The Counselor plot analysis

Trying to figure out what happens to the shipment of drugs in The Counselor (2013, Ridley Scott) has become a bit of an obsession for me. The biggest questions are how early did MALKINA (Cameron Diaz) get involved in manipulating the outcome of the cargo and how exactly does it benefit her? 
     For a maguffin it seems easy enough to follow. A couple of beaners in Juárez drive the truck across the border. They park it at a septic plant, then remove a small electronic device that they give to a man in a green baseball cap who pays one of the men for it. At a roadside cafe, Green Ballcap hands the device to the GREEN HORNET (Richard Cabral), which is all observed from a distance by JAMIE (Sam Spruell) and a lipreader. In the first of several beheadings in The Counselor, Jamie lops off the Green Hornet’s head. Afterwards, Jamie has a phonecall with Malkina letting her know he got it (the device).
     Once Jamie and SECOND MAN (Richard Brake) retrieve the truck containing the drugs, they’re hijacked and murdered by cartel. So, the 625 kilos ends its journey in Chicago. And that’s pretty much it. So why ask oneself about it any further? When Malkina is on the phone with another voice (this time we never hear), she says she always knew where the truck was going. We also know that she has all of REINER’S (Javier Bardem) rooms and phones tapped and listens in on all of his conversations. 
 
So what do you think? If the cocaine has a street value of $20 million, then why would Malkina implicate the COUNSELOR (Michael Fassbender) and Reiner in a conspiracy that results in the cartel eliminating them before they can flip it? And if it’s a finder’s fee she’s collecting from the cartel, wouldn’t they be highly unlikely to trust her, especially considering the whole motif of “they don’t believe in coincidences?” I mean the easy answer points to the cartel had a homing device that led them to the truck. 
     Upon the film’s conclusion, Malkina has WESTRAY (Brad Pitt) assassinated (you guessed it, by beheading) and hacks into his bank accounts, but if this was her motive the entire time, then was the whole conspiracy/hijacking even necessary? It doesn’t seem like too big of a coincidence that Malkina had forethought stealing the drug shipment before finding out that the Counselor had RUTH (Rosie Perez) as a client, and afterwards hedged her bets then wisely walks away. (Yet Malkina's line “I’m still in” being read as her profiting from the delivery is very difficult to comprehend unless she's talking about going after Westray as an idea she came up with after the jackpot she got into.)

     And this all seems to fit in with Cormac McCarthy’s morality theme of the weak falling prey to the strong. It’s the arc of the movie: the Counselor travels to Juárez to discover for himself that death has no meaning, then live the remainder of his life without LAURA (Penélope Cruz); and the real tragedy that after her death, he has no meaning. Another thing I just noticed for the first time is as Laura's headless corpse is dumped into the landfill there's a black trash bag that tumbles after it that is roughly the size of a human head. Not only is The Counselor so fun because of its confusing plot, but also because of how foreshadowcore it is. Upon rewatch there is so much dialogue that not only predicts, but metaphysically ponders connected respective plot points. The one I get such a big kick out of is when Westray talks about “…what happens when the surety becomes the more attractive holding?” sums it all up. But when the Counselor gives his lady the engagement ring and he says he’ll love her till the day he dies, to which she replies “me first,” that’s one morbid perversely prescient joke.

Dregs' Top 10 Movies 2013

1.   Blue Jasmine (2013, Woody Allen)
2.   Camille Claudel 1915 (2013, Bruno Dumont)
3.   The Canyons (2013, Paul Schrader)
4.   Bastards (2013, Claire Denis)
5.   Spring Breakers (2012, Harmony Korine)
6.   Prince Avalanche (2013, David Gordon Green)
7.   Behind the Candelabra (2013, Steven Soderbergh)
8.   The Grandmaster (2013, Wong Kar-wai)
9.   The Bling Ring (2013, Sofia Coppola)
10. 12 Years a Slave (2013, Steve McQueen)

--Dregs

Speed 3: Zero Gravity

I've never been a fan of Alfonso Cuarón. I don't remember Y Tu Mamá También (2001); I don't watch Harry Potter; and Children of Men (2006) was boring as shit. I dismiss Children of Men because I typically decide if I love or hate a movie before I see it. And, based on the premise: a world where women can't have babies anymore... I knew I would hate it and I do. Similarly I love Jonze/Kaufman, but Her (2013, Spike Jonze) already frustrated me with the what if a guy fell in love with his computer? premise in its trailer.

But Cuarón has Chivo as his ace. When I saw the trailer for Cuarón's big budget Fall 2013 3D blockbuster in space with Bullock and Chivo in the mix, I knew I'd love it. And I was shocked because of the films I know I'll love, rarely are hundred million dollar effects blockbusters the ones that hook me.

Gravity is perfect.

It's a fine dessert.

It's eighty minutes and change of flawless eye candy.

The main draw is the setting. We are in space. That's the whole point. Take the story and restage it anywhere else and this movie is yawn inducing. However, this short capsule of Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) dealing with debris from a soviet satellite explosion is riveting because of the detailed portrait painted by Chivo and Cuarón.

Chivo is Emmanuel Lubezki, AMC, ASC. He shoots all of Malick's films since The New World (2005, Terence Malick). I prefer his style in Gravity. Chivo's  more static and fluid, not as kinetic and Jell-Oey. The images in Gravity aren't as arty as Malick's stuff. I don't know why but this movie is so applaudable for characteristics I would normally connote a sell-out piece of crap of imbuing. And that's why I have come to call Gravity a classic.

Chivo's soft lighting always keeps a feathered gradation of shadows and skintones on these 2 movie stars. He's learned that hard shadows are his enemy. We never see the sun in Gravity. And we are usually within close sight of the Earth, which makes sense considering that's the confinement of the world of the story--just above the Earth's atmosphere.

