit jumped the shark somewhere in the 1990s, but it is surely something that would be welcomed back.
Getting back to my original point, the reason that the film is able to stay interesting is because McTiernan uses the Jaws-effect when dealing with his monster. By making the villain nearly invisible, much like the shark in Jaws, suspension builds whenever it is not around, knowing that it could show up at any time. This is also quite effective when using the disarm/surprise technique, which is used repeatedly without getting tiring.
Also tamed is the amount of C4 that is used for the action sequences. With the exception of a five-minute scene before the film’s main villain even shows up and the final explosion at the end of the film, the most we get is equivalent to fireworks. Thanks to directors such as Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay, every explosion in a contemporary action film must be seen from space and preferably take out a world wonder/national monument. For the most part, McTiernan get’s his point across with heat vision and three bundled laser pointers.
At this time, the film must also be looked at through the spectrum of its sequels, which include 1987’s Predator 2, 2004’s AVP: Alien vs. Predator, and 2007’s AVPR: Aliens vs. Predator – Requiem. Needless to say, all follow-ups have been downright awful, particularly those made in the past five years. In all three, everything that is great about the original film is thrown in the gutter for the typical and overt. Instead of hiding the Predator, he is out in the open, be it in Los Angeles, Antarctica or Colorado. Alien vs. Predator alone completely emasculates the violent hunter by getting a PG-13 rating and provides a completely unnecessary opponent that would continue into the next film. Next year a fifth film will be produced, Robert Rodriguez’s Predators and we can only hope that the last twenty-two years have provided enough of a lesson.
Based simply on its own merits, Predator is a fun film that is more than is explosions and action sequences. Nearly one-third of the film focuses on the one-on-one battle between Dutch and the predator as our hero tries to learn more about the alien creature and it is ripe with suspense and tension, hoping that his “boy scout tricks” will work against such an advanced killer. The film certainly has its flaws – the heat vision is more-than-occasionally a mess and the speed at which a Hispanic girl learns English is miraculous – but it certainly has earned its spot amongst the greatest action films of all time.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
Review: The Informant!
By Eric Eisenberg
When you get past the smaller details, there are two reasons people lie – to protect someone’s feelings and for personal gain. The former, also known as white lies, are told when grandma gives you a pair of tube socks for Christmas or you tell your wife that you would rather go clothes shopping than play golf with your friends. The latter can come in a range of sizes, be it telling your boss you are sick to get out of work or defrauding a major corporation for millions of dollars. Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon’s character in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!, certainly falls in to the second category.
It should be said, off the bat, that despite its marketing, the film is not a straight comedy, but rather a character piece. Where the laughs do come are, generally, at the expense of the character’s decisions rather than their dialogue or physical action. Instead, the audience simply marvels at the web of intricacies that the main character has established.
In the film, Matt Damon plays the afore mentioned Mark Whitacre, a high level executive at ADM, one of the largest agricultural conglomerates in the world. After learning that the company has been fixing its prices with its competitors and discovering that he may be getting set up to take the fall, Whitacre decides to become an informant for the FBI. Paired with FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula), Whitacre begins to tape conversations, videotape meetings and expose the head executives of the company for their violations of anti-trust laws. What the FBI is not aware of, however, is what else Whitacre has been up to.
Damon, of course, leads the show in a costume eerily reminiscent of Gene Hackman’s in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. While not exactly stretching his range in the role, he possesses the perfect level of charm to convince everyone in the room that he is their friend all while stabbing them in the back. It would seem that he believes that he is Tom Cruise’s character in The Firm, always one step ahead of everyone else, until he finds himself a few miles back. Providing only half-truths and all out lies to just about everyone around him, including immediate family, Damon is able to sell the character because he has such a trustable look. If George Clooney or Jack Nicholson were to be cast, the movie would be over in five minutes with the jail guard walking away with the key as the credits roll.
What is most perplexing about the film is its cast which is filled with some of the funniest comedic actors working today, such as Tom Papa, Joel McHale, Patton Oswalt, and Paul F. Tompkins. This would make perfect sense, as the film should and is categorized as a comedy, but for one detail: all of them are playing out the more serious roles. Playing government officials, FBI agents, or ADM executives, there is not a funny line between them. Perhaps it would take multiple viewings to understand or maybe Soderbergh is trying to say something, but the only funny that comes out of any of them is the occasional blank stare.
Also troubling the film is its structure. The bulk of the film’s positive aspects come in the third act, leaving the first two acts, when Whitacre turns informant and begins collecting evidence, to struggle. This is largely because rather than being the Inspector Clouseau of informants, Whitacre is actually fairly brilliant in getting people to say exactly what they are doing and positioning them so that the camera can see their pretty faces. It is not until the FBI establishes its case against ADM that everything in the film really starts to move forward and by that time the most attention span-lacking audiences may lose all interest, no matter how enchanted they are by Damon’s performance.
Mark Whitacre must be one of the most interesting people on Earth and Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns do an impressive job of capturing him. If it weren’t for the film’s marketing, which sold it as a standard Hollywood comedy, it would have exceeded expectation rather than undershooting them. There are certainly some hilarious and laugh out loud scenes in the film, and it should be recommended, provided the viewer goes in with the right idea.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
When you get past the smaller details, there are two reasons people lie – to protect someone’s feelings and for personal gain. The former, also known as white lies, are told when grandma gives you a pair of tube socks for Christmas or you tell your wife that you would rather go clothes shopping than play golf with your friends. The latter can come in a range of sizes, be it telling your boss you are sick to get out of work or defrauding a major corporation for millions of dollars. Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon’s character in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!, certainly falls in to the second category.
