I’ve touched on this briefly in this post and must once again point you fine folks in the direction of Warcraft Sues to give you an idea of what the hell I’m talking about. I’m going to rant a bit, and that means there’ll be some naughty words. Consider the cut below the metaphorical covering of your delicate ears if you are so inclined. If you think you can handle a couple curses directed at people who really deserve it, read on.

Also, this rant is not directed at anybody in particular. I will not be naming names or showing descriptions. This is just me, in general, pissed off at what I feel is bad role-playing.

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Among other things, The Departed hammers home the lesson of not judging a book by its cover. For a long time, I considered Leonardo DiCaprio an actor that got by on looks rather than talent. Mostly this was due to how unimpressed I was by the acting in general in Titanic. That happened in a period in his career that saw him in the midst of what the media called ‘Leo-mania’. There’s a reason his Wikipedia page doesn’t even mention The Beach except in passing. However, Leo hooked up with some guy named Martin and they started making movies together. I mention this because The Departed is the first film in which I found myself liking Leo as an actor and got the impression that he was just as disenchanted with ‘Leo-mania’ as I was. Against the stone of Scorsese, DiCapro sharpened himself and has definitely gotten back his edge.

The Departed, set in Boston, follows Leo as Billy Costigan, a very smart young man enrolled in the Police Academy with ties to organized crime, and Matt Damon as Colin Sullivan, a guy from South Boston groomed from a young age by Irish mobster Frank Costello to become a mole within the State Police. Billy is selected to go deep undercover, does time in jail and ends up joining Costello’s crew. What emerges from this setup is a tense game of cat-and-mouse, or perhaps ‘rat-against-rat’, as each of these men move into and out of each other’s lives in their disparate goals: Sullivan to further his career by any means necessary, and Costigan to bring Costello to justice.

Look no further than The Departed to see a director using everything at his disposal in a judicious and brilliant way to bring a story to life. Martin Scorsese is one of the most successful and influential of the ‘movie brats’, a label he shares with Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg. He shares with his cinematic brethren a unique style and a penchant for focusing on what was once considered a ‘low’ form of cinema – crime drama. While his resume includes interesting but no less powerful departures from this, such as Cape Fear and The Aviator, but when most people think Scorsese, they think Taxi Driver, GoodFellas, Casino and Gangs of New York. The Departed is classic Scorsese, steeped in his style and themes, even if it takes place in Boston instead of his usual New York.

“Feels like something’s missing. Like the Empire State Building. Or a decent pizza joint.”

The city of Boston is almost a character in and of itself in this movie. The neighborhoods, ancestry and even accents come into play now and again. It’s been tempting to do this review in a Bostonian accent, but I’d probably butcher it pretty horribly and I don’t wanna antagonize Red Sox fans. Anyway, Scorsese captures the essence of a town that’s unashamed of its heritage, proud of its people both good and bad, fully invested in being the best it can be and imbuing her people with that same energy, that same impetus. It’s this energy that permeates The Departed and brings out the best in its cast.

I mentioned Leo in the intro because, as I said, he’s very likable in this movie. Many of his actions as one of Frank’s guys are not very nice, but this is a man driven to do what he feels is necessary to get his job done. His dedication is admirable and the stress it places on him is telling. He’s exceedingly, painfully human. So to is Matt Damon, and while his stiffness might be partially due to his acting in general, it could also be attributed to his character’s discomfort around people in true authority and fear of being found out. One of the best decisions Scorsese made, however, was in letting Jack Nicholson off of his leash. As Frank Costello, Jack needs to portray a smart, charismatic and completely unpredictable man used to both the trappings and abuse of power. Scorsese let Nicholson improvise a lot of his scenes, to the point where even Leo didn’t know what to expect of him.

However, if you were to look up “scene-stealing” in the dictionary, don’t be surprised if you see the face of Mark Wahlberg. Never has the phrase “jerk with a heart of gold” so accurately described a character as it does his Staff Sergeant Dignam. Verbally abusive, quick to anger and uninterested in making friends, Dignam is still every bit as dedicated to justice as Costigan and, if you follow his arc all the way through to the end of the film, shows his true colors as a man who forges deep bonds with those he works with in undercover policing. He looks up to Martin Sheen’s Captain Queenan and sees Costigan as something of a protege, a fellow warrior in the trenches. He’s not afraid to pull punches with Billy but he’ll have the man’s back one hundred and ten percent when anybody else even mentions coming close to him. Couple this complexity with authentic Bostonian bluster and charm as well as Wahlberg’s own surprising screen presence and you have what Tropers would call an “Ensemble Darkhorse,” a somewhat minor character who will run away with your total allegiance if you’re not careful.