The two big set pieces are the two separate instances of orbitting debris that Kowalski (Clooney) clocks in as arriving in ninety minute intervals. The first act is so awesome and serene, when the collision approaches it is truly breathtaking because the technology of the vfx is used so effectively. I didn't even realize I could think astronauts and spaceships were cool until now. And the silence is a neat contrast to all of the loud visuals.

Bullock, America's sweetheart, is wonderful. Normally I can't stand her. She is America's everywoman. She's in shape, but not stripper hot. She's mousy, but alternately exotically striking. She's vulnerable, but brave. She's mediocre, but sharp. The cypher of Bullock in zero gravity is the perfect prism to refract this protagonist's lonely "Twilight Zone" confrontation with isolation.

I didn't laugh once. But Clooney is adequate as comic relief.

I can't begin to wrap my head around how they blocked this, but the feeling as an audience member of floating in space and the filmmaker's success in orienting the geography of the set pieces is undoubtedly masterful. The look of a film is something I'll always value above all else, and Gravity is so aesthetically well thought out that I got to go back to the joys of suspending disbelief.

--Dregs

Country for Old Men

Bret Easton Ellis is my favorite living author. My second is James Ellroy. I'm trying to write film criticism here, so I must admit no one gives a shit who anyone's favorites are. However, I include this information because here on Reviewiera I get to document a record of my personal take on the review outside of objective criticism.

My favorite of Ellis' novels are Glamorama (1998), The Rules of Attraction (1987), American Psycho (1991) and the short story collection, The Informers (1994). The latter three have been adapted into movies. I think the less I say about them the better.

One of my favorite moments from Ellis' books is the revelation in The Informers that there are vampires living in L. A. Not metaphorical vampires, but full on Lost Boys or Anne Rice realized classic monsters. The vampires are mentioned earlier in the book to establish a foreboding thread to be used later.

I have become sick of the ad nauseum syndicated drivel that regurgitates the same lazy adjectives to describe Ellis' characters: shallow, homosexual, paranoid and homicidal, for example. Nowadays who in filmed entertainment isn't? Paul Schrader describes Ellis' style as, "rich people doing bad things in very nice rooms." I think Ellis characters are a combination of the rich and poor; the naïve and the sociopathic; the sexually obsessed and the sexually exploited; and the thin and beautiful and the thin and beautiful. His satire is targeted at the heads of the entertainment industry and all of the mouths that feed at the teet of Hollywood.

Tied for the best screenplay of 2013 along with Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen) is a movie directed by a 67 year old man from a vital 49 year old author.

The story goes something like: Schrader asks Ellis if he'd like to rework some of his characters into a script to shoot on a microbudget, and it should work because the film would consist of mostly interior dialogue scenes. The project gets launched on Kickstarter with $30,000 from Schrader, $30,000 from Braxton Pope, and $180,000 from Kickstarter. Schrader casts Lindsay Lohan and Ellis fights for James Deen (who is apparently Ellis' idealized manifestation of his essential male lead character) and succeed because no studios are involved--the insurance would supposedly be too risky.

The Canyons (2013, Schrader) was shot on the Alexa and filmed in L. A. locations. It looks like film. The pacing is slow, but brooding--layered with ambient electronic suspense cues.

It's a Bret Easton Ellis movie.

Ellis' lead characters are the three involved in the classic love triangle. Christian (James Deen) stands out as the sneering, lip-pouting walking tool of alpha masculinity. He is a constant: a trust fund kid with daddy issues and a libertine taste for kinky sex. Ryan (Nolan Funk) and Tara (Lindsay Lohan) are defined ultimately through the changes Christian causes them to undergo.

Christian is practically one of the vampires from The Informers or, more accurately, etched out of the same mold as Sean and Patrick Bateman or Bobby Hughes. Ellis specializes in this type of character--depraved monsters whom no one suspects of the atrocities they are capable of until it's too late.

Christian makes a comment about producing the movie Ryan is cast in that describes his motivations as, "I said whatever money the Mexicans came up with I'd match." And furthermore adds that he only got involved in producing so his dad can approve of his career. The world of The Canyons is literary because L. A. used to be the capital Tinseltown, yet it's replaced here with a porn actor named James Deen (if Ellis is saying this kid is today's James Dean, and I think he is, then one begins to appreciate the satirical fantasy and its aim), Lohan acting as a lazy sexessory, and a bunch of rough trade who get cast because they let someone fuck them. Oh yeah, and Ryan drives a white Bronco (yeah, one of those white Broncos).

That scene where Tara switches off the classic Hollywood movie she's watching to use texTV says a lot.

Tara represents the real life 2010s celebrity. She's a mess. She does nothing but smoke, drink, and screw. But she looks kind of sexy.

In a world where anything goes, it is Ellis' focus on Christian's wants (sex and Tara) that make this tale indelible. Since I saw this the same day as Blue Jasmine I noticed that The Canyons also features a man with wealth who abuses women and an opponent without money who tries to compete in the romantic world of the upper class and learns that he is outmatched.

All Christian cares about is sex.

All L. A. cares about is sex, in this film. And I guess this is where the final layers of self-reference are noticeable. The Canyons is a sex movie in the sense that all of the power these characters are battling over is sexual, essentially. All of the characters are basically sleeping with someone and that defines their existence. Only incidentally do they happen to all work in movies.

Is the point that if all of the movie industry types in L. A. are as vapid as a porno flick, then one should assume that Hollywood movies will become as dull and pointless? Maybe. But Ellis and Schrader have crafted a story of substance and new ideas about the plasticity of showbiz.

I commend Deen's performance. He's got that rich asshole good looking guy quality. But his performance obviously isn't for everyone's tastes because I heard quite a few people gasp-giggling at his delivery.

The Canyons also has Ellis' signature gallows humor that pops up out of nowhere you'd expect. Some of the laughs are intentional.