It should be said, off the bat, that despite its marketing, the film is not a straight comedy, but rather a character piece. Where the laughs do come are, generally, at the expense of the character’s decisions rather than their dialogue or physical action. Instead, the audience simply marvels at the web of intricacies that the main character has established.
In the film, Matt Damon plays the afore mentioned Mark Whitacre, a high level executive at ADM, one of the largest agricultural conglomerates in the world. After learning that the company has been fixing its prices with its competitors and discovering that he may be getting set up to take the fall, Whitacre decides to become an informant for the FBI. Paired with FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula), Whitacre begins to tape conversations, videotape meetings and expose the head executives of the company for their violations of anti-trust laws. What the FBI is not aware of, however, is what else Whitacre has been up to.
Damon, of course, leads the show in a costume eerily reminiscent of Gene Hackman’s in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. While not exactly stretching his range in the role, he possesses the perfect level of charm to convince everyone in the room that he is their friend all while stabbing them in the back. It would seem that he believes that he is Tom Cruise’s character in The Firm, always one step ahead of everyone else, until he finds himself a few miles back. Providing only half-truths and all out lies to just about everyone around him, including immediate family, Damon is able to sell the character because he has such a trustable look. If George Clooney or Jack Nicholson were to be cast, the movie would be over in five minutes with the jail guard walking away with the key as the credits roll.
What is most perplexing about the film is its cast which is filled with some of the funniest comedic actors working today, such as Tom Papa, Joel McHale, Patton Oswalt, and Paul F. Tompkins. This would make perfect sense, as the film should and is categorized as a comedy, but for one detail: all of them are playing out the more serious roles. Playing government officials, FBI agents, or ADM executives, there is not a funny line between them. Perhaps it would take multiple viewings to understand or maybe Soderbergh is trying to say something, but the only funny that comes out of any of them is the occasional blank stare.
Also troubling the film is its structure. The bulk of the film’s positive aspects come in the third act, leaving the first two acts, when Whitacre turns informant and begins collecting evidence, to struggle. This is largely because rather than being the Inspector Clouseau of informants, Whitacre is actually fairly brilliant in getting people to say exactly what they are doing and positioning them so that the camera can see their pretty faces. It is not until the FBI establishes its case against ADM that everything in the film really starts to move forward and by that time the most attention span-lacking audiences may lose all interest, no matter how enchanted they are by Damon’s performance.
Mark Whitacre must be one of the most interesting people on Earth and Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns do an impressive job of capturing him. If it weren’t for the film’s marketing, which sold it as a standard Hollywood comedy, it would have exceeded expectation rather than undershooting them. There are certainly some hilarious and laugh out loud scenes in the film, and it should be recommended, provided the viewer goes in with the right idea.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
Review: Extract
By Eric Eisenberg
To put it simply, Extract is a movie about dumb people. This is not an attempt to insult the film or even its characters. It is simply what Mike Judge knows. Bevis and Butthead was about two dumb teenagers who watch entirely too much television. King of the Hill is about a neighborhood of dumb Texans just trying to live a working life. Office Space is about dumb computer programmers who are bored. Idiocracy is about future dumb people. And in that same vain, Extract is a movie about dumb people who work at a company that produces flavor extracts.
The film follows Joel (Jason Bateman), who, despite running a successful company, can’t get anything right in his life. His neighbor (David Koechner) is a talkative nuisance that continues to chit-chat through closed doors, he is sexually frustrated by a wife (Kristen Wiig) who has sweatpants that act as a chastity belt, his best friend is a stoner bartender (Ben Affleck) who hurts more than he helps and one of his best workers, named Step (Clifton Collins Jr.), loses a testicle during an on-site incident directly linked to employee incompetence.
Things go from bad to worse, however, when a beautiful con-artist, Cindy (Mila Kunis), comes to town, flirts with Joel, and convinces Step to sue Joel’s company. Wanting to ease his frustration and not wanting to feel guilty about cheating on his wife, Joel decides to hire a gigolo (Dustin Milligan) as his pool cleaner, only to find out Cindy won’t sleep with him.
Just as he did on the brilliant-but-cancelled Arrested Development, Bateman excels in playing the discontented alpha who has to deal with everyone else’s problems including his own, but the script doesn’t allow nearly enough time for the tremendous supporting cast. By the end of the film, Affleck has completely disappeared despite being an absolute scene-stealer in the opening half, and for most of the movie, Wiig is merely a set piece, providing one line of dialogue when Joel returns from work before the film fast forwards and leaves her behind.
The place where the movie succeeds is in its infuriating and bothersome characters, most notably Koechner’s neighbor character, Nathan, and Mary (Beth Grant), one of Joel’s employees. Perhaps aided by past experience, both actors excelling in the character type in previous roles, the two characters make your skin absolutely crawl and silently beg for the worst things to happen to them. Be it Nathan’s constant requests to go to the local rotary club with Joel and his wife or Mary’s insistence that other employee is stealing from her, it is hard to resist throwing your bucket of popcorn at the screen.
While the film is funny in spots, the overall film has a pacing problem, pushing all the funny lines into certain scenes while others remain dry with exposition and character development. While the story comes from Joel’s life falling to pieces, it is his interactions with the lesser characters that make the humor and those scenes tend to either be too short or far between.
