The Threes of Fall

Since so many films are just average, neither outstanding nor particularly bad, I find them hard to write on. We only use 5 shakers to keep it simple- not the one to one-hundred exactness of Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. Some average threes are almost-fours- others almost-twos. Zzzzzzz... Sorry, anyway here’s a bunch of average Joes:

"Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" - Made during the writing strike this is basically a showcase for the singing and comic talents of Neil Patrick Harris who went on to take over the award show host circuit. A cute story of offbeat superheroes; it’s retro, kitschy and hip with catchy songs. Kind of like a fun college film. The creators are the Hollywood writing family behind “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and other hi-grade pop phenoms: Jed, Joss and Zack Whedon. These men have a cult army of followers and this was a big hit at Comic-Con. You get the picture, wants to be a mini-“Rocky Horror Picture Show” for geeks.

“O’ Horten” - I loved how director Brent Hamer adapted Charles Bukowski in 2005’s “Factotum”. Here he creates a Norwegian deadpan existentialist flick about a retiring train engineer so I counted myself in! Loneliness, old age, absurdity and non sequiturs are all represented in this offbeat tale. However, like Jim Jarmusch’s work (except “Mystery Train” which I loved) this was critically praised but didn't quite work for me.

“Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!” - This is a pretty comprehensive look at how the B-Movies of Australia from the sixties through the eighties helped to establish that countrys’ national film industry. A feast of clips intercut with the older and wiser filmmakers and one horribly pretentious film critic (I hate those guys), this film moves along briskly with sex, violence, Kung Fu and car crashes. Seeing how all of this gave birth to “Mad Max”, the “Godfather” of these films, is fascinating but like the exploitive films themselves it does get tired and repetitive.

“Every Little Step” – When choreographer Michael Bennett held an interview/workshop with a bunch of dancers in New York City in 1974 and turned it into “A Chorus Line”, it became a classic Broadway success story. Winning a Pulitzer and nine Tony Awards it ran on Broadway for fifteen years closing in 1990. Fifteen more years later some of the members of the original creative team reassemble to stage a revival and this doc follows the dancers that audition for this show in a clever, life-imitating-fiction-which imitates-life loop. Yet just as the original writing team feared that too many stories would overwhelm the audience this film spreads itself too thin. I would say this is for hardcore fans only, but watching actor Jason Tam nail an audition so convincingly that it renders the production team into a bunch of crying schoolgirls, is to watch an actors’ dream. I wanted more of these breakthrough moments but as they say it’s like lightening in a bottle. “ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway” was much more fun.

“Lymelife” - Directed by Derick Martini and co written with his brother Steven (what’s with all the family teams popping up?), this film felt like the serious older cousin to Greg Mottola’s excellent “Adventureland”. I guess I should have reviewed that one. A coming-of-age film set in the late seventies on Long Island, this film would fall into the suburban angst genre I talked about earlier this year. Long-faced Rory and Kieran Culkin do their best as two siblings trapped in a disintegrating family. The adult stars Alec Baldwin, Cynthia Nixon, Timothy Hutton and Jill Hennessy almost save this film from its own over-seriousness. Almost doesn’t count.

“Coraline” - Speaking of depressing? Jeez Louise who is this film aimed at? Too creepy for children and a little too weird for adults, “Coraline” is Henry Selicks’ version of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” without the fun. The stop-animation is clever and all, but an alternative universe where a young girl must replace her eyes with buttons freaks me out much more than when the Abominable Snowman terrorized Rudolph. Children will go all Goth or Emo soon enough without entertaining them with this kind of horror and loneliness; as Joker asked: “Why so serious? “

The End of the Road- Cinema of the suburbs

“I don't want to live in a world without love or grief or beauty, I'd rather die.” - Becky in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956)

As World War II gave way to the Baby Boom and the housing experiment of Levittown gave birth to the suburbs, a whole new way of American life was created. The picturesque world of the perfect family in tidy homes was of course an ideal not quite the reality and post-war literature by authors like John Cheever were quick to point that out. Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” showed us that well-mannered mass murderers lurked among us in small town, Norman Rockwell America even before the war had finished and the suburbs were created.

Ah the burbs! Mass produced homes with conformity hanging in the air like the smell of fresh cut grass. Cautionary suburban stories continue to sprout like home gardens usually featuring the repressed individual trying to break out of the rigid norms of their family or community. If films are the dreams of a society, the suburban angst film certainly show how the American Dream can sometimes mask a nightmare. The stereotypes are obvious: strong: driven, domineering wives, obsessed with homemaking, absent or drunken husbands usually unhappy in their work, raising spoiled, superficial children against a backdrop of mid-brow culture, marital friction, adultery, divorce, drug abuse, and occasional mental illness. This has been great fodder for inspired scripts warning of the blandness of an increasingly homogenized American culture. The metaphoric suburbs are an ideal setting for tales that warn that the lives of those in those nicely manicured homes are somehow less authentic than their urban and rural counterparts. The dysfunction, boredom and banality of life in these communities are an easy target and almost a clichéd genre. Yet when done correctly they can continue to make us fear the disengagement that becomes more prevalent with each passing year and new technology.

