Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2014: Birdman, Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

 I'm not sure that I had a favorite movie of 2014, but if I absolutely had to pick one, it would be Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). I told this story to most of my friends, but after hearing people rave about it for weeks after it came out, I finally decided to go see it on Saturday. Beforehand, I watched The Empire Strikes Back, because I hadn't seen it in a while and it's still the best Star Wars movie, no contest. By the time the credits finished rolling on Birdman, I had completely forgotten that I watched The Empire Strikes Back that day. All I wanted to do was find somebody who had seen Birdman so I could talk about it. It's the sort of movie that you want to talk to someone about, something I've seen in practice as friends have slowly gravitated towards Birdman.

 There are many films which inspired Birdman - Opening Night is an obvious example - but I can't think of any that are like Birdman. It's not the fluid camera, designed to appear as a series of single "takes," or the way that Iñárritu toys with what's really happening and what isn't - you can look at Rope or any film with an unreliable narrator for that. It's not the "washed up actor trying to reinvent himself" that sets it apart. Again, nothing about what happens in Birdman is really that novel, but something about the way that Iñárritu constructs the story, the way that the propulsive, seemingly improvised drumming goes from non-diegetic to diegetic and back again, the way that Birdman seems to exist in our world but simultaneously in its own universe. Something ephemeral about the film, that makes it so unlike its obvious cinematic precedents. It's hard to describe, but when you're watching it, you can tell. The sensation is clear: this is not like everything else.

 As plots go, Birdman, Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is pretty basic: Riggan Thomsen (Michael Keaton) is an actor who walked away from a lucrative career in superhero movies, and has toiled in obscurity ever since. He's trying to jumpstart his career by adapting a Raymond Carver novella What We Talk About When We Talk About Love into a Broadway production, which he's also directing and starring in. The play is approaching its preview nights, and Riggan isn't happy with his male co-star, so he may or may not have used his telekinetic powers to cause an accident requiring a recasting. Oh, did I mention that Riggan might have telekinetic powers? Or that he's constantly being critiqued by Birdman, the character he walked away from? None of these things ever happen when other people are around, mind you, but the light did fall that guy's head for no reason...

 His producer, Jake (Zach Galifianakis) is already at his wit's end when Riggan blithely informs him they'll be recasting, but fortunately Lesley (Naomi Watts), one of the female leads, is dating Broadway bad-boy Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), who just happens to be available. He learns fast, has strong opinions about the material, and Riggan likes the challenge, so he joins the cast. He immediately hits it off with Sam (Emma Stone), Riggan's daughter, who's working as his assistant in order to be around her father. This does not appear to be her idea, but it's a place where she can stay sober and under his supervision. Mike and Lesley are having issues, Riggan is dealing with self-doubt about being treated as a "serious" actor, and Sam couldn't care less. On with the show.

 In addition to Opening Night, you could point to Noises Off!, State and Main, or any "theatrical / Inside Hollywood" based narratives, and there are other, stranger references, like the carpet from The Shining figuring prominently into the background, or the similarity of the opening credits to Pierrot le Fou, or Iñárritu's persistent references to Hollywood blockbusters. The elephant in the room is Michael Keaton playing an actor who walked away from a comic book movie franchise, but what's more interesting to me is that all four of the film's "name" stars have been in films based on comic books: Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk, Emma Stone in The Amazing Spider-Man (she was filming 2 while Birdman was in production), and the one nobody remembers is one of Naomi Watts' first roles was in Tank Girl. That might explain the otherwise out of left field moment between Lesley and Laura (Andrea Risenbourgh), which is very reminiscent of a film Watts is better known for, Mulholland Dr.

 While I'm not entirely sold that it's the case with Watts and Stone, Norton and Keaton are almost certainly playing the versions of their "personas" that audiences assume to be accurate. I've heard that the fallout between Norton and Marvel didn't have anything to do with him being a trouble-making, egomaniacal tinkerer, but that's certainly the perception. Keaton has been working steadily since Batman Returns, but I guess most moviegoers haven't paid close attention to that, so there's a large contingent that believe Riggan Thomsen and Mike Shiner are slightly fictionalized versions of the actors playing them. I do feel like this is an intentional movie by Iñárritu, considering that many of the other actors he name-drops before Mike steps in are current stars of major franchises, but I'm not convinced it's some grand statement about art vs. commerce in Hollywood. At least, no more than it is about the divide between theater and film, and celebrity in general. Yes, it's hard to ignore the literal presence of people dressed like Spider-Man and Bumblebee of the Transformers near the end, but Riggan's conversation with Tabitha (Lindsay Duncan) seems to point at a broader argument than "blockbusters are bad."

