Movie Review #37

Seven (1995)
Directed by David Fincher
Written by Andrew Kevin Walker

Rating: 7.00/10.00 or *** (out of 4)

***MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW.***

There are two major themes in this movie: hopelessness and growth. Hopelessness is sensed by the atmosphere, that of rotted wood, dark blues, blacks, and browns for sets, rain falling all of the time, and grim crime scenes and even grimmer faces of the detectives determining who the serial killer is. Growth is sensed by the increasing need for the killer to be found, by the increasingly vicious and disturbing crimes committed by the serial killer, and by the increasingly desperate faces of the detectives investigating the murders.

Seven is not for the weak and most certainly not for the optimistic. This is probably why I liked it so much. Only once does Fincher take the dark atmosphere out of the film (The material remains dark, but the setting itself becomes bright and clear.). Seven is mostly gloomy, pessimistic, and ominous throughout. The conclusion itself follows suit. If you want a happy ending to a movie, I suggest looking for something else.

Seven is not your typical thriller/mystery/suspense movie. It has a lot of substance behind the standard fare thriller. The substance is most obvious with two characters in the film: William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and John Doe (Kevin Spacey), the veteran detective and the serial killer, respectively. Freeman delves into his role with his usual subdued, subtle, poignant acting style. He develops the most interesting and the most convincing character of the movie. He makes Brad Pitt, who plays Somerset's young, amateurish partner David Mills, look overzealous, overexaggerated, and outdone. Pitt should have learned from Freeman's style in this film, as Pitt's performance certainly could use some help. Mills, which I gather is supposed to be likable, was anything but. Mills was frequently appearing as arrogant, hot-headed, and stupid. Not necessarily likable qualities. This proves to be quite important for the ending's impact, which was lessened by Pitt's poor acting. (This goes to further prove that if Pitt does not punch somebody in the film, the film and/or Pitt's acting is subpar.)

And Kevin Spacey, my favorite actor current-day, gives a riveting performance as the serial killer. Yes, we actually get a thoughtful, multi-dimensional, mysterious villain rather than the stereotypical thoughtless, evil maniac in most thrillers coming to theaters today. Spacey also uses subtlety and past performances to add to his character. There is one scene (where we as yet are unaware of his identity) where Spacey/the filmmakers no doubt use his role as Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects as an influence (the towering villain with face unseen in pouring rain). Spacey has an eager and yet calmed way of acting. You can see the fun he has with his roles, and this is no exception. Spacey's John Doe is an interesting, disturbing, and fun character to watch.

The plot of the film is simple and yet anything but. A serial killer with identity unknown has the MO of using the seven deadly sins as his motive for murder. After he murders a victim, he writes the deadly sin they committed near the crime scene. The crimes themselves are horrific, including forcing a man to eat himself to death, forcing a victim to cut off a pound of flesh, forcing a woman to "unbeautify" herself, and tying a victim to bed for a year. Each crime scene becomes more disturbing since the method of murder is always unpredictable. The result is a growing sense of urgency, in mood, in plot, in charcter development, and in style. The conclusion is the climax of the seven deadly sins, the "amazing" resolution to the killer's work. Somerset believes the killer is preaching to society and is using poetry and literature to commit each of his killings. While Mills always tries to find the easy way out (the clip notes version of investigating, and in actuality), Somerset studies for hours poets and authors such as Dante and Milton.

A noteworthy aspect of the movie is the use of the serial killer. John Doe is only revealed in the last quarter of the movie. His small, but very vital, role is much more convincing by doing this. And Spacey just makes the character much more thoughtful and mysterious by this interesting technique. The suspense switches then from finding the killer to determining what the killer has in mind. John Doe obviously is preaching to society but has the detectives individually in mind. They are his pawns and become his props for his sermon (As unusual as that sounds, it is true.).

