Generic Title (Bridge of Spies)

A (sober) conversation with my friends Chris and Walter about Spielberg's new movie Bridge of Spies. This does contain spoilers, so be forewarned. Still, none of us recommends this movie, so you can probably just keep reading and then skip the film.

Walt: Ok fellas, I'm off to see Bridge of Spies. Wish me luck.
Chris: Stay strong.
Walt: Let me just say that I am the youngest one here.
Chris: Off to a good start.
Aaron: I just got out of the movie.
Chris: Initial thoughts?
Aaron: It was boring.
Chris: Agreed.

Aaron: What was this movie about? America and stuff, right? Principles? Doing the right thing? I don't mind a movie about all of those things, really, but I think what bugged me about this movie was something I kept puzzling over the whole time it was going on. What kind of movie is this? Is Bridge of Spies supposed to be a character study? It certainly isn't one; we know nothing of the main character except that he is a kind of symbol for "American values" and "giving a guy fair shake" and that sort of thing. We literally get only one little flash that there might be something else to his character in that little moment when he says that the Yale kid is the same age as someone else (no one follows up on this little red herring, but it is some indication of this character's humanity). But then if the movie isn't about this character, then it is a movie about plot, which means this is supposed to be a kind of suspense movie! If it is, then why is it so slow? There are all of these ponderous scenes where characters philosophize about the right thing to do, but where is the suspense??

Chris: So this is basically a heroic tale of human compassion, right? Mark Rylance has this line in the holding cell where asks for a pen and paper to sketch with. Hanks denies him and Rylance responds with something to the extent of "You would want your man to be treated just the same over there, right?" – cut to soft-focus close up of Hanks trying his best.

Walt: It was a parable or something. Or something.

Chris: The trailer wants us to think it's a thriller and at the very top (the opening sequence with Rylance being pursued) I was totally on board with that. But then this goes away and I wasn't sure what was left in its place. The plane sequence was pretty great; wish there was more of that. Something that my buddy Joey brought up was that we never get a chance to really care about the Hanks/Rylance relationship, because we spend so little time with them together. This caused the final bridge scene to fall flat since it was hard to care about them as much as the movie wanted us to. 

Hanks is feeling a little bloated

Walt: I think I just watched three different movies (or maybe I’m just responding to the three endings). At some point we’re in the one of the Berlins and I’m like “this is the same movie? But I thought Alan Alda…” Ugh, it was so bloated. I feel like Spielberg used to be so tight and now he’s become so much more ponderous. A year or two after The Color Purple, he called the it “the most grown up film I’ve made”. And if I think about it, all of his grown up films are bloated. So maybe it's not about where he is in his career so much as it is that he think grown up films should be bloated. Really, though, the movie kind of wanders. I remember watching an interview with him in the '90s talking about how he has this group that he screens his films with (I’m guessing Scorsese, Coppola, yadda yadda yadda). What the hell kind of notes are they giving him, anyway?

Aaron: And I wonder about the novel, actually, because there are really three plotlines – this had to have been cleaner in the novel, and it certainly could've been written more cleanly for the screenplay.

Walt: I didn't know that it was originally a novel. That makes sense. I don't think the adaptation is very strong. This thing should’ve been an hour on the history channel, not a Hollywood film. Seriously, why did anyone make this movie? What do we need it for right now? Spielberg reminds me of my dad in a way: he still thinks we should hate the Russians and that Castro is public enemy #1. This movie hated Russians. And Amy Ryan. They must hate her, to give such a great actress such an impossible and ultimately meaningless role. All she does is complain, right to end, when he doesn’t bring back that sweet sweet British marmalade. Imagine Odysseus returns home, saves Penelope from all the suitors and she just complains about how he didn’t bring back one of those amazing Trojan rugs! Also, what’s with Tom Hank’s son? Why is there even one scene with him? And what about the humor? All those jokes stood out like a sore thumb.

The camera loves Amy Ryan but this movie doesn't.

Aaron: I love your note that it is three different movies. But for me this is both a screenplay problem and a direction problem. There are so many little jokes. Spielberg can't help himself with these little bits of silliness. It baffles me. I'm thinking of that chief prosecutor in the GDR picking up the wrong telephone. Ha ha. And the little trick that Hanks plays on the assistant who is dating his daughter. What a prankster! And when that little joke comes back to bite him when the assistant spills the truth to Amy Ryan I actually laughed out loud. I thought this was quite a comical sequence. But this has nothing to do with the rest of the film in either its plot or its tone. It is very early in the film, and is, I presumed, designed to set the tone for what we're watching, but it's so comic that the tone it set confused the rest of the movie.

Chris: Oh yeah, that assistant... what happened to his plot line/why was he in the movie? For the joke?

Aaron: You are so right about the stuff with Hanks' son. Who cares. Maybe it is supposed to contrast with that final moment on the train? "American kids used to live in terror and sleep with their bathtubs full, but now they happily scamper over the fences of their neighbors so that they can more quickly get to the orange juice in Mrs. Thompson's icebox."

Walt: I don’t see a strong enough connection between the kid in the bathtub and the kids jumping the fence, but I had other things on my mind when that was happening. Yeah, his kid meant nothing.  When he’s deciding on whether to handle the negotiation and who does the pilot remind him of?  Some older kid that works for him that he’s not even related to!

* * *

Walt: But anyway, it’s about the power of the everyman or something. A guy realizes how awesome his life is or how awesome it could be, maybe. Like Joe vs. the Volcano, except the volcano is just a bunch of shitty people he has to wade through. Tom Hanks had a cold in that one, too, except he got better as the movie went on. Maybe that’s the difference between comedy and drama? The cold gets worse in drama. Oh my god. He had a cold. I kept wondering about that in the movie, but it just hit me. Cold. Cold War? Oh my god, I bet that’s it. Like they read a Syd Field screenplay book and got to the section where they suggest you give the character a physical marker à la Jack Nicholson in Chinatown (Jake is nosey so his nose gets cut) and thought “oooh, we should do that for Tom, too! I mean, it’s the Cold War, amiright, Stevie?”

