Week Of August 7, 2006 - Mon / Wed / Fri

August 9, 2006

"It's taken the Hollywood system five years to come up with a major motion picture about what happened at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, but if you think that time was used for thoughtful introspection and careful analysis about the best way to approach those agonizing and unprecedented events, you just don't know Hollywood.

What that time has gone into instead is making the story of Sept. 11 fit as closely as possible into the business-as-usual norms of sentimental studio moviemaking. The problem is not so much that "World Trade Center" is an attempt to make a feel-good movie about a ghastly situation, it's that the result feels forced, manufactured and largely - but not entirely - unconvincing."

How to best put this…

Bullshit.

The quote above is the opening two paragraphs in Ken Turan's review of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. And this is how I see those two paragraphs.

Paragraph 1 - I have no interest in this movie because I hate Hollywood and all it stands for and if they made anything more dramatic than a documentary about 9/11, I am going to rip it a new asshole.

Paragraph 2 - I'm going to rip it a new asshole… and while I really hate it on principle, I'm going to rationalize my hatred as though I was still doing my job as a film critic.

The thing is, getting away from World Trade Center for a moment, critics seem to get into this cycle now and again, maybe a couple of times a year. Suddenly, film criticism isn't really about the movie in front of us, but something else altogether. It's not, though you might be thinking otherwise, about critics disagreeing with me. That happens often. Not an issue. But every now and again, critics line up for or against a film with a ferocity that seems to be coming from somewhere else altogether.

Sometimes, it's a director that critics just won't question. For instance, no Quentin Tarantino film has lower than an 82% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sometimes, it's just a love of obscurity. Is it a coincidence that the film likely to be the second lowest box office grosser in this week's Top Ten, The Descent, is also the only film to be over 80% on RT?

And sometimes, it is just a weird bend in the road where one overlong popcorn movie - Superman Returns with 76% - gets pretty good reviews and one week later, a movie that is clearly too long but also clearly going to be much more successful than the last gets slammed - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest with a 53% RT rating.

There are movies that many journalists swear was a disaster with critics and the public, though that position doesn't bear scrutiny. The classic is The Matrix Reloaded, which had 74% on RT (75% Cream of the Crop) and a worldwide box office gross of $739 million. Throw in DVDs and you're well over $1 billion in revenues from that one title. But no… it's a terrible flop.

But the reason why the Turan review jumped out at me is that he did a perfect job of expressing a sentiment that I have heard dozens of times in the last few weeks. The problem with World Trade Center is that is isn't about more than it is about. (This goes along with "Miami Vice is not good because it's not enough like the TV show." Of course, if it was the like the TV show, you'd be seeing Michael Mann crucified on the Hollywood sign each time you passed by.)

First, this "it should have been something else" argument drives me to distraction because isn't the job to look at the movie and not the sociology? I mean, if you're Armond White, go to town. White, however you see him, consistently works a critic of sociology and politics as part of his process. You can't read him without taking that into account. No thumbs up or down for him. But we're talking about the Los Angeles Times and a critic who gave positive reviews to Mission:Impossible II, The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift and Talladega Nights… not that there's anything wrong with that.

And here we are with the headline of "The Easy Way Out" and the sub-head, "Ghastly events forced into a feel-good formula - it's not the memorial Sept. 11 needs."

Exactly what memorial does September 11 need? Is there a specific, single film you have in mind, Ken? Or is it the old Supreme Court saw, "I'll know what it is when I see it"?

Second, I am fascinated by that position being taken when the history of political movies has delivered very few successes that were on the nose when it came to the subject matter. M*A*S*H* was a comedy about doctors in Korea, not a political tract about the way we got into or acted during the "police action" in Vietnam. American Beauty (and Fight Club and The Matrix and many others) was not specifically about the Reagan era and the intense conflicts of the Baby Boom era making a transition to being consumerist adults. The cinema of Iran and Korea and Poland were rarely direct attacks on the politics of the day in those nations, but always had deep subtext that made them respected in this country.

