Almost Famous

“Don’t let those swill merchants rewrite you.”

Directed by Cameron Crowe (2000) Starring: Patrick Fugit, Billy Crudup, Jason Lee, Kate Hudson

Almost Famous has definitely become a victim of the hype-machine.  Most of the people I met in high school who had seen this movie talked about it in hushed religious tones.  Suffice it to say, I wasn’t terribly impressed the first time I watched it, but seeing a guy go after what he was passionate for is a fairly brilliant story.  Glad that I stuck around for a second viewing.

William Morris (Fugit) is a young music writer who lands a commission with Rolling Stone on the band Stillwater.  Along the way, William becomes enamored with the lovely Penny Lane (Hudson).  In a rather equivalent situation, he also admires Stillwater’s front man Russell Hammond (Crudup).  The story alternates behind words of wisdom from Penny about being around a band and William desperately trying to get an interview with Russell.

Why is Penny Lane an issue?  She always comes off a little too idealized to be considered a real character.  While she’s not perky enough to be an official Manic Pixie Dream Girl, there isn’t much that’s revealed about her that alters William’s original idealization. It’s not enough that he’s in the observing role for much of her antics.  While the moments in New York suggest that there are real emotions behind her persona, she isn’t fully realized by the end.  The movie drops off to let William finish his story (since this is his story) with Rolling Stone, and the last word comes from mentor Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman): “And while women will always be a problem for us, most of the great art in the world is about that very same problem.  Good-looking people don’t have any spine.  Their art never lasts.  They get the girls, but we’re smarter.”

But like I said earlier: The strengths of Almost Famous lie in its basic plot, sans extended romance.  The ability to run off and write about a band for a national magazine, away from the perpetually nervous mother and unhappy school life in order to see everything that goes on behind the scenes while on tour is a fantasy for a fifteen year old kid, especially now.

The Trotsky

Written & Directed by Jacob Tierney (2009) Starring: Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire, Saul Rubinek, Michael Murphy

Leon Bronstein (Baruchel) is a Montreal teenager who believes he’s the reincarnation of Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky.  After starting a hunger strike at his father’s factory, he is enrolled in public school where he raises hell in order to establish a Students Union.

I really liked The Trotsky in most areas.  Its a fun idea to have a teenager live his life convinced that he was a big figure in history and its spun in a cool way, where Leon lists out the important life moments he has to go through, from marrying an older woman to being assassinated someplace warm.  Between the first strike and going to his new school, Leon begs for counsel from famous revolutionary Frank McGovern (Murphy) who just happens to be an adviser to PhD candidate Alexandra (Hampshire).  Leon pegs her as his future-wife and she, of course, runs screaming in the opposite direction–for awhile anyway.

To be honest, I was sold with Jay Baruchel in those glasses, wearing those suits.  He just seems really iconographic, not just because he’s copping Trotsky’s style, but in a teen-film icon as well as a political-activist style.  He’s a bit like those posters of Che Guevera, all smooth lines and little details.  You get into his character and its really interesting just to see how he drew the conclusion that he was reincarnated, and how this affected his family.  His father just criticizes him because he can’t understand, his older brother is a jerk, his mother worries and dotes,  and his younger sister looks up to him.  When he can’t take it anymore, he locks himself in his room and searches phone books for the next Lenin.

The Trotsky pulls some of the tried and true teen film cliches, but it manages to make them fresh and fitting.  As the new boy in school, Leon is able to win friends surprisingly easily, despite his weirdness, but it helps that he is able to unite them under the desire for a Student Union.  There’s also a totally awesome Social Justice-themed School Dance, and I would watch this movie just to see that.  The opening shot is so great of the teenagers dressed as Black Panthers, Mao’s Peasants, and Che Guevera-era revolutionaries approaching the high school.

Come the end, all of the little plot threads get tied up neatly and its so amusing and beautiful to the eye that The Trotsky is a joy.  Even though I’m not a Communist.

Rushmore

Directed by Wes Anderson (1998) Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams

So, awhile back I whined about not really understanding Wes Anderson hype.  I think I understand it a little better, to say the least.

Max Fischer’s (Schwartzman) only passion in life is to go to his prep school Rushmore.  However, he’s more interested in joining school clubs and putting on plays than doing well in school.  His sharp attitude helps him to befriend beleaguered Rushmore-Dad Herman Blume (Murray).  Added into the mess, he’s smitten with new teacher Rosemary Cross (Williams) and willing to go to extreme measures to get her affection.  Unfortunately, Blume and Rosemary have started dating on the sly.