Office Space, arguably Mike Judge’s best film, was successful because of the reliability of its content: anyone who has ever worked in an office has met every character from that film. While the same elements of aggravation and frustration are present, Extract fails to hit home in the same way. Does the film have its laughs? Absolutely. Will it be as good if not better than most of the comedies that will come out this month? Undoubtedly. But is Judge capable of a better film? We’ve seen it.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
To put it simply, Extract is a movie about dumb people. This is not an attempt to insult the film or even its characters. It is simply what Mike Judge knows. Bevis and Butthead was about two dumb teenagers who watch entirely too much television. King of the Hill is about a neighborhood of dumb Texans just trying to live a working life. Office Space is about dumb computer programmers who are bored. Idiocracy is about future dumb people. And in that same vain, Extract is a movie about dumb people who work at a company that produces flavor extracts.
The film follows Joel (Jason Bateman), who, despite running a successful company, can’t get anything right in his life. His neighbor (David Koechner) is a talkative nuisance that continues to chit-chat through closed doors, he is sexually frustrated by a wife (Kristen Wiig) who has sweatpants that act as a chastity belt, his best friend is a stoner bartender (Ben Affleck) who hurts more than he helps and one of his best workers, named Step (Clifton Collins Jr.), loses a testicle during an on-site incident directly linked to employee incompetence.
Things go from bad to worse, however, when a beautiful con-artist, Cindy (Mila Kunis), comes to town, flirts with Joel, and convinces Step to sue Joel’s company. Wanting to ease his frustration and not wanting to feel guilty about cheating on his wife, Joel decides to hire a gigolo (Dustin Milligan) as his pool cleaner, only to find out Cindy won’t sleep with him.
Just as he did on the brilliant-but-cancelled Arrested Development, Bateman excels in playing the discontented alpha who has to deal with everyone else’s problems including his own, but the script doesn’t allow nearly enough time for the tremendous supporting cast. By the end of the film, Affleck has completely disappeared despite being an absolute scene-stealer in the opening half, and for most of the movie, Wiig is merely a set piece, providing one line of dialogue when Joel returns from work before the film fast forwards and leaves her behind.
The place where the movie succeeds is in its infuriating and bothersome characters, most notably Koechner’s neighbor character, Nathan, and Mary (Beth Grant), one of Joel’s employees. Perhaps aided by past experience, both actors excelling in the character type in previous roles, the two characters make your skin absolutely crawl and silently beg for the worst things to happen to them. Be it Nathan’s constant requests to go to the local rotary club with Joel and his wife or Mary’s insistence that other employee is stealing from her, it is hard to resist throwing your bucket of popcorn at the screen.
While the film is funny in spots, the overall film has a pacing problem, pushing all the funny lines into certain scenes while others remain dry with exposition and character development. While the story comes from Joel’s life falling to pieces, it is his interactions with the lesser characters that make the humor and those scenes tend to either be too short or far between.
Office Space, arguably Mike Judge’s best film, was successful because of the reliability of its content: anyone who has ever worked in an office has met every character from that film. While the same elements of aggravation and frustration are present, Extract fails to hit home in the same way. Does the film have its laughs? Absolutely. Will it be as good if not better than most of the comedies that will come out this month? Undoubtedly. But is Judge capable of a better film? We’ve seen it.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
Review: Inglourious Basterds
By Eric Eisenberg
Say what you will about Quentin Tarantino, but the man knows how to put his mark on a movie. Be it is obsessive foot fetish, Mexican stand-offs, obsessively long shots, or lineage-connecting characters, it isn’t hard to pick one of his films out of a line-up.
With a mix of all of the above plus some larger-than-life characters with crackling dialogue, Inglourious Basterds is no different.
Seemingly maturing since his last outing, 2007’s Death Proof, which came packaged in theaters as Grindhouse, Tarantino shows some restraint in his reimagining of World War II, saying just as much with pauses and stillness as he does with quick wit and action sequences.
The film centers around a young Jewish French girl named Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), who, after her family is killed by the Nazis, specifically a SS Colonel named Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), opens a cinema in Paris. Following a “heroic effort” by a young German soldier named Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a propaganda film is made and set to premiere at Shosanna’s theater.
Meanwhile, an American secret service unit, led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), has positioned itself in Nazi-occupied France and has spread fear throughout the Nazi regime by taking no prisoners and leaving survivors with a Charles Manson-esque swastika that they wouldn’t be able to remove after the war ends. Upon word that the highest members of the Third Reich are to be in attendance of the premiere of the new propaganda film, an operation is planned that could end the war. What they allied forces do not know, is that Shosanna has a plan of her own.
From the opening scene, where Landa, whose nickname is “The Jew Hunter,” interrogates a French dairy farmer regarding the unknown whereabouts of a local Jewish family, Tarantino ventures into a territory that has not yet been seen in his films: Hitchcockian tension. As the Colonel asks his questions and explains his position in the party, the farmer’s poker face slips ever so slowly and you can almost hear every heart in the audience sink. Even after the farmer is worn down and has revealed everything, however, the tension never leaves. At one point in the conversation, Landa pulls a comically large Calabash, a reference to Sherlock Holmes and Landa’s perception of himself as a detective, from his pocket, but the scene doesn’t allow you anymore than a slight smirk as anxiety continues to rise and the fate of the Jewish family is sealed.
But as much as Tarantino built the film, it is Waltz’s performance that provides the paint and furnishings. Winning the best actor prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Waltz is nothing short of brilliant in his performance, interacting with characters in German, French, Italian and English and emanating fear from those around him in each dialect. The audience gulps when Landa orders milk in the middle of the film. I’ll repeat that: the audience gulps when Landa orders milk. That kind of presence is rare.