The screenplay is also noteworthy. Freeman and Spacey have good lines to toy with. Take this notable exchange between Mills and Somerset:

William Somerset: I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue.
David Mills: You're no different. You're no better.
William Somerset: I didn't say I was different or better. I'm not. Hell, I sympathize; I sympathize completely. Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work.

There are several intelligent exchanges like this through the film. This one, although maybe somewhat troubling, is far less challenging and disturbing than this exchange between the detectives and John Doe:

David Mills: Wait, I thought all you did was kill innocent people.
John Doe: Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? An obese man... a disgusting man who could barely stand up; a man who if you saw him on the street, you'd point him out to your friends so that they could join you in mocking him; a man, who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn't be able to finish your meal. After him, I picked the lawyer and I know you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that he could muster to keeping murderers and rapists on the streets!
David Mills: Murderers?
John Doe: A woman...
David Mills: Murderers, John, like yourself?
John Doe: [interrupts] A woman... so ugly on the inside she couldn't bear to go on living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer, a drug dealing pederast, actually! And let's not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed... forever.

The screenplay is also written such that John Doe always has the upper hand, a necessity in a film like this. Having the conclusion without this subtle but important feature is essential to its believability. Andrew Kevin Walker should be commended for his excellent work.

Unfortunately, there are several flaws in the film as well. For one, the film tends to drag from time to time. There are obvious interruptions in plot motion for character development that seem forced and somewhat manipulative (Take the exchange between Somerset and Mills's wife Tracy in the diner.). Another obvious weakness is the short screentime Gwyneth Paltrow has as Tracy. Tracy, a very important character, is not given enough dialogue/screentime to make her character more than a mere presence. And the ending...ah, the ending...the ending is good, very good indeed. But the ending also seems too calculated...almost contrived. The build-up is so large, the conclusion itself seems somewhat outlandish. I don't mean that it is unrealistic. The ending is just too simple and too predictable. It just does not fit with the style the movie had beforehand. And why couldn't the scenery be as dark as the material at this point (Note the scene is in a bright, open field.)?

Fortunately, these problems are more than easily surmounted by the quality of filmmaking Seven obviously has. Seven is thought out, intelligent, and for the most part, subtle. The effect is real, and the film's impact lasts far past the final scene. How often can this be said of thrillers playing in today's theaters?

***Editor's note: The rating of 7/10 is NOT done on purpose. Although I find it somewhat amusing.***

Movie Review #36

Interview with the Vampire (1994)
Directed by Neil Jordan
Written by Anne Rice based on her novel

Rating: 2.00/10.00 or * (out of 4)

If anything at all can be compared to Chinese water torture in the film industry, this film would be close. It is slow, tiring, repetitive, and painful. Slow...slow...SLOW. And it just keeps going and going and going and going... Oh, I hate movies like this. Two hours that seem like two days. Two hours I'll never get back.

Let's go through the primary reasons why I think this movie is so awful...

1) The movie's plot has few points of interest, never goes anywhere, and is boring.

Support for argument:
--Brad Pitt plays Louis, a man who was "seduced" by vampire Lestat in 1791 New Orleans. Lestat gives him the option of death or of eternal life sucking the blood of live humans. Louis is stupid and decides to do the latter instead of the former, so we get a ten minute scene of Lestat vampirizing him. Ya-hoo! The scene if full of innuendo (which actually is rather interesting, in a way...Rice often plays on how vampirising parallels sex) in the form of homoeroticism. The vampirizing process is much like the "big date," so to speak when more than just a dinner and movie are planned. Unfortunately, I don't like that the scene of Lestat biting Louis lasts so horribly long. We get the idea.
(Editor's note: Yes, I realize this is of the "old horror" genre, but that doesn't mean that an audience wants to see ten minutes of the same thing IN A ROW.)
Then Louis, through voiceover and flashback while being interviewed by curious boy Malloy, tells how horrible the life of being a vampire is. Ten minutes into the flashback of his vampire life of eating rats and then eventually humans, I pretty much got the idea. Louis hates being a vampire. Wow, living like a vampire would be awful. Just an eternity of sadness, of undesirable human hunger, of night after night of blood and guts to drink/eat, of day after day of staying away from light. Showing that a vampire's life is eternally sad and painful is great, but this does not make a quality movie. Why? Because a movie cannot possibly think of being interesting if it shows the same thing the entire length of the film without adding to the initial premise of the film. What else in the movie is there besides the subtle desire of humans to live like a vampire (Christian Slater's role as interviewer Daniel Malloy has this purpose.), the presentation that a vampire's life is endless, depressing, and disturbing, and well...hmm...that's it...? Oh, there's a lot of biting. A LOT OF BITING. And all I have to say to this is...WEEEOWW!

