Monday, June 18, 2007
Friday Movie Review (quite late but a two fer)
This weekend I had my willing suspension of disbelief tested past the breaking point in two different movies. First was the beautiful but pretentious and empty Paprika, the new anime from Satoshi Kon. The second was the new Kevin Costner vehicle, Mr. Brooks, which was satisfying and disappointing at the same time. In discussing Mr. Brooks there will be non-stop spoilers because I'm interested in the plot devices and how they failed the otherwise good acting, etc. I don't think I can spoil anything in Paprika because you have to know actually what happened in a film in order to create a spoiler. Let's go with the Japanese cartoon first.
Mr. Kon has yet to make a good movie (with the possible exception of Tokyo Godfathers, which I haven't seen). His first, Perfect Blue, was incredible for its dislocation. You had, at one point, absolutely no idea what was real and what was not as it changed rapidly between the two opposites. Few movies have accomplished that feat. I was, however, disappointed with Millennium Actress and Paranoia Agent. He says this is the last of the dream movies. God, I hope so.
The parade and characters in the abandoned amusement park reminded me a lot of a good episode of Cowboy Bebop (#20, Pierrot le Fou). I wonder if Kon had a hand in that. They certainly looked the same. Some of the artwork really was truly stunning. OK, that's the good part.
Paprika is about the 150th retelling of the Frankenstein myth--a scientific discovery is abused and grows out of control and the continued existence of our universe is in doubt. OK, that last is what the Japanese add to all their movies, as well as Tokyo being partially destroyed. I think it's a filmmaker union rule or something. Here the abused scientific discovery is a device you put on your head and it reads your dreams and records them and, I'm not sure how this was explained, someone else can enter your dream. Apparently, that's bad.
Listen, I'm not against movies NOT telling a story. It make as much sense to me to do the movie version of War and Peace, for example, as it does to sculpt a version of the Mona Lisa. A good movie can be merely a sound and light show (but it had better be freakin' beautiful). There were a series of movies with long, unpronounceable titles in the Hopi language which were terrific. But if you decide to tell a story, go ahead and tell the story. That's all I ask. There was a tiny bit of epistemological interest in this film, but the love story, such as it was, kinda sucked. Too much cliche dream vision, not enough soft core hentai.
OK, back to America, [spoilers follow] and of all the hundreds of millions of stories to tell, the director of Mr. Brooks, Bruce Evans, pick one of the rarest (so rare as not to exist), a successful businessman who happens to be floridly psychotic and get a sexual kick out of shooting people in the head. Of course! What could be more relevant to our every day lives than the problems of a successful serial killer? Director Evans hasn't made a good movie before either, but he did write some good ones, Stand By Me and Starman.
I think people who are floridly psychotic and get sexual pleasure from murdering people cannot compartmentalize it. There will be a bleed through. I know there are serial murderers who were supposedly charming and smart and able, like Ted Bundy, but they are mainly loners and the only people who really get close to them are unaware of what's really going on because the hangers-around are shallow and blind.
Costner has a successful box business in Portland, OR and is in fact so successful and popular, he is businessman of the year. Right. He hides his 'hunger' and fights it with AA meetings and the Twelve Step mantras. OK and I'm willing to swallow that, but he also has a 6 foot invisible friend named Harvey, no! sorry, Marshall, with whom he has conversations, in his head. I'm sorry, but a guy having a conversation in his head with an invisible friend for minutes at a time is going to come off as really weird, not as the businessman of the year. It gets worse (and don't get me wrong the interplay between Marshall and Mr. Brooks is about the best thing in the film).
OK, he gets caught on film closing the curtains on the exhibitionist couple he's just shot. Now, if I'm the photographer, knowing I am a threat to a successful (uncaught) serial killer, I'm clamming up and running away. Perhaps I would send the photos to the police anonymously. Perhaps. The last thing I would do would be to approach the killer, let him know I have the photos that will put him away and demand not money, but comradeship--take me along next time you kill someone--not me, of course, someone else. Yeah, everyone wants to be a murderer and cozy up to someone who lacks the little switch that disconnects the 'thrill' of murder from the the beta endorphin jolt we normal humans get with sexual orgasm. We secretly long for the the thrill of getting ourselves killed. And the stand up commedian Dane Cook looks bad in this film, really bad.
