Killing Them Softly

So let’s get this out the way from the off: in my opinion, Killing Them Softly (dir. Andrew Dominik) is the greatest gangster movie since Goodfellas came out way back in 1990. It's exciting, clever, funny, and very, very cool. Yes, again, I’m biased. I love Andrew Dominik’s previous work – however little of it there may be. Both completely different, yet both fully-formed and masterpieces in their own rights, Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford are among the best films of the last twenty years.

And so is Killing Them Softly. However, whilst the film has been by no means receiving bad reviews, it hasn’t been garnering the sort of praise that one (I) might have thought. Why? Well, there seem to be two main criticisms levelled against it.

1. We’ve seen this all before. Have we? Well, let’s think about this. Some reviews have suggested that Dominik is being perhaps a little too faithful to his sources in putting Killing Them Softly together. He certainly doesn’t help himself by having a few alumni from The Sopranos knocking around.

I expected this from Gandolfini but not you, Johnny... (don’t tell Gandolfini I said that). So here’s the deal: Dominik has shot the film brilliantly, edited it stylishly, and got a few actors who have been in gangster-related things before. Does that make it derivative? No. No, it doesn’t. This isn’t a Guy Ritchie film. This isn’t like a Guy Ritchie film; it is much, much more than that. Indeed, the fact that we might recognise a face or two might even serve a purpose: Dominik’s film is an endgame. The first time we see Gandolfini, he’s trudging his way wearily, blearily, and drunkenly through an airport. We’ve all seen The Sopranos. We’ve all seen Tony Soprano get what he wants. But this isn’t that show. Gandolfini, here, is a lonely drunk, constantly remembering better times and better women. Dominik’s film is The End for those gangsters. This is what happens when you live that life for too long. You get miserable, you get poor, you get ‘got’. There aren’t many films which (whilst still remaining exuberant, hilarious, and exciting) show us quite this far down the slope.

2. It has been suggested that Killing Them Softly is a little too ‘on the nose’, that it is a little less than subtle in its political commentary and its overall examination of the economic crisis.

Any criticism of the film for ‘bigness’ seems to me to be somewhat missing the point. It’s meant to be ‘big’, it’s meant to be brash. It’s part of the film’s confidence that it paints itself in such bright colours. There aren’t enough films with the arrogance to consider themselves so important. Yes, Dominik uses The Velvet Underground’s ‘Heroin’ in a scene in which two characters take heroin. No, that’s not a problem. It’s indicative of the film's construction of itself as an all-encompassing monster. The film may well be playing out the international financial crisis in the microcosm of organised crime, but it is still about the international financial crisis. If it was put together in any ‘smaller’ a way then it would lose its significance. To me, there just aren’t enough filmmakers with the swagger to call a film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, or use ‘The Man Comes Around’ when introducing its main character. To me, we need a few more filmmakers like Andrew Dominik in this world.

The Return of the Blog

Hi y’all, sorry for not being around for the past couple of months. I’ve just finished university and have been sorting m’self out for the real world. I’m not quite there yet but fingers crossed I’ll be able to call myself a 100% person soon enough.

But enough about me, this is a film blog, a FILM blog, A film blog. So let’s talk film: as anyone who’s worth their cinematic salt can tell you (and if you’re not, you’re probably reading the wrong blog), the most exciting thing that’s going on in film at the moment is that Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is going to be just as good as There Will be Blood. For those of us who consider that film our generation’s Citizen Kane, this is very good news indeed. Let’s hope PTA doesn’t lose it and start doing voiceovers for children’s cartoons anytime soon.

Or maybe that’d be interesting. Who knows?

But in my time away another thing has caught my eye – something which has been bothering me for a little while. Ladies and gentlemen, Exhibit A:

No, I don’t want to talk about the resurgence of 80s action movie “stars” – there’ve probably been enough jokes made about how Sly Stallone looks old. He’s old. He’s an old man. Yes. It’s true.

No, what interests me more – and indeed, worries me more – than the sight of a bunch of old, right-wing gents ‘doin it one more time’, is the current trend of the West’s assimilation of Asian cinema. The director of The Last Stand, Kim Ji-Woon, is the director of two of the most exciting and adventurous films made in the last 20 years – A Tale of Two Sisters and I Saw the Devil. The latter film might initially lead one to suspect that Kim would be perfect for Schwarzenegger’s big screen return – it features its own share of bone crunching action and a body count to match The Terminator. But it is, ultimately, an anti-violence film. It’s cleverness lies in the fact that the audience is drawn into believing that the revenge drama is what is driving the film forward. It is only in the film’s last seconds that it is revealed that all the violence and thrills and spills (admittedly thrilling as they are) have been the protagonist’s way of deflecting his own grief; a way of him not actually coming to terms with his loss. I Saw the Devil, then, is ultimately meta-cinema of the best kind; it presumes the audience’s knowledge of a genre and applies generic convention to something approaching real life – if you really did lose a loved one, would the first thing you’d actually think to do be to engage a convoluted, yet precise and brutal course of revenge? Of course it is unfair to judge The Last Stand before I have seen it, but something tells me Kim’s westernisation may have lost him some of that subtlety.