2) The acting leaves a bit to be desired.
Support for argument:
Tom Cruise plays Lestat. Unfortunately, this was still in his "Top Gun" era of acting, so he had one style of acting at the time, which was suave, "Hey, I'm good looking!", and amateurish at best. He made his character, which I am probably to assume is the "villain" of sorts in the film, uneven and often unconvincing. I wasn't sure how to look at Lestat through the film, and by the end of the film, I didn't care. This is especially important since he was the second most important character in the movie. Brad Pitt plays Louis (the most important character). Pitt does a better job than Cruise, but by the end of the film we are so tired of that slow, melancholy voice that the idea of sleep has already become more convincing than any emotion Pitt is expressing.

3) TOO MUCH MELODRAMA.
Support for argument:
Well, Anne Rice wrote the screenplay for one. Ok, I'll be more serious than this. I think the point where I knew the movie was a joke quality wise was when Kirsten Dunst appeared as the 12-year-old vampire Claudia, the viciously hungry child. Dunst does a respectable job expressing the increasingly old age within a child's body, but the very character itself is just cheesy and manipulative. I guess we're supposed to be fearful of a 12-year-old child who likes to bite into human flesh every night. But when we've already seen others eat and eat and eat...it just loses its edge. So yes, soar that music to dramatic heights. Have a focused frame on the child's face, fierce and eerily sad at the same time. Tragic, to be sure. Yes, and creepy. And what happens to this child vampire in a glorious "climatic" scene just adds to the melodrama. Add to these "dramatic" scenes an utterly slow and calculated pace and you have the perfect formula for melodrama...and so much of it. (Other scenes of this melodramatic calibre are the Paris sequence and the laughable concluding sequence.)

4) The movie is way too long.
Support for argument:
You cannot...CANNOT...have a plot this slow and expect anyone to watch for two hours. It's just not fair to the audience.
Ok, again, I'll try to be serious. Each scene just felt so long. I almost wanted to fast forward through the silence to parts where characters talked, through the scenes where music played to scenes where the music didn't play, where the movie just didn't show us anything to where the movie actually had somewhat of a motion, a sense of forward progress. The movie could have been reduced to an hour length and actually have been quite good. But that is a fifty percent reduction in the length of the film. Yes, that is a lot, but it just seemed so necessary to me.

I have very little good to say about the movie. Thought the costumes were interesting (not necessarily good, but interesting). The best part about the movie was its dark appearance and interesting use of cinematography...gave it a dark and pensive feel. But this almost seemed tiring by the end of the movie too. And good cinematography does not make for a good movie.

Interview with the Vampire is the worst movie I have seen since the dreaded sci-fi flick Battlefield Earth (which I saw in 2001). I admit my biases are playing a part here (They should...after all, movies should be viewed with opinion in mind.), not the least of which is my distaste for vampire/horror/gore films. I'm not sure why I dislike them so much. I guess it is because they seem to come in basically two forms: failed camp and overexaggerated gore/drama. In other words, the Friday the 13ths of the world are just too stupid and unfunny to be campy, and the The Rings and the I Know What You Did Last Summers are too gory, uneven, and/or melodramatic to be quality filmmaking. Even with the few films I like in this genre (The Exorcist, The Shining, Psycho (I can't believe they actually made a color version of this...)), I still have a problem with the overexaggeration. It just seems so forced and so manipulative. The end result is I'm never as scared as I believe the filmmakers want me to be. But Interview with the Vampire is on a whole different level of bad. With this movie, I'm just so bored that NO EMOTION is felt. Just hatred. Hatred that I actually spent two hours of my life watching something as bad as this.