 Tabitha is the big time theater critic in New York, and she's not shy about telling Riggan she's already torn What We Talk About When We Talk About Love a new one, sight unseen. He's a tourist to the stage, a pretender, leveraging his celebrity against the "serious" world of acting, and he'll be punished for it. He'll be mocked for it. Riggan retorts by tearing into criticism with the same fervor, using arguments that have existed for as long as there has been art and someone reacting to it. I'm not saying either of them is more right or wrong than the other, just that Iñárritu is more interested in exploring the various position within the world of acting and directing and criticism than he is in making declarative statements with Birdman. There's a lot to chew on in the movie, if you choose to, and I disagree with the sentiment that the film is trying to be "clever" and falls short. There have been reviews from people whose opinions I respect that hate the third act or don't feel that Birdman reaches its supposed "goals," but that's fine. People are talking about it, which is good. It's a movie to talk about.

 I have slowly been running out of superlatives over the course of this recap to convey how impressed I am with performances, which makes it difficult to describe just how revelatory Michael Keaton is as Riggan Thomsen. I don't think he's playing himself, and he's onscreen for almost the entire movie, in long takes, propelling Birdman forward. It's really a tour-de-force performance from him, and even if nothing else in Birdman worked, I could watch it just for him. I like how, despite the fact that Iñárritu keeps it ambiguous about Riggan's "powers," Keaton invests completely in Thomsen believing he has telekinesis. Even when he's clearly walking away from a taxi after "flying," he behaves like he soared back to the theatre (this is the part you've almost certainly seen in the trailer). The rest of the cast give what could be argued career high performances as well. Only Naomi Watts isn't given much time to register, but Norton, Risenbourgh, Stone, and Galifianakis are better than I've seen them. Amy Ryan has a small, mostly thankless role as Sylvia, Riggan's ex-wife, but uses her little time onscreen to be anything but the stereotype that part could be. Lindsay Duncan similarly owns what amounts to a cameo as the critic, withering and cynical that she may be.

 There were only a handful of films I saw more than once in 2014: John Wick, Guardians of the Galaxy, Snowpiercer, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I bought Birdman, Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) when it came out last week, and am looking forward to experiencing the film again. And talking to more people about it. If there has to be a favorite, I'm comfortable calling Birdman it. It was a better year for movies than I was expecting, and this one exceeded even that. If 2015 has anything nearly this invigorating, then I look forward to it...

Cap'n Howdy Presents: The 14 Best Films I saw in 2012 (Part Two)

 I believe when we left off, the Cap'n was lamenting that of the first seven "Best Of 2012" movies that I only had existing reviews for two of them (The Avengers and Cosmopolis) whereas the second half of the list includes only one movie I haven't already reviewed. How silly of me not to, you know, split up the writing duties between the two pieces, but as it turns out I have plenty to add about the films that made this list.

 If the theme of Part One was "surprises" - and, looking back it it, it clearly was movies I didn't expect to be blown away by - Part Two is comprised of films that I had a strong inclination I would enjoy, but that surpassed even that. It's also become clear that more than a few of these films are ones that people I know (and whose opinions I often respect) REALLY hate. One in particular looks to be a repeat of one of my top picks from last year, and we'll address that accordingly. To save some time, I'm going to let the links to the original reviews do most of the heavy lifting this time and focus my energy on additional reflections now that I've had some time to digest these films and to study reactions from around cinephilia.

 The difficult bit is figuring out where to start, so maybe I should get the most controversial choice out of the way first:


 Looper - To be honest with you, I was expecting The Master or Cosmopolis to be the movie I had the most disagreements about this year. Even Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained seem to have a healthy debate surrounding them, but I'm continually surprised by the immediate and negative reaction I get for suggesting Looper was one of my favorite movies of 2012. It's akin to my inclusion of Drive in last year's list, when I discovered that many good friends really and truly hate that film, often for the very reasons I enjoyed it.