Lindsay Lohan walking around stripping into her bra and panties, with her white bruised thighs, freckled shoulders, smoking cigarettes and holding a wine glass through most of this movie coalesced into something insightful. Namely that this looks like what goes on in the real life of someone like her.

Sometimes the film feels low budget because of the heights the melodrama attempts to attain. But the story as a whole is crafted wonderfully. Ryan is equally as important as Christian by the end. And the way the story all takes place in 4 days makes it a wholly accessible little valentine to Hollywood in the electronic social media age.

And it is okay to laugh at Deen, even I'll admit.

--Dregs

Blue Is the Warmest Color

I grew up in Corpus Christi, TX. For my last couple of years of high school my family moved to the suburbs, outside of Tulsa, OK. I hated that place. After I graduated, in 1999, I moved to Portland, OR. And that's where I met most of the Reviewiera personnel.

In 1998 I enrolled in a film appreciation course at Tulsa Community College. For one semester, I made an A in that class, along with Fs in 4 others. My final paper was a superlative-ridden celebration of the first Woody Allen movie I'd seen, Celebrity (1998). That was the first film I'd admired the cinematography in--shot in black-and-white by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's longtime D. P., crowded with statuesque supermodels like Charlize Theron and the earthy ingenue Gretchen Mol--and the beginning of my obsession with all of Woody Allen's films.

Being in a small town I quenched my itch at collecting that had failed to persist with baseball cards, comic books, or other novelties by cataloguing my own Woody Allen filmography and watching every title I could find. I had bought my own satellite dish that showed many of them, the rest were only available on VHS.

I didn't hang on to my VHS tapes.

But Woody Allen's films will always remain vital.

I've made ageist comments about directors here before. However, the best screenplay of the year 2013 has been filmed by a 77 year old man.

Wealth attracts deception.

Woody Allen is known for having delightfully clever creations in his scripts that play with parallels. Like the sketch in Husbands and Wives (1992) about married Pepkin and playboy Knapp envying each other, all of Melinda and Melinda (2004), or Roy's and Strangler's respective fates in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010).

The screenplay for Blue Jasmine (2013) focuses on a tower of petite bourgeoisie characters headed by Hal (Alec Baldwin) that leave a deluge of disaffectedness, deception, and destruction at its base; although, the victims are the working class whom these noveau riche are family with, and find love with. The consistency that occurs most clearly is that men with money abuse women. But, early on Ginger (Sally Hawkins) defends her sister Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) by citing, "she wasn't the crook, he [Hal] was," which follows down the tower by disavowing Jasmine's culpability because she was oppressed by Hal, yet Ginger was innocent.

This movie is about "looking the other way," as Jasmine is accused of. The rich characters are devoid of ethics and if their middle class loved ones want anything at all to do with them, they must ignore their glaringly hostile transgressive-abusive natures.

Jasmine's rich backstory is told in flashbacks. This stuff is Woody Allen showing off his master screenwriting skills. It's charming. Every character is desperate to salvage some catastrophe on the verge of disaster, but it's modern and class-conscious. Jasmine is similar to some of the best roles Judy Davis acted out, as the hysteric jilted lover she so often played in other Allen films. But Jasmine goes insane for real, not movie ha ha insane, and this is where the story shows it's got balls.

The rich are made out to be insane for actually buying into the myth that they are above everyone else, and in the world of fiction that's fun to play around with. Why not? The WASP culture of material obsession is sickening in this film, and it's played for high drama. And it is because Allen is deriving his comedy from such a touchy real life source that it works so well. It's funny because it's true.

Allen has a couple of penetrating closeups that really compliment Blanchett's face. The scene where she boasts of her socialite life to Ginger's bewildered boys; the scene where she's without make-up at the end, lost, deranged.

Alec Baldwin has been in a few Woody Allen films before. He's great. But, Sally Hawkins really is the other half of Blanchett's movie. These are probably two of the most established American female leads of the year, and both of the women playing these characters are British--just a trivia note.

With the exception of Hal and Al (Louis C. K.), the men in this film are subservient to their women. And Hal and Al are the only guys who own their own businesses or are otherwise financially wealthy.

I first appreciated the way Allen can take real life situations and get so much out of class, sex, age, race, religion, and have mostly just scenes of people talking be so accomplished. But, at this late in his career, the fact that he's still covering this same material and getting more out of it is really something rare in movies.

--Dregs

Drive, He Said

Summer brings big budget blockbusters. But this summer, there have also been a number of minimalist-structured narrative art films: Like Someone in Love (2012, Abbas Kiarostami) and To the Wonder (2012, Terrence Malick) in March kind of kicked things off; followed by Spring Breakers (2012, Harmony Korine); The Bling Ring (2013, Sofia Coppola); and Prince Avalanche (2013, David Gordon Green). Another word to describe these films would be slow.

My first Nicolas Winding Refn film was Bronson (2008), which I hated because it treaded over the same dramatic elements too much: it was a movie about a badass who fights when cornered, so he goes to prison where... guess what?... he gets cornered and fights. In the film's defense, it looked amazing with its theatrical lighting stylization, and I had been burnt out by a festival schedule where I had already seen three films before Bronson that night.

Drive (2011, Refn) is a treat. Cliff Martinez's synthesizer 80s New Wave madness and pop songs really characterize Drive. And Carey Mulligan's damsel is the right kind of distress The Driver (Ryan Gosling) needs to check his desires. Comedy and violence finally add to create a work that can travel around to plenty of audiences effectively.

Power attracts beauty.

Only God Forgives (2013, Refn) is an urban Crime Drama that takes place in Bangkok and focuses on the few individuals who wield substantial power in the close-knit criminal underworld, and the attainability of beauty, justice, and morality that their respective statuses and power afford them.