All of these characters are woven into an excellently paced story. The Departed is a remake on a Hong Kong crime thriller called Internal Affairs, but as I mentioned, this film of Scorsese’s becomes so steeped in Boston that it’s likely a different animal entirely. I haven’t seen Internal Affairs myself, but comparing the two would probably be an interesting exercise, and I’d have to watch this film again, gee darn. If there was any doubt in your mind that this is a superlative film, look at the accolades it’s won. If nothing else, it finally won Scorsese an Academy Award as a director, along with itself winning for Best Picture of 2006, and earning film editor Thelma Schoonmaker and writer William Monahan Oscars as well. Scorsese is quoted as saying that this film won after being nominated so many times, not because he deserved it after a lifetime of cinematic achievement, but because The Departed was “the first movie I’ve done with a plot.”

Yes, that’s Alec Baldwin in there. Did I mention this cast is excellent?

In summary, The Departed is one of those rare films that delivers on every level possible. It may seem like a by-the-numbers crime drama at first to some, but with the richness of its characters, the invasive nature of the setting, the canny directing and taut writing, it quickly shows itself to stand on its own. There’s a weight of realism to this story, no particular performance tears us away from being immersed in it and Scorsese’s directing never breaks pace to keep us a part of it. If I were asked on the street to briefly deliver a recommendation for The Departed, I’d have to paraphrase Movie Bob once again: “You hafta ask?? It’s Scorsese! Getcher ass on Netflix and get this movie!”

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

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Here’s a fun fact you might not have known about me. I grew up in house full of women. It was my mother and my two sisters, and when I was a young boy my grandmother moved in with us as well. Being surrounded by women, it’s probably no surprised I was exposed to more than my share of romance stories. A good romance is one that puts two individuals in a situation where a real and visceral connection is made, an emotional and physical attraction that’s nearly addictive in its intoxication, and then makes thing interestng by putting obstacles between the individuals. On that level, friends, let me say that Brokeback Mountain works. The individuals just happen to be gay shepherds. That’s shepherds, not cowboys.

The year is 1963. Ennis Del Mar, a downtrodden and stoic ranch hand, finds a job herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain along with former rodeo rider Jack Twist. The two bond on the long nights up on the mountain and eventually fall in love. Their summer is cut short due to their boss seeing them together and they go their separate ways, Ennis marrying his long-time fiancée Alma while Jack tries to break back into rodeo, only to meet his future wife, Lureen. The men start their families but never manage to put their feelings for one another behind them, and meet after four years for a fishing trip that becomes the first of many. As much as Jack wants to build a life for them together, Ennis refuses, afraid of the potentially lethal backlash that could occur and claim both their lives. Over the years, it becomes clear that neither man is anywhere near happy in their daily lives, and the only thing that keeps them going is those trips together up to Brokeback.

This is a story that is steeped in atmosphere. From the scenery to the aesthetic of cars and clothes, we not only see the passage of time, but we can feel it. The way in which the years roll by, while glossing over things in places which I’ll address later, helps contribute to the film’s atmospheric density. This is also helped by good writing of very human characters, which leads me to the acting.

Miss Hathaway is an actress I’ve yet to dislike in a role.

All four lead actors in this film are absolutely stellar. Michelle Williams gives real emotion to her portrayal of the wife fully aware of her husband’s true passions, and when we see her come to the full realization of her rejection, Williams shows us the depth of the wound without saying a word. Anne Hathaway, showing just how talented she is when she’s not being a princess, is a woman who gradually moves more distant from both her husband and the person she was when they met and fell in love, a very real change that unfortunately comes over more people than it really should. Jake Gyllenhal inhabits Jake with electrifying passion while the late Heath Ledger’s quiet intensity and silent angst power through the film. When these two are together, the chemistry is palpable and their awkwardness about the situation feels just as real as their feelings.

Enough gushing, as Brokeback Mountain has a few issues and I wouldn’t be able to call myself anything approaching a “critic” with a straight face if I didn’t point them out. As much as these actors give their all, the movie moves at such a pace that we really don’t experience a great deal of depth in them. Oh, they’re developed and they don’t feel as laughably two-dimensional as some others I could name, but there’s a lot more that could have been done with them if this hadn’t been a film. In other words, we’re not in the shallow end of the pool but we’re not swimming in the ocean, either. Brokeback Mountain probably could have surmounted this problem in the form of a novel, or an HBO mini-series. I doubt PBS would have touched the tent scene with a ten-foot pole. Insert pun about poles here, insert pun about inserting things here, we’re walking, we’re walking. (Sorry, Cleo, I love that joke).