 I get the impression that people don't like Looper because the time travel logic is nonsensical, or that the resolution of the story leaves audiences feeling like they wasted their time, or that (in the words of an acquaintance of mine) the film felt like someone was shooting "a first draft."

 Needless to say, I don't agree, but this is a much more hotly contested movie than I had any idea after seeing it. Whether you left the film feeling ripped off or wanting to see it again immediately, I guess it's better to feel strongly about it than to feel nothing, but for my money Looper was worth revisiting. I think that Rian Johnson sets up a world with its own rules about time travel, sticks to them and tinkers with themes set up in the film in clever ways. He also leaves a few elements ambiguous (I find it amusing that in his downloadable commentary, Johnson is fascinated by the "Kid Blue is Abe" theory but doesn't say one way or the other). I've given Prometheus grief for intentional ambiguity, but since Looper is a self-contained story that is pretty clearly about closing Joe's "loop," the story elements not specifically addressed don't fall under the "kick the can down the road" sequel-izing that Prometheus and Tron Legacy are guilty of.

 You'll notice that in my original review I posited a theory that can't possibly be right. One commenter suggested another theory, so I checked to see if that held any water.

This is the comment:

 I saw this posted on another blog about Looper and watched the movie again and realized yup this person has got it right: ( I was a bit uncomfortable with the thought of Joe sleeping with his mother but turns out he didn't at all)

"I'm going to throw everyone for a "loop" no pun intended. If anyone paid attention, Young Joe slept with a hooker whom had a daughter named: SARAH. "Sarah" was the girl looking after Cid. Considering the hooker knew what Young Joe did, and that Old Joe went after the hookers daughter(Note long hair of the kid the hooker carrys to the room, it's blonde.) as one of the three targets this leads you to one conclusion. The hookers daughter is the Sarah watching the young Rainmaker. She herself looped back to change him from a young age, remember Cid stated that, "Sarah's a liar, she's not my mother. My mother was killed." and Sarah stated she was trying to raise him properly. Boom, now you know how Sarah know's what Looper's are.

I caught it the first round. If I hadn't heard the hooker state her daughter's name was Sarah, I would of never of caught it." 

 Unfortunately, none of this is true. I literally just finished watching every scene that Piper Perabo's Susie is in the film, and she never once says her daughter's name. The child is also not blonde, but brunette (which helps the argument because Emily Blunt / Sarah's hair has brown roots). Rian Johnson is actually pretty tricky in avoiding Susie's daughter's name, even in the deleted scenes, but when you look at the age matches Old Joe finds, two of them are visible:

 The cagey bit is leaving the bottom one off (and the edit happens right before the bottom picture gets close), but since Cid is one of the possible choices and the other possibility was the boy that Old Joe kills, I think we're meant to believe that Megan Richardson is Susie's daughter (even though the address doesn't match). So that doesn't help my theory or the reposted comment theory, but I guess if you hate Looper for "not making any sense," then this is only going to bolster your case.

 Fair enough. I'm not going to try to argue with you about whether every plot point makes perfect sense or not, or in failing to do so that it means the film is terrible (and I've heard that a lot). I still think that Johnson sets up the universe well, raises the stakes in a compelling way, and tells an interesting story that leaves you asking questions. Are the answers to those questions in Looper? Well, I've seen it several times now, with and without the commentary/ies, and I find there's something new to discover every successive time. For me, that's successful, but I get that for others, the film collapses under its own logic. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.


 Moonrise Kindgom - While I will continue to debate with myself what my favorite Wes Anderson film is, I'm settling down comfortably with saying that Moonrise Kingdom is his best made so far. For a film that's set in the period that Anderson fetishizes unabashedly in all of his other movie (the mid-1960s), Moonrise Kingdom manages not do feel bogged down by its period trappings. I don't mean to diminish Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic, et al, but Moonrise Kingdom's cast of characters feels less like a motley collection of "let's see what these types would be like together" and more like an ensemble that fit together in the story. In particular, I like the way the adults are continually flummoxed about how they're supposed to handle Sam and Suzy's determination to stay together, in particular Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) and Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton). I don't think I mentioned it in the old review, but the scenes with them talking to Sam's foster parents and Social Services (Tilda Swinton) over the phone made me laugh as hard as anything in the film.