The film opens with a kickboxing ring Julian (Gosling) runs. Slow camera dollies fluidly present sumptuous production design, highlighted by real Thailand locations, elaborate black-on-red wallpaper schemes, strong red lights, and ornate floral arrangements. This Bangkok, like Tokyo in Enter the Void (2009, Gaspar Noé), is painted in its most dark, dangerous, and aesthetically elegant form.

Once the tone is established, the following 85 minutes sludge forward charged with the behemoth Cliff Martinez score, which is unlike his recent electropop funk arrangements. Martinez's score features foreboding low strings that sound like tectonic plates must be shifting, along with bizarre atonal percussion arrangements that sometimes sound like the music from the stargate sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick). In the film's third act climax, Martinez finally brings out his Moog funk for a big fight though--what fun.

Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) is the central character of the film. He rules Bangkok as a Police Chief, dishing out his own brand of justice, as he sees fit--which usually involves bloodshed. His stoicism seems contagious. The entire cast barely moves a face muscle, appendage, or even mutters a word that they don't absolutely have to. This movie is heavy. It's about a triangle of powerful people who cross each other, and the ensuing resolution.

The brothels and 12 year old Thai prostitutes are shockingly beautiful in their context here. And so is the venerable Chang's karaoke performances, with his adoring disciples (Bangkok PD) solemnly and piously granting him audience.

The blocking is very important in Only God Forgives. Audiences must pay close attention to eyelines to decipher where Julian is looking often, as cuts mismatch geographical and temporal unity. Is all of this real? Is some of it imagined? Obviously we are meant to decide ourselves, but we can assume the shots of the bloody samurai sword, for example, represent something more than your typical connect-the-dots narratives.

Only God Forgives meets the challenge of the cliché, "Go big or go home." I love the way the gargantuan metropolis Bangkok can represent the pinnacle of exotic beauty and vice, and we get to study the power dynamic through a few White expatriates primarily--it's fun to imagine that these criminals are so big that they just live off the fat of the land down there pursuing the classic safe haven for American outlaws, while running shit and living the life of luxury. And it is even more fitting that they all answer to Chang, the benevolent Chang.

I just dig Chang. Something about how formidable his presence is, always wearing that short-sleeved black shirt and slacks uniform. And Crystal (Kristen Scott Thomas) is hilariously adept at being the termagant who commands her own empire.

--Dregs

The 5th Film by Sofia Coppola

One thing Sofia Coppola has going for her is that her entire oeuvre displays a directorial authorship and she has written all of her films. Her motifs include a sense of isolation refracted through a protagonist's femininity, celebrity, or adolescence--sometimes all three. She also has a precious hand at art direction, with iconography and milieus often involving a noticeably girly insight into a delicately hand-decorated stylization.

However, her films exhibit an anemic quality that I imagine resembles what Coppola is like in real life. From what I've heard of her public speaking persona, she often mumbles, appears fatigued, and languidly struggles to make her points (I wonder if she's always like that? Her father, Francis Ford Coppola, seems incapable of ever shutting up.).

So, as an American female filmmaker of personal and original works, she has no peers. The only other American female voice I can think of in cinema to point out currently is screenwriter Diablo Cody. These two women maintain a literary consistency to their work that is responsible, without sacrificing the quality of the entertainment.

Did anyone see the alternate design Spring Breakers (2012, Harmony Korine) poster that this ad resembles? It's no shocker that advertisers would try to piggyback onto a market trend. Yet, The Bling Ring (2013, Sofia Coppola) is an entity that's saturated with themes of imitation, impostors, and moral and intellectual wastoids. Since The Bling Ring operate as criminals who are obsessed with looking good and getting rich by assimilating with and robbing those who already are good looking and rich, they are following the newest trend this summer, as evinced by Spring Breakers or Pain and Gain (2013, Michael Bay).

There are no characters or character development. All members of the Bling Ring Five serve a single function--they steal. That's it. We're introduced to them as a gang of thieves who seek high price-tagged luxury goods, they succeed, and they are punished. The plot archs, but the characters do not. This works because it fits the world of the story. I don't want more character here because it's depicting shallow teenagers who are looking for something that they don't know themselves--fun--and don't know it 'til they find it.

This feels like Coppola's adaptation of the video game Grand Theft Auto. The bulk of the film is a pass into the proceedings for the sake of fun, as opposed to a glimpse into the procedural of why and how they did it and why and how they got caught. Go read Crime and Punishment if you really care about heftier literary crime narratives that pathologize burglary.

The familiar structure of inserting mock interview footage of the culprits after they've been convicted of their crime amidst flashbacks of the crimes themselves seems like a new direction for Coppola, but it is similar to the structure used in The Virgin Suicides (1999, Coppola).

After The Virgin Suicides, Gus Van Sant would spend the '00s churning out his "Beautiful Corpse Trilogy," Gerry (2002), Elephant (2004), and Last Days (2005). Van Sant and Coppola have a lot in common. If Van Sant's trilogy can be said to have followed The Virgin Suicides, Coppola definitely seems to have returned the homage. Coppola hired DP Harris Savides (who shot all of Van Sant's trilogy) to shoot her 2010 film Somewhere, and The Bling Ring was his final film. By itself, this is weak evidence, but the pacing of Somewhere was glacial and the point of view in general feels more detached.

Savides' look is desaturated. There are no strong blacks or whites. He doesn't light for subjects, so actors often walk through areas of the set where they fall off into shadows. And this obviously stands out against the complete opposite look of Spring Breakers.

The production design is the star of this movie. We get the cool Coppola teen girl bedrooms, although the mansions are superbly evoked. It's almost like we're back in her 18th century Versailles.

The music is every bit as legit as it should be since we're supposed to feel like we are hanging out with the coolest kids in America. The culture of singing in one's car is also an astute addition.

