CTJ: Encounters at the End of the World ****1/2

The fact that Werner Herzog can shoot a continent-sized block of ice for two hours and actually make it seem utterly compelling is proof of his genius. Of course, I have always loved Antarctica, so I admittedly came to this film with a bias. But bias aside, it is a wonderful film, something like watching a sci-fi documentary from another planet.

The film isn't just about the landscape though, or the watery world beneath it, although it is about those things too. It is also about the people who populate this frozen continent, whose dreams take flight in the blustery whiteouts of semi-permanent Antarctic daylight. They are an unusual cast of characters, not unlike Herzog himself, and he is clearly drawn to them as a person is drawn to his own reflection in a mirror.

At the end of the film I found myself wanting to see more of the strange Antarctic landscape, and I wanted to dive below the surface again and survey the amorphous creatures who called this underwater netherworld their home. I was spellbound by what I saw, and I didn't want to leave.

The film only falters where Antarctica falters. In the midst of this strange world, even Herzog is disappointed to find that the one civilized place he visits is something like a mining town, mundane in every way, including all of the trappings of civilization. There is an ATM. There is a bowling alley. Even at the end of the world we cannot escape our need to drag clunky claptrap along with us. We are a people who establish ourselves wherever we go, and in the most awkward of ways.

While Herzog has made films that I can hardly sit through, this is not one of those. This is every bit as good as "Grizzly Man" or "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" as far as his documentaries go. Dress up in neoprene and dive into Herzog's beautiful Antarctic wasteland. It is a wonderful, otherworldly experience.

DJG / Synecdoche, NY

Synecdoche, NY * * * *
Directed by: Charlie Kaufman / 2008

Groundbreaking and celebrated, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich”, “Adaptation”, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) has crafted some of the most uniquely entertaining and creatively challenging movies to roar out of the past decade. One thing is for certain, I would not enjoy being Charlie’s brain as he must hit it hard like a game of racket ball. However, tackling at the art of directing his brain may have hurt him with his latest, “Synecdoche, NY”, a very ambitiously intricate and involved epic affair that I need to see again to make complete sense of. Kaufman very well may have created his masterwork, if I could just figure out what the heck he was exactly saying to me. It wasn’t a completely complicated cluster like Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” train wreck. Nor was it art house at random, which I think Kaufman would be the first to make fun of something that was random and confusing and "arty" for the sake of. It was self-indulgent and pretentious and ridiculous and bizarre, like a Charlie Kaufman fan would now come to expect as the norm. But, I couldn’t agree more with acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert when he states, “…it’s a film that should never be seen unless you've already seen it at least once.” Really, that’s all there needs to be said for a review and/or poster for “Synecdoche, NY”, or any Kaufman movie for that matter.

“Synecdoche, NY” gives us the powerhouse reliable acting of Philip Seymour Hoffman as fledging, middle-aged playwright Caden Cotard who wants to leave behind something of importance before he dies except he keeps stumbling over the day-to-day of life’s road blocks. Caden’s enjoyments in life seem to range from sleeping in; to mumbling things with his wife; to reading the obituaries of notable talents in the local paper; to spending small bits of quality time with his daughter Olive and being over-involved in his current take on the classic play “Death of a Salesman”. He is also constantly reminded of death by either those around him or his own ailing health that he begins to see everywhere in television cartoons and commercials to people in his life. Caden also has a better relationship with every woman in his life but his wife. His wife is Adele (Catherine Keener), an up and coming painter of portraits so tiny that their name plates are larger and one needs a magnifying glass to even see and study them (a nice parallel to Caden’s own microscopic detailing of everything in his life and under the sun). Adele decides to attend her current gallery show in Berlin, thus deciding, as she feels the marriage is dwindling, to move extensively and uproot daughter Olive from Caden’s life. Soon after being devastated by life, Caden receives a special artistic grant of a large sum of money due to high praise for his current play. He’s encouraged to do something great with it, and embarks on his life project. It ends up advancing time rather quickly (don't flinch while watching as the passing of time goes extra fast in this film), all the while not realizing that years have gone by as he works to get not only his life back but also his life’s work. Soon the lines between life and work merge and Caden’s own life becomes nothing more than a product of his own play and his play becomes nothing but a product of his life…and so forth. It’s really something, trust me…but extremely hard to pen-down, even while watching it. It's a strange mess and I'm not even beginning to nail the explanation of it nor all the other little things and characters. It's ultimately a story about life. See it for yourself. See yourself for it.