Chris: Worst bit: That old woman on the train. She notices Hanks and scowls at him (you know, because he's defending a traitor). Then weeks later she happens to be on the same train car with him, but this time smiles because he did good job. Steven, we get it.

Walt: Oh my god, that woman on the train. She smiles for an awfully long while, doesn’t she? That’s bad train etiquette, even in an age where you didn’t have to lock your doors at night. Also, what about when Tom Hanks is looking out the subway window down onto the Brooklyn streets and is most likely thinking "god, I’m glad we’re not Russian"?

Aaron: Can we talk a little about Tom Hanks's acting in this? I kept looking at him in this picture and I just don't get it. What is he doing?

Tom Hanks is a little lost.

Walt: I don’t know what to say about Tom Hanks. I love him. I miss him, actually, but not enough that I want him back yet. He should hang out for a while. Thanks to TBS, he’ll never really go away, anyway. They basically just alternate screenings of Big and You’ve Got Mail. I mean, he was fine, he really was. But just because he’s our Jimmy Stewart doesn’t mean he has to take roles that they can’t offer Jimmy Stewart anymore. 

Chris: Hanks was not bad, but forgettable. I thought he was fantastic in that Captain Phillips movie and had high hopes for this. I will say he was a great casting choice, as was everyone. Rylance was fantastic but we didn't get enough!

Aaron: I thought Mark Rylance was great, and I also really liked Peter McRobbie (who plays some sort of higher-up dude in the CIA), and I also thought Sebastian Koch was perfectly cast and he was probably my favorite thing in the whole film. He was so good.

Walt: I enjoyed Mark Rylance. I’ve seen some clips of him doing Shakespeare and one of his funny Tony acceptance speeches, but that’s about it. I found him a bit too adorable, though. Wasn’t there something about him that was just kind cute? With that “would it help?” catchphrase? What a darling. I loved the KGB guy (Mikhail Gorevoy) and Sebastian Koch as well. In a movie that tried so hard to make everything look so dangerous, the danger he presented felt authentic to me.

* * *

Chris: Positive thoughts: Cinematically, it was everything we've come to expect from Spielberg. Just beautiful to watch with great attention to detail. Really lovely.

Walt: You’re right: it was beautifully shot. Spielberg is a master at conventional visual storytelling. That shot of Hanks on the bridge in the 1st ending was breathtaking. I thought the film should’ve ended there.

Aaron: Yeah, it surprises me that you guys thought it was well shot. The whole thing looked simultaneously washed out and milky to me. All of that bright, hazy sun pouring through the windows (this was especially annoying when we were in the chief prosecutor's office at the GDR). I don't understand Kaminski's style anymore. What is the point of bleaching all of the color out of every shot? 

The milky glow of sunlight beatifying our star

Walt: I agree with you that the lighting exposure in a lot of the film didn’t really work, but I’ll still defend the visual storytelling.  Little things, really, like the reveal of all the policeman in front of Tom Hanks' house. A lot of other directors would have shown all those police cars at the beginning of the scene to establish the tension, but Spielberg holds that off and waits until after he’s confronted by the single policeman to reveal what looks to be the entire precinct out there. Before that reveal Hanks and the policeman are on equal ground, but after, we see that Hanks’ character is all alone in this. I’ll also stand behind that beautiful shot of Hanks on the bridge in the first ending. However, I will not stand behind the several shots of using window panes as a literal framing device.

Chris: To be fair, the dismal/it's really cold look with the saturated color scheme was effective. Russia looked terrible and I wanted to put on another coat. Then we get a nice sepia tone for the pilot plot because we're going back in time. Haha.

Walt: Oh man, and what about how the Supreme Court glowed like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude? Spielberg really loves the America. And the 50s. I didn’t mean to write the “the” in “the America”, but it actually seems right somehow. 

Aaron: But I don't think it is fair to say that Spielberg loves the 1950s any more than any of the cohort that he came of age with - Lucas and Barry Levinson and Zemeckis and Coppola all love the 1950s. It was an important time for them. "When men were men" or maybe "when ethical questions meant something" or something like that. The movie does try to deal with those things. As much as Spielberg loves the U.S. – and that absurd shot at the end where Hanks is glad he's not a Soviet is evidence of that – the  movie can't help but notice that the Americans themselves are just as bad as the Soviets and the East Germans at several points. Note Hanks' crack about his East German prison cell being no better than his digs in West Germany. And then there was that crusty old judge and his total railroading of American justice, and the CIA's attempts to get Hanks to violate attorney-client privilege. The movie can't help but show us that Americans are no more a just group of people than the East Berliners or the Soviets. For all its highmindedness about the Constitution and liberty and all of that, the soldiers at the end are still dishonorable assholes to that kid who got shot down over Soviet territory and managed not to talk even though he was tortured. Bridge of Spies believes that the American people are, in truth, just as bad as Soviets and East Germans; we just have better laws over here.

Mark Rylance being adorable.

Walt: Oh man, I totally kept cracking to myself “when men were men” during this movie.  And you’re right too, that the movie includes Americans in the shitty people/volcano that Tom Hanks has to fight (I thought of Lionel Barrymore a lot when watching that cranky judge. Doesn’t that judge belong in a holiday movie about a guy who doesn’t believe reindeer can fly or something?). Perhaps Spielberg is wrestling with the idea that while he was having his American Graffiti moment there were all kinds of assholes pulling strings at the highest level. But do we need this movie for that? Or this story?

