It Must Be Me…
But I have an annoying habbit of only feeling luke warm about movies that everyone else I know thinks are the shiznit. I suppose it started with Pulp Fiction which my whole college dorm could not stop raving about. Even my stoner dude neighbors typed up the Samuel Jackson “Ezekiel 25:17” speech and hung it on their front door. I on the other hand felt like I was being told a 2 hour 45 minute joke about people I didn’t know at a party I hadn’t been invited to. And Quinten Tarantino kept filling my drink. And I don’t drink.
Which brings me to the latest crop of you-got-it-I-didn’ts: Two movies that are nominated for several Academy Awards.
Million Dollar Baby. My old friend Justin practically flew out here from Chicago and escorted me in handcuffs to this movie. Suzan and I went, unmanacled, last Friday.
This is a good film, not a great one. Which is exactly how I felt about Mystic River, Clint Eastwood’s previous widely-lauded film. Mystic River, to my mind, is 2 hours of great drama entirely premised on the under-developed, skated over prologue. In publishing terms, the story doesn’t “earn out.” What comes later isn’t jusitfied by what came earlier.
Million Dollar Baby has the reverse problem: Its lead up promises a knockout its conclusion doesn’t deliver. Justin and several other friends have said, repeatedly now, that the last 30 minutes of Million Dollar Baby is like a kick in the gut, a twist you never saw coming and remember long after the film ends. A) I saw it coming from across the sea and B) Because the last 30 minutes played like a foregone conclusion, it made the rest seem rather anticlimatic.
Yes, I still liked it. But it did not change my world. And the expectation with Clint Eastwood now seems to be that every third film of his is a classic.
The Aviator: Suzan raved about this movie. I had an unexpected cancellation after a very busy Thursday and took myself there.
Eh. I expected more. Howard Hughes led one of the most iconic lives of the 20th century yet this treatment of it seems curiously flat and joyless. We see him as a dashing young engineer, movie producer and entrapaneur. We get brief glimpses into the gathering darkness that consumed his later life. Yet we never really are shown what motivated Howard Hughes, what made him a person this compelling or what his influence was. I’m assuming it was vast.
Martin Scorcese has been saying for years that his dream project was a biography of Howard Hughes. At various times, Steven Spielberg was attached to the project. Yet it does not feel like Scorcese brought his A-Game. I didn’t see too many shots that I needed to talk about afterward. His screenplay, usually impecable, seemed amorphous and imprecise.
I admired The Aviator way more than I enjoyed it, the way one would a Barney’s window at Christmas. The whole movie feels like it’s behind glass, cut, burnished and sterile instead of alive.
What did everyone else think? Or is it just me?
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10 Replies to “It Must Be Me…”
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Scorcese did not pull me into Howard Hughes’ world and head the way he dragged me through Travis Bickel’s, despite Leonardo DiCaprio’s convincing portrayal of a guy who gets stuck in the grooves in his own head and Cate Blanchett’s gutsy rendition of Katheryn Hepburn.
That performance could only have been more courageous is Ms. H were still alive. I mean, who on earth would dare play a woman whose life entailed playing herself? The bonus round in that game would have to mean playing the love child of Kate and Andy Warhol. But I digress.
I agree that John Logan’s script fell short of showing the hows and whys of HH; OK, so his mother went overboard with the germ consciousness. BlahBlahBlah whatever. So he lost his parents before he really grew up. And he was brilliant and rich enough to follow his schemes until they crashed, soared, or both.
The scen with Hepburns family was great for illustrating HH’s social awkwardness, disfunction, whatever you want to call it; the entire film needed an establishing shot that made us not just feel for HH as he sat at the table, but suffered that scene along with him.
I feel like I had to answer too many questions on my own; and while I like an artist to err on the side of making me work, I think this script left holes — or no, blank spots, like those parts of the Muni wires where the electricity is dead and if the driver isn’t careful, the bus will lurch. The cables didn’t pop off the track, but I definitely didn’t lose myself, forget I was on the bus, and wish I’d never reach my stop.
Scorcese did not pull me into Howard Hughes’ world and head the way he dragged me through Travis Bickel’s, despite Leonardo DiCaprio’s convincing portrayal of a guy who gets stuck in the grooves in his own head and Cate Blanchett’s gutsy rendition of Katheryn Hepburn.
That performance could only have been more courageous is Ms. H were still alive. I mean, who on earth would dare play a woman whose life entailed playing herself? The bonus round in that game would have to mean playing the love child of Kate and Andy Warhol. But I digress.
I agree that John Logan’s script fell short of showing the hows and whys of HH; OK, so his mother went overboard with the germ consciousness. BlahBlahBlah whatever. So he lost his parents before he really grew up. And he was brilliant and rich enough to follow his schemes until they crashed, soared, or both.
The scen with Hepburns family was great for illustrating HH’s social awkwardness, disfunction, whatever you want to call it; the entire film needed an establishing shot that made us not just feel for HH as he sat at the table, but suffered that scene along with him.
I feel like I had to answer too many questions on my own; and while I like an artist to err on the side of making me work, I think this script left holes — or no, blank spots, like those parts of the Muni wires where the electricity is dead and if the driver isn’t careful, the bus will lurch. The cables didn’t pop off the track, but I definitely didn’t lose myself, forget I was on the bus, and wish I’d never reach my stop.
I wasn’t crazy about either M$B or Aviator, though I thought both were very well-made. On a scene-by-scene basis, I think M$B has it over the Aviator, which for me doesn’t really come together until the last hour (after two hours of “that-looks-cool-but-what’s-the-point?”). Of the five films nominated for Best Picture, none made my top ten this year. I’d take “The Incredibles” or “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” over them any day of the week. And don’t even get me started on “Before Sunset.”
I wasn’t crazy about either M$B or Aviator, though I thought both were very well-made. On a scene-by-scene basis, I think M$B has it over the Aviator, which for me doesn’t really come together until the last hour (after two hours of “that-looks-cool-but-what’s-the-point?”). Of the five films nominated for Best Picture, none made my top ten this year. I’d take “The Incredibles” or “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” over them any day of the week. And don’t even get me started on “Before Sunset.”
Of the movies you mention, the only one I have seen and am ever likely to see is Pulp Fiction: while I am not in the obsessive fan category, it had more going for it than any of the others. But then, the bigger the budget, the more noise made about the movie, the less likely I am to see it. Of the Oscar nominees, the only one I am likely to see is Sideways. Eternal Spotless was cheated of a place in the finalists.
Oh, and I loved Before Sunset.
If Scorsese actually does the remake of Taxi Driver, that will be interesting.
Of the movies you mention, the only one I have seen and am ever likely to see is Pulp Fiction: while I am not in the obsessive fan category, it had more going for it than any of the others. But then, the bigger the budget, the more noise made about the movie, the less likely I am to see it. Of the Oscar nominees, the only one I am likely to see is Sideways. Eternal Spotless was cheated of a place in the finalists.
Oh, and I loved Before Sunset.
If Scorsese actually does the remake of Taxi Driver, that will be interesting.
Eternal Sunshine was great. Sideways was great. I have not yet seen either of the two movies about which you post. The guy wants to see Aviator still, though, so maybe I’ll be able to weigh in properly on the question after the weekend.
That does rather show what my priorities are, doesn’t it?
Eternal Sunshine was great. Sideways was great. I have not yet seen either of the two movies about which you post. The guy wants to see Aviator still, though, so maybe I’ll be able to weigh in properly on the question after the weekend.
That does rather show what my priorities are, doesn’t it?
Indeed. Kevin’s blog, first! Film second!
Indeed. Kevin’s blog, first! Film second!