The Perfect Storm

When this movie first came out I actively avoided it. As I mentioned when writing about Leatherheads, I was no fan of George Clooney until I saw his directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. I actively (perhaps unfairly) disliked him at the time for that matter. (To be fair to me, I saw a good portion of Batman and Robin theatrically, before walking out.) Funky Bunch. I’ve long struggled with this guy as well. I didn’t like him in The Basketball Diaries (for the record, any film with Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died” song is at quite a disadvantage with me) and next caught him when Traveller came out the following year, which I thought he was pretty good in. He is extremely hit and miss, but his hits are pretty mind-boggling. It’s hard for me to root for a guy like Mark Wahlberg and I tend to feel like he has been more lucky than choosy. (Maybe his agent employs the greatest script reader of all time combined with the unbelievable list of talented directors he has worked with?) I can clearly say that I don’t go see a movie just because Wahlberg is in it, whereas I at least consider it if Clooney is involved. This was another clearance bin, movie-for-a-rainy-day HD-DVD purchase that sat shelved for the past year plus. Since the new millennium has been a pretty solid one for George Clooney, I thought I’d watch it with my newfound appreciation of the guy. I was actually looking forward to it a little bit. I was encouraged when I saw John C. Reilly, John Hawkes and Cherry Jones in the credits. This is a pretty reliable cast of character actors.

As Gene Shalit would probably say, “This movie is a Perfect Storm”, except he would finish the sentence with “of terrific adventure!!!” whereas I would finish it with “of shitiness.” The movie starts out like all of these event movies do, setting you in the “nuanced” world of fill-in-the-blank (fishing boats and fisherman, their long-suffering partners, and the port towns they drink in, in this case). The first thirty minutes outlines the various archetypes that the viewers are supposed to hopelessly root for. There is John C. Reilly’s, the life of a fisherman being gone to sea for long periods of time will break up your family, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my kid and wife (who recently divorced me after sleeping around with a guy I hope doesn’t become a last minute replacement on my upcoming fishing job). The inexplicable choice is then made to have him tell his adoring son, just before he leaves for said particularly fateful fishing job that, “someday mommy will find a new daddy for you and we both just need to accept that fate even though neither of us want to”. Hmm. Then there is John Hawkes’, why can’t I just get laid before going back out to sea, but really I want a full-time meaningful relationship, oh wait a minute, I just met her at the bar and our relationship will be perfect and get started in just a minute, I just have to run out for this little fishing job first character. You know, just like life! There is a foreign-born, minority fisherman that barely existed apparently and rarely spoke. He did a lot of fucking, unlike Hawkes’ character, who wished he could. This is truly all you find out about him (and he was a real guy – who died! – geez, what’s a guy gotta do?). Funky Bunch’s character is a greenhorn heading out for his second job and just not cut out for this life of broken relationships because he has the perfect lady and a perfect relationship (despite the drunken physical abuse) who has secretly bought them their first house that she is going to surprise him with right after he gets back from his one last fishing job. That stuff is always happening to me too. Clooney is either the wreckless and controlling or brilliant and admirable captain of the ship, as clearly there must have been some debate and the screenwriter decided, “I’ll just pick minute-by-minute until the end, when I’ll have to make him more of a good guy to help prop up my struggling conclusion”. Get this, he is the later version of all of these guys, who has already officially lost connection with his wife and child and lives for the sea. But wait, there is another lady boat captain who sees who he really is and maybe, just maybe, they have future waiting together, after this next fishing trip. Oh yeah, it turns out the last minute replacement deckhand is that guy who fucked Reilly’s wife… Shoot, I hoped it wouldn’t be. Bad luck I guess, but it sure could make things interesting!