 Argo - Ben Affleck made a Zero Dark Thirty that doesn't seem to bother the people bothered by Zero Dark Thirty. Does that make sense? I don't wish to diminish his truly engrossing, exceedingly well made retelling of a declassified true story by implying that because it doesn't address torture that the film is somehow "less than" another movie that retells something more recent. Not at all. Argo is Ben Affleck firing on all cylinders, and while I enjoyed Gone Baby Gone and really enjoyed The Town, that didn't prepare me for how accomplished his third directorial feature is.

 The parallels to Zero Dark Thirty are inevitable - both deal with CIA Operatives who, in real life, tenaciously pursued their goal and succeeded when nobody believed they could. One was made with the cooperation of the individuals involved and the other wasn't (if you don't already know which is which, go check - you might be surprised). Both manage to keep the audience engaged in the narrative, to give them a laugh or two, but to then turn that switch and be genuinely suspenseful even when we know what happened. Zero Dark Thirty is harder to watch, but don't take that to mean I'm suggesting that Argo's palatability (probably not an actual word) means it should regarded with kid gloves. I've seen it twice, and it holds up both times. Hopefully we can get over this "Ben Affleck who stars in crappy movies" stigma and begin to enjoy his second life as a director of high quality films. We know what he can do, and I look forward to seeing him top himself after setting the bar this high.

  The Master - If Cosmopolis is a hard movie to like, then The Master is its mercurial cousin. Paul Thomas Anderson continues to push his films further away from the concept of conventional narrative and towards specific types of character studies, of dichotomies. Since Punch-Drunk Love, he's edged away from the "three act" structure of conventional cinema and instead hones in on two specific archetypes, pits them against each other, and plays out the result in front of us. The films don't so much end as they drift off, and even more so than There Will Be Blood, The Master is less about the lives of Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as it is the specific intersection of their paths for a period of time lasting no longer than two or three years. We learn as much about Freddie as we're ever going to before he meets Lancaster, and what little we know about "the Master" comes from the way that other people react to him.

 I can understand the frustration from audiences (and working at a theatre where The Master was playing, I saw it first hand), but I don't believe the point of the film was to tell a story about these two men - any more than the film is a meditation or expose on Scientology - so much as it was to throw the embodiments of two essentially divergent philosophies together and allow them to coexist for as long as humanly possible. Or perhaps you'd like to think of The Master as the Id and the Ego clashing, as the Super Ego strains to separate them, all the while acknowledging a futility in fighting their codependent addiction. In the end, they both get what they want, and unlike most Hollywood films that turns out not to be each other. Eventually I hope to be able to talk to more people who have seen The Master, as so far it's been a limited sample size.

 Skyfall - It took MGM going bankrupt to settle the Daniel Craig as James Bond run of 007 films. Like another movie on this list, the down time helped, rather than hindered, the end result, because for all of the promise of Casino Royale and all that Quantum of Solace failed to build on, Skyfall at last figured out how to bring Bond full circle. Yes, it borrows a bit liberally from The Dark Knight in its villain's story structure (I'm sorry, but it's hard to watch the interrogation scene and not see Javier Bardem giving his best take on the Joker), but where it stumbles in some places it excels in others. Yes, Silva sometimes resembles a certain Clown Prince of Crime in his philosophy and execution, but his reasoning for it is more sound in the Bond universe, and his maternal fixation to M (Judi Dench) elevates some of the "copycat" mechanics of the plot.

 But besides all of that, Skyfall is a cracking good James Bond film that feels like it's a James Bond film. Gone are many of the Bourne-inspired aspects of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, and in its place are clear action sequences, clever quips, and nods to the earliest of 007 films that serve a purpose beyond just referencing the series. Skyfall ends in a comfortable nook that should have James Bond fans very excited for what's to come, because it's the promise of what we've been looking forward to married to the series that brought us here in the first place. The revelation of who a certain character is caught me completely off-guard because of how well Sam Mendes, John Logan, Robert Wade and Neal Purvis built their arc (I'm being cagey just in case you haven't seen it and want to) in the story. Needless to say that we end Skyfall in a very familiar location with a fitfully intriguing dynamic moving forward.

