zbrak Reviews

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016)

Every decision you make is a mistake

[9/10 · 28 November 2016]

Note: If they'd shaved five minutes off of the musical (which still made me laugh a lot), this would be a 10. It just falls short.

A year in the Life was outstanding and extremely satisfying. I sincerely hope that all of the upset fans out there griping about the plot lines don't discourage that Palladinos from exploring more of these characters if they truly want to. Warts and all, these are some of the best characters ever written.

So Rory's a mess. What's new? She's been a mess since meeting Logan. Or did we conveniently forget dropping out of Yale, stealing a boat, getting arrested, doing community service, and having a huge blowup with Lorelai? We wanted her to be "more together" in the interim? I'm not sure I know anyone whose 20s weren't a mess. It comes with the territory. Maybe being pregnant is what will FINALLY get her to come to grips with growing up, something that Logan (as much as we kinda like him) wasn't ever going to insist that she do. Quite the opposite, actually. He can't grow up either.

Lorelai's a lesser mess, but still a mess. At the Inn, she misses Sookie like she misses her right arm. She still can't commit completely to Luke or be completely honest with him. She's holding back and stuck. Somewhere inside her are some serious daddy issues that she can no longer resolve with her dad. The scene with the "Unbreakable" song was gut-wrenching. Lauren Graham didn't have to say a word to make everybody bawl -- she just sat there and looked scraped raw. It was powerful stuff.

The real heroine of A Year in the Life -- the character with the biggest arc -- is Emily. She owned the revival. Emily sees what Lorelai and Rory have and it hurts her because she'll never have it. She never knew how to have it. But she had -- and loved and adored - - Richard. And now he's gone and she's just wrecked and lost (sleeping until noon!). But she's tough and she'll get through it and burn whatever bridges need to be burned. Kudos to the Palladinos for making Richard's death the linchpin event of the whole revival. I can't think of a better tribute to Edward Herrmann than having Richard's palpable presence driving the narrative. And Kelly Bishop was awesome. I think both her and Lauren Graham deserve Emmy nominations (if not actual Emmys) for the revival. That's what great acting looks like.

Here's the skinny, folks. These characters, with all of their mistakes and bad decisions, belong ultimately to the writers. They do not belong to us. We can love them, but with these particular characters, it's kinda like loving a real live human. They will say and do things that will confound and frustrate us. They've been doing that the entire time, maybe some of us weren't paying attention. Carping about what happens in their lives is like carping about what happens in your friends' lives. You can choose to care for them or not, but they're gonna do what they do. And thank you to the Palladinos for doing it your way. If that's the end of the story, it was a great, great ride.

One-Trick Pony (1980)

A flawed but fascinating movie

[7/10 · 25 September 2013]

There's no question that this movie has some issues that bring it down - - I think it's mainly the dialog, which is just uncomfortably stiff in places. I guess that flaw has to be laid at Simon's feet since he's the only writer credited. As amazing as he is as a songwriter, scripts apparently weren't his thing. That said, you'd think that the director (Robert Young) might have done something to address these issues.

Paul Simon as Jonah Levin does an admirable job with his acting. He acts like a lost soul, which is kinda the whole point of the movie. A few scenes stand out -- Jonah's argument with Marion (Blair Brown) in the kitchen, when he's drunk at the show-biz gala party, and towards the end of the movie when he bursts into tears and starts singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight." And all the scenes with Matty are pretty precious.

Just before the crying scene mentioned above, Jonah asks for some Percodans and then a minute later says, "I am Matty, just older." And that's the key to this movie -- Jonah is a guy who knows he's getting older, but doesn't know how to grow up. He doesn't know what he wants, and he distracts and numbs himself up to avoid dealing with it.

He's offered the golden ticket -- another shot at pop relevance -- and understands it'll mean sacrificing his musical integrity and pissing off people he cares about (his bandmates). Even after people go out of their way to help him out (Joan Hackett's Lonnie Fox), in the end he chooses to trash it all, and it's left ambiguous as to what it means and where he goes next. Was he just sticking it to the man in a spoiled artist's tantrum? Does he go back to Marion to reconcile, find a real job, and raise his son? Does he go back -- integrity restored -- to his band to play dive gigs and drink and drug himself up until . . .what? We aren't given the answer, and that's okay -- I like those kinds of endings.

Really, there's a lot to chew on in this movie. It's just hard to watch because the dialog is just not realistic enough.

Lots of great cameos and small parts -- Rip Torn as the almost cartoonishly smarmy Walter Fox, Sam and Dave (would LOVE to see everything they filmed for that show), Lou Reed (as the snotty producer), Joan Hackett, Blair Brown, Mare Winningham, Harry Shearer, Tiny Tim, Dave Sanborn, . . . really everybody in the movie performs admirably despite the flawed script.