 * * *

Walt: Was anyone else struck by Tom Hank’s color palette at the end of the film?  He’s passed out on the bed wearing a charcoal gray suit with a dark red sweater poking out the sleeve.  Does he come back from East Berlin a lil’ bit Communist?  Does it signify Mark Rylance’s last impact on him?

Aaron: I didn't notice a change in his color palette when he returned. Perhaps that was further evidence of that never-ending cold??

Walt: Also, why go through the bit at the end where Rylance mentions that if the Russians don’t embrace him upon his release at the end it will signify his death only to tell us in the credits that nope, never mind, he didn’t die actually?

Aaron: That Mark-Rylance-doesn't-die bit was so Steven Spielberg - a habit he has that is just as marked as his multiple endings. Create tension and make something seem really scary, and then show us that we had nothing to be worried about after all. It happened when the CIA guy followed him in act one, as well. That guy seemed really dangerous, but turns out he was able to be defeated simply by a few snide remarks about American values and some nonchalant snacking on an almond or two. I kept hoping Rylance would get shot on the bridge itself by those snipers. I know that's terrible, but this movie needed some actual stakes, and then all of that tension would have actually had a payoff.

Walt: I fully expected him to get shot. Otherwise, oooooo snipers.  Better watch out, cause, y’know, they might… let you know if someone’s coming or something.

Chris: This was a true event right? So there's boundaries.  I assume Rylance's character didn't get shot on the bridge - then again maybe that whole scene didn't actually happen on a bridge. I don't know.

Hanks on the eponymous bridge

Walt: It had to happen on a bridge, otherwise no title. The bridge was so inconsequential to the film though. What’s the bridge of spies? Is it East Berlin? Tom Hanks? The actual bridge? It works on many levels, but so little is made of the actual bridge that there’s nothing concrete to tie it to. I’m just generally confused. About why the movie was made and what we’re supposed to get from it. I’m sure Spielberg’s great uncle loved it. It felt like a movie that a great uncle would tell his filmmaker nephew that he should make. “Now THAT would be real story.  None of this treasure-hunting crap. You wanna talk about danger?  When I was in Berlin…” 

Aaron: I am not actually sure how I stayed awake.

Chris: So why are people giving so much love to this movie? Is it palpable to today's attitudes towards war?  The paranoia factor? Are people just suckers for Spielberg? The shot that rings most true for me was the Germans getting shot down climbing the wall: that demonstrated the terror of the entire situation for me. That "oh shit" moment. Then Steven screwed it up by having American kids climbing over a fence at the end.

 * * *

Aaron: I am not really a Spielberg fan or a Hanks fan, so I don't have the same kind of affection or emotional attachment to these Hollywood icons that the two of you do, but to me this kind of "prestige picture"/Oscar-bait garbage that Spielberg makes is completely uninteresting. It reminds me of the sort of old-school Clifford Odets-style of writing: a kind of writing that makes itself look very important but actually doesn't say anything at all; it simply pretends to be serious. I think Spielberg should stick to genre pictures.

Walt:  I love Spielberg and I love Hanks, but I’m over their being paired together. I’ve heard that Spielberg thinks Hollywood is broken, though he and his “cohorts” as you called them, namely Lucas, were really behind the breaking. Now he’s trying to make up for it by being a grown-up, except it feels like a 14-year-old’s version of what being a grown-up is. Not that “being grown up” really means anything anyway, but Spielberg seems to think it does, and who better to cast in a grown up movie than Tom “American Dad” Hanks. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do about either of them as a fan of theirs.  I just want them both to go away. Like Star Wars. Just go away so that I can be glad to see them again. 

Chris: If I had to rate this movie with a facial expression, it would be the one that old lady made on the train. Mildly disapproving with a touch of confusion. 

Desolation and Dragons

Last year, my friend Caleb and I shared one of our really nerdy conversations about The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey. (For the record, we have a lot of incredibly complex conversations about Tolkien lore, and we do this fairly often.) So, of course, we both have already seen the second installment of The Hobbit, which Jackson and co. are calling The Desolation of Smaug. Here is some of our conversation about Hobbit #2. I have tried to link anything that might demand more knowledge of Tolkien's books.

***

Caleb: We went opening night at midnight. Because I still had hope. But I feel the credits should've read based on characters created by J.R.R. Tolkien. I actually think Peter Jackson improved a lot of the story and closed up some of the gaps with Lord of the Rings. And brought the piece in line with the rest of the canon. But it's about 99.95% action and people kicking ass and about .05% story on screen.

Aaron: I agree with you that the plot of The Hobbit is actually improved by all of the stuff with Gandalf running around and trying to figure out what's happening with Sauron. The thing is, that the movie just sort of doesn't feel like anything. I mean, running, running, running. Escape the orcs, escape the wood-elves, escape the men, escape the dragon. In order to what? The idea that the dwarves are going to get back some kind of ancestral homeland just seems sort of preposterously unattainable, doesn't it? And the film never lets us hang out with the dwarves at home – there is that one moment where Glóin shows us portraits of his son and his wife. And they tried to do this a little with Bard and his three wee ones (did we hear the word "da" enough times?). But I want to see these worlds without duress! We get this a little whenever we're in Rivendell in Lord of the Rings and in the first Hobbit, and we get this when we see the Shire, but in Desolation of Smaug, there just isn't much of anything to root for.

Caleb: I do think that Jackson fixed the tone issues with The Hobbit. Bilbo singing and calling the spiders “attercop” has always been a little lame. Glad that was cut. Although Fran Walsh is failing in her research if she wrote “This sword is from Gondolin! My kin!” since Legolas is not of Noldorin ancestry. 

The tie-ins with Gandalf’s search for the necromancer are perfect. That helps us understand the rise of the Dark Lord. Although what was that terrible shot where we see Sauron’s silhouette fade into the eye over and over like a terrible music video. Does the audience really need a beating with the Obvious Bat there? I’m feeling bruised.