I'm not saying that World Trade Center is M*A*S*H*. But the notion that a quality, veteran film critic is not able to work past preconceived notions about what the film should have been about to really consider what the powerful emotional experience is for audiences is a damned shame. It is a little unfair of me, but I always imagine the film critic wiping a tear away from his/her eye and cursing under his/her breath, "Fuck you, filmmaker… I'm a pro! I'm not supposed to be crying unless it's in French! You tricked me!"

Turan later writes, "Because those events (9/11) are guaranteed to elicit emotion in a way that is almost Pavlovian, we hold depictions of them to a higher standard. We don't want this story of all stories to devolve into a standard studio scenario, full of uplifting messages about bringing out "the goodness we forgot could exist."

"We." That has to be the Royal We, doesn't it?

Of course, as a film critic (or as a critic of a film critic), you offer your opinion because you believe in it and feel others might be well instructed by it… but when you lose perspective on the fact that it is your opinion and not necessarily our opinion, you are on some dangerous ground.

Plus, of course, Turan assumes that any audience member having a genuine emotion while watching the film is being tricked like a dog hearing a whistle. Sorry. It's not only patronizing, but it is factually inaccurate. Audiences, however poor their taste sometimes, make decisions. They are not just sheep. Word of mouth matters. You can lead them to water on the opening weekend, but if they are going to drink the entire bowl, they have to want to drink what's in there.

More patronizing from Turan - "That it is Stone, the iconoclastic director of "JFK," "Natural Born Killers" and "Salvador," who is assuming the standard Hollywood position speaks sad volumes about the grinding effects of decades spent confronting the studio system."

I'll let Stone decide to give KT the finger on this if he likes, but more important to me, it is the arrogant assumption that by making this film, Stone has been ground down by the system. Where was this Ken Turan when he gave a positive review to that studio turd burger, Any Given Sunday?

And as pathetically repetitive the critic stereotyping Hollywood is, how is WTC a typical studio movie? If your idea of typical is Cast Away or Apollo 13 or Forrest Gump, I guess it is typical. But if Hollywood knew how to make those films from processed cheese, wouldn't we have at least one every year. But we don't. The movie that really does reach the audience is a rarity. And screening after screening, World Trade Center is hitting a good percentage of the audience like a ton of bricks.

Turan really lets his liberal freak flag fly (good for dinner parties… bad for film criticism in a major daily) with: "Looking for all the world like the kind of completely deranged individual you would expect to be hanging out with Freddy Krueger, Karnes turns out to be one of "World Trade Center's" heroes. After telling his pastor that he is literally on a mission from God, he gets his hair cut short, breaks out his old Marine uniform, sneaks into the World Trade Center site and becomes instrumental in saving the two buried men."

Then comes the coup de grâce. "They're going to need some good men to avenge this," Karnes says ominously, and the next thing you know, a title card tells us that the man reenlisted in the Marines and served two tours of duty in Iraq. Even the conspiracy theories that Stone floated in "JFK" pale beside this blatant support of the big lie linking Iraq and Sept. 11."

Let me try to translate -

"Completely deranged individual you would expect to be hanging out with Freddy Krueger" means "guy with a crew cut and a military background who would actually go to his church, discuss things with his pastor, and feel he was called to the WTC by God."

"Even the conspiracy theories that Stone floated in "JFK" pale beside this blatant support of the big lie linking Iraq and Sept. 11" means "no one could believe that anyone - other than the U.S. Congress, right and left sides of the aisle - actually felt that there was a war worth fighting in the Middle East and the fact that this man, who did act heroically in the days after 9/11 and who some might consider honorable for defending his country, felt that way should not be dramatized because it doesn't concur with Turan's political beliefs and does not make a point of noting that the war in Iraq is bad."

But the truth is, I am probably overreacting to Turan. Of 23 "Cream of the Crop" reviews, only 3 were deemed "rotten" by Rotten Tomatoes for an 88% positive rating. Interestingly, 36% of non-cream reviews are negative.

I don't recall ever seeing such a disparity between the two segments of the voting in the past. It is also interesting, however, that only one of the Traditional Media critics who is not a Cream voter was negative, Dana Stevens at Slate.

