Trespass

Trespass (Joel Schumacher, 2011) Two A-listers in this thing and it goes straight to video?  A casual viewing can see why.  It's a dimly written variation on the typical home-invasion story (The Desperate Hours—either version, Panic Room, Firewall), with more than a smattering of Michael Haneke's cruel Funny Games (also either version) directed by that "master" of subtlety, Joel Schumacher. 

Kyle Miller (Nicolas Cage) is a diamond broker with a security fortress for a house, a tense marriage with his wife, Sarah (Nicole Kidman) and a teenager (Liana Liberato) who's a shade on the rebellious side.  While the kid is off sulking in her room (actually, she runs off with a friend to a party—fine security system that house has), the home is invaded by a gang of three guys and a girl, who threaten the Millers and want the diamonds that Kyle has squirrelled away in an elaborate safe.  Kyle won't do it, even at the threat of a pistol aimed at his temple or his wife's.  Kyle is arrogant enough that he starts to negotiate with the burglars over what they want and what an alternative take-away might be.  Cash?  Sarah's jewels?  Insurance money?  And the thieves are the type that hesitate at every negotiating point.  Pretty soon, it turns into a competitive play-off of who's the greediest and the slimiest, the crooks or the capitalists?  It would be entertaining if there was anybody worth rooting for.

Fact is, the burglars are stupid.  Most criminals are, but these guys aren't even competent to take the cake.  They're the three "D's"—dumb, dysfunctional and (a)ddicted, and pretty soon, everybody is squabbling, the burglars with the Millers, the burglars amongst themselves, and the Millers against each other (Thanks, if I wanted to watch something like this, I'd watch the Republican primaries coverage).  It's one of those movies where you sit, staring at the screen (when you're eyes aren't rolling back in their sockets) and you think "why doesn't everybody just get a good night's sleep" (and, in fact, Miller even suggests that at one point).

The only engaging question about the whole enterprise is why would Cage and Kidman appear in such a poorly executed "bottle" movie, in the first place.  After all, there is no brilliance in Karl Gajdusek's script, not even something juicy for the two thesps to sink their acting chops into.  The only reason must be is that they owed director Schumacher a favor: Cage for appearing in Schumacher's earlier 8MM, and Kidman for having her career emerge from Tom Cruise's shadow due to Batman Forever.  Loyalty is fine and all, but if they'd moved on to other projects and let this one rest in the dumper, the rewards would have been far greater—they'd have done the rest of us a favor.

Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice

"Aw, I'm Sappy..."

I was beginning to think producer Jerry Bruckheimer could do no wrong. 


(I know, I know...) 


My head was turned by that particular exec spear-heading grand entertainments out of such slight germs of ideas as a Disney Animatronic Ride ("Pirates of the Caribbean"-the first one) and a 2-D video game ("Prince of Persia").  I'd forgotten the Bay films, and I hadn't seen the "National Treasure" collaborations with director Jon Turtletaub and star Nicolas Cage.  My expectations weren't high going into "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," and, indeed, for most of its length, it's quite a clever little entertainment, even if its source is the Mickey Mouse sequence of "Fantasia."


It reminded me of other Disney programmers, like "Emil and the Detectives" and "That Darn Cat" (the original one) that had just enough flash and talent behind it to get by and convince you you'd been entertained.  "Sorcerer's Apprentice," the tale of a nerdish NYU physics student, Dave Stuttler, (Jay Baruchel, whose mannered hummings and hawings remind one of a weaker-chinned Jerry Lewis) who finds himself designated by one of Merlin's three apprentices, Balthazar Blake (Cage), as "The Prime Merlinian," the last in the blood-line of the Arthurian wizard's followers.  It's a good thing, too, because Dave sets in motion a series of events that can lead to the resurrection of Morgana LeFaye (Alice Krige), who will bring about "The Rising," the bringing back from the dead of all the evil sorcerers who will...are I say it?..."rule the world."


Pure cheese in the summary,* but it's quite a bit of fun in the telling, aided and abetted by a fine cast, particularly Alfred Molina as the villain of the piece, Maxim Horvath, and Cage, who has never looked more in control of a movie as he does here.