While I brought it up facetiously, I would like to point out some of the hypocracy that Brokeback Mountain alludes to in terms of the attitude towards homosexuals. Imagine, if you will, that gender roles were reversed in our world. Homosexuality is the norm, and people only couple with others of the same sex. Now, imagine you fall in love with someone of the opposite sex. The impulses, emotions and conventions that many people in this world take for granted are suddenly taboo, and you are under threat of death every single day because people can’t wrap their minds around your “strangeness”. That’s the sort of world gay men and women live in every hour of every day. Now, some places are better than others, things are improving in terms of accepting these people as, well, people, but for every pride parade or happy common-law couple, there’s someone living a lie because Bubba Ray is so eager to please Jaysus he keeps a hangin’ rope in his shed next to the special belt he uses to beat his wife. And Bubba Ray’s a stockbroker who lives in a suburb and goes to church every single Sunday in a $10,000 suit. But I digress.

Brokeback Mountain is a film about passion. The vistas and scenery captured beautifully in this film are powerful, sensual images that are the perfect backdrop for people falling in love. You couldn’t ask for a more evocative setting. The score perfectly fits the deep melancholy and quiet tragedy of this situation and the lifes of these people as they slowly but inevitably unravel. Director Ang Lee is able to balance the surrealness of some scenes with very real emotional power in others, driving home the fact that these are all human beings involved in this, and none of them are unholy abominations bent on undermining the sanctity of marriage or utterly destroying the individuality or another person. They make decisions, they try to be happy, they screw up and try to deal with the aftermath of their mistakes. There’s a reason this film won three Oscars, in the areas I just mentioned.

At the end of the day, Brokeback Mountain isn’t telling us anything we haven’t heard before. The power and beauty of it, however, is the unashamed way in which it approaches its subject matter and the unflinching way its point is driven home. More than being a rather extreme interpretation of the ‘bromance’ and a taut, well-acted if somewhat glossed-over tale of star-crossed lovers and rule-abiding rebels, Brokeback Mountain is a cautionary tale. It’s one that’s been out there for some time, but that doesn’t stop it from being a damn good one. The lesson to be learned in this, dear reader, is this: Life is too short to be miserable, and if you are in a situation where you are mired in misery every day, where you are being forced to try and be someone you’re not, get out. Get out while you’re still alive.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

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In case you didn’t know, writing is difficult. It’s grueling on an intellectual level, isolating on a social level and ultimately unrewarding in terms of both criticism and payment. Despite the banality of their works, Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown are rarities, in that they’ve managed to make fortunes for themselves (and, in Ms. Meyer’s case, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints) in the world of printed fiction. Even more rare are gifted writers who tell good and deep stories, and then there are films like Adaptation.

I wasn’t sure what this movie was really about, when I put it on my Netflix queue. I’d heard it was quirky and funny, and I guess I was expecting the kind of dry, pretentious comedy that tries to be the polar opposite of populist slapstick. I was looking for something hard to watch because it was face-palmingly gut-wrenchingly bad. I should have known better. Adaptation. is not hard to watch for those reasons, but it can be a bit difficult for me because I relate a great deal to the protagonist, Charlie Kaufman.

Charlie, played by Nicholas Cage at his neurotic best, is a struggling screenwriter fresh from his work on Being John Malkovich. He’s hired to adapt the novel The Orchid Thief, a story that he believes is merely about flowers. This excites him since he’s not interested in cliché over-marketed screenplays (I can’t blame him). However, he begins to have serious problems, losing sleep and struggling with a way to even open his screenplay. He studies both the subject of the novel, John Laroche, and its author, Susan Orlean. The more we learn about these two, the more the story between them is revealed and yet, the more Charlie struggles with his work. His mooching twin brother, Donald, takes it upon himself to write a screenplay of his own, going right for the clichés that Charlie loathes. As the film goes on, we go deeper and deeper into all of these characters, and the film seems to become more and more self-aware, unfolding like a flower before our eyes.

This is a feeling I know very, very well.

I know there are people out there who don’t like Nicholas Cage. They’re not fond of his taste for the scenery he often chews on, and some find his popping up in action or adventure movies like National Treasure or Ghost Rider to be a gross misappropriation of talent. While I don’t think this is necessarily true, Adaptation. is hands-down one of the best Nicholas Cage performances I’ve yet to see. It’s like my favorite performance of Ben Stiller’s, way back in Zero Effect, in that it’s delightfully understated and leaves the scenery mostly free of bite marks. In playing both Charlie and Donald, Nick gives us a pair of unique, nuanced characters that are totally believable as twin brothers. The delivery of their lines, the way they move and interact, even tiny things like the shapes of their disparate smiles speak to a rare talent that often goes overlooked in those aforementioned blockbusters. It was so compelling that the Academy Awards nominated both Charlie and Donald for Best Adapted Screenplay that year, making Donald the first and only fully fictitious person ever nominated for an award.

