Reviews

Maybe it was the beer we snuck into the movie theater, but honestly, I went in expecting a rotten film and found one instead that I really enjoyed.

Anyone who expects a movie to be scientifically accurate is a moron. Science makes movies boring. Hence, you fake science in a movie to make science interesting. Aliens aren't creating a satellite relay formation around the planet, olive oil doesn't cure ALD, and the next ice age isn't going to happen tomorrow. Big surprise. Get over it.

If you suspend your disbelief (and I shudder for people who don't), The Day After Tomorrow is a perfectly entertaining disaster movie. The special effects were cool looking without appearing in every single scene, and the acting was generally understated (with the exception of the hilariously Dick Cheney-like VP). I don't want to spoil the funny parts, but the political humor is well worth the time. (The President looked so much like Al Gore that between his character and the aforementioned VP, I couldn't quite tell which party was getting more lambasted.)

I was impressed by Bowling For Columbine, and particularly impressed by Michael Moore's trademark doggedness in pursuit of answers. The impressive rate of gun violence in America is almost impossible to understand, and thankfully Moore decided to treat it that way -- not as a problem of gun ownership, or history, or violence in all forms of entertainment. As he astutely points out, all of those things exist in other countries that still manage to log annual gun-related deaths in the double digits. Over 11,000 people on average are shot to death every year in this country, and nobody really understands why.

Now, it would be impossible to expect Moore to actually answer that question in three hours or less -- and he doesn't. He makes some interesting points about culture-wide fear (leading Americans to regard everything from plane travel to bean-stuffed teddy bears with anxiety), and manages to get a very unilluminating interview with Charlton Heston, but in the end the movie left me disappointed. Not because I had expected an answer, but because Moore failed to maintain a consistent inquiry into the issues.

One of the most glaring problems came in a segment in which Moore helps (or encourages?) two Columbine victims to take a stand against K-Mart, where the two Columbine shooters purchased their ammunition. Moore, an NRA member himself, has just spent at least 20 minutes discovering that rates of gun ownership (which usually means owning ammunition as well) really have nothing to do with the propensity for violence. He tells us that there are 7 million guns owned in Canada, where the rate of gun-related deaths is miniscule in comparison with our own. So, we've abandoned the hypothesis that legal ownership (hence, legal sales) is the problem. But now we take a moral stand against K-Mart? Yes, it's frightening (and hilarious) to watch the 16-year old K-Mart clerks drop live ammunition, but what point does it serve? If anything, it undercuts the complexity of Moore's exploration, reverting to a simple and overused explanation that simply hasn't proved either effective or true.

The other truly grand-scale problem with the film was Moore's inability to overtly discuss important issues that he raised tangentially. Again comparing Canada to the United States, he briefly interviews Canadians regarding universal health care, the (non)existence of Canadian slums, poverty, and rampant unemployment. What he does not come out and do at any point is discuss the political structure that guarantees health insurance, safe neighborhoods, and welfare checks to Canadians -- socialism.

The flip side of this problem is that he fails to properly address the socio-economic issues of the U.S. -- issues that are clearly relevant to our culture of violence. Moore shrugs off the issue of inner-city violence as little more than a myth, attributing the idea to white fear of black people. I am not convinced. From what I see in the news, African-Americans are involved in American violence -- in large part because of the untenable situation in which they live. How can you expect people to get well-paying jobs and own comfortable homes when they can't get a good education because the homes they own are in lousy neighborhoods with no property value to fund the schools? It's ridiculous, and without blaming the entire murder rate on the black community (yet another highly unfair general assumption), Moore does have to do something other than deny that a problem exists.

His concentration is in the (mostly white) suburbs of America, where gun violence has certainly become a problem (if a much smaller problem than the media coverage would have us believe). Here is the crux of the movie's problem: 11,000+ people die every year in this country because of guns. Less than 1% of those deaths involved suburban school shootings. Moore has a great question with a slightly skewed focus. With a slightly broader scope, he could have had a great film on his hands.

I can see exactly why comparisons to Dead Poets' Society abound. Having attended boarding school and developed an irrational attachment to that film at the time, I have since discarded it like an overworn leisure suit, and tried to move on to more interesting fare. But honestly, this film made me think -- in all the ways that school should have, and the DPSociety didn't even try to.