Looking for all the world like a rangy Tim Burton** "in a 350 year old rawhide coat," Cage plays a sage authoritarian figure with ease, especially as Baruchel is dithering all over the place, he can sit back and be the calm center of the storm, the hub around which all the activity revolves.  That one moment, repeated in all the commercials and trailers (and spoiled by a "cutesy" sound effect in the film), where Stuttler yells at Blake "You're crazy!!" and and he responds with a tiny "this much" gesture—Cage does very little with that, but the "I'm serious here" look in his eyes is a model of selling more by doing less.  This is Cage's best part in years, and he does wonders with it.


But, as good as he is—as good as everybody is—the film is, ultimately, a disappointment.  So much is dependent on the Stuttler kid doing everything right, when he previously was such a klutz, that when everything goes as scripted, it's a huge let-down, all buttoned-up and Disneyfied, with everything except animated birds communicating a cloyingly happy ending.  After attempting to make its own way for much of the movie (and largely succeeding), the film ends with an uninspired thud, by recalling it's source from the Magic Kingdom...and being so Mickey Mouse.

"Disney's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is a Rental...and barely that.

* The screen-story is credited to a pair of "franchise-killers" Laurence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, two Hollywood hacks who've managed to pen the final entries in many a previously successful film series (they must have a very good agent or be in good with the Writer's Guild) as well as Matt Lopez, who wrote Disney's recent "Witch Mountain" entry and Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard, who managed to breathe some life into "Prince of Persia."

** It struck me: why haven't Burton and Cage ever worked together?  Probably because if you have Johnny Depp, you don't need him.  But, if Cage can restrain himself from his acting eccentricities (like his trying-too-hard" early roles), he could be as useful as he is here, a cornerstone of practicality in Burton's fractured Universe.

Kick-Ass

"Super-hero-Nihilistic-Crypto-Fascist Bull-shit"


"Kick-Ass" is the latest comics off-shoot to hit the movies and the comics and film geeks have only increased the amount of saliva that's escaped their lips. There hasn't been this much anticipation for a movie since...oh, "Watchmen" and before that, "Snakes on a Plane." Both films, though eagerly awaited, and generating reams of MB's of blog-love, were disappointments as income generators for the studios who translated the hype into an actual commitment to...ya know...actually GO to see the movie. Failure to commit? Or premature ejaculation?

Don't know. Probably both.

But, "Kick-Ass" is geared right to the enlarged heart of fan-boys, a celebration of the super-hero concept that preaches empowerment to the wish-fulfilling power-seekers, who wish-oh-wish-oh-wish that they could have a freak-accident or some inspiring tragedy or be born on another planet that can turn them from one of the disenfranchised to one of the disenfranchised—who can kick your ass.

That the movie opens the day after Tax-Day cannot be a coincidence.

It's a revenge-fantasy-placebo to those who feel they're being taken advantage of by people who've "got all the breaks" or who have power that the wannabe- hero covets. I've read a lot of comics (still do), but am critical enough to see them for what they are: Spandex Fascist Fantasies, whether you're a Big Blue Boy Scout or you strike terror into a superstitious cowardly lot. The tables turned for me when I read a "Superman" comic where Lois Lane expressed surprise Superman knows her address. "Of course, Lois," says Mr. X-Ray Vision. "I know where everybody lives."

Creeeepy.

That re-red-boot of "Superman" was written by John Byrne, and he is of the group of comic-book writers who are a little too reflexive in their writing, because what they know is comics history and movies, and when you read one of their breathless narratives you know what movies they've been seeing as plot-lines and lines of dialogue are lifted with and without acknowledgement. They're pop-culture pin-ball machines of borrowed movie phrases and plots that ping into comic-books and pong back into movies and television (enough to make me go *Tilt!*). One can't escape the sense that the ideas are as recycled as the pages they're printed on, and that these writers are riding the coat-tails (or capes) of the ink-stained brethren who have blazed trails before them. They provide a familiar comfort, but not an awful lot of insight. In that class of well-read writers are Brian Michael Bendis, Frank Miller...and Mark Millar.