Pitt, the film’s headliner, also shines in what is actually a somewhat limited role, despite the impression given by both the title and the film’s promotion. Following the film’s first trailer, many were put off by Pitt’s southern accent, which seemed somewhat overdone, but works perfectly for a character that would look comfortable riding Babe the Blue Ox. With a mysterious scar around his neck and a personal vendetta against the Germans, the background of which not explored, Lt. Raine is a legend in his own right and Pitt brings the goods with a comical albeit violent performance.
What truly makes a Tarantino film, though, is how the director’s personal love of film shines through. In each of his films, Reservoir Dogs through to Death Proof, there are references from classic cinema spread from the title screen to the closing credits, some say to an excessive degree. Inglourious Basterds, however, shows his love more than any of his previous efforts. Even the title is a reference to Enzo Castellari’s Italian film of the same name, misspelled because the owner of the rental store Tarantino worked for mislabeled the film so he was constantly unable to find it. With splashes of The Dirty Dozen, numerous World War II-era foreign film posters scattered throughout Shosanna’s theater, and references to David O. Selznick and Charlie Chaplin, the film more than contains homages to previous films, but, instead, the whole film is a dedication to the history of cinema.
The film is also not without the pulp/Grindhouse attitude that has been in his films since the mid-1990s. With the exception of Pitt, Diane Kruger (as the German actress/Allied spy Bridget von Hammersmark), Mike Myers (in a small role as a British general) and B.J. Ryan (from NBC’s “The Office), the entire cast is made up of little known actors, most of who actually share heritage with the characters they play, something fresh after last year’s Valkyrie. Key players are introduced with blasting trumpets and bold fonts and their back stories are told by the ever-smooth and Tarantino-regular Samuel L. Jackson. The audience can only laugh at this, as they are meant to. Nobody does over-the-top quite as artfully.
Where the film might find its detractors is in the amount of violence in the film. More on the level of Kill Bill than Pulp Fiction, the Basterds interrogation of the soldiers they capture tends to be more stylish than subtle. In some places it works, such as expressing the extreme anger of Donnie Donowitz, played by Eli Roth, whose hatred of the Nazi’s choice of victim leads him to use a baseball bat as his primary weapon. In others, such as Raine sticking his finger in the bullet wound of a person he’s questioning, it simply seems gratuitous, as something of that nature can be implied instead of shown. In his first feature film, Reservoir Dogs, the camera slowly pans away as Mr. Blonde cuts off the ear of a cop he is torturing. In the 17 years since, it would appear that Tarantino has lost some of that discipline.
Inglourious Basterds is simply the film that all of Tarantino’s previous works have been building up to. At the age of 46, he is no where close to retirement and should he continue to direct in to his 60s and 70s, he could have as many as 20 more films to make. Up to this point, however, Tarantino has yet to make a finer film.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
Say what you will about Quentin Tarantino, but the man knows how to put his mark on a movie. Be it is obsessive foot fetish, Mexican stand-offs, obsessively long shots, or lineage-connecting characters, it isn’t hard to pick one of his films out of a line-up.
With a mix of all of the above plus some larger-than-life characters with crackling dialogue, Inglourious Basterds is no different.
Seemingly maturing since his last outing, 2007’s Death Proof, which came packaged in theaters as Grindhouse, Tarantino shows some restraint in his reimagining of World War II, saying just as much with pauses and stillness as he does with quick wit and action sequences.
The film centers around a young Jewish French girl named Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), who, after her family is killed by the Nazis, specifically a SS Colonel named Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), opens a cinema in Paris. Following a “heroic effort” by a young German soldier named Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a propaganda film is made and set to premiere at Shosanna’s theater.
Meanwhile, an American secret service unit, led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), has positioned itself in Nazi-occupied France and has spread fear throughout the Nazi regime by taking no prisoners and leaving survivors with a Charles Manson-esque swastika that they wouldn’t be able to remove after the war ends. Upon word that the highest members of the Third Reich are to be in attendance of the premiere of the new propaganda film, an operation is planned that could end the war. What they allied forces do not know, is that Shosanna has a plan of her own.
From the opening scene, where Landa, whose nickname is “The Jew Hunter,” interrogates a French dairy farmer regarding the unknown whereabouts of a local Jewish family, Tarantino ventures into a territory that has not yet been seen in his films: Hitchcockian tension. As the Colonel asks his questions and explains his position in the party, the farmer’s poker face slips ever so slowly and you can almost hear every heart in the audience sink. Even after the farmer is worn down and has revealed everything, however, the tension never leaves. At one point in the conversation, Landa pulls a comically large Calabash, a reference to Sherlock Holmes and Landa’s perception of himself as a detective, from his pocket, but the scene doesn’t allow you anymore than a slight smirk as anxiety continues to rise and the fate of the Jewish family is sealed.
But as much as Tarantino built the film, it is Waltz’s performance that provides the paint and furnishings. Winning the best actor prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Waltz is nothing short of brilliant in his performance, interacting with characters in German, French, Italian and English and emanating fear from those around him in each dialect. The audience gulps when Landa orders milk in the middle of the film. I’ll repeat that: the audience gulps when Landa orders milk. That kind of presence is rare.
Pitt, the film’s headliner, also shines in what is actually a somewhat limited role, despite the impression given by both the title and the film’s promotion. Following the film’s first trailer, many were put off by Pitt’s southern accent, which seemed somewhat overdone, but works perfectly for a character that would look comfortable riding Babe the Blue Ox. With a mysterious scar around his neck and a personal vendetta against the Germans, the background of which not explored, Lt. Raine is a legend in his own right and Pitt brings the goods with a comical albeit violent performance.
