Disappointments

I've always loved movies, and I still become excited by the prospect of seeing a really great film in a theater with a like-minded audience. I remember how much fun it felt to see a movie like Raiders of the Lost Ark with an audience laughing and cheering with you, or a movie like Blue Velvet where you could exchange "aren't we cool because we get this" looks with your fellow audience members as you left the theater. Part of what made me think those movies were so great may have been my youth at the time, but I always go to the movies seeking to see something new, to recapture that old excitement. However, lately I've been find that experience very hard to come by.

I saw Cloverfield a couple of weeks ago, and I feel like a victim. The movie was the subject of a huge online "viral" video promotion. I was sucked into the air of mystery surrounding the movie like everyone else. (Well, not everyone else-actually probably just me and a bunch of sci-fi-freaks who live in their parent's basement.) The entire premise of the movie's promotion was that something mysterious was attacking New York and you had to watch the movie to find out what it was. I knew the characters in the moview were a bunch of attractive twenty-somethings, so I was prepared for that, and I knew that the conceit of the movie was that it would be told through the lens of a digital recorder manned by someone at a going away party, and I knew that there was a monster involved. What I wasn't prepared for was the fact that I was never, ever, even after watching the movie, going to know anything else! Technically, the movie is impressive. If New York is ever attacked by a sky-scrapper high monster, this is what it is going to look like. The herky-jerky camera movements didn't bother me, although my friend with whom I saw the movie leaned over to me and said, "Is the Blair Witch attacking New York?"

I understand that the conceit of the movie is that this is found footage, and real people in a real attack wouldn't know all the answers, but come on! If we are to believe that a monster is attacking New York, why can't we believe that the main characters would at least over hear a soldier saying something like, "They say it came out of an iceberg broken of from the North Atlantic floe by global warming" or "Someone overfed his iguana" or something. The monster, which we do see a couple of times in all its glory, still looks like someone's overgrown pet lizard. It even looks kinda cute in its one close-up. Why couldn't the filmakers have looked at the incredible diversity of life on planet earth and have been more original? Haven't they ever seen pictures of the strange forms of life at the bottom of the ocean? Even the creatures in The Mist had a strange other-worldly quality, and that movie didn't get nearly the publicity it deserved.

With his TV show Lost, and now with Cloverfield, JJ Abrams has become of a master of the high concept hype with very little follow through. I was intrigued by Lost until I realized it was just Gillgan's Island with special effects. If you continue to break the promises you make to your audience, you soon will be left without one.

Last night I saw, There Will Be Blood. Actually, I was so anticipating seeing this movie that I snuck out of work early to catch a late afternoon matinee. I loved Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love, so I was really looking forward to this move. Also, the film has been receiving incredible reviews from critics comparing it to Citizen Kane and other epic classic movies. First, let me say that Daniel Day Lewis is incredible and deserves whatever awards he may win for this part. The same goes for Paul Dano, who consistently makes unexpected choices in his performance as a sort of male Aimee Semple Macpherson. However, the movie as a whole for me is a great disappointment. Lewis plays a character named Plainview (hmm, a symbolic name do you think?) who is driven to drill for oil, basically so he can make enough money to shut himself off from the rest of humanity in a mansion that includes a bowling alley. (It's an important detail-you'll see.) We watch him swindle people out of their land, and the movie is full of accidental deaths and intentional deaths, and scenes of oil pumping out of the earth like blood. Eventually, both religion and money are shown to be false gods. Gee, never heard that before. Daniel Day Lewis is onscreen constantly, but the viewer never makes a connection with this evil madman, and we have no idea why he acts the way he does. Again, as in Cloverfield we are reminded that real-life doesn't give us the answers we need to understand people. However, a story needs that sense of completion. We need a window into the soul of this madman, or we are left pondering Lewis's performance...we listen to his voice which he lowers until he sounds like an Baboo the bear with not a trace of an English accent, we watch him limp and remember, oh yea, that character broke his leg earlier, we watch his face as he realizes a close confederate is about to betray him. The performance is there. I just wish the script had made him more human.

There are scenes of great power. An oil fire sequence is very cool for awhile, but once again the filmaker decides he has to show us the main character cavorting in front of the fire like he's some devil. Okay, we get it!

Another problem area for me in the movie is the score. The score itself is receiving great reviews, and this week's New Yorker devotes two pages to a revent discussion of the score, which is by Jonny Greenwood from the band Radiohead. To me, the score jolted me out of what little emotional involvement I was able to achieve with this movie. If I were to make a satire about avant-garde music, this is the music I would choose to satirize. Plus, I felt like I had heard it all before, especially the gigantic opening chords at the start of the film which sound like those old THX sound commercials they used to play in theaters during the previews.

Sometimes, I wonder if movies have lost some their luster for me because I am older. Have I just seen so much, that I'm hard to impress? But then I think of recent (well, recent to me) movies that I have loved like Lost in Translation, Hero, and Year of the Dog, and I decide it's not just me....really...it's not.