And kudos to his awesome band (Richard Tee, Steve Gadd, Tony Levin, Eric Gale). Love the scene in the dressing room when Steve Gadd is cracking Richard Tee up -- they act just like musicians). In a lot of ways, this really is a musician's movie.

It also captures a pretty peculiar time in the music biz -- the end of the '70s. Jonah's style of music is a dinosaur (the juxtaposition of his band opening for the B-52s at the Agora makes it as plain as day). For that matter, the label guy, the AM radio guy, and the producer will all find their relevance in question as the quantum shift from '70s styles to '80s styles takes place.

Also of note is that it visually captures an America that doesn't really exist any more. No strip malls in sight and lots of urban centers barely hanging on. And a "small" movie like this couldn't be made by a major studio just a few years later. It was the end of an era in Hollywood as well.

Bottom line -- flawed but recommended, especially if you like Paul Simon's music.

A Mighty Wind (2003)

Funny and touching

[30 January 2004]

A Mighty Wind goes where none of the other previous Christopher Guest "mockumentaries" have gone before, in that it treats some of its subjects with grace and tenderness. Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy in particular are doing fantastic ensemble acting. So much of the poignancy that exists between their characters is played out without dialogue, using body language and their eyes instead. For these two, there's nothing they can really say to each other at this point about what has happened between them. So they say it in their obvious awkwardness when they're not singing, and in their obvious warmth when they are singing. In the commentary on the DVD, you can hear Guest tell how Parker Posey and Jane Lynch were crying when the scene with their reunion was shot. This is beautiful stuff, and powerful. So if you're looking JUST for belly laughs, go elsewhere. But if you want the laughs and something more to chew on, this is a great film.

A few other highlights: The music is surprisingly good, and I am impressed at the talent that this ensemble has as instrumentalists, singers, and songwriters, as well as actors and comedians. Parker Posey is always magnetic. And Jane Lynch steals just about every scene she is in (especially the one about WINC). And Fred Willard is out of control as usual. Guest and his troupe are really hitting their stride in Mighty Wind.

The Matrix (1999)

This movie took the Blue Pill

[4/10 · 14 July 2003]

I have heard so much about the Matrix and finally watched it for the first time this weekend.

Boy, were there lots of action sequences. Lots and lots and lots of action sequences. You can feel the filmmakers just trying to top the last sequence instead of doing something like advancing the plot or developing the characters. Unless you think the action sequence is the be-all-and-end-all of movies, all that action just gets boring after a while. I have nothing against whiz-bang special effects as long as they do something worthwhile to move the film along (the Lord of the Rings films are good at this). But this is just not happening with the Matrix.

The Matrix concept itself is thought-provoking. Why isn't it developed more? The fact that this monumental struggle for the soul of humanity ends up with a shoot-out, a helicopter-dangling rescue sequence and a martial arts fight is almost laughable. It's like saying the mysteries of the universe can be unraveled by watching beer commercials. If you want to see an ending that leaves you with something worth chewing on, you'll be sadly disappointed (as I was).

As for other elements of the movie -- Keanu Reeves, as much as I usually enjoy watching him, was extremely wooden. Fishburne and Moss were good at what they did, but their parts were pretty two-dimensional. I couldn't get emotionally involved with any of the characters, which is ultimately the fault of the writers. The cinematography and "style" of the film and the sets is pretty cool to look at. However, the whole black clothes and sunglasses motif is just a little bit hokey after a while. And the agents -- I swear they look just like the bad aliens in Brother From Another Planet -- I kept expecting them to shriek at each other.

I look at it this way - people who think that sitting in front of their tubes and playing video games is a worthwhile way to spend their lives will probably love this movie. People who want something more will think it's pretty hollow. It's a shame because the concept had a lot of potential, but the filmmakers took the easy way out.

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)

Five down, one to go

[5/10 · 31 March 2003]

It's time to face facts. The last good Star Wars film was released 23 years ago. The decline started with Jedi, and it just keeps getting worse with the prequels. I could care less about whiz-bang action sequences -- all I ask is a decent story. There's not one here. The plot is labored. The pacing drags terribly during the love scenes. The dialog is beyond stiff. I still hope that Lucas will pull off a masterstroke with the last episode (memo to George -- let somebody else write the script and tell them to make it dark). But I'm not holding my breath.

I was a huge fan of the first two films (I know, I'm supposed to say Episodes IV and V). What made those movies so great is that Lucas had created this world that had a great back-story -- all this history that had gone before. The Imperial Senate, The Clone Wars, The Jedis, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan ("Old Ben") Kenobi, all of these things were alluded to

within the first hour of the first film. It gave the films a sense of a greater history (Lord of the Rings has that same mojo). The created world and the story taking place within it became that much more believable because you felt it was part of a grand history. The weight of that history added a gravity to the stories that made them all the more compelling.