There’s a lot to like about this movie, but its all the little things about it: the club montage, the elaborate stagings for Max’s plays, the falling-in-love over a Jacques Cousteau quote.  It’s all in a weird little world, where things tend towards whimsy and cleverness.  But you already know that.

I hate being last to the party on these sorts of things, but writing a movie-blog involves a lot of catch up to be done.  There are so many movies out there and only a lifetime to see them in.  That doesn’t even account that people have different lives, not even taking into account generation gaps.  I feel like Rushmore is a high school movie–that’s when people discover it the most and relate to it the best.

Max is earnest in both good and bad ways, much like the teenagers we’ve all been (or known).  He’s passionate, but stupid and really short-sighted.  But he is likable, if only for being clever and strangely charming.  Compare that to Herman, who’s really a man-child but is also kind, just more world-weary.  When it comes down to it, it’s the relationship between these two that bring the movie together.

 

Visual Films: Kamikaze Girls

Ah!  I went a little bit overboard with this Visual Films post.  But who cares, it’s Kamikaze Girls. Who doesn’t like Kamikaze Girls? Answer: No one.

Holy Rollers

Directed by Kevin Asch (2010) Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha, Danny A. Abeckaser, Jason Fuchs

Sam Gold (Eisenberg) is a Hassidic Jew who works at his father’s fabric shop while studying to become a rabbi.  He wants to get married, but his hopes are stymied in the face of his family’s poverty.  When his neighbor Yosef (Bartha) gives him the opportunity to make more money by smuggling medicine in from Europe, he agrees, continuing with the trade even after its revealed that they are smuggling ecstasy.

Sam is contrasted with his friend, and Yosef’s younger brother, Leon (Fuchs), who drops out of the smuggling group when he finds out that they’re bringing back drugs.  Leon is posed as who Sam could be–he’s a better student than Sam and holds no moral qualms when informing their mother what Yosef is doing.  Unfortunately, this hurts the friendship, even more so when Leon gets the blessing to marry the girl who was previously engaged to Sam.  However, come the end of the film, its clear that Leon plays a very important role in Sam’s life, especially when smuggling the ecstasy becomes a crisis of faith.

 

Switching from a life that is determined in creating a separate, conservative religious community to the fast life of girls, drugs, and clubbing, it’s clear that Sam has been thrown into a difficult situation.  He’s strained between the easy money and fun he gets in the new job, while having to hide the details away from his family.  When he’s discovered, it’s complete shame and he is forced out of the community.  The community of his job– having fun with Yosef, experiencing a one-sided relationship with Rachel (Ari Graynor), and convincing others to join the organization– seems like a better option, at least money-wise.  However, when the crisis becomes too much, the most poignant scene is when Sam meets a Dutch Jew on the streets of Amsterdam and prays.

Holy Rollers has an unusual situation from the get-go as a religious minority, but the stresses of familial expectation and money woes makes Sam’s decision to continue understandable, but his eventual return to conservative faith makes for a fascinating watch.  Jesse Eisenberg gives an impressive performance as he leaves his safety zone of nerdy jerks to a character based off a true story.  He plays it honestly, and its a pleasure to watch.

Matinee

Directed by Joe Dante (1993)

Starring: John Goodman, Cathy Moriarty, Simon Fenton, Omri Katz, Lisa Jakub, Kellie Martin

Once upon a time, several years ago, I wandered downstairs one Saturday morning and stumbled upon my brother watching a movie about a movie theater that was full of interactive events.  In one scene, a boy and a girl have their first kiss in a fallout shelter.  The producer and lead actress ride off into the sunset in a white convertible.  I couldn’t remember the title of this movie for a long time, but then in came to me: Matinee. And lo and behold! It was on Netflix Instant Watch.

Matinee stars John Goodman as Lawrence Woolsey, the king of B-Horrors in Hollywood.  His latest films have all had some interactive element to them, culminating in the experience that is “Mant.”

For young horror fan and new kid in Key West, Gene (Fenton), life is a little rough, except when he’s at the movie theater.  His father is in the Navy, forcing his family to move around a lot.  Instead of having close friends, Gene has his monster movies and comics.  It would be tough as it was as another Navy kid in school, but it’s October 1962, and his father’s ship has just been deployed.  The movie handles its depiction of the Cuban Missile Crisis so well that the fear of Nuclear attack is palpable, especially for the Florida community.