Millar is the original...and I say that ironically...author of "Kick-Ass" which he put to paper with artist John Romita Jr. (the second generation of Romita artists—he also provides illustrations and a nifty 3-dimensional "comic-book-within-a-comic-book sequence for the film). And his story is a sort of "Watchmen-tykes" version of Alan Moore's break-down of the conventions of comic book heroism, going beneath the costumes and exploring the motivations beyond what is described in "Kick-Ass" as "a combination of optimism and naivete"—it goes into realms of dysfunction, survivor's guilt, masochism, politics and aberrant sexuality. But "Kick-Ass" doesn't have the depth of Moore's work, while also borrowing from themes in Rick Veitch's "Brat Pack."

"Brat Pack" is a pretty seamy examination of hero side-kicks, but there is an unstated empathy for the kids who go out "adventuring" at the behest of their driven mentors. The kids in "Kick-Ass" aren't given that much consideration, and it's all done in the name of "fun." Certainly the film has been sold by countless previews on the comedic aspect of the story.

But they leave out the brutal beatings and stabbings, the use of firearms by hero and villain alike—there really isn't any moral delineation between the two factions and their techniques are similar—you are told that one is "good" and the other is "bad," but other than that "optimism and naivete," the two could be the same—protecting their own.

The age is bothersome. "Kick-Ass" (a fine Aaron Johnson) and "Red-Mist" (an annoying Christopher Mintz-Plasse) are high-school age, but little "Hit Girl" (who is the best—albeit startling—thing in the movie as played by the chirpy Chloe Moretz) may be 10 or 11, and works at the behest of "Big Daddy" (Nicolas Cage), her gun-nut revenge-obsessed father. It's a bit off-putting to see her running up walls, firing hand-guns with complete abandon, whirling butterfly knives into the torsos of her victims, and chopping off legs and stabbing pushers through the sternum with a sword-capped baton. Her costume is a kinky combination of kevlar and plaid skirt. "Big Daddy" is a marksman in a bat-man suit. He loves his little girl and wants her protected in all his planned mayhem—an introductory training exercise testing the validity of her costume stopping bullets is the funniest thing in the movie—but how much love is there throwing your kid into harm's way for your own blood-lust?

This stuff is off-putting. Kids will want to see "Kick-Ass" but you've got to be a little stupid in the head to take them. The film is Rated "R" by the MPAA legitimately, but I notice why isn't spelled out. I'll tell you: persistent intense bloody violence—not "comic book action" as the euphemism goes—sexuality (and some sensuality and half-way nudity), constant endangerment to children, torture, disturbing images—one character is burned alive, drug use, and an endless stream of obscenities, some of which emanate from "Hit Girl." We're talking jaw-dropping F-clusters, and anatomy euphemisms that she didn't pick up at the school-yard—she's home-schooled (wait to go, Dad).

As I mentioned, "Hit Girl" is fun—a "girl wonder" with acrobatic abilities and weapons accuracy that would put her in Olympic competition if it weren't for the blood-spatter in the front rows. And Chloe Moretz is a "find." I can just imagine Quentin Tarantino googling for pictures of her on the Internet. Nicholas Cage's "Big Daddy" is a tad weird. In costume, Cage uses a staccato way of speaking that's simply a bad Adam West imitation.

Ponder that phrase for a moment: "a...bad...Adam West imitation."

The other kids are a trifle...Corey...for my taste. A little too cute in their geekitude. And Mark Strong's rackets king-pin is merely his Lord Blackwood from "Sherlock Holmes" with less style.

Matthew Vaughn can be a fine director, "Layer Cake" and "Stardust" being prime examples of him at his best two out of three. He stages the action in the same ramp-edited brutal style as "Watchmen" with the occasional bow to John Woo. And it never drags, and is quite clever in places. It ends with the vow of a sequel, with a purloined line from another super-hero movie. Been there, done that.

But "Kick-Ass" appeals to the worst of the The Fan-Boy Love Association, those "Lost Boys" who never grow up, the "Beavis and Butt-heads" who clap and "huh-huh" at every disfigurement and perforation, and who point to the horrific validation of their comic fantasy story as being "realistic" and "adult." This isn't adult. This is fascist-framed thuggery for entertainment, whose paucity of idealism just turns into another validation for bullying to get yours.

I don't need a lunk-headed super-hero movie to do that. I can watch the news. It's a depressing, horrific spectacle—super-hero kiddie-porn.

