Contradicting Popular Opinion
A.K.A.
An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks
:Kennedy vs. Netflix
intro
A friend of ours was vacationing in Europe. I guess that sort of thing is entertaining if you like culture and shit. Me, I’ve got monkey movies to watch, so I was more interested in stealing his Netflix for the duration of his trip. Monkeys, dinosaurs, space-pirates, space truckers, and all sorts of shwanky goodness all mine for free!
Sadly, my wife got to the Netflix first, and she was mostly interested in renting “respectable” flicks with nary a simian in site, let alone a Carnosaur. Alas.
Netflix did afford me the opportunity to have an interesting double feature last night. The Squid and the Whale and Hustle and Flow. The former is the tremendously white story about the divorce of two incredibly WASPy novelists, each with a PhD in Literature. The latter is the tremendously un-white story of a Memphis area pimp capriciously attempting to succeed in the mercurial world of rap.
At first glance, I had these films pegged at opposite sides of the spectrum, but I guess they aren’t too dissimilar. Aside from the obvious (the BLANK and BLANK title structure), each flick tells the story of largely flawed characters with whom I would be reluctant to spend time. Both are about dysfunctional families. Both movies are the product of a writer-director, and thus serve more a representation of their respective creator’s single vision as opposed to the vision of a committee consisting of 15 writers and a clueless putz director.
In a perfect world, they would be known as The Hustle and Squid.
Maybe not.
At any rate, today we will take a look at some of the movies I have watched recently, and try to make some sense of these things.
The Squid and the Whale
I will admit it. I actually liked this movie. It occasionally happens.
Anyways, I still have complaints, mostly regarding camera work. The camera is really bouncy early on serving to make me nauseous. Also early on, is a scene that starts way out of focus. Thankfully this shit settles down fairly quickly.
An aside that has nothing to do with squids or whales: Some folks get on my case for criticizing bouncy camera work. “Kennedy, can’t the shaky camera work be used to conveyed a greater sense of documentary-like realism?” Sure, but shaky is a synonym for questionable. Documentaries look like they do, because they are filmed on the cheap without blocking or many of the technical aspects of fictional film-making. If you need to make your film-making look shoddy in order to gain some sort of credibility, chances are your movie isn’t that good to start.
If you do stick with the bouncy cam, stick with the bouncy cam. The camera work in “Homicide” was effective because it was consistent. The camera was in constant motion, cuts were limited, and there was continuity from one shot to the next. To many times, I’ve seen film-makers try to have their cake and eat it too. (And, I usually avoid clichés like the plague…) That is to say, if you have been relying on the shaky cam, it is jarring to cut to multiple angles or switch to that big fat lens for the actors’ close-ups or to have artificial lighting. After you have the slick camera work, the shitty camera work just looks shitty.
End Aside.
Anyways, let’s get back to The Squid and the Whale. Jeff Daniels channels Jeff Bridges playing a washed up prickish intellectual who enjoys feeling superior and being an ass to his kids. Laura Linney plays his wife, a recently successful writer who decides to kick Jeff to the curb after 17 years of marriage. They end up sharing custody of their two kids, one a 17 year old plagiarist and his masturbating younger brother.
It is a brutally honest film that is densely packed into 75 minutes. Jeff Daniels gives a performance that defies my estimation of his limits as an actor. The soundtrack is overdone, but not when compared to any 3 other modern flicks.
Check it out.
Hustle and Flow
Terrence Howard (who in real life certainly seems like a flaming ‘mo) plays Djay, an abusive drug-dealing pimp. A crazy derelict trades Djay a kiddie keyboard in order to score some weed. This tiny-electric piano inspires a mid-life crisis in our man Djay, who decides he is tired of the daily grind of all things pimpery. To be fair though, it is the women in his employ that do the vast majority of said grinding.
Djay meets up with Kangaroo Jack who leads a full life with a perfectly reasonable wife and a career taping arbitration sessions. Djay convinces Kangaroo Jack to use his skills with a tape recorder to produce a pimpingly new demo tape. Together, with the help of The New Guy they cut together various tracks about the difficulties of pimp life, such as the mechanics of stomping one’s whores and whooping their Johns.
Indeed, it is hard out there for a pimp.
Except that it really doesn’t seem to be at all. Pimping, contrary to what I have been lead to believe, appears to be remarkably easy. Djay doesn’t seem to have much work to do. I guess that he could call himself a salesman but his merchandise consists of pussy and drugs, two products which essentially sell themselves. AND he isn’t even very good at this remarkable easy task as he certainly appears to live in squalor.
Obviously, this flick was not made for me. It is blaxploitate-a-riffic. It’s credits are in groovy ’70s font. Isaac f*cking Hayes is in the movie. Me, I’m a pasty white boy with an Irish name. Seneca kids outnumbered black kids in my highschool by at least a 10 to 1 margin. I understand this thing, and understand that I have little street cred.
Be that as it may, The Street Fighter is the story of a morally ambiguous character that was obviously not made fo me. I am able to enjoy The Street Fighter but not Hustle and Flow. Okay so, I don’t think this comparison is going anywhere. Let’s try again.
The movie that Hustle and Flow most reminded me of was The King of Comedy. In King of Comedy, Robert DeNiro plays Rupert Pupkin a loser with very little to show for his life. Like Djay, people are always getting his name wrong. Like Djay, he has fanciful dreams of making it big in show business. Like Djay, he makes a demo tape of all his best material. Like Djay, he doesn’t want to work to achieve his fame, choosing instead to accost a celebrity with the career he wants. This plan doesn’t work terribly well in either film, so in each our protagonist has to resort to committing some crimes against said celebrity, and achieving fame in jail.