 It's fair to mention that there isn't a "Bond Girl" in Skyfall, not in the conventional sense or really in any way that you'd define the character type. There are characters that would seem to fit into those roles, but without spoiling too much, neither of them actually where you think they'll be. Instead, Skyfall focuses more on Bond's relationship with M, with Silva's relationship to M, and briefly where Bond himself came from (all the while debunking the long-standing theory that "James Bond" is a code name assigned to 007 agents). On the other hand, I can't gripe too much with a movie that brings back Q and the Ashton Martin and has refreshingly clever things to do with both of them.


  Django Unchained - I don't know that I have a lot more to add to my review of Django Unchained. It is, bar none, the most fun I've had watching a Quentin Tarantino film, and that includes the giddy experience of watching Pulp Fiction when I was far too young and that first audience reaction to Kill Bill Part One. It still makes me chuckle that Tarantino brazenly gets away with using a Jim Croce song and it's totally appropriate for the montage he includes it in. That, even more than the Rick Ross or the James Brown / Tupac Shakur mashup, made me laugh out loud in the theatre. If you want to read something silly, Google Armond White's critique of Tarantino (and more specifically, of Samuel L. Jackson), "Still Not a Brother." It's hilarious in the way that almost everything Armond White writes is, and if you haven't heard of the intentionally contrarian reviewer before, it's as good a place as any to learn what he's all about.

  The Cabin in the Woods - I was watching Serenity the other night, and when I finished it made sense to watch some of the extras again. In particular, I wanted to watch them for the conception of Joss Whedon in 2005, when he was still mostly known as the guy who made Buffy and Angel and Firefly. He had a small legion of devoted fans (of which the Cap'n counts himself, to a degree) that helped turn the cancelled Firefly into Serenity, which didn't set the world on fire (at first, anyway - today it has a solid fan base I run across frequently). Whedon made Dr. Horrible and Dollhouse, and then 2012 happened.

 Now he's the proven box-office commodity / smash hit director slash writer of The Avengers, a movie that really shouldn't have worked and even then shouldn't have worked as well as it does. The world is his oyster, but it's funny to think that because MGM went bankrupt, the Whedon-scripted / Drew Goddard-directed meta-horror film The Cabin in the Woods went from coming out to relative anonymity in 2009 (when it was made) to being a preamble of sorts to the blockbuster to come. And honestly, if I really had to choose between the two, I'd give the edge to The Cabin in the Woods.

 I've mentioned it before, and because horror films are something of a specialty for the Cap'n, I come back to it a lot, but The Cabin in the Woods doesn't necessarily deconstruct or redefine horror films in the way that I think some people believe it does. That fact, counter-intuitively perhaps, actually helps the film more than it hurts it. Scream was a deconstruction of slasher films while also being a slasher film. The Cabin in the Woods slaps the structure of "Scooby Doo" on top of the concept of horror archetypes - trust me, you'll have a hard time finding a horror film that corresponds closely to the "rules" of Cabin, especially The Evil Dead - and then uses that pretext to explore what audiences expect in scary movies.

  The Cabin in the Woods is clever as a meta text not because of how it deconstructs the genre, but in exploring why the genre persists when people firmly believe that it's the bottom of the barrel in "entertainment." Whedon and Goddard throw in a few specific references (a Pinhead stand-in complete with puzzle box) but by and large focus on the broader purpose of horror, and of audiences who don't get what they want. Look at it this way, complaining about the way the movie ends is really making their point.

  Had The Cabin in the Woods been released in 2009 or 2010, I'm not sure how people would have responded to it. That was still in the height or remakes and Saw-mania, and I think that unlike some movies that sit on a shelf for a few years, Cabin benefited from being able to wait until a lull in horror trends. The impact was that much stronger last April, because not knowing what I was in for made all the difference that first time.

 And yes, to be fair, it was following Lockout, the worst movie I saw in 2012, but I've seen The Cabin in the Woods three times since that fateful weekend, and I tell you with confidence that it still delivers the goods and rewards multiple viewings. So, sorry Avengers, but in the battle of Whedon projects, you come in second this year... 