What truly makes a Tarantino film, though, is how the director’s personal love of film shines through. In each of his films, Reservoir Dogs through to Death Proof, there are references from classic cinema spread from the title screen to the closing credits, some say to an excessive degree. Inglourious Basterds, however, shows his love more than any of his previous efforts. Even the title is a reference to Enzo Castellari’s Italian film of the same name, misspelled because the owner of the rental store Tarantino worked for mislabeled the film so he was constantly unable to find it. With splashes of The Dirty Dozen, numerous World War II-era foreign film posters scattered throughout Shosanna’s theater, and references to David O. Selznick and Charlie Chaplin, the film more than contains homages to previous films, but, instead, the whole film is a dedication to the history of cinema.
The film is also not without the pulp/Grindhouse attitude that has been in his films since the mid-1990s. With the exception of Pitt, Diane Kruger (as the German actress/Allied spy Bridget von Hammersmark), Mike Myers (in a small role as a British general) and B.J. Ryan (from NBC’s “The Office), the entire cast is made up of little known actors, most of who actually share heritage with the characters they play, something fresh after last year’s Valkyrie. Key players are introduced with blasting trumpets and bold fonts and their back stories are told by the ever-smooth and Tarantino-regular Samuel L. Jackson. The audience can only laugh at this, as they are meant to. Nobody does over-the-top quite as artfully.
Where the film might find its detractors is in the amount of violence in the film. More on the level of Kill Bill than Pulp Fiction, the Basterds interrogation of the soldiers they capture tends to be more stylish than subtle. In some places it works, such as expressing the extreme anger of Donnie Donowitz, played by Eli Roth, whose hatred of the Nazi’s choice of victim leads him to use a baseball bat as his primary weapon. In others, such as Raine sticking his finger in the bullet wound of a person he’s questioning, it simply seems gratuitous, as something of that nature can be implied instead of shown. In his first feature film, Reservoir Dogs, the camera slowly pans away as Mr. Blonde cuts off the ear of a cop he is torturing. In the 17 years since, it would appear that Tarantino has lost some of that discipline.
Inglourious Basterds is simply the film that all of Tarantino’s previous works have been building up to. At the age of 46, he is no where close to retirement and should he continue to direct in to his 60s and 70s, he could have as many as 20 more films to make. Up to this point, however, Tarantino has yet to make a finer film.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
Review: District 9
By Eric Eisenberg
There are four progressions through which every genre must go.
First, there is building stage. This is where something new is introduced to the audience that they have never seen before. There are still some issues and kinks that need to be worked out, but a base audience is created that is hungry for more.
The second stage is the classics stage. Directors and writers take on material from the building stage and, using original stories and deep characters, morph it to their own vision. It is during this stage that most of the best material is made.
The third stage is a depression stage. Attempting to capture the same successes that were done during the classics period, there becomes a lack of creativity that stunts the genre and prevents it from moving forward. Be it through exhausted series, overuse of underdeveloped technologies or simply a lack of creativity, the material cannot surpass that which was made before it and audiences begin to feel exhausted by the genre and demand begins to fade.
But then there is the fourth stage: resurrection. A director or writer steps forward with a new idea as to how to treat material that people grew tired of and make it new again. New stories to tell are discovered and ideas begin to be mined, allowing the cycle to begin again.
Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 is the resurrection of the science fiction genre.
Looking at the human-alien relationship like no film has ever done before, Blomkamp brings something so entirely new to the science-fiction genre that reflections of it will be seen in film for at least the next decade.
The film centers on Johannesburg, South Africa where a mysterious alien ship has parked itself in the sky above the city. The aliens are destitute, and by receiving aid that would otherwise go to the native people, they have no supporters in the human population. The aliens, derogatively nicknamed “prawns” due to both their appearance and the public’s view of the creatures as bottom-feeders, are quarantined in a section of the city known as District 9.
But as conditions in District 9 worsen, with a growing crime rate involving Nigerians, the alien’s exploitable addiction to cat food and a growing number of weapons, an evacuation is planned by Multi-National United (MNU) and headed by recently promoted field operative Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley). But during the proceedings, van der Merwe discovers a horrible secret about MNU and District 9 and what has been hidden from the public eye.
Since its inception, the science-fiction genre has relied on the idea that humans are the heroes and that the aliens or technology are out to destroy us, much of the original material based in Cold War fears of the emerging space age. But with childhood experiences of apartheid in his home country, Blomkamp questions how our species would react to a large presence of another. What did he find? Well, let’s just say we would probably not be the most hospitable planet for aliens to come to (part of the reason, perhaps, being that we have watched too many science-fiction films.)
The movie is filmed half as a documentary retracing what occurred during the aliens twenty year presence on Earth, and the other half as a live narrative following both van der Merwe and an alien named Christopher Johnson, who lives in District 9 with his son. The style allows the film to truly capture the feeling of a new world, something that has always been a substantial part of the genre, be it the Star Wars universe or the revolution of Skynet in the Terminator films, and provide enough drama and action to keep the audience both intrigued and emotionally invested in the characters.
In his performance as van der Merwe, Copley, in his feature acting debut, displays an incredible character transformation, starting as a nebbish weakling who received a promotion simply because his superior (Louis Minnaar) happens to be his step-father. By the end of the film, however, Copley becomes a strong fighter for the race that he was originally meant to suppress.