I feel that previous movies scripted by Kaufman, directed either by equaled creative visionaries Spike Jonze (who was actually the first choice to direct “Synecdoche, NY”) or Michel Gondry, aid to multiple-multiple viewings due to their balancing act of supreme freshness, studies on life and human relationship, enjoyment, creativity, commentary, drama and comedy and with the added bonus of overall watch-ability. It’s not that it didn’t come housed with these stats, but I definitely don’t just want, but rather NEED to spend a second time with “Synecdoche, NY” and only a second time to make more sense of it. And for those who seemed to leave frustrated, one-third or even over three-fourths (!) through the showing that I was at, shame on you because you’ve really cheated yourselves and you’ve cheated Charlie Kaufman and a Charlie Kaufman movie.

Just like Charlie must do every day of his life, I’ve been racking my own brain for a couple of days now…and I find this to be a pretty good thing. I know that I saw something masterful, and there are a few things that are making more and more sense 36 hours later, but I feel that a second look would reveal more under the many layers of Charlie’s brain with this one and I look forward to this. After the wide-release opening and awards season dies down, please take it easy on yourself for just a little bit, Mr. Kaufman. However, I hope you get back to work ASAP because I will gladly see anything that you beat around in your own racket court whether it’s just writing or passing back between the daunting task of writing and directing.

-djg

CTJ: Mister Lonely *****

I turned off "Gummo" after 10 minutes, and I barely made it through "Julien Donkey-Boy," so how is it possible that I absolutely loved "Mister Lonely," Harmony Korine's third film? It's a good question, and one I will probably ponder the answer to for some time.

Primarily I have to attribute my love of this film to two things: 1) My growing appreciation for Werner Herzog's body of work (Surely it is no coincidence that he is in "Mister Lonely"), and 2) An essay I read in film school about the "Cinema of Attractions."

Like Herzog's films, this one takes the long route to get from point A to point B, and when I say this I do not mean that it is slow. They just follow a certain idiosyncratic logic that one might expect to find in a Herzog film. The narratives it contains are linear, but they are filtered through a cinematic kaleidoscope of color and sound and beautifully strange sights that could easily stand alone as short-films.

And this is where the Cinema of Attractions comes in. This film really is something like going to the circus and seeing one attraction after another, and each exhibit holds the attention of the audience precisely because it is so strange. Above all, this aspect of the film recalled nothing so much as the introductory sequences of Federico Fellini's "Satyricon." While these vignettes could exist independent of one another, they work together to form two separate narratives that never really overlap. The results somehow feel right, but it's hard to say why. There is some genius in that, I think.

The main narrative focuses on a Michael Jackson impersonator and his experiences as he discovers other impersonators who channel Marilyn Monroe, Abe "F------" Lincoln, Charlie Chaplin, and James Dean, among others. This cast of characters lives together in circus of strangeness, and the results are magnetic. The other narrative focuses on a priest (Herzog) and a group of nuns who experience a miracle when one of them falls out of a plane and lands on the ground unharmed.

Overall, the film struck me much as a very abstract painting might: I didn't know what I was looking at, but I knew I liked it. Most films are not brave enough to attempt this, and most films that attempt this manage to lose cohesion along the way or never find a way to make the audience invest in what they are watching. "Mister Lonely" works where other films of its kind do not (although it is really difficult to say exactly what kind of film this is). I cannot explain how difficult it is for a film like this to hold a person's attention for an hour, let alone almost two. But "Mister Lonely" was wildly successful in this for me, and for that reason I shall have to own it.