I did like that we see Dol Guldur. I’m confused about the hanging cages, though, since it’s always described as “pits”. I suspect that Gandalf will find Thráin II there in the pits since we know that he is missing and died in the pits “in madness and torment” when the last ring was taken from him. I would love to see that thread tied up. I really liked the tombs of the Nazgûl although I’m sure that the Witch King has never been entombed as he has never died. I really don’t know much about the other 8 other than they were living men so I assume they had bodies that could have been put in a tomb. But they are wraiths now and have no true physical form. So why are the iron bars bent? No idea.

Gandalf and Radagast confer

Aaron: I'm totally with you on Gandalf and the necromancer: the stuff with Gandalf figuring out that the evil in the south of the forest is more than he had thought it was. It is interesting and created a much darker, scarier tone for the film. Which was great. Except that Jackson makes those sections of the movie just as bland as the rest of the film. Gandalf looks around at stuff (that we don't recognize), he sees a sign on a tree (for which the viewer has no context), he goes to Dol Guldur and apparently sees things (that we don't see), and so there is nothing for us to figure out as an audience. No mystery, no clues, no puzzle. Gandalf doesn't quite know, and then – bang! – he knows. McKellen's delivery, too, has gotten more drawn out and ponderous as this series continues. "You'll neeeeeeddddd ittttt," he tells Bilbo. It's like Alan Rickman's delivery as Snape.

Caleb:I think the dialog is the worst part. It’s 80% action film cliches (“How do we know we can trust him? We have no choice!” “I thought you were an orc. If I were an orc, you would be dead.”) There’s just no ring of authenticity. Gandalf says "We must force his hand…”. Force his hand is an analogy from poker which makes no sense in the world of the piece. When you read the dialog from The Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Durin’s Folk, the dialog between Gandalf and Thorin in the Prancing Pony is actually pretty good. And I think Jackson knew the dialog was bad and so, like George Lucas before him, decided you might not notice how bad the dialog is if all of the dialog takes place in the middle of insane special effects. That scene between Bilbo and Smaug didn’t need to be set with Bilbo flying all around the crazy piles of gold. That could have been a scene of actual acting. I would have loved that. After tons of running around and jumping and shooting, we have a still, tense scene between those characters before we see the dragon’s full size. But nope, let’s just cover our dialog with green screens and the audience won’t notice that Smaug has no motivation anymore.

 Aaron: You are exactly right. I haven't read this book in a dog's age, but Bilbo's titles – Underhill, barrel-rider, etc. – are meant to trick Smaug, yes? You don't give the dragon your real name because he will use it to destroy you. We know Bilbo can't die because he's in The Lord of the Rings, but at least the stakes could've been raised considerably.

Caleb: Yes! Without a true scene between Smaug and Bilbo, it's very unclear why the dragon decides to attack Laketown, especially when the dwarves, his true enemies, are within the mountain. In the book, Bilbo accidentally tricks Smaug into thinking he a man from Laketown. He's playing at riddles and calls himself "The barrel-rider" which makes Smaug think the Lakemen are trying to steal his gold. He has no idea that the dwarves have arrived. If he knew that the heir of Thráin had returned, Smaug would never have left the mountain until he was dead. In the film, it's as though he just gets distracted and decides to burn up a town... weak motivation which again, makes you lose faith in the characters. 

Aaron: I want to say, too, that the Steven Spielberg moves really started to piss me off this time. I know Jackson adores Spielberg and his many endings (we all laughed at how many times those first couple of movies ended). But, the dwarves all lose hope and then Bilbo shows up to save them from the spiders, then the dwarves all lose hope again in the prisons of the wood-elves, and then Bilbo shows up. The dwarves almost get caught sneaking into Laketown, then (surprise!) they don't get caught. There are no stakes here. Who cares if they get caught? When they did get caught the Master of Laketown threw them a party. But then the dwarves give up again. We can't find the keyhole to the door on the side of the mountain! Guess our quest's over! Who is falling for these little mini-cliffhangers? I'll tell you: exactly no one. So why is the film filled with this phony nonsense?

Caleb: I agree. They give up after 35 seconds of trying to open the hidden door: the characters lose all credibility. Would Thorin really come all this way, fight all of these ridiculous white orcs and then give up his life’s quest after a small setback like that? It makes no sense. It’s very hard to feel anything for a character who is so visible a slave to the writer’s emotional manipulation. And I don’t really want to talk about Thorin’s “plan” to fight the dragon by covering him in molten gold… I mean wow, even for a man with no plan, that was terrible. Maybe next time he’ll try to light the dragon on fire to kill it. Hot gold? Really? That just made him a total idiot. At least the book just made him blind and arrogant to dealing with the dragon.

Aaron: But... we got to see a dragon covered in molten gold! In truth (and you knew this would be the case) I loved absolutely every second of Smaug. The effects were wonderful, I loved when he breathed fire, I loved Benedict Cumberbatch's voice, and I loved Smaug's arrogant, smug, murderous attitude.

Caleb: I think that “Legolas Kicks Everyone’s Ass” just needs to be it’s own film. It’s a distracting plot line (if such long string of action sequences can be called a “plot line") from this movie. I’ve created a graph of Legolas’ screen time [to the right]. Also I’m pretty sure that Bilbo can’t swim or at least not very well. In the film though, he was the Michael Phelps of white-water free styling.

Aaron: It's the style of the movie that I just can't get past. He's filmed it with a hundred of these micro-cliffhangers – none of which we ever take seriously. I mean, did anyone in the film actually die? A real action movie kills off its cast members as the movie progresses. So that there are stakes to the fake action that is happening on screen. In Desolation, every single person in the film is basically as invulnerable as Gandalf.

Caleb: Not entirely true... Don't forget that touching moment when Legolas stems his bleeding nose and ponders the mortality of the Eldar in Middle Earth for at least 0.36 seconds. And then continues his one-elf quest to punch to death all of the orcs.