While I did say there was no character, I'd like to close with one final Van Sant analogy. Nicky (Emma Watson) isn't developed as a character really, but her two dimensional stereotype strongly resembles that of the Buck Henry-created sociopath Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) in To Die For (1995, Van Sant). And Nicky seems to anchor the cast.

At least the actors were all actually pretty and young. Katy Chang is flawlessly cute.

While the film doesn't attain the heights of an actual tabloid opera, its modestly scaled case study does manage to show what it feels like to be a teenager again; and additionally, the dangers and excitement of breaking into houses, burglary, and snorting cocaine (for those of us who didn't actually experience these thrills first hand).

--Dregs

Paramount's Plagued Production

Summertime for movie fans means the promise of big budget effects pictures.



The cinematography in World War Z (2013, Marc Forster) is identifiable firstly by Robert Richardson, A.S.C.'s tendency to toplight and bounce off of practical surfaces, most typically using a table top. Furthermore, Bob still creates images wherein a character finds themselves in a pool of harsh source light that is overexposed and looks like they are some sort of apparition. The scene in the underground bunker in South Korea where the Brad Pitt character receives intelligence from the James Badge Dale character is especially beholden of this distinct look.

The director really fucked up his chance to give this any clear stamp of authorship.

But, the crowd scenes in Jerusalem primarily, Philly, and also elsewhere, are magnificent in their D.W. Griffith worthy opulence. The geography of the action is layed out with forethought and polished. The edits are quick and we stay on the move. The jolts are nerve wracking. And, there are quite a few laughs scattered throughout--like when the cop shows up to take command of a throng of looters, but is revealed to be one of them.

But, for the most part, the movie feels like it keeps striking the same note again, and eventually becomes a little monotonous.

And while the film may not be the work of an auteur, I do still commend its focus and realistic commitment to the protagonist's uphill battle to save humanity. Who says the zombies aren't scary? These are the scariest kind of zombies because they bear the strongest resemblance to living humans in the sense that they are stupid, dangerous, and just clogging every thoroughfare with their rotting carcasses.

Contagion (2011, Steven Soderbergh) is a way better outbreak picture, but with Bob's lensing and $170 million for crowd scenes and effects work, World War Z manages to earn its own spot in movies that matter for me.

I did have one qualm with plot continuity. SPOILER ALERT:

Doesn't the UN chief answer the Pitt character's phonecall and tell him that "there was nothing we could do," about his wife, but then at the end we find out she was fine the whole time? Or is there something I missed? I think that the chief meant that he couldn't keep a close watch and security detail on the Pitt character's wife and girls, but it came off as though they were dead--this movie is PG-13 though, so of course no real harm can come to the Pitt character's family.

End SPOILERS.



When I first began writing for Reviewiera, I had envisioned the goal of subjectively writing film criticism (as opposed to movie reviews) and writing predominantly from a first person perspective that would allow any digressions as long as I felt they were pertinent.

But, sometimes I've found myself slacking lately. And unfortunately, the result is shoddy tidbits of criticism. At least when I say something, I've tried to back it up.

So, this week I was working on a Chevy Silverado commercial that was directed and shot by one of my artistic heroes, cinematographer Robert Richardson. I picked him up from the airport 2 weeks ago and immediately gushed about how I'd been indoctrinated into personal/subjective filmmaking when I was 13 because of Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone). He was very cool and brought me along to have dinner at uchi (probably the hottest sushi restaurant in Austin--I can't believe I just said that) with he and his producer and production designer.

And nearly 20 years after being dragged out of Natural Born Killers 10 minutes into it by my disapproving parents (in their defense, maybe that isn't a movie a 13 year old should watch), my influences have remained uncannily consistent.

Richardson shot every Oliver Stone movie from Salvador (1986, Stone) to U Turn (1997, Stone), winning an Oscar for JFK (1991, Stone); he also shot Casino (1995, Martin Scorsese), which I always preferred to Goodfellas (1990, Scorsese) and when I was 14 I knew that the cinematography was stellar--he was the only D.P. I could identify by his style (particularly the blown out table tops and harsh source lighting), before reteaming with Scorsese for Bringing Out the Dead (1999, Scorsese), winnning his second Oscar for The Aviator (2004, Scorsese), Shutter Island (2010, Scorsese) and the film that earned him his third Oscar, Hugo (2012, Scorsese); and Bob's been Quentin Tarantino's D.P. since Kill Bill (2003/4, Tarantino).

I didn't see JFK until I was 24, but I fell in love with dude's style all over again. This was the same time I'd been punch drunk over Kill Bill.

If I didn't work with Bob this week I wouldn't have known that he shot World War Z, or that he took his name off of the movie because Paramount insisted on releasing the movie in 3D, despite the fact that the film was shot in 2D without 3D cameras. Richardson won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for the 3D Hugo and knows what it takes to make a 3D movie right. Anyway, on the Chevy commercial I also got to meet Bob's 1st AC, Gregor Tavenner (whose credit is still on IMDb and in the movie), his Key Grip, Chris Centrella (whose credit is still in World War Z, but not on IMDb?), and Gaffer, Ian Kincaid (whose credit, like Richardson's, has been removed from IMDb and the finished film). 

And earlier this week, after I'd spent an hour or so talking with Ian, he told me that Tarantino says, "Friends go see friends' movies on opening day," and that he always mails Tarantino a ticket stub to prove this every time he releases a new movie.

Basically I said all that to say normally I wouldn't have been inclined to go see World War Z, but I did it for Bob.

Richardson, right, with an adoring fan.

So was it worth it? Definitely. I've been known to watch a movie just because Keira Knightley is in it. Now, usually I'm an auteur theorist who follows directors like sports clubs, with the exception of Miss Knightley. I questioned the moral ramifications about watching a movie just because she's sodreamy I hang on her every syllable.