Then there's the daughter, who has the gene and is a messy murderer. Yeah, like I believe it's genetic. The reason Costner calls the dream of his murder a nightmare is not that she killed him but that she was so bad at it and sloppy (no way she doesn't get caught). He's OK that she's a murderer and considers him a possible target, but he's revolted by the mess she makes. Yeah, that's a normal fatherly reaction to news like that. Good that he's pro-life too. I liked that little detail.
Then there's the Demi Moore detour. She still looks pretty good, but is definitely fading (I liked that they dinged her through her character's wedding to a young man). OK, she's a very rich cop, looking for Costner, but is sidetracked by her divorce from Kutcher avatar and being stalked and attacked by another serial murderer she had earlier caught, who has escaped. Yeah, like that happens. I guess her role in the movie was important for the plot, but not what you'd call integral.
OK, the guns. Costner killed people with a suppressed PPK in .380 that he shot through a big plastic bag (very clever) and he could keep because he always recovered the slugs. (Tough to believe none stayed in the skull--the .380 will usually punch through one side of cranium but not through both sides, every time). Dane Cook had a 1935 Browning Hi Power in 9 mm. (I'm not sure 'bending' the firing pin would do anything to stop it firing. Removing or shortening it might have been a safer course). Demi had a Sig Sauer P229 in .40 S&W. She was not that good a shot, apparently, (although she drew her gun at the drop of a hat) and unlike the real characteristics of the round she was using, she managed to wound the steroid addicted (what?) serial torturer without actually knocking him down with the force of the bullet. He would not have gotten back in the fight after the shoulder hit, in reality. He was as bad a shot as the whole of the storm trooper corps in Star Wars, which is very bad indeed.
I'm sick of cartoons other than anime; movies based on comic books I recognize; movies about professional hit men and soon I'll add movies about Hannibal Lecter type serial killers who are unable to conform their behavior to social norms but are still very clever and otherwise noble and normal. I don't think those guys really exist either.
Mr. Brooks was the better movie, but just barely. I hope a good movie comes along this summer.
Mr. Kon has yet to make a good movie (with the possible exception of Tokyo Godfathers, which I haven't seen). His first, Perfect Blue, was incredible for its dislocation. You had, at one point, absolutely no idea what was real and what was not as it changed rapidly between the two opposites. Few movies have accomplished that feat. I was, however, disappointed with Millennium Actress and Paranoia Agent. He says this is the last of the dream movies. God, I hope so.
The parade and characters in the abandoned amusement park reminded me a lot of a good episode of Cowboy Bebop (#20, Pierrot le Fou). I wonder if Kon had a hand in that. They certainly looked the same. Some of the artwork really was truly stunning. OK, that's the good part.
Paprika is about the 150th retelling of the Frankenstein myth--a scientific discovery is abused and grows out of control and the continued existence of our universe is in doubt. OK, that last is what the Japanese add to all their movies, as well as Tokyo being partially destroyed. I think it's a filmmaker union rule or something. Here the abused scientific discovery is a device you put on your head and it reads your dreams and records them and, I'm not sure how this was explained, someone else can enter your dream. Apparently, that's bad.
Listen, I'm not against movies NOT telling a story. It make as much sense to me to do the movie version of War and Peace, for example, as it does to sculpt a version of the Mona Lisa. A good movie can be merely a sound and light show (but it had better be freakin' beautiful). There were a series of movies with long, unpronounceable titles in the Hopi language which were terrific. But if you decide to tell a story, go ahead and tell the story. That's all I ask. There was a tiny bit of epistemological interest in this film, but the love story, such as it was, kinda sucked. Too much cliche dream vision, not enough soft core hentai.
OK, back to America, [spoilers follow] and of all the hundreds of millions of stories to tell, the director of Mr. Brooks, Bruce Evans, pick one of the rarest (so rare as not to exist), a successful businessman who happens to be floridly psychotic and get a sexual kick out of shooting people in the head. Of course! What could be more relevant to our every day lives than the problems of a successful serial killer? Director Evans hasn't made a good movie before either, but he did write some good ones, Stand By Me and Starman.
I think people who are floridly psychotic and get sexual pleasure from murdering people cannot compartmentalize it. There will be a bleed through. I know there are serial murderers who were supposedly charming and smart and able, like Ted Bundy, but they are mainly loners and the only people who really get close to them are unaware of what's really going on because the hangers-around are shallow and blind.