 * I'll include the link down here, although I generally disagree with everything in this review and don't necessarily see the connections he tries to make with other films listed.

Horror Fest VII Day Two: The Cabin in the Woods

 Oh, kiddos! I know! I sure thought that this year, of all years, Halloween III: Season of the Witch was going to make it! But it got bumped... for Moontrap. Yeah, let's just blame Moontrap for it and not my inability to stay up late any more.

 Once upon a time, believe it or not, Horror and Summer Fests were and ALL NIGHT activity. No joke. There was a time, when the Cap'n and friends were younger than they are now, when I could actually watch movies until six or seven in the morning, go to bed, wake up five hours later, and start all over. Seriously, though: I have hazy memories of watching Friday the 13th Part 2 as the sun was coming up during Summer Fest or nudging Neil and Cranpire to wake up as Shark Attack 3: Megalodon reached its absurd crescendo (and if you've seen the movie, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about) at six thirty in the morning. That used to happen.

 But not so much any more. Now we're older than we used to be, and it's much, much harder to keep things going past midnight. Three is usually the threshold, even on a weekend, and when everybody else takes off, it's difficult to talk myself into pushing that extra mile, even for you, dear readers.

 So Cap'n Howdy is a lame-o and you aren't going to get the Halloween III: Season of the Witch write-up you were so desperately hoping for. Or the one for The Silent Scream (featuring The Boogens' Rebecca Balding). If you'd like I can repost my review of The Woman in Black and we can pretend folks stayed awake for it. Because, believe me, if they had, they wouldn't have slept at all that night. Hell, if The Boogens hadn't happened, there's a good chance V/H/S could have ruined some golden slumbers on Friday. But that's what horror movies are supposed to do, dammit! They're supposed to scare the crap out of you and keep you up all night. That and Hobo Bug Juice, but with less vomiting on the former and probably more on the latter.

 There's a reason they don't make Mountain Dew: Game Fuel Orange any more, and I'd like to think it's because someone found out we were mixing it with Wild Irish Rose and putting it in Styrofoam cups for your endurance pleasure. That's surely why nobody makes Sunkists Floats anymore - TripWIR was too much for any one human to handle.

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 Where was I? Oh yes, the closing film of Horror Fest VII - Cap'n Howdy's New Nightmare, which surprisingly didn't feature a single Nightmare on Elm Street film (partly because we watched Part 4 - The Dream Master during Summerfest 4). I am here to add a few thoughts to The Cabin in the Woods, mostly to my initial write-up, which gave Four Reasons to See The Cabin in the Woods (Again), which I did.

 Tonight was actually the fourth time I've seen the film (the fifth if you count watching it with the commentary). I saw it again in theaters, and then on home video and Blu-Ray (clearly the same thing so ask no follow up questions there) and I took advantage of the "pause" button to scour the background for details. And while I still haven't found the Unicorn Tapestry (and I will!), I did see a lot of the other triggers for various monsters (including what I believe would unleash the Dismemberment Goblins, the evil doctors, and possibly the sexy witches that we'll see when The Cabin in the Woods makes its way to Skinemax).

 I guess I forgot to mention this when I did the original write-up of The Cabin in the Woods, but the very first time I saw it there was some grousing online about what the "electrical disruption" was that prevented the cave-in and how it came from "upstairs." It was a plot point people seemed to believe was abandoned or never really explained in favor of getting Marty and Dana into the facility and unleashing the monsters. However, the second time I saw the movie it was abundantly clear what happened, and there was no secretive conspiracy being used to undermine the facility from within.

 So "upstairs" is the cabin and the entire area surrounding it, and since the electrical disturbance happens after Marty disappears, it's pretty clear that the wires he was playing around with that lead him to find the elevator are what prevents the cave-in from happening. There's no reason to resolve that story downstairs because the characters it impacts don't meet Marty until it's too late, so it's entirely up to the audience to put it together. Sneaky...