The film also helps make a point about the genre, one that has been marred by the presence of both Transformers 2 and G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra this summer. Many fans of these films have dismissed critics by saying that all they wanted was action, and that was what they received. Many didn’t care that neither film possessed a coherent plot that didn’t undermine or contradict itself mid-scene. District 9 is the perfect retaliation for this argument. Containing plenty of action and fantastic spectacle to please any audience, the film is, most importantly, backed up by an incredible story with a real message that can be applied to the real world. There are real emotions on display with deep character development. There are dramatic elements as well as comedic notes. The film has everything a filmgoer could hope for.
One of the keys to District 9’s marketing was keeping the public completely unaware of what exactly the film was about. For many anticipating the film, the best way to sum up the plot to someone who had not heard of it was to describe it as “an alien apartheid movie,” which does no justice to the complexity of the picture. In a contemporary film marketing, where you can decipher the first, second and third act of a film from a three minute trailer, the secrecy heightened the movie watching experience as not one person could tell you what would happen next or even anticipate a line of dialogue.
Blomkamp was originally slated to direct the film version of the Microsoft video-game Halo, but following difficulties Peter Jackson offered him $30 million to make any movie he wanted. While the adaptation is still being looked at, it is in no way conceivable that it will be able to match the extraordinary levels that District 9 has reached. Blomkamp and writer Terri Tatchell have resurrected the science-fiction genre and given upcoming filmmakers a goal to strive for.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
There are four progressions through which every genre must go.
First, there is building stage. This is where something new is introduced to the audience that they have never seen before. There are still some issues and kinks that need to be worked out, but a base audience is created that is hungry for more.
The second stage is the classics stage. Directors and writers take on material from the building stage and, using original stories and deep characters, morph it to their own vision. It is during this stage that most of the best material is made.
The third stage is a depression stage. Attempting to capture the same successes that were done during the classics period, there becomes a lack of creativity that stunts the genre and prevents it from moving forward. Be it through exhausted series, overuse of underdeveloped technologies or simply a lack of creativity, the material cannot surpass that which was made before it and audiences begin to feel exhausted by the genre and demand begins to fade.
But then there is the fourth stage: resurrection. A director or writer steps forward with a new idea as to how to treat material that people grew tired of and make it new again. New stories to tell are discovered and ideas begin to be mined, allowing the cycle to begin again.
Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 is the resurrection of the science fiction genre.
Looking at the human-alien relationship like no film has ever done before, Blomkamp brings something so entirely new to the science-fiction genre that reflections of it will be seen in film for at least the next decade.
The film centers on Johannesburg, South Africa where a mysterious alien ship has parked itself in the sky above the city. The aliens are destitute, and by receiving aid that would otherwise go to the native people, they have no supporters in the human population. The aliens, derogatively nicknamed “prawns” due to both their appearance and the public’s view of the creatures as bottom-feeders, are quarantined in a section of the city known as District 9.
But as conditions in District 9 worsen, with a growing crime rate involving Nigerians, the alien’s exploitable addiction to cat food and a growing number of weapons, an evacuation is planned by Multi-National United (MNU) and headed by recently promoted field operative Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley). But during the proceedings, van der Merwe discovers a horrible secret about MNU and District 9 and what has been hidden from the public eye.
Since its inception, the science-fiction genre has relied on the idea that humans are the heroes and that the aliens or technology are out to destroy us, much of the original material based in Cold War fears of the emerging space age. But with childhood experiences of apartheid in his home country, Blomkamp questions how our species would react to a large presence of another. What did he find? Well, let’s just say we would probably not be the most hospitable planet for aliens to come to (part of the reason, perhaps, being that we have watched too many science-fiction films.)
The movie is filmed half as a documentary retracing what occurred during the aliens twenty year presence on Earth, and the other half as a live narrative following both van der Merwe and an alien named Christopher Johnson, who lives in District 9 with his son. The style allows the film to truly capture the feeling of a new world, something that has always been a substantial part of the genre, be it the Star Wars universe or the revolution of Skynet in the Terminator films, and provide enough drama and action to keep the audience both intrigued and emotionally invested in the characters.
In his performance as van der Merwe, Copley, in his feature acting debut, displays an incredible character transformation, starting as a nebbish weakling who received a promotion simply because his superior (Louis Minnaar) happens to be his step-father. By the end of the film, however, Copley becomes a strong fighter for the race that he was originally meant to suppress.
The film also helps make a point about the genre, one that has been marred by the presence of both Transformers 2 and G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra this summer. Many fans of these films have dismissed critics by saying that all they wanted was action, and that was what they received. Many didn’t care that neither film possessed a coherent plot that didn’t undermine or contradict itself mid-scene. District 9 is the perfect retaliation for this argument. Containing plenty of action and fantastic spectacle to please any audience, the film is, most importantly, backed up by an incredible story with a real message that can be applied to the real world. There are real emotions on display with deep character development. There are dramatic elements as well as comedic notes. The film has everything a filmgoer could hope for.
One of the keys to District 9’s marketing was keeping the public completely unaware of what exactly the film was about. For many anticipating the film, the best way to sum up the plot to someone who had not heard of it was to describe it as “an alien apartheid movie,” which does no justice to the complexity of the picture. In a contemporary film marketing, where you can decipher the first, second and third act of a film from a three minute trailer, the secrecy heightened the movie watching experience as not one person could tell you what would happen next or even anticipate a line of dialogue.