Aside from the differences in chosen career, Pumpkin wanted to be a comedian, Djay a Musician, the films have one MAJOR difference. King of Comedy was satire. It was a dark comedy about our culture’s obsession with fame, celebrated persons, and how celebrated notoriety becomes fame. Hustle and Flow, on the other hand, is trying to be inspirational. It presents a character who is more of a degenerate than Rupert Pupkin, portraying him in a mostly positive light, and offering his path as a perfectly acceptable option to achieve his ends. Huh?
To quote my old friend Julia, “that’s just crap.”
But, hell, what do I know? The movie was critically acclaimed and all that nonsense. I think I can tell you why. Generally speaking, black people in films tend towards two ends. Those who are 1-dimensional clowns, and those that “act white.” Hustle and Flow presents complex black characters that don’t speak and act like typical white folk. It is competently made and fairly well acted. (Terrence Howard almost passes himself off as a hetero!) These things are refreshing to a public bombarded with White Chicks, Big Momma’s House, and Soul Plane.
They’d have to be, right?
But as it stands, and all questions of morality and satire aside, the film isn’t terribly good. It runs about half an hour too long, a good portion of the dialogue is reserved for spouting bland truisms, and it tends to do some frustrating things. Hustle and Flow is the sort of flick where it is just assumed and understood that being black means that one has musical talent. The prostitutes of Hustle and Flow act genuinely surprised when they are prostituted. A flick where 20 dollars whores have all their teeth and are never really in any sort of danger.
But hey, I’m a white boy from the rust belt. What do I know?
Sky High
Sky High is a bad movie, certainly. But it is an enjoyable bad movie, that is fully accepting of the fact that it is indeed a bad movie. Frankly, I’d watch the film for the cast alone. Sky High stars Jack McFarland’s son; likeable hunk, Kurt Russell; B-movie icon Bruce Campbell; the man with the world’s greatest comedic timing, Dave Foley; Kid in the Hall Kevin; Rod f*cking Farvae!; and TV’s Wonder Woman.
The mostly talentless, Kelly Preston is also in the flick, but even that thing has a bright side! You see, using her you can jump from Jerry Maguire into A Few Good Men to get to Kevin Bacon.
Although, one should be careful with these Kevin Bacon style connections. It can quickly turn into A Beautiful Mind the home game. For instance, Debra Messing went from starring as Stacey on “Ned and Stacey” to starring as Grace on “Will and Grace”. On “Will and Grace” she dated Woody Harrelson and Harry Connick. Woody, of course played Woody on “Cheers” who once had a cousin played by Harry Connick. Now “Cheers” existed in the same universe as “Wings”. Norm, Cliff, Lilith and Frasier all showed up on “Wings” at one point or another. Thomas Hayden Church starred on “Wings” for years as mechanic Lowell, until he left th show to pursue a career as the lead on… “Ned and Stacey”. And see, both the lead of Sky High and Dave Foley played re-occurring characters on “Will and Grace” which also once had a guest appearance by Kevin Bacon.
Did you know that I am the emperor of Antarctica?
Fucking A.
MAILBAG
So, a couple of folks accused me of writing “Confirming Popular Opinion” last week with Emily Rose. Meh. IP’s original review of the movie gave it an 8, and our review of the movie on DVD gave it a 7. I say, then, that means open season.
DC’s tastes are catholic, or perhaps Catholic
I should have warned you about the whole Emily Rose thing. There was a brief span in the middle
when I thought it was going to turn around and be good. It was when they started cutting back and
forth between the flashbacks of her episodes and the courtroom shit, and I thought that the
prosecution was going to pick up on the heavy-handed element of sexual panic in the possession
scenes, explaining the girl’s reaction to her own seizures through psychoanalysis, and that the
small-town bumpkin jury would be torn between A.) outrage at the possession story and resulting
neglect and B.) revulsion at the psychoanalytic intrusion of their standards of decorum (ah, the
unconscious, spookier than Satan to some). That would have been fun to watch, albeit a bit hard onthe rurals I guess. Did not happen. I shrugged. I guess a traumatic background for the priest
would have been a shorter road to semi-legitimacy, but whatever.I mean, I generally like all that Catholic business in my horror movies. At least the Paul
Schrader version of the Excorcist prequel is good. It looks like they cut corners on the
post-production in spots, possibly after dumping the film to do the Renny Harlin version we
watched on Spectrovision in Atlanta, but the themes are tight, and the whole thing seems geared as
a condemnation of the recent trend in messianic military strikes, since the confrontation with old
scratch plays cross-cut with a battle of Christians vs. Pagans happening between the Brits and an
African tribe. Best yet, when a squad leader is told by his commander to maintain good relations
with the locals, he winningly and sensitively replies, “Yes sir, respect for the godforsaken
fuzzies at all times, sir.” It’s slow and brooding, but not in that snooze-inducing Underworld
way.You seen Wolf Creek? I just rented it. It’s a straight-forward slasher about teenagers venturing
out beyond the bounds of polite society only to find themselves in the clutches of a brutal yet
captivating murderer and spouter of delightful idiomatic phrases. So, in the tradition of the
Fosters commercials, it’s basically Australian for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
It is hard out there for a pimp
We have a rabble cast? I’m on f*cking dial-up. Somebody listen to that thing for me.
Culto takes a look at a Bruce Campbell movie I’ve never seen! Okay, maybe I did catch it on cable once, but that doesn’t count.
Lucard hasn’t done any pimping since this countdown started. Boo-urns.
I like to skim Gloomie’s column for my name. It’s never in there. I guess the world isn’t ready for my specific brand of post-grunge alt-country neo-folklorica industrial…TGWFHPF