Robin Williams has never starred in a thinking man's film, which is why, in the end, the comparison between the two movies doesn't hold up. To get The Emperor's Club, you have to actually grasp why someone might be inspired by history -- by a time when men could truly fail, or conquer, or establish a foothold in eternity. The fact that we know Socrates existed is astounding. It is luck. If James Carville goes down in history it will be an accident, if a likely one. The point of this film is that difference -- the difference between men whose character demands to be remembered, and men whose character demands to be forgotten. It is also the story of two systems of reward and recognition -- one that produced Plato and one that produced Jerry Springer. That is why we study history, as the movie says. To learn from and be inspired by the great leaders who came before us, and to overcome the moral mediocrity of the modern world.

But, as the film concludes, great men are no longer chosen to lead. The Emperor's Club, while cloaked in the guise of a charming elitist flick, is actually a tale of profound disappointment and disillusionment regarding human society. The few great men who are left exist in the shadows, while the ignorant grandstanders wield political power. We elect them; we are in their hands. And it is all because of a lack of awareness, a lack of knowledge, and a lack of history. People don't vote for principle -- they vote for rhetoric. And it shows.

I was not expecting too much from this movie, other than the always pleasurable experience of watching Kevin Kline. But, wrapped up in the sentimental moralizing, there was the story of a great man doing the only great thing left: trying to bring others out the darkness. His success or failure is as immaterial as the execution of Socrates -- it really is the thought that counts.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out where this movie is going to end up. I saw it coming about an hour in, but that did nothing to diminish my enjoyment of and respect for the film. High Art gives its audience two characters who stand for so much: youth and ambition vs. maturity and disillusionment, action vs. passivity, and perhaps most intriguingly art vs. the culture/criticism of it. The struggles between these oppositions play out in the difficult romance between Lucy and Syd, their need, their repulsion, and the final non-issue of their compatibility.

Lucy is the stereotypical artist with a dangerously hedonistic lifestyle, but her self-destruction does not prevent her from producing art, only from participating in the secondary commercial/professional world. She is burned out of shows and magazines, but her apartment walls are blazing with her continued photography. She is the artist removed from the critical world, now safe, now sane, but the mild stagnation of her newer work reveals a need for prodding towards brilliance. The question, of course, is whether she can withstand the production of her most honest art.

Syd is a young woman who lives below Lucy, and works as an assistant editor at Frame magazine. Syd is all ambition, but it is ambition tempered by a love of her field, a true adoration for the aesthetics of photography. Not surprisingly, her professional drive leads her to Lucy, and she gently draws the artist out of her 10 year cocoon to shoot a cover for Frame. The assignment takes Lucy back to her previous work, demanding that she examine her life. In that process, Lucy's art transforms Syd, literally making art out of the critic.

The sexual tension between Lucy and Syd is gorgeous, just so well acted and with such restraint. There are no sweeping declarations, no apparent road to happiness. Just two people, circling each other, getting close whenever possible. They are constantly pulled apart by their work, their desires, and their previous relationships, and it is sometimes hard to tell their flirtations from their arguments. The analogy to the love/hate relationship between art and criticism would be hackneyed to discuss, but is subtly and beautifully portrayed.

Rahde, whose last name I forget, is perfect as the enigmatical Syd, and Sheedy is astonishing. As for the direction, I was wholly impressed. The atmosphere is fully realized, and the brief scenes in upstate New York are a perfect foil for the dreariness and frenzied, if doomed, vitality of the city. There appeared to be a few careless moments in the editing room, but the worst that happens is a momentary break in the suspension of disbelief. All is forgiven when you look at the photography. Just as Lucy shifts quietly while taking snapshots, the camera slides in shots, mimicking the photographers hunt for the perfect moment.

I grew up hating this movie. It's my grandfather's favorite and the annual holiday torture always involved the phrase, "So, Katie, want to watch Shane?" I thought it was long, boring, and painfully simple, so my answer was always "no." But then film class hit, and I had no choice but to sit through the whole thing again, and as much as I continue to dislike the film, I have to admit its importance.

This is not a movie to kick back and watch on a Saturday night. It is jam-packed with the kind of melodramatic posturing that even a real film lover can't forgive. And the kid, christ, we all thought the film might be good if he actually died in the end. That little boy utters the most irritating line ever filmed, and his insipid expression makes you want Shane to keep on riding. Not to be cold-hearted, but the issue of innocence got pushed way too far.

That, however, brings up the film's symbolism, and as an expression of American ideology, Shane really can't be beat. This movie is the foundational document -- a fantastic text for the study of our internal contradictions. Perfect hero, evil villain, moral simplicity, the necessity of violence... But rather than just putting these notions out there, the film makes clear that gun is necessary to safeguard society, but we can't live with the man who would use it. These kind of juxtapositions flow all through the film, and that is why I can't just hate this movie. Watch it, but be warned, it is only worthwhile if you interpret and keep your eyes open.