 I still feel like the film is more a commentary on horror in the abstract than attributable to any single film, and that it models itself more on Scooby Doo character tropes than a particular horror film or series, but that doesn't bother me. Most of the horror theory I read in college and continue to study now begins with broad notions and pulls portions of specific films in as it suits them (for example, the idea that "Final Girls" have gender ambiguous names, which I'm sorry, but how many guys do you know named Laurie, Nancy, or Alice - Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th, the "big three" for Final Girl theory). It's okay that The Cabin in the Woods is more "about" horror in general than it is about a specific set of tropes you see over and over again. Believe me, I spent the whole weekend watching horror movies and The Cabin in the Woods meta-narrative doesn't map onto any of them, even The Mutilator.

 Still, it's a clever idea and it has something to say about audiences and our relationship to the films we watch, which puts it ten to twenty notches above, say, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which talks a lot ABOUT horror tropes but doesn't really have anything to say about them (other than to make up a trope - the "Ahab" - that only exists in the Halloween films).

 Alas, kiddos, it's pushing 2 in the morning, and as much as I'd like to wax the philosophic about this, the Cap'n is no spring chicken anymore. I'm older, and wiser, especially enough to know better than to ever take on the McGangbang Challenge again... that took years off of my life!

Blogorium Review(s): 21 Jump Street and 30 Minutes or Less

 Welcome to a numerically themed pair of reviews at the Blogorium. I actually saw these movies a few weeks ago, but didn't really have enough to say about them individually to put up reviews. Since my Young Adult review / essay / whatever keeps running into the "delete" button, it seemed like I might have better luck giving you good people the lowdown on a couple of comedies that skirted under the radar. For very different reasons, mind you, but under the radar no less.

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 I wasn't going to see 21 Jump Street. There was no reason to: I didn't watch the show, I have a middling disinterest in Channing Tatum, and the premise represented something in the trend of "if they know the name, make it into a movie" that just bores me. I don't even have the energy to get indignant about it any more.

 And then I started seeing the positive reviews; the critics weren't just positive, many of them were glowing about 21 Jump Street. It had to be a joke, I thought - there was no way this movie was in any way as funny or surprising as readers were being led to believe. The fix must finally be in and studios managed to buy off every critic out there. While the concept of "Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes has long since outlived its use as a marketing tool, there's that 85% positive rating sitting next to 21 Jump Street. A movie based on a TV show that people probably just barely remember. I'm in the film's target audience (18-35) and I barely remember the show.

 What I didn't anticipate was that screenwriter Michael Bacall (working with a story credit to co-star Jonah Hill) is as aware as many of us are about this tendency and addresses it directly near the beginning of the film. After Jenko (Tatum) and Schmidt (Hill), two high school antagonists turned police academy pals, ruin an easy bust of drug runners because Jenko can't remember the Miranda rights, Deputy Chief Hardy (Nick Offerman) reassigns them, describing the situation thusly:

 "Fortunately for you two, we're reviving a cancelled undercover police program from the 80s, revamping it for modern times. You see, the guys in charge of this stuff lack creativity and are completely out of ideas, so all they do now is recycle shit from the past and expect us not to notice."

 It is refreshing to admit up front that the premise of your film is a hollow, soulless grab at name recognition, but if that had been the extent of 21 Jump Street's comic sensibility, I couldn't in good conscience recommend it. Just admitting being bereft of originality doesn't automatically give you a pass for still being what you're making fun of.

 Luckily, that's the tip of the iceberg for 21 Jump Street, which makes the most of its stars (one of whom I have to admit never remembered having seen in anything*) and its extended cast, including Ice Cube (as Jump Street's police chief that urges officers to "embrace your stereotypes"), Dave Franco, Chris Parnell, Brie Larson, Ellie Kemper, and Rob Riggle as the Schmidt-hating track coach Mr. Walters.

 Most of 21 Jump Street works because it finds comedy in the way high schools have changed, but also the moronic way that Schmidt and Jenko can't remember their undercover names and end up with the wrong identities. The popular Jenko ends up in AP Chemistry and Schmidt in Drama and on the track team. Again, if it was a one-note joke, things would get old fast, but Tatum and Hill sneak in some actual character development. The drug they're supposed to find ("HFS") comes with its own set of animated "stages" of high (and a montage I swear includes the head explosion from Scanners), and the film also plays an amusing game with action movie tropes. You might want to call it "will it explode."