Blomkamp was originally slated to direct the film version of the Microsoft video-game Halo, but following difficulties Peter Jackson offered him $30 million to make any movie he wanted. While the adaptation is still being looked at, it is in no way conceivable that it will be able to match the extraordinary levels that District 9 has reached. Blomkamp and writer Terri Tatchell have resurrected the science-fiction genre and given upcoming filmmakers a goal to strive for.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
Review: The Brothers Bloom
By Eric Eisenberg
Grifters. Matchstick Men. Con artists. Cinema has a long and strong history with these suave, suit-wearing swindlers. Despite the large numbers, almost every film within this sub-genre follows the same formula: a team of confidence men get together for one last score before retirement. One of the members will protest, citing either riskiness or immorality, but will drop the argument quickly as the leader explains it away. The mark is picked, the dumber and richer the better, and with the audience only half-cued into the plot, twists and turns galore hamper and help the bilkers until the final twist arrives, squeezing the anti-heroes out of one final jam.
With all of this repetition, however, what makes the audience come back for more of the same story? The answer is simple: the film’s ability to make the audience question everything they see until they don’t know their left from right.
So enters “The Brothers Bloom” into the hustler genus. The sophomore effort from writer/director Rian Johnson, whose previous film, “Brick,” was a critically lauded reimagining of film noir, “Bloom” has the snap and crackle that he exhibited in his first film, but also some strangely placed pops along the way.
The film follows the tried-and-true plot structure mentioned above as two orphan brothers, the outgoing plan-maker Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and the reserved and withheld Bloom (Adrian Brody) plan to bamboozle an eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz). Paired with a silent explosions expert (Rinko Kikuchi) and a Belgian curator (Robbie Coltrane), the group begins a world-wide adventure to raise some bank accounts while lowering others.
Stealing nearly every scene is Weisz as the hobby collecting heiress. While juggling chainsaws, break dancing and performing card tricks, Weisz always maintains and exerts a child-like quirkiness. As she continues to crash multiple orange Lamborghinis throughout the film, the audience simply giggles as her driving skills match her maturity level: somewhere around age ten. The Oscar winning Weisz, who learned to play multiple instruments, do karate, play Ping-Pong, unicycle, skateboard, and many other skills for the role, just seems to have fun with the character and the audience understands Bloom’s pain as he tries to stop himself from falling in love with her.
While two films is hardly enough to fully grasp a director’s sense of style and mise en scène, Johnson seems most influenced by Wes Anderson, both in character development and cinematography (making ample use of tracking shots), and Paul Thomas Anderson, who even goes so far as to have Ricky Jay perform the voice-over narration in the beginning of the film, reminiscent of Jay’s work in Anderson’s “Magnolia.” While the influence is notable, the film does have its own individual style, often having as much going on in the background as in the front (such as Kikuchi, playing the aptly named Bang Bang, shooting down a tree with a handgun.)
The film’s largest weakness comes from its title character. Playing a character similar in attitude to his role in “The Darjeeling Limited,” Brody is often simply middle-gazing, never showing the emotional range needed for a character who has realized that his life is nothing more than a story written by his brother. Be it sitting next to his former mentor turned threatening enemy or quickly exiting a train car after Penelope exclaims her “horniness,” Brody is never in the moment and doesn’t seem to care.
So now, the answer to the posed determinate: how much is the audience given and how long are the lights kept off? Simply, rather than having a feeling of confusion, the film seems to make the audience self-aware and feel that what they are watching is not the whole truth. While this feeling is rewarded when the question is answered and the film starts down a positive path, or what is thought to be fiction turns out to be truth, too often the audience is let down when a twist loses it’s surprise.
The film is worth seeing for Weisz and Kikuchi’s performances alone, but as a film about flimflammers, the story does not offer enough new to balance out the old.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
Grifters. Matchstick Men. Con artists. Cinema has a long and strong history with these suave, suit-wearing swindlers. Despite the large numbers, almost every film within this sub-genre follows the same formula: a team of confidence men get together for one last score before retirement. One of the members will protest, citing either riskiness or immorality, but will drop the argument quickly as the leader explains it away. The mark is picked, the dumber and richer the better, and with the audience only half-cued into the plot, twists and turns galore hamper and help the bilkers until the final twist arrives, squeezing the anti-heroes out of one final jam.
With all of this repetition, however, what makes the audience come back for more of the same story? The answer is simple: the film’s ability to make the audience question everything they see until they don’t know their left from right.
So enters “The Brothers Bloom” into the hustler genus. The sophomore effort from writer/director Rian Johnson, whose previous film, “Brick,” was a critically lauded reimagining of film noir, “Bloom” has the snap and crackle that he exhibited in his first film, but also some strangely placed pops along the way.
The film follows the tried-and-true plot structure mentioned above as two orphan brothers, the outgoing plan-maker Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and the reserved and withheld Bloom (Adrian Brody) plan to bamboozle an eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz). Paired with a silent explosions expert (Rinko Kikuchi) and a Belgian curator (Robbie Coltrane), the group begins a world-wide adventure to raise some bank accounts while lowering others.
Stealing nearly every scene is Weisz as the hobby collecting heiress. While juggling chainsaws, break dancing and performing card tricks, Weisz always maintains and exerts a child-like quirkiness. As she continues to crash multiple orange Lamborghinis throughout the film, the audience simply giggles as her driving skills match her maturity level: somewhere around age ten. The Oscar winning Weisz, who learned to play multiple instruments, do karate, play Ping-Pong, unicycle, skateboard, and many other skills for the role, just seems to have fun with the character and the audience understands Bloom’s pain as he tries to stop himself from falling in love with her.