Sing along with me now (you know the song):
I-it's
Super-hero-Nihilistic-Crypto-Fascist Bull-shit
Sado-masochism from a comic-writing half-wit
All the subtle nuance of a drive-by shooting mob hit
Super-hero-Nihilistic-Crypto-Fascist Bull-shit

"Kick-Ass" is Cable-watcher (when the kids aren't home).

Yes. Yes, he is.

Knowing

"Knowing" (Alex Proyas, 2009) The director's last film was the "in-name-only" bastardization of Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot," with its rule-breaking chrome figure-models that couldn't take apart a car convincingly. The movie benefited from Proyas' dark imagery and sense of imagination, but in the end it was another sci-fi film that finished with a fist-fight among the art direction. How....uh, "retro." The best thing about it was it gives somebody another chance to do Asimov right.

One walks in to "Knowing," with the same kind of dread—another apocalypse movie, oh joy—only to come away impressed. More than that, you come away thinking thoughts that maybe Proyas knows science fiction better than most film-makers today, because "Knowing" does what really good science fiction does—show us an aspect of "now" that we don't consider and "us" that we finally recognize.

Forget the details, it's all hooey. They're just levels of Hell in Proyas' "Inferno," a means for John Koestler, college professor (Nicolas Cage) to drop the "Doubting Thomas" act, and "find religion." He's a man of science, after all, and doesn't believe in pre-determination...unless, of course, he unlocks, scientifically, the battle plan himself. Then, he believes, Lawd A'mighty.

But, once he reaches his cross-roads (and Proyas points it out with all the subtlety of a pick-up truck) that's when the certainty arrives and the movie reveals itself to be something different: a metaphor for Death.

And that's where the title comes in: we go through out lives sure of our mortality, and aware of the clock ticking in our chest, but we ignore it—we don't face it. It's pencilled into the Day-Planner like that trip to France, but we never firm it up, we just delay it a day at a time. Some day, not today. Manana. There's no "drop-dead" deadline.

Until there is. And then, you have to face it and walk the Kubler-Ross steps, knowing (knowing) time's a-wastin.' And the priorities and everyday details knock over like those endless arrangements of dominoes, revealing what needs to be done right here, right now. You can rant, you can rave, you can find God (Hint: He's always the last place you look), you can put your affairs in order, have your last meal and cigarette and say your good-byes at the door. That's just all delaying the inevitable.

But the first thing is, it's all out of your hands.

This isn't about "you." It's about what "you" leave.

And that's what knowing (and "knowledge" is what the word "science" means) and "Knowing" is all about.

There's a reason Roger Ebert was the one critic in the country who didn't just dismiss this movie. He's been to the cross-roads. He's on the other side, waving and smiling at us.

And laughing.

That's the thing about smarter people. They're so "elitist."

By Request: Adaptation.

"Adaptation." (Spike Jonze, 2002) I love Charlie Kaufman's writing. It reminds me of the old "Twilight Zone" series...but with depth*—but he's more of the Charles Beaumont style of TZ story-telling than Serling's or Richard Matheson's or Earl Hamner Jr.'s. Leaps are made every few minutes beyond the central conceit, and comes to a truly disconcerting kernel of truth at the end, which makes whatever frustrations made during the course of the film worth it. "Being John Malkovich" is a charming deconstruction of personality and wish-fulfillment, and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind " is a jaded cynic's validation of love, and its intrinsic ability to be more than merely a process of instincts, chemistry and firing synapses. What's not to love?

But "Adaptation." is another animal. It's "Charlie Kaufman in crisis," and a bit of a cheat, while also being an ingenious way to solve a problem--that is, writing a screenplay for a book that is, basically, unfilmable. Given the opportunity (and contract) to write a treatment based on Susan Orlean's best-selling book "The Orchid Thief,"** Kaufman readily accepted the job, being attracted to the odd obsessive themes of the book, and found himself unable to translate it into a film-story.