That same year, Chris Cooper won the Best Supporting Actor for this film, while Meryl Streep was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. They so completely inhabit the celluloid personifications of real-life ‘characters’ John Laroche and Susan Orlean that at times the film almost feels like a documentary, and this is without the use of any major contrivances. I could go on about the cast, like Brian Cox playing story seminar luminary Robert McKee at McKee’s suggestion, but I think this starting to become another one of those reviews where I’ll need to really struggle to find something critical to say about the film.

Meryl Streep is stunning and Chris Cooper has no front teeth.

And here it is: it might be too intellectual. Most of the first two acts of this movie are in the head-space of very smart people, specialists in their field. Charlie Kaufman, for all of his neuroses, is a very gifted screenwriter with a unique point of view. Orlean is a journalist and novelist that should inspire lady writers everywhere, and even Laroche, played by Chris Cooper as something of a backwoods eccentric, is actually well-read and published in his own right in the world of horticulture. The mitigating factor that makes all of this brainpower interesting is that these people are every bit as passionate as they are intellectual. Kaufman is haunted by his previous success and his desire to continue to rail against the common conventions of the movie industry. Orlean is a deeply lonely woman, trying like hell to uncover some sort of meaning to her life. Laroche is driven by a series of personal tragedies that lurk just behind his toothless grin and devil-may-care attitude. Which leads me from Adaptation‘s only obvious flaw to its greatest strength.

To say that Adaptation. is about writing, or flowers, or the fallacy of writer’s block would be true in a sense, but would also be doing the film a disservice. What Adaptation. draws our attention to is people. The crux of this movie involves the depiction of its characters as something much deeper than the standard shallow stock ones that usually wander across movie sets. It seems to be telling us that people are a lot more multi-faceted and capable of more growth than that for which we typically give them credit. The ways in which a given human individual can both rise and fall are so different and endless as to boggle the mind, and yet it’s something taken for granted. Among other things, Adaptation. struggles to shake us free of that complacency, and in a sarcastic deconstructionist world delivers an optimism and appreciation for individuality – amusingly, in a deconstructionist and occasionally sarcastic way.

Happy together.

The last thing I’ll touch on here is that this movie is by no means afraid to take the piss out of itself. A few of the jabs here and there are aimed at the film industry in general, but Adaptation. has a level of meta-awareness that’s incredibly rare. When Charlie asks how his twin brother plans to convey the multiple-personality serial killer, essentially putting two people who are the same person into the same room, Donald shrugs and remarks, “Trick photography.” To put it another way, Nicholas Cage’s character tells Nicholas Cage’s other character that he’s going to achieve an effect to have two characters played by the same actor talk to each other with trick photography. It’s meta humor, and it’s not for everybody, but I got a big charge out of it, to say nothing of the film’s third act – which, without giving anything away, I believe all takes place as a conversation between Charlie and Donald that we never see or hear.

Anyway, those’re my thoughts on Adaptation. and I highly recommend it for the reasons I’ve cited. I’ll say that I’m sure it’s not the kind of film everybody is going to like. In fact, I can see people downright hating it. But as someone aspiring to make their living writing, someone who’s come to appreciate good meta humor and the kind of person who enjoys deep character explorations and interesting dialog just as much as car chases or gunfights, this film is an absolute standout. I can’t say the same for this review, however. I’ve once again gushed about a film that, while some people might not have seen, others will probably have seen the subject line of the review and rolled their eyes, as if to say, “Oh, here we go again, he’s going to love it and not tear it a new asshole.”

Tell you what, conjectural nay-sayer: You start paying me to review shitty movies, and I’ll be more than happy to tell you how shitty they are. Sound like a fair deal? Do you think MovieBob really wanted to sit through New Moon? How much do you think Yahtzee enjoys reviewing JRPGs? They’re professionals. I’m just an amateur center-of-attention pseudo-intellectual wanna-be pissing away hours of my life because this is something I’ve discovered people tend to think I’m halfway decent at doing. It’s the same reason I code websites for my dayjob. But hey, if someone out there on the Internet with hiring power actually stumbles across these reviews and thinks I’ll marginally increase their Google page rank, maybe I can get underpaid for doing this job, too.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

This week’s IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! brought to you by a generous donation by Benjamin Axel Jakobsson. Thank you for your support!