By the halfway point of the film I found myself officially distracted by the ridiculous score. This score goes to eleven! Neither director Wolfgang Peterson nor composer James Horner were lacking experience by this point in their careers. They both should have known better. When it comes to film music, less is usually more. Every moment of this film had a huge clichéd orchestra nipping at its heels, just in case you were too dumb to figure out what you should feel at any time, what with all of the subtlety of the script. Despite all of the other problems I have with the film, this music is far and away the biggest problem in the movie. I know that a lot of viewers don’t have their attention drawn to this type of thing, but now you won’t be able to avoid it. Word curse. I’m not nitpicking here, this is terrible shit.

George Clooney was serviceable if not miscast in the film and the rest of the cast was equal to or less than that. I won’t go into the obvious “based on a true story” problems that this film has. I guess that misses the point of this type of fare. The script and direction were extremely clunky and strangely amateurish (this feels generous) with the Christopher McDonald meteorologist character being the most prominent example. His character exists merely as a piece of the sloppiest exposition, informing the viewer about the convergence of multiple storm fronts into a super-(dare I say, perfect?)storm, and then he is completely dropped from the storyline. There are a million ways to pick apart all of the problems with this movie, but I’ll leave the numerous others for you to discover (or re-discover!). It seems the point of this type of movie is usually to say something about the human condition, love, loss, resignation, redemption, hope, etc… All of those things are done so lamely here, that they truly don’t justify the use of the real fisherman’s names and “likenesses”.

I think a movie like The Perfect Storm really only need rise to one occasion. Can a typical American male watch this on a lazy Sunday with his father/brother/son/”buddy” every now and again and have it fit the occasion? Truthfully, I don’t see it happening. It’ll be reached past on the shelf in favor of the Tombstone’s, Jason Bourne and Jack Ryan movies of the world. File this with Renaissance Man, Planet of the Apes, and Rock Star and not with Boogie Nights and I Heart Huckabees. I’ll forgive you Clooney. It would be unfair to file this with The Facts of Life.

Paranormal Activity

Nothing new to say about this one that hasn’t been said before. I feared that seeing this even a few months after the hype would diminish the experience. It didn’t. This is filled with suspense and is a triumph of no-budget filmmaking. It’s a shame that the much belated credits roll so quickly that the pretty excellent naturalistic actors’ credits flash before they can be read. It’s tricky to move on to a bigger budget affair when you’ve had such success working with such limitations. I hope these filmmakers figure a way past the uphill climb in front of them. Truly impressive stuff.

Anchorman – The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Ah, the future that is HD-DVD. So I picked this up some time ago when that format was officially on its way out and the prices fell to the floor. I had seen this a few years ago and figured I would watch it again on a rainy day. Well I think that 18 degrees (F) is close enough to rain to keep me indoors most of the day. I honestly intended to put this on in the background while I focused on something else, but it turns out that something else had to wait. Five plus years after its theatrical run and this film is still stupid/inspired fun with lots of extras (though not presented in HD) that made me laugh. I assume that the bonus material on this edition is similiar or exactly the same as the Blu-Ray release. I hope and think that ten and more years on these Will Ferrell (and Judd Apatow) comedies will hold up better than the 1980′s comedies of previous SNL alumnus.

Up

One of Disney’s more recent Pixar releases, I had previously caught this in theatres in 3D with my father and my son. Upon second viewing, I still find this to be a near perfect animated feature. This film manages to completely suck me in emotionally by about the ten minute mark with a remarkable sequence outlining the entire duration of a decades long romance in just a few minutes without aid of any dialogue. I can only imagine the filmmakers must have known they had something very special upon completing this sequence. The trailers for this film, while funny and whimsical, leave almost the entire story there to be discovered by the audience. Upon seeing both this film, the pertinent black comedy that is Wall-E, and the incredible Ratatouille from a couple of years ago, I continue to look forward to what Disney/Pixar have coming in the future. The film loses nothing without the 3D effects and shows Pixar firing on all cylinders. I viewed a few of the excellent special features on the 4 disc Blu-Ray release (well really just 2 and then a DVD copy and a “digital copy” installation disc), including the additional shorts (Partly Cloudy and Dug’s Special Mission) as well as the excellent documentary short “Adventure Is Out There”, which details several of the animators/filmmakers research trip to South America to the tepuis mountains in Venezuela that inspired the incredible landscapes within the film itself.