Similarly, the reason I watched World War Z, was to check out Bob's cinematography, and it was worth it for me on that merit alone. I don't know if I'll ever really come around to big budget action effects movies. The last action effects movie I saw that I thought was truly brilliant was Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991, James Cameron)--I know Fat is somewhere along the lines of David Foster Wallace level disdain for that movie though. For me, T2 is not only the work of an auteur, but presient about the public's taste with CGI, sexy, dangerous, and a lot of fun (but, I did fall for it when I was 12).

I see every Michael Bay movie in the theater, because since T2, I feel like he's inherited its legacy in a way, and dare I say, the Transformers films are the closest thing to T2 I've found for my tastes. (Okay, I'm also a little biased because I worked on Transformers 4 last week.) But I don't go for The Matrix films, the Star Wars prequels, J. J. Abrams, or Spielberg (although I do really like Mission: Impossible III (2006, J. J. Abrams), Spider-Man 3 (2007, Sam Raimi) and  The Adventures of Tintin (2011, Steven Spielberg)). I've also never liked Peter Jackson's films because I don't like any wizards and faries films ever, but also because I feel, much like with Baz Luhrmann, that the spectacle is bloated and not edgy enough. But District 9 (2009, Neill Blomkamp) was stellar, even though I have yet to come fully on board--I can't wait to hear what Fat thought of Elysium (2013, Blomkamp).

So yeah, World War Z is a little flat and it suffers from the PG-13 curse of knowing Gerry (Pitt) and his family will be safe and he will be the hero who saves the world, to be fair. But it's got spectacle, and Bob's cinematography is amazing.

--Dregs



Contrast

Like Gatsby, To the Wonder (2012, Terrence Malick) sucks because its dramatic stakes eventually amount to nothing more than the fact that among a triangle of ridiculously beautiful mannequins, infidelity occurs for a slight moment, yet they all go on the same as they were when first introduced.

The difference with Malick though, is that he is showing us the limits of people and how unlimited the beauty of nature is, whereas Gatsby thinks it's showing us how unlimited the capacity for people to party and fall in love is, and ignores nature in favor of booze, baubles, and Babylon.

Although, while Malick's visual bravura is breathtaking, it is reducible to wide angle Steadicam subjective roving gliding movements mostly through nature, with some shots of beautiful people looking off into the distance, and a random menagerie of North American wildlife.

To the Wonder is unusually lacking in plot structured through dramatic turns; very much like The Tree of Life (2011, Malick). And, for a Malick film, it doesn't have as many attention pulling symphonic score excerpts. But, this new mini-Malick is like seeing Werckmeister Harmonies after you've already seen Satantango. It's like listening to a new 7" of your favorite band. And I think Malick is editing three more movies he's already shot, so I think To the Wonder will definitely be re-evaluated by many viewers after those films have been released.

To the Wonder feels like 60s Bresson with less plot.

Olga Kurylenko and Bartlesville, Oklahoma are the subject of Malick's gaze. And, having spent the latter years of my high school days very close to this area, I am impressed by the natural grotesque local flavor that shows up in the film--mostly through extras casting. Kurylenko is in a Sirkian woman's picture: she has love and a house to keep, but what the fuck can she do in Hicksville with no stimulus or fulfillment?

Sea turtles and a field of buffalo are among the cute critters Malick photographs in To the Wonder. I wish I could have delved in depth more critically, but at least I've been able to start.

--Dregs

The Dream of the 90s Is Still Alive

Michael Bay makes big American movies. Is this the first time he's made a movie that didn't cost over $100 million?

Pain & Gain (2013, Michael Bay) is an action-packed morality tale about the consequences of using crime to attain the American dream. The protagonist, Daniel (Mark Wahlberg), is a victim of the early 1990s pop culture wasteland who foolishly recruits two other stooges to take on Miami as if he were Scarface. The layers of pop culture self-reference stack high, beginning with Marky Mark himself heading the ensemble.

But what Bay handles best is borrowing seemingly doofus drips from twenty years ago and finding that they are perfectly interchangeable with Americans today.

The dregs of mainstream society on display here are the same characters used ironically to entertain in Spring Breakers (2012, Harmony Korine). Image-obsessed, mass market cultured consumers with an amoral understanding of violence and laws really know how to run amok this summer. But, Bay's anything but pretentious. He drives the story and knows how to deliver high octane escalating conflict that adheres to the wham o meter.

People aren't so much beautiful in Pain & Gain as they are idealized conceptions of cool American symbols; so, mostly beefcakes and strippers. Miami looks like a music video or million dollar commercial. Bay uses a mix of film and video capturing evocative images within his vast canvas that never becomes static. The Digital Domain people must have had something to do with the many slo-mo shots: something like 1,000 frames per second and often projectile spittle that floats in air.

Plot wise, this comedy of errors keeps getting unbelievably worse. And, I think that as an American, I was kind of proud that we're such a big obnoxious badass of a country, but also glad that I could point my finger at all the people in this movie and say hey, "at least I don't have it as bad as they do."

Dwayne Johnson is thoroughly hilarious in his comedic turn as a highly moralized ex-con Christian coke head bodybuilder who nearly involuntarily whoops people's asses.

Ed Harris is fun though too, cast on-type.

I really think the theme of this movie coalesced, unlike any other Michael Bay movie I've ever seen. Or, not so much the theme, but the way the visual representation of this simple true crime tale makes it so tangible. It's like looking up close at the ugliest, sexiest, balance of American culture.

I think the line in the movie went something like: "America started as thirteen scrawny colonies, but now it's the buffest nation in the world." Tongue in cheek, Bay's commitment to action earned my respect today. I don't know how long my admiration for him can hold up, but every once in a while, I always know who I go to when I want to see the biggest, loudest, simplest forms of entertainment Hollywood has to offer.

--Dregs

If Terry Richardson Remade Badlands...