Aaron: Wow, you disliked this movie so much more than I. I just thought there was not much to it.

Caleb: No, I actually enjoyed watching the film. The pace is good and there's more than enough action to keep you entertained. I just wish there was a story.

An Unexpected Journey

Nerd alert: this is a conversation between two guys who probably know way too much about Tolkien's universe for our own good. I have tried to link to any terms that need explanation. Here's my conversation with my friend Caleb about The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey:

***

Me: So. What did you think of The Hobbit's first installment?

Caleb: I know in my head that it's not a good film, but I was always going to like it. I like Durin's Folk too much to not enjoy this. A lot of the plot was pulled from the appendices, which are clearly huge favorites of mine. But the dialogue and action sequences are terrible. And the story wanders a lot. Peter didn't really tighten it up either. But I'm happy with it being so blinded as I am in this area.

Me: See I think I went in expecting not to like it, and I mostly got what I expected (what I wanted?). But what was with all of the silly humor (which wasn't funny)? And the odd little songs? I won't gripe about the White Council not actually being held in Rivendell or Galadriel's total inability to become invisible and disappear – to complain about those things would be picking nits – but that entire Radagast section? What was it doing in the film? So strange!

Caleb: Yeah WTF on Radagast… I had blocked that whole rabbit sled shit from my memory. The humor was terrible. Most of the non-canonical dialog was poorly written and lacked tone.

Me: I want to say that I love the conceptual art. Rivendell and the Orc mines and Erebor all looked wonderful. And I loved Gollum – even though I wasn't expecting to.

Caleb: I did love Erebor. I never pictured it that way. And it made me think; for all their ingenuity, why did the dwarfs never prepare for the inevitability of a dragon attack? Sooner or later one will show up. Seems like there should be a better plan than guys with spears behind the main doors… giant ballistas or something.

Me: I was thinking that too. Thorin is yelling Dragon!!! but they literally have no preparation for it except shut the doors. I mean, it's not like no one has ever seen a fire-drake from the North. That seems like a pretty dumb group of people, although, we should note that Thror (was that his name?) had become complacent and arrogant – obscene wealth in Tolkien is always corrupting and ultimately blinding: think Denethor II or King Thingol or (for that matter) Fëanor. But tell me more about what you dug in the movie... as I say, I really liked Gollum in this film.

Caleb: I liked seeing Master Elrond in armor and on horseback. I feel like that's an aspect of his character lacking in the films. He is still youthful by human standards and hates raiding orcs after what happens to his wife. I wish we saw his sons. They are two of my favorites.

Me: Oh, I agree! I am totally with you about Elrond. It was nice to see him on the warpath. (Although calling him young is interesting, Caleb. He's lived through the entirety of the Second Age and the first three thousand years of the Third, no?) Also, I thought his armor was designed beautifully.

Aaron: "The hottest dwarf anyone's ever seen."

Caleb:  Yes, I know that Elrond isn't actually "young" – I suppose I mean that he still has a lot of vitality surpassing his more middle-aged appearance. I sort of feel like the casting directors pandered to human aging. Elrond and Galadriel are cast as about 40 years old while Legolas is cast as about 20. Elrond and Legolas are about the same age while Galadriel is probably twice as old, maybe more, depending on how long you count the Days Before Days.

I liked all the eating scenes in Bag End. I am a sucker for the simple Hobbit pleasures of comfort and food. I feel it's important in both Bilbo and Frodo's cases to show their love for the simple good life, since that is what powers them through their journeys. They are driven by their love of the comfort of the Shire.

Me: As you put it, the simple Hobbit pleasures of comfort and food sound lovely. You're right, of course, about Bilbo and Frodo, but the way that entire scene worked – with the dwarves basically as clowns? I just couldn't get behind all of that.

Caleb:  Typically, I would agree with you about all the dwarf silliness in Bag End but I think that Peter and the writers had a very tough job trying to reconcile the widely differing tone of The Hobbit from the rest of the canon. Something that Tolkien never really successfully did. The dwarfs of The Hobbit are more clowns than mighty warriors. Their names are comical and even a little lazy in their alliteration. I don't think the writers were by any means successful at uniting the two worlds. It feels more like they choose scenes from each. The battles are from the darker tone of the later works while the songs and Shire are from The Hobbit. But on top of that Jackson added 21st-century PG action-movie one-liners. It's an odd mix. Mostly I hate An Unexpected Journey's tone, but for those scenes in Bag End… I can get on board there.

I actually liked the Misty Mountains song. That was well integrated music in my opinion. I liked the implementation of Thorin's shield. I think that was practical and makes more sense than a branch as a club.
And I did like Gollum, as well. "He is too clever of a waterman." I liked that they gave him a boat. I only wish his cave had been deeper in the mountain. I always pictured it at the roots of the mountain. This felt close, just off the beaten track but not inaccessibly deep.

Me: I always imagined Gollum with a boat. But you are right: his cave should be much much deeper in the mountain. He has basically seen no light for most of an Age, right? And isn't he almost blind? I know I remember Bilbo groping around once he found Gollum. Actually, I didn't like that we saw Gollum lose the ring. In the book, Bilbo finds the ring but neither he nor we know whose ring it is, isn't that right? (I guess everyone has seen LotR at this point, so what I am saying is moot...)

Caleb: Yes, Gollum is almost blind. The fish that he eats are said to have no eyes. But I get that you can't have an almost entirely dark scene, or one lit only by Sting. Or you could, but that would be an art film.

Caleb: "It just should not have happened."

Me: I did like all of the different-looking orcs. They looked very different from each other (as they should) and of course they don't look like the Uruks from the other three movies. But that goblin king in the Misty Mountains... ugh.