Movie Review #35

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Directed by Charles Crichton
Screenplay by John Cleese
Story by Charles Crichton & John Cleese

Rating: 7.75/10.00 or *** 1/2 (out of 4)

Comedy is so much fun when it's done right. Who needs the physical, bad-taste, gross-out, stupid humor that Adam Sandler and David Spade grace the screens with when we have the eccentric, off-the-wall, slapstick of John Cleese just begging to be heard? After all, the laughs come much more often, and you feel smarter when you laugh because the humor has some intelligence behind it. Yes, I am not a fan of the childish humor of such films as Happy Gilmore and Joe Dirt. I am a fan of thought-provoking satire or slapstick that is as funny as it is difficult to produce.

A Fish Called Wanda is the second funniest film from the 80s (after This Is Spinal Tap) and in my top five favorite comedies of all time. The movie didn't go two minutes without making me laugh at some time. During the times I wasn't laughing, I was leaning forward in anticipation. I was eager to see the next setup and the nearly always successful payoff. For example, one character (Otto) has this obsession with not being called stupid. "Don't ever call me stupid!" Of course he isn't stupid for thinking the London Underground is a political movement or that Aristotle was Belgian or, my personal favorite, that the principle theme behind Buddhism is "every man for himself." The payoff: Title character Wanda rants about his mistaken ideas as described above, Otto tells Wanda to not call her stupid while she's attempting to seduce Archie (I'll get to the plot points shortly.)...yes, while attempting to have intercourse with another man.

A Fish Called Wanda is full of moments like these, and they just get better with time. The humor is silly, unconventional, and somewhat sickening...but these all make the film better. John Cleese is a master of making the funniest things out of the weirdest of things. How is it funny to kill three dogs in one movie? Well, when the murder attempts are not made at the dogs but at a potential witness in a criminal trial, the said attempts are futile, and the result (after the third dog is killed) is collapse and death of the lady in question by heart attack, you may get the picture. Sick, but damn funny.

The film centers around impossibly outrageous characters. They are jewelry store robbers, and they just scored a big hit. Featured in the quartet are group leader Thomason (Tom Georgeson), stuttering Ken Pile (Michael Palin), dumber-than-a-sack-of-hair Otto (Kevin Kline), and sexy and devious Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis). But there is more at hand than jewelry...Wanda and Otto plan to take the jewels all for themselves. So, Wanda and Otto anonymously call the police and notify them of the identity of Thomason, who is soon arrested. But, to the dismay of the American odd couple, Thomason hides the jewels before he is caught. So step two in the plan is for Wanda to seduce Thomason's lawyer Archie (Cleese) so he may give up the whereabouts of the jewelry. And hilarity ensues. ***Editor's note: The "dumber-than-a-sack-of-hair" comment is from a Law & Order episode.***

There is nothing simple about the story, really. There is always some mishap or some impossible circumstance that adds a bit of edge to the humor. How Archie has to "rob" his own house to help Wanda out (Her seductions are working.), how Wanda has to somehow hide while Archie has to explain himself away to his cold wife when she returns unexpectedly to her home one evening, how Otto tries to evoke information out of Ken by eating fish from an aquarium, and how speaking Italian is just too much for Wanda to handle are all benefited from the absurdity and yet necessity of the situations that lead up to them.

The movie has several themes of humor. One theme that is played by each character is obsessive eccentricities. For example, Ken has an enormous love for animals. But in his attempts to quiet a witness to the robbery he was involved in, he ends up killing three dogs (as previously described). Furthermore, Otto eats fish to evoke information out of him. Otto hates being called stupid. Wanda loves Italian, so this leads to unwanted situations of Italian voices distracting her immensely. Archie is a magnet for being in the wrong place at the right time (Stripping in front of acquaintances is one such circumstance.).