Harmony Korine creates high concept product for the international arthouse circuit. Spring Breakers (2013, Harmony Korine) is atypical for him because it is unlike the intimate cockroach surviving devastating disaster of nature structure he commanded in Gummo (1997, Korine), or the narratives where he transports us to tag along with obscure communes, Mister Lonely (2007, Korine) and Trash Humpers (2009, Korine); because, in his newest film he ventures for the first time away from his commitment to realism.

Gummo is presented almost as a documentary. Trash Humpers is presented as a home movie. And, while portioning out his aesthetic with equal measures of both, Korine goes all out in favor of a superbly realized stream of images--mostly shot with a shutter over-cranked to the point of tableau--and sounds, to arrive at what I am unfortunately struggling to decide describing as either like a music video, a commercial, or post-Eisensteinian montage. But undoubtedly, Spring Breakers is presented as a dream fantasy.

Music videos and commercials rely on image and sound because they're so short. They also typically feature many cuts. But, whereas they can project a wide array of disparate and unrelated shots, Spring Breakers feels more like a theme; or, like a book of photography.

Spring Breakers is A-list teensploitation. We get no plot or character. The girls are one dimensional: they like partying (sex, drugs, and violence) in bikinis and believe spring break is about finding themselves. The only plot turns are who gets robbed and who leaves spring break. Maybe I'd expected more. But, this is acceptable for the teensploitation genre. The goal of teensploitation is to get teens to spend money on a movie that promises sex and other R rated antics. So, why I would still commend the plot structure of Spring Breakers is because it places the reality of the dangerous crimes being perpetrated in the background, and basically eschews any moral consequences in favor of following each girl's pursuit of their ideal endless spring break.

And the girls' continuous grounding in reckless high-stakes adventure is what sets the movie apart. No one ever interrupts their roadtrip; well, at least no moral laws do. The obsession with the fleeting spring break is all that matters. While the girls travel to Florida, spring break ends. However, they stay and refuse to quit living the spring break lifestyle. And inexplicably, so does the film. The film places all the vice and danger so close you can touch it, and says if you want it, you can have it all and for life.

The setting is magnificently realized. Korine's primary ingredients are several party scenes full of girls in bikinis and topless (Is this a record for number of nipples?), girls making out with girls, girls in ski masks, pistols, machine guns, blunts, lines of cocaine, hard liquor by the liter, beer bongs of the syphon variety, beer bongs of the trumpet variety, and cool cars. And the bulk of the film is precisely about shuffling out these images. The aesthetic is fetishistic taboo. Again, like Gummo, Korine delights in beautifully photographing filthy squalor.

One shot that occurs shortly after the midpoint, that nears sublime, is an image of a girl in a bikini on the beach holding up a beer bong with its trumpet end blown out by the overhead sun behind it--it looks truly sacred.

Every aspect of the film has been punched by a rainbow. Even the dreary lecture halls are no match for the dayglo candy colored beams emanating from the girls' laptop screens; the Christian church of course, happens to be one with colorful stained glass vignettes of the gospels.

James Franco as Alien is over the top, but doesn't turn the film into camp. He's hilarious, but subordinate to the dangerous warpath of the girls.

The centerpiece of the film is a climactic, character-defining sequence set to the extant, prominently mixed "Everytime," by Britney Spears, from her 2003 album, In the Zone. And here's where I'll end it: I didn't think the use of the song was ironic; I bought into it; I bought into the whole plastic shallow sexy sentimental invigorating sweep of Britney, spring break, uninhibited youth and the whole enchilada. For real. Sometime last year I heard about this and decided it was the biggest thing I would look forward to in 2013--and it is every bit what I'd hoped for and more. This proves Harmony Korine is never ironic or condescending about his characters. When he decides he's found an interesting story, he comes up with art.

--Dregs

The Ladies of Salem

To apply a broad label grouping Rob Zombie's influences, House of 1000 Corpses (2003, Rob Zombie) is very similar to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper) with its faux-final girl structure amid a backwoods cannibal family's home; The Devil's Rejects (2005, Zombie) feels a lot like The Hills Have Eyes (1977, Wes Craven) in that wholesome-valued type tourists are abducted by sadistic murderers in a Southwestern desert.

However, the Halloween films showed Zombie transitioning into a more cohesive visionary, in the sense that he turned more serious--Halloween II (2009, Zombie) is cold, and the violence isn't playful. And that film also benefits from Zombie's addition of a subjective dream in Myers' head that runs along with the actual chronological progression of the narrative. For those are his strengths (so far): visualizing fucked up rock n' roll/classic horror inspired set pieces, and, a straightforward plot of terror encroaching upon a final girl.

The Lords of Salem (2012, Zombie) is an onslaught of images for the sake of shock, violence, sex, satanic ritual, metal, and art--the pictures on display at this exhibition are fun, provocative, and inspired by classic Golden Age European horror. Rob Zombie respects vintage horror.

Plot is minimal. Sheri Moon Zombie stars as Heidi Hawthorne, a local DJ for a Salem, MA radio station who discovers a mysterious record by a band simply called "The Lords." The record has a strange effect on her and brings about strange hallucinations of a sacrilegious nature.

Once that's been established, nothing else really happens.

But, I'm not disappointed. At 90 minutes, and with a low budget, the tone is consistent: messed up. Let's say someone took Rosemary's Baby (1968, Roman Polanski) and decided to eliminate all of the plot except for the part about a coven abducting a young woman for a satanic ritual, and try to stretch out that ending and make it into its own spinoff. Because that's what The Lords of Salem is. The urban alienation is there, but Zombie doesn't know how to craft characters. His turf is exploitation though, so I'm not faulting him--I enjoy his stereotypes because at least they're markedly his own (even if I am a little over that Tarantino/Smith/Cody style of pop-naturalistic dialogue that has nothing to do with the plot.)