I think I am mostly complaining here about Jackson's tone throughout. He frustrates me with his silly jokes and his easy aphorisms about "change" or "power" or "little people doing big things". He goes back and forth from making fun of the dwarves – think of that fat dwarf who only gets to be the butt of jokes – to talking about how they're displaced and miss their home, etc. So we're supposed to connect to their struggle of homelessness, but also supposed to laugh at them for being fat/ugly/having funny hairstyles. (Except Kili: who is obviously the hottest dwarf anyone's ever seen.)

Caleb: I'm not discussing the cameo that Jabba the Hutt's stepson made in the film. It just should not have happened.

Jason and the Argonauts

Argo is really good.

I'm going to assume that you're all planning on seeing this movie anyway, right? I mean, the trailer is excellent, and this is the same guy who directed The Town two years ago. At the very least, Argo delivers on all of the things that you know you are going to get from Affleck: the pacing is absolutely excellent. He knows when to build tension, when to let the audience in on a bit of irony, when to relieve a series of fast-paced sequences with something more contemplative, and he is expert at relieving tension with a good joke. He did this in both of his previous movies, and it works here just as well.

The story is a great one. Utterly preposterous and also based on a true story. The story is, in fact, so good that the film doesn't need to give its audience the usual twists and feints that we are so used to seeing in the movies these days. Instead, Affleck tells it in a straightforward manner, throwing up only a few obstacles at the end, but even these seem less important than the inevitability of the story itself.

For me, though, this film is all about its incredible supporting players. The supporting cast in Argo is just the best. Affleck is wonderful in the central role, a lovely anchor to the film, but what makes this film work from start to finish is the great performances that an entire series of undersung supporting players in Hollywood give in small roles. Clea DuVall, Bryan Cranston, Tate Donovan, Chris Messina, Farshad Farahat, and Željko Ivanek, were my personal favorites, but there is excellent work all around.

John Goodman and Alan Arkin are mostly here for laughs. They get almost all the good lines, and their respective deliveries of these gems are easily worth Argo's price of admission.

I do think that Affleck's sentimental side tends to kick in as he tries to end his films. I felt frustrated with the oh-so-romantic ending to The Town, and I felt just as frustrated with the pat ending of Argo. These kinds of endings feel easy, almost obligatory, as though the brain of everyone working on the film stopped working in the film's last five minutes and everyone turned into Steven Spielberg circa 1982.

One more note about nostalgia. Sometimes I complain when films sentimentalize an earlier period in movie history. Argo does this blatantly. There's this great sequence where people quote Sidney Lumet's Network and then someone onscreen references it explicitly. The entire idea for Argo comes from Don Taylor's Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and Affleck ends the film with a shot of miniature versions of the Star Wars characters. Even more (and I laughed out loud when I saw this), the logo that Affleck uses for the distributor's credit at the very beginning of Argo is Warner Bros' logo from the late 1970s. It's a great in-joke that immediately set the tone for the picture. This Warner Bros image, too, is not a nostalgic one per se. In fact, let me be kind and say that it isn't exactly the best logo Warner has ever had. Affleck isn't romanticizing the 1970s so much as he is revisiting them, warts and all.

I want to say just one more thing, and that is that I am told there is Oscar buzz about Argo, and while I think that is good news for Affleck's career (he deserves it), and good for the movie in general. I really hope that no one starts acting like Argo is the frontrunner for Best Picture. I don't think the movie's got the legs for that. And it doesn't need them. Behaving as though this movie should win Best Picture is asking more than ought to be asked of Argo. It's a very strong tongue-in-cheek spy movie that happens to be a true story.
Let's all just sit back and enjoy it. It's a good movie.

Hope, Whiteness, and James Earl Jones

I watched this a while ago, and I just wanted to share how much I really loved The Great White Hope. It's an old movie made from an even older play, but it's really excellent.

The Great White Hope also boasts some superb performances. James Earl Jones is just outstanding, and his later fame in other roles is completely obvious when looking at his work in this. He was already a master in 1970. The performance is big and brave and powerful.

I have to admit to being a little baffled as to why they didn't just call the character in the movie Jack Johnson. The Great White Hope is so clearly based on Johnson's life-story that it seems odd to provide any subterfuge. The film calls him Jack Jefferson, which makes the subterfuge seem even sillier to me.

One thing the fake name did do for me is that I kept asking "Did that really happen?" "They didn't do that to him, did they?" "They couldn't have ended up in Budapest performing in a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin could they have?" That's probably not all bad. I mean, I ended up looking Johnson up and spending an hour reading about him after the movie was over.

The Great White Hope is a boxing movie only partially. Much of the boxing happens off screen – a choice that would probably never be made by a filmmaker working today and probably a formal device left over from the original play – and instead the focus is on the ingenious methods these racist jackasses in the United States invented as a way of punishing Jack Johnson for being a powerful pugilist and for loving a white woman.

But TGWH is, even more than that, one of those 1970s lonely-man films of which I am so fond, where the protagonist's morals are questionable and when the film ends he goes off into an uncertain, confusing future, but faces that future with a characteristic unflappability and fortitude. TGWH is a character study and an absolutely fascinating one. The writing is also excellent, though as I noted above, it's often a little too stage-y.

Jane Alexander is also great in the movie, and TGWH also boasts a fierce performance by Network actress Marlene Warfield (god I love her) and an appearance from the amazing Beah Richards.

One more thing. I have watched two James Earl Jones movies recently (the other was 1974's Claudine, which I loved), and both appear in this hilarious mashup, which my friend Walt showed me this summer. Enjoy:

The Briefest of Reviews from 1973

I was just talking about childhood, wasn't I? I have to admit to being totally underwhelmed by this picture. It was good... sort of. American Graffiti is a movie that is actually about nostalgia; in other words, the picture attempts to give us an idyllic picture of life as it used to be, to revive something that the film always already assumes is lost. (That makes sense, right?) I don't do very well with either so-called main-street values or with nostalgia, so I didn't really like this movie very much. It was cool to see Harrison Ford looking so young and pretty, though.