Another theme of humor in the movie is parallelism. The best example of this is the parallel sex scene between Otto and Wanda and Archie and his wife. Otto and Wanda are free and operatic while Archie and his wife are cold and distant (In fact, no sex occurs between Archie and his wife...they just go to bed and lie there, wife reading a book.). The scene is masterfully done.

Physical humor also is a common theme, but it is not gross-out whatsoever (unless smashing a dog with a crate is gross to you...trust me, it does not appear gross when watching it). Watch as Otto is smashed (literally) or Otto dangles a fish in his mouth before eating it.

No one is unscathed in this movie. By no one, I mean Americans, British, heterosexuals, homosexuals, stutterers, pet-lovers, men, women, idiots, or nerds. Case in point: Here's some dialogue between Archie and Wanda...

Archie: Your brother [Otto] didn't bring you here this time, did he?
Wanda: No.
Archie: He's no idea?
Wanda: He doesn't have a clue.
Archie: What?
Wanda: He's so dumb...
Archie: Really?
Wanda: ...he thought that the Gettysburg Address was where Lincoln lived.

Or some dialogue between Archie's wife Wendy and Otto...

Otto: Look, you obviously don't know anything about intelligence work, lady. It's an X-K-Red-27 technique.
Wendy: My father was in the Secret Service, Mr. Manfredjinsinjin, and I know perfectly well that you don't keep the general public informed when you are "debriefing KGB defectors in a safe house."

Or the cold, English, stuck-up wife stereotype displayed in Wendy's famous line:

"You can stick this marriage right in your bottom."

Or more dialogue between Archie and Wanda...

Archie: You make me feel free!
Wanda: Free?
Archie: Wanda, do you have any idea what it's like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing, of saying to someone "Are you married?" and hearing "My wife left me this morning," or saying, uh, "Do you have children?" and being told they all burned to death on Wednesday. You see, Wanda, we'll all terrified of embarrassment. That's why we're so... dead. Most of my friends are dead, you know, we have these piles of corpses to dinner. But you're alive, God bless you, and I want to be, I'm so fed up with all this. I want to make love with you, Wanda. I'm a good lover - at least, used to be, back in the early 14th century. Can we go to bed?
Wanda: Yeah!

Insults on idiots, British, women, and stutterers. And these are timid compared to some of the dialogue.

By the end of the film, Wanda and Archie decide to run off together. The final scenes, interestingly enough, are as suspenseful as they are humorous. We want Wanda and Archie to run off together. They're an odd fit and both highly likable. Archie and Wanda run off as Otto chases and Ken finds redemption. The climax is the big payoff and well presented at that.

The movie is not afraid to make fun of anything and everything. And it does it so well. I've always been a fan of John Cleese, but this film brings a whole new level of appreciation I have for him. He brings such wit to the screen. He is classy in being classless. He doesn't have to resort to dumb humor that a five-year-old would find childish. Cleese finds genuine humor out of everything and exploits it so well. His exploitation works because it is so complex and yet so eerily accessible. Cleese adds a touch to things that few others can even find, let alone appreciate and present. A Fish Called Wanda is comedy in the truest sense of the word.

Movie Review #34

The Apartment (1960)
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond

Rating: 7.00/10.00 or *** (out of 4)

The Apartment expresses its mood in the first few minutes of the film. The film opens with dreary black and white on a cold day in December, near Christmas time, on cruel city streets. C.C. Baxter is pacing the sidewalk next to his apartment, waiting for one of his superiors at his job to leave his apartment with his mistress. It is obvious that Baxter is lonely, desperate, and impatient. All he wants is to live in his apartment and just go to bed. But he doesn't have the nerve to go in there and tell his executive to leave. If there is a defining moment in the movie, it is this scene. Baxter just wants to live in his apartment. He just wants to live, actually. He appears to have lost hope at love. He just lives for his job, which is why he lets his superiors borrow his apartment as date settings for their lovers/wives/mistresses in the first place. The executives fling out the words "raise" and "promotion" with the intent of making Baxter give in to letting them use his apartment more.