DJG / Wanted

Wanted * * * ½
Directed by: Timu Bekmambetov / 2008

I’ve wanted to see “Wanted” ever since I saw its Super Bowl commercial spots from earlier this year. On top of the sheer awesomeness in film perspective that the clips gave me, I also thought about how awesome the marketing was to secure Super Bowl advertising time for the millions of violence loving football guys watching (Oh, and most guys love Angelina Jolie too). I know that the day after The Super Bowl, I was one of many young men You Tubing the trailer, passing it to their buddies and posting fan-boy blogs about it. Unfortunately, I somehow missed the film when it finally came to theaters six months later. With the exception of maybe an advanced screening or opening night, I doubt that the film packed out theatres, but I would have loved to see this one with a wound-up crowd fist pumping and laughing hysterically. OK…Imagine a two thousand-year-old elite group of assassins generically called “The Fraternity” given secret killing assignments based on microscopic binary code-like letters deciphered by boss man Morgan Freeman on a tapestry created by a giant ancient loom. Mix this original screenplay writing genius with the typical cliché plot route feature of a “Rouge” assassin hunting all the other assassins down and then throw in a totally hot assassin babe mentoring a young new guy discovering that he too possesses his recently departed father’s assassin skills and destiny to kill instead of working in an office cubicle and in a matter of a days he beefs up and becomes the greatest assassin to ever live and you’ve got a movie called “Wanted”. What the heck am I doing working in my own office cubicle job when I could be writing Hollywood action fantasy flick genius like this? Oh and don’t forget a garbage truck full of peanut buttered rats and a key board that gets smacked against some jerk’s face with letters flying to the camera spelling out “F#*K YOU”. Yep…do I need to say more? Oh, and of course there is a message about how you’ve got to take hold of your life and make what you want of it. Heck yeah! I’m not making this stuff up. If films could produce babies, “Wanted” would be the offspring of a three-way between “Shoot ‘em Up”, “The Matrix” and “Fight Club”. It’s not as great of a film as those (the last two being groundbreaking masterpieces), but every bit ridiculous and over-the-top-awesome in scope and merge of action and technology. If my enthusiasm in writing this review adds up to cinema treasure for you as easily as a Super Bowl commercial teaser did for me, then put “Wanted” on your list. I think I’ll now stop writing reviews and get to writing action movies.

-djg

DJG's CINEMADHESIVE / The Wrestler

The Wrestler * * * * *
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky / 2008

You know the advertisements that quote and claim their motion picture as “Special”, a “Triumph”, a “Mini Masterpiece” or even a “Resurrection in Acting Talent”? Well, “The Wrestler” stands-up to these statements and some. It’s on the top rope of the year’s best films for me and demands to be seen, multiple times. It demands to be cherished and followed like the living, breathing champions of the sport that it showcases. Director Darren Aronofsky has created a darling little gem of motion picture and it’s his best and makes me even more excited to see what his next move will be. And I can’t recommend his latest move enough as he has matured from an already mature filmmaking state. For the past two weeks I can’t stop thinking about Randy "Ram" Robinson’s bitter-sweet climb to the top rope.

This time last year I was boiling over with anxiety and anticipation to see P.T. Anderson’s genius on the big screen with “There Will Be Blood”. It seemed that everybody in the world had seen it six months prior to it finally opening in Kansas City, MO. After all the worry and all the emails by my fellow crazed P.T. fan Chad and I to Paramount and area theater chains, we finally got to plop down in plush cushions in the dark on a cold day just 11 months ago to finally witness the hype. After hearing about “The Wrestler” hitting the 2008 crop earlier this year, and picking up just as many arresting accolades and awards and feedback as “There Will Be Blood”, I felt that I had another one of my own private movie wrestles in waiting. The anticipation swelled even more when I heard that not only was visionary director Darren Aronofsky (“Pi”, “Requiem For A Dream”, “The Fountain”) behind the camera, but it was also about pro wrestling and then capped with a brand new track from Bruce Springsteen!