A number of Kim’s contemporaries have also made the move West and are soon to come out with their own English-language debuts. Whilst neither Bong Joon-Ho or Park Chan-Wook look to be following Kim quite so far into Western schlock, I only hope that they maintain some semblance of their roots. Eurgh. This is a moot post. I’ll go and see a movie and review it. Have you seen This Must be the Place yet?

How Not to Save a Sitcom

This is a film blog so I won’t make this too much of a regular thing; but given the cinematic tendencies of Community it seems fitting that if I’m going to talk about one TV show it should be this one. Dan Harmon’s sitcom IS the funniest, sharpest, smartest programme going. What seems bizarre then is that the folks over at NBC should think it a good move to axe the show’s creator and show-runner just at the time when it is reaching its creative peak. By now the Twitterverse has surged and receded over the news of Harmon’s removal so this post is a little bit redundant information-wise – but I’ve been doing exams and I want to vent some bilious spleen.

In what world is it a good idea to get rid of the man responsible for this:

and this:

for the people who did this:

Admittedly, David Guarascio and Moses Port also currently oversee Happy Endings - which is a pretty dang good sitcom. But while Happy Endings may be pretty dang good, it’s also pretty dang standard. It’s just not exciting in the way Community is. Also admittedly, Dan Harmon is apparently a pretty difficult man to work with. But I imagine that a man would have to fight pretty hard to keep things as truly groundbreaking as Community so frequently is. You’ve got to wonder what would’ve happened to the show if it called HBO or AMC its home. The latter especially currently demonstrating what can be achieved when a network gives full blessing to the new breed of television-auteurs (oh hai Vince Gilligan and Matthew Weiner).

Unfortunately, as Slate recently pointed out, Community generally pulls in just under a tenth of the audience that the ultimate popularity-model Seinfeld drew at its peak. But in ridding the show of its more extreme influences (Joe and Anthony Russo of Harmon's alma mater Arrested Development have also mysteriously declined to return for the forthcoming season), rather than simply cancelling it at its best, NBC seem to have decided to bastardize Dan Harmon’s baby, attempting to gentrify it into something that it was never meant to be – a standard sitcom.

Doing Exams: Back in a Week and a Bit

In the meantime: go and see This Must be the Place.

This Must be the Place

The reception for Paolo Sorrentino’s new movie, This Must be the Place, has for the most part been pretty lukewarm. Many critics have deemed it too bizarre, too offbeat, too quirksome. Certainly, the way the film is trickling into “select” cinemas suggests that its distributors also consider it unworthy for mass consumption. Whilst I completely understand the reasons that many are holding this film at arm’s length, I also completely disagree.

I should be honest, I’m a huge fan of Sorrentino’s work. Il Divo has, since its release in 2008, had a firm mooring in my generally fluctuating “Top Five”. Now, however, I’d go so far as to say that it may not even be my favourite Sorrentino film. This Must be the Place is that good.

Like all of Sorrentino’s films, it’s a beautiful, perfectly-crafted, astonishingly-shot visual and aural treat. Penn plays retired-goth-rockstar, Cheyenne, who lives a strange, almost-purgatorial life in Dublin with his wife, Jane (Frances McDormand – delivering a lovely, warm, and warming performance). Receiving a call from New York, Cheyenne learns that his estranged father is dying ‘of old age’. I won’t go into greater specifics because this really is a film that is so much more than a description of its parts. Suffice to say, Cheyenne goes on a road-trip to find the Nazi guard who tormented his father during the Holocaust, allowing Sorrentino to perform a full-on, Wenders-esque roadtrip movie to match the best.

Penn puts in a performance that blows full-force into the face of all who think that he takes himself a little too... seriously. Some (Chris Tookey) have considered Penn’s turn a train-wreck, a disastrously misjudged, incomprehensible mess. Again, I understand but I disagree. In my opinion, it’s a classic.

At home in Dublin, Cheyenne frequently visits a mother grieving her absentee son. So too, he feels guilty over the suicides of two teenagers – apparently caused by music he made solely for the money. Before beginning his quest, Cheyenne meets with Mordecai Midler, a ‘legend’, a professional Nazi-hunter. Midler asks Cheyenne, ‘do you know about the Holocaust?’ Cheyenne replies, ‘in a general sort of way’. Midler asks Cheyenne, ‘did you know your father?’ Cheyenne replies, ‘in a general sort of way’.