The brilliant original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” had average small town folks transforming into unfeeling zombies right there in fifties perfect ‘Santa Mira’. “The Graduate” perfectly anticipated the youth movement of the sixties that rejected the homogenous suburban ‘successes’ of the postwar generation. (“I Love you, Alice B Tolklas!” then took it to the stoned extreme) By the seventies films like “The Stepford Wives”,“Over the Edge” (Matt Dillon’s film debut) and “Halloween” continued to warn that safety was just an illusion at the heart of the suburban myth. The conservative eighties delivered their punches with gently rebellious films such as “Ordinary People”, "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "Blue Velvet", “Desperately Seeking Susan”, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", "The Burbs, "Heathers" and even “The Breakfast Club”. The nineties exploded with further examinations including: "Clerks", “Safe”, “Dazed and Confused”,” Welcome to the Dollhouse”, “Suburbia”, “Pleasantville” and Mendes' own “American Beauty”. The past decade has continued the trend with: “Donnie Darko”, “Ghost World”, "Little Children", ‘Little Miss Sunshine” and "Towelhead" among others.

So flashback to the postwar fifties and first-time novelist Richard Yates who cast his nervous eye on the emerging lifestyle as he saw it unfolding when he wrote “Revolutionary Road” first published in 1961. The title itself spoke as a warning since there was nothing revolutionary about suburban life; in fact it seemed to be the very death of the adventurous life and individualism that America was famous for. So although we’ve all seen many of the films I’ve noted, not to mention a slew of Lifetime movies set in these quiet neighborhoods, “Revolutionary Road” still feels as fresh and pertinent as when it was first written since it was still original and of its’ time.In fact the conformity of the fifties looks even more stifling as we look back on it a half century later.

As I’ve said so many films do present this setting as a cliché, so I was half expecting not to like this film which I thought might be a bunch of overwrought Oscar- bait. Happily I was wrong. Being a real work of literature rather than a 50’s soap opera script, “Revolutionary Road” was a novel aspiring to deeper truths. Sam Mendes and his whole creative team have taken this to heart by delivering a film not really about the suburbs but about relationships and the compromises they create. We first meet the Wheelers as they meet at a party in Greenwich Village where fifties hipsters are seen toking weed. Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) seems to be buying into the Bohemian vibe by stating that he could care less about his job. April (Kate Winslet) is an aspiring actress and they immediately are attracted to each other. When we see them next she is in a shoddy community theater production of “Petrified Forest” and their argument in the car on the way home has her dreams dying before we have reached the opening credits. By the time they move to their suburban home on Revolutionary Road, in a Connecticut suburb of New York City, they have two children and Frank is working in the marketing department of a business machine company in the city, the same firm his father worked at. Their ideal dreams of their youth have not yet been packed away but they truly are both becoming just another suburban couple and they are neither happy nor communicating well.

As is obvious by now, I really identify with this genre being a suburban boy myself. My first job had me commuting into New York City (via Port Authority rather than Grand Central station as Frank does) and seeing those fifties businessmen in their matching suits and fedoras walking the walk stirred a feeling in me much like when we nod our head in recognition of George Romero’s zombies. No one wants to be predictable or conformist, but family life does mean making this sacrifice. Or does it? That is the main point of this film and it is wonderfully played.

Leo and Kate act their asses off and her Oscar for this was well earned. The supporting cast is also great; David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn are sympathetic and not caricatures as their less than supportive, bland suburban friends; Kathy Bates brings life to the role of Mrs. Givings, (how great is that name?) the annoying nosey neighbor, plus a great turn by Michael Shannon as her disturbed son who has had the strong impulse control of the place fried out of him by shock therapy treatment and therefore acts as the chorus of the Wheeler’s conscience. Sam Mendes nicely captures the claustrophobia and emotion of the piece and seeing April framed behind a picture window like a caged bird is tragic. I feel this should have beaten out ‘Slumdog’ for best film but perhaps we are still not ready to look inside our nice houses (or our souls) just quite yet. Turning a deaf ear is easier, much like how Mrs. Givings husband quietly turns off his hearing aid during her conformist rants.

“Towelhead”- Coming of age is horrifically gross - let's shoot that in close-up!

Isn’t the world horrible? Jesus what a way to start a new year! I see and usually rate the “look I’m provocative for the sake of provocation” school of films a banal average rating. (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”, “Happiness”, “Kids”, “Spanking the Monkey”, etc) They remind me of the ‘torture porn’ flicks that have to desperately go over the top in the name of attempted coolness. (Cough- Tarantino!) Excess only works in the context of an already strong film (“Thirteen”, ”Trainspotting”, “Eating Raoul”, “Boogie Nights”, “City of God” and in theaters “Slumdog Millionaire”).

Since Alan Ball wrote the fun “American Beauty” (and “Six Feet Under”) and was making his directorial debut with “Towelhead”, I thought this would be decent. Somewhere between the low angle shot of menstruated panties and the -well: the dead pet in the freezer, the casual sex between young children, the pedophilia, bigotry, abuse and other such horrors presented in a matter of fact fashion, my mind just switched off. Our shell shocked teen (who in fact acts appropriately like a zombie compared to thirteen year olds I’ve met) moves from one abuse to another while some critics cheer. Set in Texas against the backdrop of the first Gulf War our broken Middle Eastern family comments on – blah- blah-blah…not one of these characters seemed real to me but were more like caricatures in a morality play. The DVD has extras that include discussions on prejudice in a desperate attempt to cast this film as non-exploitive. It is in the “Funny Games” camp of filmmaking to manipulate the audience to teach it about itself. I get enough condescension in real life guys, get into documentaries and stop exploiting the same wrongs that you preach to be against. It’s ‘Theaters’ not “The Haters" , so please stop hating the audience. Like your main charactor we are shell shocked and in need of love or at the very least meaningful entertainment that touches us without that sledgehammer.