 Tatum, an actor I really felt nothing about to this point, emerges as the MVP of 21 Jump Street. He goes for broke ridiculing his action lunkhead "type" and the set-up and payoff of the line "Fuck you, science!" still has me chuckling. Jonah Hill also seems to be having fun playing the opposite of his "type" - Schmidt finds himself unexpectedly popular in the new world of eco-friendly, studious, hipster-esque high school, but since I had no expectations whatsoever for Tatum, he knocked it out of the park.

 Quite to my surprise, I laughed and laughed hard during 21 Jump Street, a film that really has no right to be clever or entertaining. So credit to Hill, Bacall, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and the cast for making a movie that acknowledges our diminished expectations, and then proceeds to raise the bar for yuks and belly laughs.

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 And then there's Reuben Fleischer's 30 Minutes or Less, which is all right but feels a little disjointed. I'd say that I was pretty much on board for whatever Fleischer followed Zombieland with, and when it ended up being a movie about a pizza delivery guy (Jesse Eisenberg) being kidnapped by two losers (Danny McBride and Nick Swarsdon) who strap a bomb to him in order to get $100,000. Not sure what to do, he decides to rob a bank with the help of his friend (Aziz Ansari), whose sister (Dilshad Vadsaria) he also happens to be dating, causing additional tension. That much was evident from the trailers, and it looked like it could be fun.

 The movie opens with dual narratives: on one hand, there's Nick (Eisenberg) and Chet (Ansari), two guys heading in different directions with their lives. Chet is beginning to make the transition to adulthood and Nick is still delivering pizzas, renting DVDs and waiting in front of Chet's apartment for him to get home from teaching. Nick didn't exactly tell Chet about how long he's been "involved" with his sister Kate (Vadsaria), and they have a bit of a blow up.

 Meanwhile, there's Dwayne (McBride) and Travis (Swarsdon), two buddies that lounge around in Dwayne's father (Fred Ward), The Major's mansion. The Major hit the lottery after being a life long Marine and he spends the money on giant TVs and monster trucks while constantly belittling his son for having no ambition. Dwayne wants his dad's money so he can open a tanning salon / brothel, and Nick builds explosives. With the help of Juicy (Bianca Kajlich), a stripper who knows hitman Chango (Michael Peña), they scheme to kill The Major. But they can't do it themselves, and Chango wants a hundred grand to do the job.

 The rest, as you may have guessed, leads to the trailer, which is around the 20 minute mark of the film. Everything beforehand is crammed in so we can get to the central premise of the film. And then things just kind of move along for the next hour. Nick and Chet come up with a plan that requires them to find fake guns, steal a car, make a few "bucket list" stops for the pizza slinger, and then eventually rob a bank twenty minutes later. All the while Dwayne and Travis are following them, so we're still basically following two stories that are but aren't really connected with two sets of semi-likable losers.

 In fact, the problem might be that nobody in 30 Minutes or Less is particularly interesting: all four leads are basically the same and have the same desire to be doing anything other than what they're doing. It isn't until late in the film that McBride's Dwayne begins to develop something resembling a dark side, and by that point Peña's killer-for-hire who gets cheated out of his money suddenly has a good reason to want to kill everybody. I didn't mind the shift from slacker goofy to suddenly violent (the movie is based on a true story that puts a bit of a damper on the comedy) but 30 Minutes or Less never coalesces into a unified narrative.

 The film is funny, to be sure, and in fits and spurts is very funny, but when it ended I couldn't help but think "that's it?" It felt like there was something missing from 30 Minutes or Less, something that made everything click together, that just isn't in the movie. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I was a little underwhelmed to be honest with you.


 There you have it: one is a solid recommendation for a movie I never would have thought was worth anybody's time, and the other is a "I'm not really sure" kind of flick. Tomorrow I'll be back with a Retro Review of Mission: Impossible: III which should dovetail nicely into Thursday's Blogorium Review of Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol. If we're lucky, I might even get past all the navel gazing and self introspection and be able to explain why Young Adult is worth seeing.


 * Update: So Channing Tatum is in Havoc and in War of the Worlds. I did not know that.