Questionnaire from Julie. I Must Be Bored.

1. You and Jesus go out to dinner - who pays?
Jesus. I've given that man a lot over the years. I figure he owes me one.

2. You suddenly have to flee the country and adopt a new name... what would it be?
Wow. I haven't thought about this before. It would be a name from a movie. I name everything after movies. Maybe Bill Holden.

3. Pick one state in the U.S. to get rid of permanently?
Texas. Peace out. They can obsess about themselves in their own country. They do anyway.

4. You wake up as the opposite gender. What's the one thing you wanna do?
I think I'd probably masturbate.

5. Luke Skywalker or Han Solo?
Han. I'm not into blondes.

6. Toy you always wanted but never got as a child?
I seriously can't remember. I always wanted more legos, but I think I always saved up and bought them...

7. If you were this question, what would you ask?
When is the last time someone took your breath away?

8. The last time you laughed until your stomach hurt:
With Ryan, Alison & Julie the last time we went to Brothers the Warehouse.

9. What is the last movie you saw that actually scared you?
Final Destination. Don't lie. That shit is scary. I also get scared every time I watch Apocalypse Now. I never expect that fucking tiger to jump out at me.

10. Stupidest thing you've ever said out loud?
The list is pretty long. I can't remember. I say stupid shit all the time.

11. You're sentenced to death and it’s the morning of your execution: what do you want to eat?
Gin.

12. What's something that most people do that you've never done?
I've never been to New York and I have no excuse.

13. Before you die you want to go to...?
Back to Europe.

14. What’s the last thing you ate?
I drank a glass of juice. I'm turning into Shelby from Steel Magnolias

15. A wild animal you'd like to have as a pet?
A fucking wolf. That would be awesome.

16. A drug you'll never try?
N/A

17. If you were an animal, what would you be?
A bird. Maybe a goose or an owl.

18. If you had to marry someone you knew at the age of 12, who would it have been?
Oh my. That was what? The seventh grade? I think my closest friend was Michael Rodarte (I wonder if he's gay now. Probably.)

19. What's something a lot of people don't know about you?
I used to know how to play the piano. But now I don't.

20. First celebrity crush?
Matlock. And Hercule Poirot. Crimefighters are hot.

21. What's a weapon to suit your personality, habits and abilities?
Just give me a cigarette and let me burn people.

22. Best flavor of runts?
The red one.

23. Favorite breakfast bread style (pancakes, waffles, toast etc...)
Coffee cake. Yum. But I won't eat it. People with body dysmorphia don't eat things like that.

24. Favorite movie?
Network. Have you seen it? If you haven't you're missing out.

25. Worst way to die?
There aren't any that are good. But I don't want to die quickly, that's all I know.

26. Grossest injury you've ever seen?
When I cut the end of my middle finger off on Christmas Eve 2005. That was hot.

27. The worst injury you've ever had?
Nothing that bad. Except when my mother ran over my foot with the family car.

28. Favorite thing about Thanksgiving?
This quiz asks a lot of questions about food. I think this questionnaire has body dysmorphia. My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is stuffing. And gravy. I am all about gravy.

29. Sport you hate the most?
Basketball. I know the men are half-clothed and all that, but it's so boring.

30. What state in the US do you want to visit?
New York. It's time I went.

31. What's something you think would be sweet to know everything about?
Mandarin Chinese. I wish I spoke it.

32. Favorite Actor/Actress?
Lately, I'm all about Meryl Streep. My new favorite actor is Neil Patrick Harris.

33. What's one phrase you absolutely detest?
"I don't think the character would do that."

34. What makes an awesome party?
Prince.

35. What's your favorite material possession?
My books.

36. What's something that most consider an insult but you enjoy having said about you?
Does being called gay count?

37. Favorite kind of dog(s)?
Beagles. God help me those things are cute.

38. Favorite carnival food?
What is this? I have no idea.

39. Morning or night person?
Night. Mornings are for people who went to bed early.

41. Weirdest Ebay purchase?
I've never done this.

43. Its Saturday at 3am. Where are you?
Writing a paper, usually.

44. Who's your favorite friend/friends to go out with?
My boyfriend.

45. Worst job you've ever had?
I dug weeds for one day for a property manager when I was fifteen. Never again.

46. What's something your friends make fun of you for?
Being a snob is a frequent jab. And they're usually right.

47. Favorite cereal?
Golden Grahams.

48. Book you could read repeatedly?
Michael Cunningham's Flesh & Blood and Lewis Thomas's The Lives of a Cell.

49. What's the meanest thing you've ever done?
I do inappropriately unkind things all the time. Is there a scale? I sometimes tell a story of something really mean that I did after my girlfriend in high school and I broke up, but I don't want to repeat it here. It was really mean.

50. If you were drafted into a war, would you survive?
I sure as Hell would.

The Promise of More

Tonight I wasted my time on yet another Chinese epic promising bold visuals, acid color palettes and fabulous swordsmanship. This one was called The Promise and is an entry into the genre by Chinese master filmmaker Chen Kaige (who, you may remember, directed the brilliant Farewell, My Concubine.)

I have to learn to talk myself out of going to see films from this spectacular Chinese genre. Their trailers lure me with the promise of visual panache, eye candy and good actors but I am inevitably let down by the film itself, which always lacks substance and more often than not is chock-full of totally ludicrous sentiment and nonsense. I speak to you of Hero (a film I did not appreciate) and House of Flying Daggers (a film I appreciated only slightly better.) The Promise is one of these: a lovely film on the surface, but a film without real characters and a film completely devoid of honest emotion.