Operation Filmmaker

This is a little documentary worth seeking out.  I caught it this week on the fantastic PBS series Independent Lens and remember hearing about it somewhere (maybe NPR’s This American Life?) several months ago.  The story follows aspiring Iraqi filmmaker Muthana Mohmed as he is plucked from his country during the first year or so of the current Iraq war after being spotted by filmmaker Liev Schreiber on an MTV human interest piece about young Iraqi’s living through the war.  Schreiber decides that he will fly Muthana to Prague to give him the chance to work on his film Everything Is Illuminated.  Illuminated producer Peter Saraf and Schreiber have hired two documentary filmmakers to chronicle Muthana’s time on the set, but don’t seem to have thought the decision through beyond the potential self-congratulatory public relations story and potential DVD special feature aspects of bringing Muthana along.  Muthana quickly finds himself dissatisfied with the tasks he is asked to do and expresses fear of returning to Iraq and being singled out for assassination after working with the American Jews on a film about the German holocaust.  Suddenly Muthana is a problem that no one wants to deal with.  Only documentarian Nina Davenport sticks around to follow Muthanas story as Illuminated completes filming and the crew leave.

The film chronicles Muthana’s sometimes duplicitous nature and the ups and downs of his hustling to pursue his dream as well as the personal ups and downs of his working relationship and friendship with Davenport herself.

Strays

This is Vin Diesel’s writing and directorial debut from 1997 that was recently released to DVD for the first time.  I picked this up at the video store because I remembered hearing Sydney Lumet mention it as the reason he cast Diesel in Find Me Guilty.  This and The Man in the Chair have a lot in common.  While I can’t say that either one of them are films I’m likely to watch again, they both have a lot of heart and it is enjoyable to watch these little personal projects get made out of sheer determination on the part of the filmmakers and all of their cast and crewmembers.

The Man in the Chair

I grabbed this at the local video store because I like Christopher Plummer and thought the idea held some promise.  It’s uneven but has heart.  Plummer is really good through a lot of it.  The editing leaves something to be desired and it feels like a first effort, though IMDB tells it differently.  Still from director Michael Schroeder’s body of work, it seems likely that this is the first “personal” movie that he has attempted to make.  Given that this was almost certainly made for very little money, the casting was well-chosen and you can see everyone gave this little movie their all.

The Matrix

My kids have wanted to watch this for a very long time.  The R rating kept me from watching it with them, but upon viewing it again not long ago, I realized that it really makes no sense to have received that rating.  I have to say that this is another movie that is truly great at being what it is.  I did find the sequels to be disappointing and merely capitalized on one half of what makes this movie so enjoyable; the special effects.  They loved it and I thought it held up well.

Swimming with Sharks

I re-watched this little movie for probably the third or fourth time last night.  I hadn’t seen it for many, many years and really didn’t expect it to age particularly well.  I watched The Usual Suspects about three years ago and it felt completely dated and nearly unwatchable to me.  I was really pleasantly surprised to find this movie still worked.  This is a little movie that couldn’t have cost much at the time.  Despite a shaky start with some fairly rough audio quality and a few dubbing problems here and there, this is a great little movie.  It still works based on the strength of the writing.  This movie is damned funny and contains one of the essential sarcastic and cynical Kevin Spacey performances.  The Big Kahuna is another little gem that seems to be overlooked in Spacey’s canon and covers some of the same ground.

The Shield Around the K

A documentary about the influential K Records.  Shot with extremely limited means, but unlike the Chomsky movie, couldn’t really dream of being a profitable project based upon the subject of the film.  It’s hard for me not to admire something so earnest.