While two films is hardly enough to fully grasp a director’s sense of style and mise en scène, Johnson seems most influenced by Wes Anderson, both in character development and cinematography (making ample use of tracking shots), and Paul Thomas Anderson, who even goes so far as to have Ricky Jay perform the voice-over narration in the beginning of the film, reminiscent of Jay’s work in Anderson’s “Magnolia.” While the influence is notable, the film does have its own individual style, often having as much going on in the background as in the front (such as Kikuchi, playing the aptly named Bang Bang, shooting down a tree with a handgun.)
The film’s largest weakness comes from its title character. Playing a character similar in attitude to his role in “The Darjeeling Limited,” Brody is often simply middle-gazing, never showing the emotional range needed for a character who has realized that his life is nothing more than a story written by his brother. Be it sitting next to his former mentor turned threatening enemy or quickly exiting a train car after Penelope exclaims her “horniness,” Brody is never in the moment and doesn’t seem to care.
So now, the answer to the posed determinate: how much is the audience given and how long are the lights kept off? Simply, rather than having a feeling of confusion, the film seems to make the audience self-aware and feel that what they are watching is not the whole truth. While this feeling is rewarded when the question is answered and the film starts down a positive path, or what is thought to be fiction turns out to be truth, too often the audience is let down when a twist loses it’s surprise.
The film is worth seeing for Weisz and Kikuchi’s performances alone, but as a film about flimflammers, the story does not offer enough new to balance out the old.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
Review: The Hurt Locker
By Eric Eisenberg
War is hell and there isn’t a single filmmaker on Earth who would deny it (save perhaps Leni Riefenstahl). What often sidetracks a war film, however, is the writer or directors personal politics, especially when dealing with a controversial war. Be it Johnny Got His Gun or Fail Safe, it is more common that not that a war film will look at thing from a certain perspective that will result in a divided audience and possibly redirect attention away from the film’s better qualities.
Enter The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow’s return to the big screen after a seven year absence. The film follows a three-man bomb squad (Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty) working to protect civilians and military personnel alike during a tour in the Iraq War.
Just as the Vietnam war had in the 1960s and 1970s, the ongoing Iraq War has been a major source of strife in America, some supporting the war and some against it, and has already seen a number of film treatments, including Stop Loss, The Kingdom and In the Valley of Elah, a movie that Mark Boal, who wrote The Hurt Locker, contributed to. Locker, however, succeeds where these other films failed in that it rises above the politics of the war and instead focuses more on the nature of war itself and its effect on the soldiers fighting in it. The film could easily take place in an alternate universe in a completely different war, but the message would still be the same.
Leading the film is Renner as Staff Sergeant William James who is called in to lead the unit following the previous leader’s death. At first, Renner comes across as a stock character: cocky yet brilliant, like a bomb defusing robot crossed with the personality of Gregory House. Mackie and Geraghty, playing Sergeant JT Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge respectively, even contemplate killing James for endangering their lives and it doesn’t seem like to bad an idea. Following a few missions, though, seeing James work and getting paid back for his attitude, the character quickly becomes a well rounded and sympathetic.
As almost a fourth team member, the tension in the film is perpetually at a high point, reflecting the pressure put on the team during each mission. Audience members will find themselves sweating alongside Renner as he works quickly and carefully to save lives. Adding to this is the regular use of a hand-held camera, giving the film a documentary-type feel and making everything seem just that much more real and important.
Thus far, The Hurt Locker is the best film made about America’s current conflict in the Middle East and is one of the better war films ever made. Its apolitical positioning, high tension and incredible performances make it an absolute standout and one of the best films so far this year.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
War is hell and there isn’t a single filmmaker on Earth who would deny it (save perhaps Leni Riefenstahl). What often sidetracks a war film, however, is the writer or directors personal politics, especially when dealing with a controversial war. Be it Johnny Got His Gun or Fail Safe, it is more common that not that a war film will look at thing from a certain perspective that will result in a divided audience and possibly redirect attention away from the film’s better qualities.
Enter The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow’s return to the big screen after a seven year absence. The film follows a three-man bomb squad (Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty) working to protect civilians and military personnel alike during a tour in the Iraq War.
Just as the Vietnam war had in the 1960s and 1970s, the ongoing Iraq War has been a major source of strife in America, some supporting the war and some against it, and has already seen a number of film treatments, including Stop Loss, The Kingdom and In the Valley of Elah, a movie that Mark Boal, who wrote The Hurt Locker, contributed to. Locker, however, succeeds where these other films failed in that it rises above the politics of the war and instead focuses more on the nature of war itself and its effect on the soldiers fighting in it. The film could easily take place in an alternate universe in a completely different war, but the message would still be the same.
Leading the film is Renner as Staff Sergeant William James who is called in to lead the unit following the previous leader’s death. At first, Renner comes across as a stock character: cocky yet brilliant, like a bomb defusing robot crossed with the personality of Gregory House. Mackie and Geraghty, playing Sergeant JT Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge respectively, even contemplate killing James for endangering their lives and it doesn’t seem like to bad an idea. Following a few missions, though, seeing James work and getting paid back for his attitude, the character quickly becomes a well rounded and sympathetic.
As almost a fourth team member, the tension in the film is perpetually at a high point, reflecting the pressure put on the team during each mission. Audience members will find themselves sweating alongside Renner as he works quickly and carefully to save lives. Adding to this is the regular use of a hand-held camera, giving the film a documentary-type feel and making everything seem just that much more real and important.
Thus far, The Hurt Locker is the best film made about America’s current conflict in the Middle East and is one of the better war films ever made. Its apolitical positioning, high tension and incredible performances make it an absolute standout and one of the best films so far this year.
© Eric Eisenberg, All Rights Reserved
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