Now, I’m thankful to even have the resources and technology and freedom to even SEE film and it’s even more silly to curse and complain the Hollywood stone ponies and marketing gurus and all of those things beyond my reach, but I honestly just can’t wait sometimes on certain films. And “The Wrestler” is one of those films for me. But, the film giants must have been looking out for me two weeks ago, allowing me to cash in on last year’s P.T. Anxiety. I was in Dallas, TX for an extended Thanksgiving holiday and my friend Christian exclaimed one morning that if we wanted to get in line at 5pm or so that night, there would be a free advanced screening of the new film by Darren Aronofsky starting at 8pm…and with director in attendance for a Q & A! You can’t believe how fast my eyebrows perked up-and-out of my weary and stressed, travel-beaten brow. I was already there…and sitting on a firm spot in line with book in hands and BossPod in ears.

Without sounding silly to most people, it’s hard to say that “The Wrestler” saved me from the dumps on the stressful start of my Texas trip, but it honestly did. And I was about to tell Darren Aronofsky that right before a pack of much more enhanced than I geeks camera flashed their way past and usurped my chance at the moment’s hard simplicity of “THANK YOU” . Since the very second the hand-held cameras followed Mickey Rourke’s molded-to-perfection Randy "Ram" Robinson out of the local town hall locker room and out the opened doors and arms of his world, I’ve had the bitter-sweet taste of life’s goose bumps inside and out. In fact, I’ve carried them many times before but, this is a different feeling that sunk into me and it has affected me pretty deep. There is so much life in this picture and in Rourke’s performance that I felt I was watching a real story on screen and I still see that life living on, beyond the screen. It will be unfortunate if he doesn’t come home with a statue come Oscar night or if Aronofsky doesn’t at least get a nomination, it’s that breathtaking. All power-house acting aside, “The Wrestler” tells a real and relatable story, one that probably many former and current wrestlers as well as many every day people can tell.

Ram once recognized a gift, and that gift was wrestling superstardom. He was the go-to guy for selling out noisy arenas bursting at the seams with fist-clinched fans waiting and responding with glee to his signature moves and championship matches. Twenty years later finds him struggling and scraping life’s pot to make ends meet working week days on a loading dock and reliving his glory days on the weekends in town halls and small-time venues, wrestling for a few dollars for the few remaining fans caring enough to come watch younger wrestlers take it easy on Ram’s aging body. He wakes up every morning in either his trailer or van, pending on when rent is due. He wakes up either sore or hung-over, pending on the day of the week or outcome of occupational hazard.

The rest of the story? Well, I won’t spoil anymore for you, as it breathes far better life than I can type and is something that has to be experienced. I’ll end on…life hasn’t been good on Ram and neither has Ram on occasion. And you can see that in his beaten teary eyes and weathered face. But, there is a spirit to Ram that surpasses many heaps and piles of even the most spiritually powered of humans. He has both perspective from the top and bottom ropes and that makes the sometimes painful search and climb to redemption, life, family, gifts and hope all the more bitter-sweet, powerful and enduring. As the screen goes black and Bruce starts strumming and singing Ram’s theme, well let’s just say that you’ll be pretty darn pinned and hard to get out of that plush cushion. You’ll have just witnessed something truly “Special”…and some. Thank you Darren Aronofsky. THANK YOU.