I admire the brazen quality of this sideshow, but I really can't stand all of the sequences that are imaginary in the first half seamlessly blending into those in the second half. I mean, this movie really doesn't commit itself to much aside from the aforementioned imagery.

So, I'd recommend this to anyone who's up for naked women, goats, chanting, and bizarre pagan fun. What little there is here works for me.

The music is excellent overall, especially the "Lords" drone metal track played several times throughout the movie--I got a kick out of its heaviness.

--Dregs

The Adventures of Alvin & Lance

In the summer of 2012, after severe forest fires ravaged the rural town of Bastrop, TX, David Gordon Green snuck under the radar of the press and quickly got together with his cinematographer on every-film-he's-ever-done Tim Orr to film a loosely and spontaneously captured comedy with Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch in the burnt and overcast backdrop of Bastrop State Park.

 

Green has crafted Prince Avalanche (2013, David Gordon Green) as a simple, short, camping trip/men at (road) work ballad about loss, survival, and rebuilding. The opening title card places the narrative in Bastrop, 1988, after the wake of a devastating forest fire. A dark, sombre undertone constantly supports a minimalist and bleak menagerie of odd Texas wildlife, with virtually no signs of civilization, except one---

--The road

Alvin (Paul Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch) are assigned the task of painting and placing signs along an 8 mile stretch of highway, and they are always moving, fighting, laughing, or getting drunk on that same blacktop.

So here's the twist:

Green takes these two distinct male characters and constantly pinpoints details about their contrasting characters in wide stretching intimate forest vistas--and almost every few minutes this becomes classically, essentially archetypal broad comedy that feels fresh and sincerely sweet, with a hefty resolution right where you'd expect it--the end. Yet, David Wingo & Explosions in the Sky have created a prog rock spacey fun concoction that continuously makes the film something else. The film becomes a score-propelled, shiny, bright, electronic, somewhat 80s new wave ironied adventure that never lags. Additionally, Orr's constant slow-as-molasses zooms cut together in a way that turn this trip practically into a music video. This reminds me of David Fincher's collaborations with Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross because like Explosions in the Sky, Reznor & Ross were already in a band, and also because the music is post rock electronic stuff that is wall to wall and dominant, as opposed to the only other director I can think of who uses that kind of music--Michael Mann; but, Mann uses his cues traditionally in an emotionally underscoring way, unlike Fincher and Green, who show real balls with their sonic experimentations.

The film's themes are etched out by a woman named Joyce, who first appears to Alvin in a trance. (After Lance leaves into town for the weekend and Alvin decompresses, reality becomes subjective.) Joyce's significance in the plot isn't worth mentioning in detail because it's up to the individual viewer to find their own response. However, it is reasonable to say that the film has a kindness that never approaches cruelty, as if it chooses to keep looking until it desperately finds what it needs to survive with a will to love and build.

Paul Rudd works marvels within the role of uptight, anally retentive nerdy outdoorsman against a frequently brilliant Emile Hirsch as shallow, woman-crazy, but really too sweet for his own good underneath all the vanity dude.

And if I would say the film had a centerpiece, it's the drunken montage. Green made a serious comedy that's actually hilarious--rare.

--Dregs

The Bitter Pill

Steven Soderbergh says he is retiring from making movies. If so, he's gone out in peak fashion.

The best thing going for Side Effects (2013, Steven Soderbergh) is Scott Z. Burns's whip-smart script. Burns proves to have mastered a delicate balance between positive and negative charged genre blending; yet, the protagonist and antagonist are also balanced along a similar +/- structure; and, this foundation is a very strong mix in the hands of Soderbergh.

Rooney Mara plays Emily Taylor, a mousy, modestly-attired social climber sociopath who freely and carelessly manipulates state and government institutions both legal and medical, deviously and deceptively plying her lethal black widow schemes in service of her own survival. Emily murders her husband and lies her way out of it like a pro. This cynical modern epic crime narrative is the negative charge.

Jude Law plays Dr. Jonathan Banks, an upper-class professional who earnestly tries to treat Emily, a young woman suffering from clinical depression. This is the medical drama narrative that initially cloaks the crime plot. But, ultimately it returns. By the end of the film, Banks or Emily wins--but, that doesn't mean that this hybrid settles on taking sides; because, both are so well balanced.

This is one of the rare instances of the protagonist being all bad (Emily) and the antagonist being all good (Banks).  Furthermore, the reason the hybrid genre characteristic is worth commenting on is because this isn't a twist at the end of the second act--Emily revealed as a faker--due to the fact that Emily may or may not actually be a victim of circumstances and depression and misdiagnoses, as she's initially introduced to be. In a disturbingly modern way, Rooney Mara looks realistically like one of those recent young cute female murderers who the cable tabloid news networks saturate the media with.

Mara's performance is the other standout of the film. She's now part of some kind of elite group, having now worked with David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and Terrence Malick. Those three have been the top-rank Hollywood big-budget, quality filmmaking triumvirate for the past decade and a half. We get a lot of Rooney Mara and Side Effects is a vehicle for her brooding explosive sculptured cypher of beauty. And she screams a might deal fierce, which is still unsettling.

Soderbergh is on his best behavior camera wise. It's like one of the most subdued films he's delivered in the past twenty years--probably somewhere between The Girlfriend Experience (2009) and The Informant! (2009). But his stylized interiors, with the fluttery business of artificial lighting in NYC, and subtle variants within warm and cool sources, are impressively and carefully crafted.

Side Effects lacks an emotional punch. But, Soderbergh, in only 100 minutes, puts us in an emotional choke hold, and keeps us there. The moral is a cautionary tale about what can happen when a common everyday anybody can try to get away with crime at some of the highest stakes imaginable; and this target's success is that it's been brought to the screen in a compact, efficiently executed, sleek and right out of yesterday's headlines panache by Soderbergh, entrenched in his own style, as it should be.

--Dregs