In contrast, the playfulness of Woolsey’s technology for “Mant” is a relief.  He has managed to rig up the local theater for a full experience, including Rumble-Rama which shakes the theater and convinces the manager that a Nuclear bomb has been dropped, and the local hooligan dressed up in a rubber costume to terrorize the audience.

It’s a love letter to the B-movies from decades ago and the creative means needed to scare an audience in a way that would also distract them from the horrors of the world at that time.  More than anything, it’s a fun movie, one that captures the angst in coming-of-age with humor and sympathetic wink.

 

Me and Orson Welles

Directed by Richard Linklater (2008)

Starring: Zac Efron, Claire Danes, Christian McKay, Zoe Kazan, James Tupper, Leo Bill

This is like half of a good movie, which then meets up with some Coming of Age Male fantasy that I don’t really understand or feel like I have to. Me and Orson Welles is about Richard Samuels (Efron), a 17-year-old who is cast as Lucius in the Mercury Theater production of Julius Caesar.  The movie is awesome when it’s about the production and Orson Welles– Christian McKay is brilliant– but the movie is really terrible whenever Zac Efron’s involved.

Zac Efron is evidence ‘A’ that the Disney Acting School for Young Actors teaches bad habits.  Not only can he not deliver jokes very well or have chemistry with love-interest Sonja (Danes), but it’s really obvious that he doesn’t know how to sing correctly.  He has an okay voice, but it’s been trained to end every note on a high inflection, which makes him sound a) nasal and b) 21st century pop-style.

Strangely enough, part of the problem isn’t just Efron.  His character is a skeez in the script, at once annoying and rather misogynistic.  For one thing, he’s That Dick when he’s in class, around his rich family, talking to Sonja, et al.  He just lies and then acts innocent, and is pretty much a grade-A dick. He also throws out these old-time words like he should be pat on the head for remembering them, it’s so cute.

I’d even go so far as saying the film is misogynistic, where the men can place a bet on whether a woman will put out, but if she sleeps around she’s in the moral wrong.  That said, that comes from Richard’s perspective and I’ve already outlined why he’s a dick.

Sidenote: Here’s where I’m getting a Juvenile Fantasy vibe from, like here’s an older lady vying for some inexperienced Jailbait action. Naturally.  Danes, for her part, is a peach who’s just been given the wrong material.  Her character doesn’t have much to do besides talk about possibly meeting David O. Selznick and not have any chemistry with Richard.

Okay, so here’s where the movie did right: Christian McKay is awesome. He’s great as Orson Welles, and I’m kind of hoping someone is working on a Welles biopic screenplay so that he can play him in a better movie.  There are parts that are him directing the actors onstage and yelling at the band, and those were great.  If the movie had just been about preparing for opening night, sans Efron, it would have been great.

The opening night montage was really epic, actually, and got across what a game-changer this version of Caesar was.  I really liked Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd (he also played Darwin in The Fall), so I like him even more.  James Tupper really looks like Joseph Cotton, but I wish they had given him some voice training in order to sound like Cotton.  Would have anted up the film for me, I’m just saying.

 

Radio Days

Written & Directed by Woody Allen (1987) Starring: Julie Kavner, Julie Kurnitz, David Warrilow, Wallace Shawn, Seth Green, Michael Tucker, Josh Mostel, Joy Newman, Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow

Woody Allen’s nostalgia stretches out to the days of radio, while showcasing the life of a family in Rockaway, New York.  He cuts between various anecdotes that relates to the radio with brief scenes of the radio-stars themselves.  Radio Days is a very loose, funny story about growing up with a very particular media.

Allen narrates the story, providing a general, if meandering, structure about the radio programs.  As a young boy, Joe (Green) listens to the radio with his extended family, his favorite show being the Masked Avenger, voiced by Wallace Shawn.  Each member of his family has their favorite program, and the radio plays an important part of each of their lives in the film.  Most notably, Mother’s (Kavner) favorite show “Breakfast with Roger and Irene” comes back in their off-radio lives of affairs and parties.

The disparate stories meld well together, although they span a period of several years-length.  At one point featuring Joe’s sight of a German submarine off the coast to one of his aunt Bea’s (Wiest) many dates, each story feels even and interesting, funny sometimes and sad in others.  It’s a sweetly spun bit of nostalgia for people.