The prequels series has nothing of the sort. The political discourse that Lucas apparently finds necessary does nothing other than advance the plot. It's tedious, it's just not engaging, and we end up not really caring. Continuity issues are all over the place. If R2D2 could fly, why didn't he do it in all the other movies? Christiansen and Portman have zero chemistry. Anakin is an extremely annoying character. You just want to slap him. Some of the CGI is terrible (those big lumpy creatures in the meadow come to mind).

The sad part is that Lucas used to know what he was doing, bad dialogue and all. But that magic is dead.

I know it's not a contest, but what Peter Jackson is doing with Lord Of The Rings shows that it's possible to have a mythical action blockbuster that is successful enough as a movie experience to be nominated for Best Picture three consecutive times (assuming ROTK is nominated, which it will be). Jackson's films have that exuberant film-school quality that made Lucas earlier efforts so good, and that's why they work as well as they do.

It's also interesting to take a look at the box office business for the franchise -- Episode II is doing considerably less business that Episode I. People are voting with their feet. I think that will get Lucas' attention, but I'm not sure it'll do any good.

I know people want to defend the Star Wars franchise for some reason -- maybe they're too emotionally invested to see how thin these films have become. But it's time to wake up and smell the coffee, folks.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

Plot changes -- books are still sublime, movie is still epic

[10/10 · 19 December 2002]

A lot of teeth are gnashing about the changes Jackson has made to the plot in Two Towers. I feel bad for people who are upset and can understand their frustration. I myself went out of my way to find reviews with spoilers so that, instead of spending my time in the theatre obsessing about plot deviations, I could just sit back and enjoy the movie (which I truly did). I think many of these plot changes were necessary, although I might have done them some other way if I was calling the shots. So let's launch in to a few of them . . .

**SPOILER WARNING** Faramir: He's one of the more fascinating characters in the book, and he's simply given a broad stroke in the film, and not a particularly attractive one. But looking back at the book, Faramir's character occupies 50 pages, much of which is dialogue between Faramir and Frodo. No wonder he's a complex character in the book! He does lots of soul-baring. Given all that, it's understandable that some change had to be made in the film, otherwise we'd have "My Dinner With Faramir".

In the book, Faramir's plan originally was to take Frodo and Sam back to Gondor (not because of the ring, however). After all the dialogue (and after Faramir finds out about the ring), he changes his mind. There are also mentions of the book about the battles at Osgiliath. So lots of the elements that are 'changed' in the movie have foundation in the books, and Jackson (who feels his job is to make an exciting movie) did what he felt he had to do. I would've done it differently, but that's me. But there's obviously no room in the movie for the exposition that the books have.

The Nazgul confronting Frodo as Osgiliath bothered me as much as anything - part of the strategy of Gandalf for the war is to sneak the ring in to Mordor to destroy it, figuring Sauron will believe that Gondor is going to try to use the ring to challenge him. No need to announce to Sauron that the ring is somehow at mordor's doorstep.

I think the rousing of the ents (Pippin's `trick') also could've been handled better. In the books, Tolken makes it clear that the Ents are slow to anger and reluctant to get involved, but they knew what Saruman was up to and said `enough is enough.' Not sure why Jackson did it the way he did - didn't really add anything that needed to be added.

The warg battle - This is in the book, sort of. As the contingent from Rohan is riding to Helm's Deep, they skirmish with orcs on Wargs and drive them off. This is probably a couple of sentences in the book and is expanded in the movie (a la the cave troll in the first movie). No harm done here, IMHO. Aragorn's plunge off the cliff, however, could've been left out. It didn't add anything to the film, except another excuse to dip into the Arwen subplot.

Speaking of which, much of the tension between Arwen, Aragorn and Elrond is spelled out in one of the appendices in the book. Jackson took some liberties there as well, but the idea pretty much holds true. (You could've left the whole Arwen thing out of all the movies completely and it wouldn't have bothered me, but I understand how androcentric the film would've looked then.) The imagery of Arwen grieving over King Ellasar's body was nicely done, showing her dilemma. So again, Jackson is taking the story and shaping it to the film - he is not creating this stuff out of whole cloth.

After looking back through the book, I was actually pretty impressed about how much the battle of Helm's Deep matched Tolkein's descriptions of it. And the landscapes --- I cannot believe how much the scenery matched my mind's eye from reading the books (like the scrub trees in the final scene in Ithilien - a tiny detail, but absolutely perfect as it was captured on film.) Astounding. And enough has already been said about Gollum, who is a revelation. As I said before, I sought out spoiler reviews so I wouldn't be distracted from plot deviations. If I want to read the books, I'll read them. But I certainly enjoyed the film for what it was - a majestic and exciting adventure flick, well worth seeing again.