The Promise is much worse than both Daggers and Hero, though, because the director, Kaige Chen, doesn't have the will to pull his film through the way Zhang Yimou did with the other two. The costumes for The Promise are gorgeous, stunning things, and the art direction is pretty if boring and lacking wit. Unfortunately, the visual effects are not good at all and though the costumes are lovely, Chen doesn't use them to their advantage. Using a beautiful costume is something Yimou knows how to do brilliantly, and both House of Flying Daggers and Hero use theirs to full effect: the costumes and colors signifying emotion, vacillating loyalties and freedom. The costumes in The Promise signify nothing at all, even though a certain set of "crimson armor" is all anyone talks about for a good forty minutes of the film.

The actors are good enough in The Promise: Hiroyuki Sanada (The White Countess & The Twilight Samurai) especially and the villain is a gorgeous young man by the name of Nicholas Tse, but this film is terrible.

I have debated a lot with other movie lovers about style over substance: when it is okay and when it isn't. It is a rare film where the style is enough to make up for a lack of substance. I, frankly, can't think of one. My aforementioned boredom with both Flying Daggers and Hero is a testament to my preference for substance. I love Douglas Sirk (who doesn't?) but then I think he was still a really good storyteller... and the thing about Sirk for me is that even though everything was so contrived, he was trying to get at something serious: some deep human truths. For me, though, The Promise is this year's Star Wars: Episode III. It's a movie that is completely and totally about style and isn't any good at style. In a word: pointless.

Oscar Nominees: Part Three

JUNEBUG

1 Nomination: Best Supporting Actress
A Really great film, buoyed by excellent performances all around. The script is really great, too. I wish this film had gotten more recognition, but I suppose I should just be happy Amy Adams nabbed a nomination.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Supporting Actress (I hope I hope I hope)
My Rating: #8 out of 82 films

MATCH POINT

1 Nomination: Best Original Screenplay
Woody Allen's return to greatness? Pretty much... or so it appears. I have loved Woody Allen for years and it's nice to see him get another Oscar nomination. The last one was eight years ago for Deconstructing Harry.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #13 out of 82 films

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE

1 Nomination: Best Original Screenplay
Clever little film with truly odious characters. This movie was critically acclaimed and truly deserves its nomination, but it hasn't a prayer to win... and I don't really think it ought to, either. My reasoning for this is chiefly based on the horrible, horrible outfits Laura Linney wore throughout.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #55 out of 82 films

THE NEW WORLD

1 Nomination: Best Cinematography
My favorite film of the year and the most maligned by the Academy of all the films nominated. It probably suffered from its extremely late release date. But it is a truly gorgeous film and Emmanuel Lubeski very much deserves his nomination.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #1 out of 82 films

BATMAN BEGINS

1 Nomination: Best Cinematography
The best comic book movie that's come out in a long time. Christopher Nolan did great work with the Batman mythology and everyone in Hollywood was pleased. I expected it, frankly, to perform better on nomination morning, but a B-picture is a B-picture, and action films aren't usually the stuff of Oscars. A shame, because the costume design and art direction for this film were excellent, and the score (disqualified by the Academy—too many composers) had people talking as well.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #29 out of 82 films

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

1 Nomination: Best Costume Design
Tim Burton! Hi! I'm Tim Burton! Look at how weird I am! I'm being mean. I actually really liked this movie, but I guess I'm one of very few. Everyone else seemed to really dislike it. It's box office was pretty good, but critics panned it and none of my friends liked it either.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #34 out of 82 films

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

1 Nomination: Best Art Direction
How this missed for Visual Effects I just don't know. Ah well. Harry Potter has all the money in the world. He doesn't need a bunch of Oscar nominations to boot.
Will Win: Nothing
Could Win: Nothing
My Rating: #26 out of 82 films

STAR WARS - EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH

1 Nomination: Best Makeup
No comment. Why did I see this movie again?
Will Win: Jack Shit Nothing
Could Win: Visual Effects
My Rating: #82 out of 82 films

I Have Joined the Dark Side

I have seen Star Wars - Episode III: the Revenge of the Sith. It was really bad. I know we've all been told that Episode III is better than Episodes I & II, and that is certainly true, but being better than laugh-out-loud stupid is not very difficult. In this case, "better" means that while watching Episode III, the audience only laughed at the movie about half a dozen times.

It's like someone took a book you love and made it into a shitty movie... that's the only way I can think to compare the Star Wars prequels to anything. I already like and care about the characters, I have a pretty good sense of the plot, and I want the movie to be good--all when I walk into the theatre, but like Alexander or A Home at the End of the World, I leave the theatre going "I can't believe I sat through that piece of trash."

Lucas has no subtlety whatsoever. He neither has any ability to develop character. He has a kind of visual style, if you can call it that. He crams a billion little completely useless bits of information into each frame so that the picture is so busy you don't know what to look at. But strangely, his frames are very rarely beautiful, if ever. (To be fair, Attack of the Clones and Phantom Menace both had really cool costumes: Revenge doesn't have any.) And instead of writing a screenplay, he just choreographs fight scene after fight scene--I couldn't tell you who was fighting whom and why. And the fight scenes are the best part.

I know many have complained that the dialogue was bad in Attack of the Clones, myself included. But watching Revenge of the Sith, I was more aware that what didn't work wasn't the dialogue, it was the moments in the story when Lucas tried to use no dialogue at all to tell the story. There were several quiet moments when something very serious would happen and no dialogue was necessary: Anakin stares out a window at the Republic he loves and makes a decision while the woman he loves stares out a different window worrying about him. These scenes were much, much worse than scenes with dialogue. This is where Lucas's weaknesses as a filmmaker really reveal themselves. He can't create character, so he can't ever be serious, so when he tries to get us to feel something, he falls flat on his face. The audience at the screening I attended, I am sorry to report, laughed out loud at these scenes.

They're showing the trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with Episode III. Very cool.