I know people always talk about the seventies as Woody Allen’s great movie-making period, but his movies from the eighties find the most resonance with me, Radio Days included.

Whip It

Directed by Drew Barrymore (2009) Starring: Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristin Wiig, Juliette Lewis, Jimmy Fallon

A movie which passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors! So deeply entertaining that I want to take up Roller Derby now! (That would be a very terrible idea, but I want to do it anyway).

Bliss Cavendar (Page) is stuck in the Texas suburbs, forced into competing at beauty pageants as per her mother’s wishes.  When they go shopping, she sees some Derby Ladies drop off fliers for the next match, where she falls for the compact sport hard.  Bliss tries out for the Hurl Scouts, the worst team in the league.  However, Bliss has a natural talent for Roller Derby and she becomes known for her speed.

The Hurl Scouts give Bliss a place to belong and allow her to have more confidence in the rest of her life.  While falling in love for the first time and facing up to the local mean girl, Bliss has found something outside of her small town as well as a family of sorts made up of her teammates.

As much as I love this movie for being very roller derby punk rock, the sheen of your Typical Sports Movie shows through the plot.  The difference is, of course, this isn’t about men playing football, baseball, basketball, hockey, rugby, et al.  This is about one woman, finding something she loves, interacting with her teammates and the rest of the league, and finding out what is important for her.  Other sport movies usually look at egotistic individuals having to pull together to be a team: Whip It is about one individual finding herself while playing for a team.  The story is about how the support of the team helps Bliss to  become a stronger individual.

I thoroughly enjoyed Whip It and am looking forward to any future directorial projects Barrymore has up her sleeve.

Honey and Clover: The Movie

This comic features me (no bangs) and my friend Lucy from 1 Minute, Poppy Seed.  She drew it!  And it’s based on a true story about the big let down that was Honey & Clover: The Movie.

Honey & Clover/ Hachimitsu to Kuroba (2006) Directed by Masahiro Takada

Starring: Sho Sakurai, Yu Aoi, Yusuke Iseya, Ryo Kase, Megumi Seiki

Honey & Clover starts very similar to the start of the manga.  Takemoto (Sakurai) is an art school student who lives with his friends Mayama (Kase) and Morita (Iseya).  While at a party at his professor’s house, Takemoto falls in love with Hagu (Aoi), a talented, though shy, oil painting student.  While Hagu is shy, she manages to become quick friends with Yamada (Seiki), who is hopelessly in love with Mayama who is likewise hopelessly in love with his employer Rika (Naomi Nishida).  While Takemoto struggles to find himself, Hagu catches the eye of the ever-talented Morita.

The main problem with the movie is that it tries to take ten volumes of comics and reduce it to a two hour movie.  While the love-triangles power the plot of the story, the real drive comes from the true to life struggles.  Takemoto may go to art school, but he doesn’t have the same kind of natural talent that Morita and Hagu have naturally.  While in the comic it’s explained that he goes to art school without much sincere drive towards it, in the movie he comes off more desperate.

The artistic theme between Morita and Hagu remains strong.  Morita is willing to sell out for his art, raking in five million yen on a lackluster sculpture.  Hagu is considered a very talented artist, but when it comes to producing for a contest, she freezes up.  Their contrasting philosophies about artistic integrity stayed consistent from comic to film adaptation.

It’s evident that respect for Chika Umino’s comic was put towards the visuals.  Certain scenes seem like they were recreated panel for panel.  The looks of the characters seems like they came to life onscreen.  Unfortunately, certain characterizations were lost.  Morita became less manic and Yamada became more of a shy wallflower-type.  This was especially annoying, since the point of her character was that she was this ideal beauty with vicious reactions.  Morita came off a little too much of a cool guy, instead of some insane force of nature.

The chosen soundtrack was distracting at best.  A lot of cheesy Western music was played, where some slight orchestration would have been better placed.  The music contrasted with the washed out, naturalistic lighting used for the visuals.  What is honest nit-picking is that the art produced by these genius art students is pretty terrible.  Unfortunately, that’s how it goes with art-movies, unless originals from outside artists can be borrowed from galleries.

Arguably, the best part of the comic– Takemoto’s bike journey and Search for Himself– became watered down into fitting the time limit.  Before it was connected to his life’s purposelessness at art school, but the movie connected it directly to his romantic feelings for Hagu.

While Honey and Clover the movie is a respectful adaptation of Umino’s comics, too much of the plot and characters were watered down in order to fit a two-hour format.