Still, it gets my goat.

It was probably best related by the street saying, "Don't hate the player, hate the game."

READER OF THE DAY: HOBBETTE writes, responding to the E-ME question on Monday of what she would write about: "Little Miss Sunshine.

Which I am dying to see and I was so excited to see it on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.

But is it playing anywhere near me?

NO!!!!!!!!!

I think getting on the cover of EW might be an indication that you should be releasing the movie wide…..

NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Other than that, I have seen a lot of the summer movies and here are my recaps:

Thank you for Smoking – One of my favorite movies this year. I just absolutely loved it, now I want to read the book. It was great!!!!

Mission Impossible III – which I saw once in German and then again in English when I got home. I liked it, a lot, it was definitely better than number 2. I think Tom Cruise should learn to shut his mouth for the 6 months before and after the opening of one of his films, oh wait, maybe he should shut his mouth altogether, at least in regards to diagnosing people he does not know.

Poseidon – Great effects, but I was so so so so so disappointed that they just used essentially the same story and stereotypes of the original instead of coming up with a more serious one without the laughs. Oh wait, you say that it was a serious one? Well I laughed at Poseidon more than some comedies I saw this summer. And I never talk during movies but since the theater was fairly empty, my cousin and I just had a heyday.

The Da Vinci Code – I enjoyed it, a lot, Ian McKellan was great and I love Tom Hanks so I am biased, although I agree this was one of Oscar winning performances. As to the Catholic brouhaha over it, get a life people, IT IS A FREAKIN’ MOVIE!!

X-Men 3 – I really liked it too, except Hallie Berry’s character Storm, I don’t like her that much anyway but it has nothing to do with her acting, her speech when she won the Oscar really turned me off, she acted like she was the first black woman that has won an Oscar (hello…Hattie McDaniel). She is extremely beautiful, I have always thought so, so I know many will forgive her that or don’ care for that matter LOL.

Over the Hedge – Totally enjoyed this one too, Bruce Willis, I always love him, and I love Wanda Sykes, it was a good diversion

The Break-up – It was okay, I love Vince Vaughn too, but it took me five minutes to remember that it was one of the films we had seen.

Cars – loved it, better than I thought it would be, I guess I should just start realizing if it is from Pixar, it will be great no matter how crappy I think the trailer is.

Nacho Libre – I loved that too, it was harmless silly fun and my grandson absolutely loved it.

Click – loved it a lot, I cried so much during the last act, I thought it was great.

The Devil Wears Prada – I really liked it, although I have to disagree with the critics about Anne Hathaway, she needed to be blander since she was surrounded by such strong and quirky personalities. But I didn’t have much sympathy for her character either.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest – I liked it, but it didn’t have the charm of the first one and I hate when you can tell that everything in this one is a set up for the next one. It works with some series like Lord of the Rings, because that is the way it is written too. But this one was not a substantive and just seemed like a longggggggggggggg preview for what is yet to come.

You, Me, and Dupree – This could have been great, but as many have saud, Matt Dillon was completely wrong for the part he was playing. It was no There’s Something About Mary and it should have been Ben Stiller in the part that Matt Dillon played, it would have been better then.

Monster House – I liked it, my cousin absolutely loved it. It seems to me this would have been better served if released around Halloween rather than in the summer.

Miami Vice – I liked it a lot, although I though Jamie Foxx was a non-entity, and the extended love scenes were unnecessary.

Talledaga Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby – Loved it, it was hysterical and the people in the theater I was in which was pretty full laughed their butts off except the asshole sitting in the aisle seat in my row that was OFFENDED that anyone would dare to want to sit in the 10 empty seats beside him and his wife which would require him to actually move his feet. OMG he had a hissy fit because I actually had to go past him during the movie. ASSWIPE don’t sit in the aisle seat!!!

Other movies that I’ve seen this year and really loved but aren’t summer movies: American Dreamz, Inside Man, and 16 Blocks. (I like the alternate ending they released on the DVD better.)

E Me.

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