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When Hubilub asked me to review Paul Haggis’ Crash from 2005, he did so in the following charming fashion:

It won three Oscars and IT’S FUCKING HORRIBLE!. I hate it so much! It’s so stupid and preachy and…. GOD!

I’d seen the film years ago, and while I didn’t quite remember if it was all that great or not, I did remember feeling uncomfortable watching it, at times. If the film does have a message to shout from its pulpit, it goes something like this: PEOPLE ARE SELFISH PRICKS. It’s a message couched in one racially-charged conversation after another occasionally broken up with music that felt like it came from the secret love child of Enya and Coldplay. It’s got “Oscar bait” written all over it.

I can’t quite bring myself to call it “bad”, though.

Haggis: “Look, Academy! You can tell it’s art by the way it’s shot!”

It’s funny, actually, that I’m watching this right after having watched Pulp Fiction again. Both films involve different plots following an ensemble cast of individuals that weave into and out of each other. In the case of Crash we follow two married couples, two families and two sets of partners who live and work in Los Angeles and deal with issues of bigotry, racism and prejudice. Everybody screws up, everybody lets emotions get the better of them, and most of them learn something. It’s a little snapshot of the human experience, and the film tries very hard to err on the side of honesty about the human condition.

Let’s get the praise out of the way: the film is neither written nor acted badly. From bigger names like Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock to surprises like Ludacris, Michael Peña, Shaun Toub and Bahar Soomekh, the delivery of lines and flow of conversations feels natural more often than not. It does feel a bit more scripted than Pulp Fiction‘s dialog, but it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination. In terms of cinematography, Crash is well-shot, presenting the situations and conversations in an unflinching manner. While this sort of straightforward on-location film-making does keep the audience focused on the meaning of a scene rather than distracting them with superfluous gimmickry, it also makes the heavy-handed nature of the film’s message all the more obvious.

Haggis: “IT’S ART I TELL YOOOOOOOU!”

And when I say ‘heavy-handed’, folks, I mean Crash drops meaning into our laps with all of the subtlety of an anvil dropped from the bomb bay of a B-52. It’s like Paul Haggis took the Avenue Q song “Everybody’s A Little Bit Racist” and re-scored it into a ninety minute operetta. If we were to compare Crash to, say, Schindler’s List, the most apparent difference is that Crash is an entirely fictional work whose characters and conversations merely serve as a vehicle for delivering this rather pedantic message, while Schindler’s List actually downplays the very real horror and tragedy of historical events yet still retains the power of its message without having to be blatant about it. Going in the other direction, take another look at Die Hard with a Vengeance some time. Seriously, the dynamic between John McClaine and Zeus Carver feels a lot more natural and realistic in terms of two men of differing races overcoming their prejudices than a lot of the stuff that happens in Crash. (Also, Vengeance has more gunfights and explosions. And Jeremy Irons.)

Back to Crash. If the film is to be believed, it’s not just that racism is bad and people are selfish pricks. Let’s see, there’s also the fact that just about everybody in LA is thoroughly racist, buying guns in the US is pretty easy for just about anybody even if the salesman is a fat bigoted pervert, and being a racist cop who abuses the position is okay as long as they do their job when its called for. And that’s just some of the unfortunate implications. As much as the script might not be terrible, the plot relies so much on convenience and contrivance that it seems to be talking about predestination and fate as much as it is racism. The pretentiousness of the message coupled with this reliance on the blatantly artificial construction of situations hurls the moviegoer out of the experience with all of the comfort and guidance of someone sitting in the sling of a trebuchet and kicking the release lever thinking that it’s an overly elaborate swing set.

Don can’t get into that War Machine armor fast enough, if you ask me.

I don’t want to give the impression that Crash is a bad movie. There are things in it that go just a bit too far and take away from the overall experience. The good acting is countered by contrived plot points. The decent conversations are balanced with the message that has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The end result is something that is, in my opinion, worth watching once or twice but not really deserving of much praise or attention beyond that, and certainly not Best Picture material.

As a personal aside as I wrap this up, I’ll admit I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain or Munich, two of the other films up for the coveted golden statue back in 2006. I have, however, seen Good Night and Good Luck. That film is well-written, finely acted, intimately shot and uses a documentary style and a basis on real events to add weight to its message. It doesn’t hit you over the head with what it’s trying to say, either. It’s touching, funny and powerful. That film is Best Picture material. Crash tends to get a bit messy here and there. I’ve see worse messes, to be sure. So I guess Crash does get a recommendation, if you can get past the preachiness and the contrivances and the hammy moments and the laughably mournful score and…

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.