And Baxter does, but at the same time, he grows more desperate. He is depressed. He has no family to go home to, no one to talk to, and no one to love. All there is is his generic job in the generic large office of desk after desk in row after row. He hopes for his own office, his own place to work. Maybe this is the change he needs.

C.C. Baxter is played by Jack Lemmon, in a markedly different role than his slapstick performance in Some Like It Hot a year before. Lemmon has an uncanny ability to be as subtle as possible in any role he chooses. He could always act more, but he chooses not to. Instead he chooses the more admirable and the more successful way to take on a role. He just lives it. Lemmon's face is the thing to watch in his performance. He says words, but he shows emotion through his face. Baxter's eyes light up whenever he sees Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), whom he eventually dares to ask out. Kubelik agrees, only to stand him up at the last minute. And Baxter just paces another sidewalk waiting futilely for her. Baxter's face is genuine disappointment, not ever overexpressed or overemphasized.

Miss Kubelik has a parallel problem to Baxter. She has been led on by Sheldrake, Baxter's direct superior. Sheldrake, who is married, keeps Kubelik within his grasp by promising for a divorce that everyone knows will never happen. Yet, Kubelik, stuck in a rut of a relationship, cannot turn to anyone else. Kubelik is sad but cannot fathom the idea of turning anywhere else. She hates her relationship, but she hates the thought of being alone even more.

Billy Wilder presents us this very serious story with an amazing combination of realism, cynicism, and farce. Wilder shows us an extended scene where Baxter is on the phone with executive after executive scheduling their next appearance at his apartment. The scene is obviously intended to be humorous, but at the same time it comes with a sort of desperation. Baxter just wants to straighten it out, and for selfish reasons. He just wants to get his own office. But there's more to the story. He eventually does get his own office, but at the company Christmas party he is alone and, more importantly, lonely. He wants something more than work; he wants somebody to enjoy his life with.

Meanwhile, Kubelik aspires to be the wife of the company boss. It's a comfort to her, but she is also lonely. She is being used, just as Baxter is. The parallel is obvious and becomes more convincing as the movie transpires. Perhaps one of the major themes of The Apartment is that a person can be happy if he is alone, but a person can never be happy if he is lonely. Kubelik and Baxter are both alone, but more than that, they are lonely.

The rest of the film I will not reveal. I recommend watching it for what transpires in the last thirty minutes. It's fitting and yet somewhat bittersweet. But it is pointless and counterintuitive for me to reveal the plot points of the rest of the film.

The film is appropriately titled for several reasons. It is the focus of Baxter's sadness, of the climax of the movie, of the reasons Baxter and Kubelik are in the spot they are in their lives, of the loneliness that the single everyman/everywoman feels. There are no Christmas decorations that light up the place in this apartment, only solitude.

I admire this movie for many reasons, most notably the atmosphere the movie presents us. The movie flows just as the characters flow. It senses the desperation they feel; it hints at the adult lives lived by so many. The acting is delicate, poignant, and provocative. The drama is touching. There is never a hint of overexaggeration or sappiness. There is only realism in this film.

But even for this, I still have my issues with the movie. I came into the movie with high expectations, and the film just never produced. It was always true to itself, true to form. But it was never entirely masterful in style or presentation. It did not give me the sense of classic material. The movie just went on, and I watched and maybe even felt...but I just sat there and observed for the most part. The movie is, I guess, nothing special. The film is decent and touching but not innovative or very memorable. The Apartment serves as a reminder of adult life. We live around work, we have an incentive for improvement, we work to have a better life. But, my guess is, to most adults, this is a reminder of something they already know much too well.