Costner has a successful box business in Portland, OR and is in fact so successful and popular, he is businessman of the year. Right. He hides his 'hunger' and fights it with AA meetings and the Twelve Step mantras. OK and I'm willing to swallow that, but he also has a 6 foot invisible friend named Harvey, no! sorry, Marshall, with whom he has conversations, in his head. I'm sorry, but a guy having a conversation in his head with an invisible friend for minutes at a time is going to come off as really weird, not as the businessman of the year. It gets worse (and don't get me wrong the interplay between Marshall and Mr. Brooks is about the best thing in the film).
OK, he gets caught on film closing the curtains on the exhibitionist couple he's just shot. Now, if I'm the photographer, knowing I am a threat to a successful (uncaught) serial killer, I'm clamming up and running away. Perhaps I would send the photos to the police anonymously. Perhaps. The last thing I would do would be to approach the killer, let him know I have the photos that will put him away and demand not money, but comradeship--take me along next time you kill someone--not me, of course, someone else. Yeah, everyone wants to be a murderer and cozy up to someone who lacks the little switch that disconnects the 'thrill' of murder from the the beta endorphin jolt we normal humans get with sexual orgasm. We secretly long for the the thrill of getting ourselves killed. And the stand up commedian Dane Cook looks bad in this film, really bad.
Then there's the daughter, who has the gene and is a messy murderer. Yeah, like I believe it's genetic. The reason Costner calls the dream of his murder a nightmare is not that she killed him but that she was so bad at it and sloppy (no way she doesn't get caught). He's OK that she's a murderer and considers him a possible target, but he's revolted by the mess she makes. Yeah, that's a normal fatherly reaction to news like that. Good that he's pro-life too. I liked that little detail.
Then there's the Demi Moore detour. She still looks pretty good, but is definitely fading (I liked that they dinged her through her character's wedding to a young man). OK, she's a very rich cop, looking for Costner, but is sidetracked by her divorce from Kutcher avatar and being stalked and attacked by another serial murderer she had earlier caught, who has escaped. Yeah, like that happens. I guess her role in the movie was important for the plot, but not what you'd call integral.
OK, the guns. Costner killed people with a suppressed PPK in .380 that he shot through a big plastic bag (very clever) and he could keep because he always recovered the slugs. (Tough to believe none stayed in the skull--the .380 will usually punch through one side of cranium but not through both sides, every time). Dane Cook had a 1935 Browning Hi Power in 9 mm. (I'm not sure 'bending' the firing pin would do anything to stop it firing. Removing or shortening it might have been a safer course). Demi had a Sig Sauer P229 in .40 S&W. She was not that good a shot, apparently, (although she drew her gun at the drop of a hat) and unlike the real characteristics of the round she was using, she managed to wound the steroid addicted (what?) serial torturer without actually knocking him down with the force of the bullet. He would not have gotten back in the fight after the shoulder hit, in reality. He was as bad a shot as the whole of the storm trooper corps in Star Wars, which is very bad indeed.
I'm sick of cartoons other than anime; movies based on comic books I recognize; movies about professional hit men and soon I'll add movies about Hannibal Lecter type serial killers who are unable to conform their behavior to social norms but are still very clever and otherwise noble and normal. I don't think those guys really exist either.
Mr. Brooks was the better movie, but just barely. I hope a good movie comes along this summer.
Labels: Paprika; Mr. Brooks
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 4:03 PM 
Comments:
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"... unlike the real characteristics of the round she was using, she managed to wound the steroid addicted (what?) serial torturer without actually knocking him down with the force of the bullet."
.40 cal. has a reputation for serious recoil (for a pistol round), but I've never seen anyone knocked down by firing it. Since system momentum is conserved, you can't transfer any more momentum to the target than the shooter experienced (neglecting recoilless weapons, of course). If the bullet exits the target, even less momentum is transferred. Why would you expect the target to be knocked down by a hit to the shoulder?
(Am I missing an ironic comment on Hollywood's unique physics here?)
.40 cal. has a reputation for serious recoil (for a pistol round), but I've never seen anyone knocked down by firing it. Since system momentum is conserved, you can't transfer any more momentum to the target than the shooter experienced (neglecting recoilless weapons, of course). If the bullet exits the target, even less momentum is transferred. Why would you expect the target to be knocked down by a hit to the shoulder?
(Am I missing an ironic comment on Hollywood's unique physics here?)
No, I read somewhere that they tested the .45 on 1,000 lb. steers in Chicago and it knocked them down each time. I read later that Jihadis tested the .40 S&W on a guy with a vest and it knocked him down each time. I get the Newtonian physics you cite and I see your point, I'm just reporting what I think I know.
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