Some have considered the blending of Penn’s affected peculiarity with the Holocaust a step too far. And again, I disagree. I must, however, qualify: I do not really believe that This Must be the Place is about the Holocaust. It is about grief – and the balancing of it. Sorrentino’s genius is in juxtaposing the singular, specific losses of those in Dublin and those whom Cheyenne meets on the road, with the far larger yet less “personal” loss of life that most people today associate with the Holocaust. Cheyenne only knows the Holocaust in broad terms. So too, the professional, Midler, makes vengeful yet strangely unfocussed rants over his desire to reclaim the lost gold-teeth of deceased Jews. Sorrentino is not belittling those who suffered, he is questioning whether one may ever truly comprehend a tragedy of that magnitude, and whether one grief may be considered to be worth more than another.

It is obvious that every sane person rightly despises and laments the Holocaust, but can those who have never experienced it really claim grief and the desire for revenge? Cheyenne admits that his desire to find his father’s tormentor is born out of boredom, whilst Midler’s general rage over the crime done to ‘us’ contrasts uncomfortably with the smaller, quiet sorrow felt by a grieving mother in Dublin. What are we to make of a son, missing for no explicit reason, when compared to the loss of so many? These questions are raised but, like any great artist, Sorrentino recognizes that they can only be left unanswered.

I don’t want to spoil anything so I won’t reveal further complications to these questions but, late in the film, Cheyenne says: ‘something’s not right here. I don’t know what it is, but something’s just not right’. I won’t go deeper than simply to say that this is a phrase used by Cheyenne on a number of occasions, all of what we would consider “varying” importance. The significance of this final usage – with regards to the film’s questions – cannot be overestimated.

I’m making it sound like This Must be the Place is not much fun. It is. It’s maybe the funniest film I’ve seen this year. It just also happens to be very moving, very important, and very, very worth your time. It is a masterpiece.

A*V*E*N*G*E*R*S

Or so I was thinking when I went in (yes I had forgotten that Hawkeye was in it).

Actually, Joss Whedon has done the impossible. He's taken Marvel's seemingly incompatible building blocks - Lego and Playmobile if I may and if you will - and put them together to make an exhilarating, hysterical, and truly brilliant blockbuster. He's also made what were predicted to be the weaker characters - Hulk, Black Widow and, yes, even Hawkeye - and turned them into just about the best characters involved. But you know all that because you and everyone you know and everyone you don't has already seen it. So how about THAT extended shot in the final battle? Murrr!!

Along with Cabin in the Woods, 2012's looking pretty peachy for The Talented Mr. Buffy. Now how about Serenity 2?

When Sundance Rode In

So, today the fantastic Mr. Robert Redford has taken our Prime Minister to task for his ‘narrow-minded’ approach to British Film. While of course we all know this will immediately change entirely the way Cameron looks at films, the universe and everything–

 –it’s perhaps also worth considering the state of affairs that has led to the Sundance Kid saddling into town to offer his two cents. When Cameron first ordered the British Film Industry to start making more ‘commercially viable’, ‘mainstream’ films, just what was he talking about? This is the industry that has just finished making the Harry Potter series – a series which has grossed nearly $8 billion dollars worldwide. Unfortunately, that’s about it for global literary sensations hailing from our little island for the time being. New Zealand nicked Lord of the Rings; maybe we could do a remake in the Lake District? Or if that’s too expensive, maybe we could do some kind of animated version?

Maybe we could reboot Potter, locking Daniel Radcliffe into some nightmarish cycle of playing a boy wizard for the rest of his life. ‘But what do we do when he dies, Matt? What do we do then?’ Well, Mr. Cameron, obviously we re-animate the Radcliffe-man-corpse and force him to continue.

You're not... unpatriotic... are you, Mr. Potter? You do love your country don't you?

There are two obvious issues with Cameron's position. First: who the hell can define what the ‘mainstream’ actually is? Slumdog Millionaire was nearly a straight-to-DVD burnout. No one could have predicted the success it would ultimately have – costing £15 million to produce, but achieving £380 million at the box office, compared to say Quantum of Solace which made £500 million but also cost £200 million to make. Does its success mean that we can retrospectively call it ‘mainstream’? With not a word said about quality, how can a film with instances of child-torture be anyone's idea of 'mainstream'?

Second: why does Cameron suddenly appear to give such a shit about the success of British film? This is the man behind the worst cuts since the 1950s – what possible reason do we think he could have for wanting to be Mr. Compassionate, acting to create jobs in a visible area of the industry, but losing them in less obvious areas?

Good job we hid Shane Meadows' body in the basement.

Obviously it’s necessary for an industry to be in profit and obviously Cameron, as Prime Minister, wants as much profit from as many industries as possible. But it’s ultimately pointless to think Britain can compete with the huge number of franchises that the States has. British film, Sirs Bond and Potter aside, is not a “big” cinematic country – “big” in the sense of big names, big budgets, and big returns. We thrive on medium-to-small sized films; these are the films we are known for. The hit-rate might be smaller but it's all we've got. The worry for British Film, then, is that Cameron might get rid of the little guys before realising that there aren’t enough big guys to fall back on.