-djg

DJG / The Go-Getter

The Go-Getter * *
Directed by: Martin Hynes / 2007

All puns intended, “The Go-Getter” gets GONE from the GET-GO and doesn’t GET ‘ER DONE for me. If anything this indie cliché in the “random road trip category” makes me really want to over-turn my rule of not turning off a movie early in hopes that it will be redeeming or rewarding in the end. “The Go-Getter” is ripe with mindless, random indie movie flub…and not even in a good way as its tricks were way too much of the trade. So, what IS “indie” anymore? THIS is it folks. Speaking of folks, I was originally intrigued by the film because not only can one count on Jena Malone and Zooey Deschanel for the doubling of solid performance and enjoyable film, but also because darling “it” boy guitar hero M. Ward was boasted to play a small role (yeah, like 3 seconds!) and put the musical backing to the road trip. Which, he did, but I had high hopes for an original score, and I now see why I couldn’t locate one to purchase as it was nothing more than random cut and pastes of previously released M. Ward tunes, as well as an assortment of songs by artists like Elliott Smith and a few random others. Yeah, the film gets some cool points musically, but boy did it stink as a story and even the music couldn’t save this one. I won’t go into details because if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all and I was muttering to myself the entire time about how “stupid” and “random” and it was that I now don’t wish to revisit the reasons why. The only good thing to come out of “The Go-Getter” is the pairing of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward as they went on to make lovely country-folk music under the identity “She & Him”. Let’s shoot for more volumes of their fresh and lovely musical work instead of trite indie films. I just wish I could GO GET my time back and watching something more rewarding.

-djg

DJG / Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda * * 1/2
Directed by: John Stevenson and Mark Osborne / 2008

Jack Black’s latest vehicle to let us all know that he really is a bankable box office marquee name to stay, whether in human flesh or Panda Bear, was pretty much what I gathered from the “samey-so-so” trailers and TV spots, yet it also had a couple of pleasant surprises. One such surprise was that Black’s involvement in this fast-paced cliché animated adventure initially had me groaning from just hearing about it but as it turns out he scales back his “a little goes a long way” status with me and stayed well behind character. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t see him behind a couple hundred more pounds of Panda? I love Black’s characters in a couple of movies (“High Fidelity” and “Be Kind Rewind” come to mind), but for the most part he annoys the heck out of me (It’s hard not to hold a personal preference with reviews, isn’t it, but I’ll do my best?). Another surprise, though it might be more of a “Good Lord”, was that the film clocks in at under an hour and a half. Though hinting at 30 and claiming to possess a healthy dose of eternal “man-child”, I’m finding it more and more difficult to sit through more than an hour of cartoons. That is, unless it’s directed by Brad Bird or a Pixar feature or a pile of oldie-goldie cartoons from my youth (And let me tell you, they just don’t make cartoons like they used to!). Actually, I’m going to blame my antsy-pants on today’s computer animation. It seems that Michael Bay’s beefy and bloaty and dizzyingly action orchestration and edits have sizzled their way into influencing the bulk of Hollywood filmmaking, including the animation departments. Now, Bay didn’t have anything to do with “Kung Fu Panda”, that I know of, but I found the movie to suffer from an over-grown Panda Bear stomach of way too much going on and hard to keep up with. Or, am I just really slow? In fact, I tend to come away from many computer animated movies either confused or really tired. As an artist and a “man-child” you’d think I’d be gushing from the visual fruit tree on my tube, and I think that I do just a little bit as it can be pretty darn impressive. But, I think as a very hands-on and old-fashioned type of guy, I appreciate new computer animation more than I actually love it. The times I did find a gush with “Kung Fu Panda” came from the splices of traditional animation used in flashback scenes and I couldn’t help but think about how much more I’d like the movie if it was all rendered in this way. Is this what we now think of traditional animation, as old-timey yesterday stuff like black and white photography? Clever, the use was…but, it has me worried just a little bit as children and even most adults today have to have everything super-awesome looking. I think that my eyes and brain work so hard at enjoying a split second of the majority of today’s animation (majority: remember, I love Brad Bird and Pixar stuff) that by the time I come back to the plot, the film has advanced twelve scenes and I’m totally in the dark as the “know-what’s-happening” small children and baby boomers laugh it up and I pretend-laugh that I “get” it too. How do children and adults older than me keep up with this stuff? It’s just like watching high-octane action and heist movies and/or Michael Bay flicks. Though, with “Kung Fu Panda”, the story was so cliché and Jack Black didn’t annoy me enough to keep a heated and disgusted gaze that I didn’t really need to pay attention. By the credits’ turn I don’t think I really missed anything.

-djg