So he wrote about his difficulties translating it into a film-story! The book's subject, John Laroche, the poacher who was seeking the "Ghost Orchid" in the Florida Everglades was a real person who was determined to find the rare flower to clone it and sell it. The screenplay's subject is about Charles Kaufman, screenwriter, who's trying to adapt Susan Orlean's book, "The Orchid Thief," and wrestling with its themes and his own inability to create the screenplay. Impeding his process is his twin, simpler brother Donald (both played by Nicolas Cage), who's decided he's also going to write screenplays--none of which Charlie likes. Susan Orlean figures in it (played by Meryl Streep), as does Laroche—he's the bespectacled fellow pictured to the right, not Chris Cooper's snaggle-toothed, though Oscar-winning, portrayal— but they're fictionalized versions of the real people, adapted to fit a more commercial film. Laroche is using the orchids to make a drug and sell it, hooks Orlean, and she begins a needy affair with him and, fueled by her addiction, becomes as obsessed with the Orchid Thief as much as he's obsessed with the orchids. Is any of that true? No. Are the people real? Yes. The website, Chasing the Frog.com had done a fairly succinct job of separating the fact from fiction here. Yes, these people do exist, as does screen-lecturer Robert McKee,*** but they're fictionalized versions of the real people. Can Kaufman get away with doing that? Yes, he obviously did, but they had to get permission from the real-life counterparts to do so (just as Jonez had to get permission from John Malkovich for Kaufman's "Being John Malkovich" or that would have been a moot project).

Look up the word "Adaptation" in the dictionary. "Any change in the structure or functioning of an organism that makes it better suited to its environment." There couldn't be a better explanation of the screen treatment of "Adaptation." Kaufman couldn't, as they say in the trades, "crack it," so he changed the structure of the scenario...transplanted it, if you will...to make it work as a movie—especially a movie in the current environment of movie-making. And he made the debate between what he wanted to do and what he had to do part of the story in the form of the arguing screenwriting twins, Charles and Donald Kaufman.

Any writer of success must at some point deal with "the Other." The other writer, whose ideas are dismissed and shelved for work accomplished. Steven King did an experiment once to see if his writing would be as successful in other genres as opposed to the "scary fiction" writer, Steven King. So he created a psuedonym, Richard Bachman, much to the consternation of his publisher. Bachman sold well, but King had to deal with the success of his dopplescrivener after several books were published. Ultimately, it inspired the concept of his novel "The Dark Half."

Noms de plume are as old as Bashō (and I'd bet cave paintings had false signatures, as well), and "Adaptation." is credited to both Charlie and Donald Kaufman. Donald Kaufman is the first completely fictional person to be nominated for an Academy Award. Donald also serves as a way for Charles to have conflict while doing something solitary—writing. For all the preciousness of the conceit, it still manages to work in a weirdly clear way, and it provides the means of this exchange, which re-defines the whole picture and sums it up: Donald and Charlie are talking about a time in school when Donald approached a girl he had a crush on, and when his back was turned, she and her gaggle of "Heathers" made fun of him.

 Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.
Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?
Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

You are what you love. Not what loves you. For that little gem of a thought—multi-faceted, flawless and fundamental—I have enormous respect for "Adaptation." for all its problems.

The fictional Charles Kaufman—or is it Donald? (Nicolas Cage)
—on-set with the non-fictional Susan Orlean.

Oh, one more thing: My first impression of "Adaptation." was to recall a punch-line from an ancient Warner Brothers cartoon (actually a couple of them, one of them being "Show Biz Bugs," another "Curtain Razor")--but because of what transpires (and the fear that kids would duplicate it) it's not much in circulation anymore. In it, the indefatigably fame-seeking Daffy Duck is auditioning for stage-time for his act. Each one fails miserably and he's rejected. "Next!" Finally, he shows up in a devil's costume. He eats gunpowder. He drinks gasoline and nitro-glycerine. Then...dramatically, he swallows a lit match. BOOM! There's a huge explosion. "That's incredible!" cries the ecstatic agent. "I can book you immediately!" "Yeah yeah," says the ghost of Daffy, drifting heavenward. "But I can only do it once!"


For Ned, who asked...on July 9th, 2008

* There are others who take that switcheroo-based style of writing, including M. Night Shamyalan, and Alejandro Amenábar.

**You can read the original Laroche article here, at Orlean's web-site.

***McKee suggested Brian Cox (the original Hannibal Lecter) to play him in the movie. Good suggestion, actually.