The problem with the slow release of these high-profile award films is that by the time they’ve traveled from film fests to critics’ screenings to limited release and finally to local theaters, we already know what to expect. I don’t mean in regards to “spoilers”, the bane of film fanatics and perhaps human existence as a whole, because critics are mostly pretty careful about that. Even in a movie like Zero Dark Thirty,reviewers are careful to dance avoid excessive detail despite the facts of the story having been printed in every newspaper in the country a few years ago. If you don’t already know the story of Seal Team 6 and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, I don’t know why you’re in the theater in the first place.
What I don’t like is how I already know the conversation that surrounds the film before I see a single frame. I knew when I walked in to Les Misérables I would walk out discussing how the film would be shot and how the live singing sounded. I knew when I walked into Django Unchained I’d be discussing the use of the n-word in contemporary cinema. And I knew when I walked into Zero Dark Thirty, I’d have to decide whether or not the movie was “pro-torture” or not.
A half hour into the film, I thought the answer inarguable. The protagonists of the film had submitted a captured terror suspect to brutal torture by a variety of methods. It’s a tough watch made worse by the simple veracity of it, the knowledge that interrogations of this sort really happened, and with our blind-eye blessing. But the subject finally gives up useful information, and it’s a clue in a chain reaction of events that lead to the discovery of bin Laden’s hideout. Torture, the movie indicates, helped keep us safe.
Or does it? The longer the movie went, the less sure I became that Zero Dark Thirty seemed willing to give us easy answers of any kind. It shows the horror of torture, then juxtaposes it with the merciless bloodshed of radicals wielding AK-47s. We see kindness pay off in ways that cruelty didn’t, then the mortal stakes of people who trust too freely.
Even the climactic raid isn’t cut-and-dried heroism, but an unsettling look at what a military strike of a home with women and children inside really looks like. The soldiers are portrayed as daring and capable, but not conquerors drenched in blood victorious. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a war movie that ever felt so truthful.
Still, it’s easy for me to understand why some have found the movie so repugnant. When you’re connected to these events, something that’s narrative peppered with truth looks an awful lot like truth peppered with lies.
I suppose it might be possible to watch the movie and not realize that no person like the film’s subject, Maya, really exists. She is an amalgam of many people, perhaps even no more than a metaphor; a stand-in for America’s ruthless, unquestioning drive to enact revenge on its enemy.
But I don’t know if a viewer’s ignorance about such matters would make the slightest difference. The film’s point is tough to miss, although the people who make loud arguments that torture didn’t ever lead us to Osama bin Laden do in fact manage to miss it by a wide margin.
Which is why Kathryn Bigelow had to write a piece explaining her intentions when making the movie, the sort of strategy usually only necessary when a movie has fumbled in its ability to express those intentions. The fact the strategy is used here speaks more to people's hard-headedness than it does the movie's quality.
Zero Dark Thirty isn’t here to laud the heroes of America’s great victory, it’s here to make us retrace our steps and examine the footprints. The plot of the movie operates as a guided tour and not an endorsement. It exists only so that we remember that all this stuff happened. And we shouldn’t forget it too quickly.
I stumbled upon an article on Twitter today entitled 13 Reasons Why Nice Guys Are The Worst – it was link bait, one of those Buzzfeed links perfectly titled to troll for clicks, and it got mine. I'd seen a handful of anti-"nice guy" posts floating around the web, and I was curious what this was all stemming from.
The article itself couldn’t have been more of a Buzzfeed standard: a collection of web comics, meme art, and GIFs designed to be scrolled down in two or three minutes and instantly forgotten about. This is a website that makes its living off articles like “22 Reasons Katy Perry Is Better Than This Puppy” and “39 People Who Now Believe In Unicorns,” so I wasn’t expecting much. But it stuck with me.
The collected pieces all centered around a certain theme: that “nice guys” have created a false narrative, one in which they show up and are dependable, caring friends, but girls “friend zone” them and go after guys who don’t treat them as well, because they are “too nice.” (boy, lots of quotation marks in that sentence) Women are devalued for their insistence on treating their male friends as just that – friends.
My first instinct was defensive on behalf of my brethren. I don’t think I’ve ever referred to myself by the term (I certainly hope I haven't), but self-identifying as a “nice guy” isn’t the worst thing in the world. As endorsements go, it's awfully pedestrian – just a bland bit of back-patting, really – but it comes from a good place. Someone recognizes the pain caused when women are treated as objects/accessories/nuisances and consciously moves to the other camp. I endorse that.
The problem with it is not the decision but the story that gets invented to go with it. It divides men into two camps: “nice guys” and “jerks” (or “douches,” “bros,” etc. Whatever the kids are calling it these days). Nice guys do all the right things for girls – give 'em support, provide a listening ear, help them with whatever they need, while jerks probably just wear sunglasses indoors all the time and talk disparagingly about their girlfriend’s chest with their friends. You know how jerks are.
Teen movies teach us that the girl eventually rejects the jerk to end up with the nice guy. Other guys are always Matthew Lilliard, and we’re always Breckin Meyer. But that’s not a real world choice, that’s just a fantasy. If things were really that straightforward, girls really would pick the “nice guy” every time, and not just because Breckin Meyer is handsome in an accessible sort of way.
The problem is more insidious. The deeply-held belief that you are the right choice for someone because you've always been willing to listen to her problems creates a world in which relationships are somehow merited by the amount of dedication already put in. That is, your niceness “earned” you dating rights.
The pieces in the article – some explicitly, some unwittingly – all argued that this story is just as sexually aggressive a notion as standard bro-tactics. After a quick exploration of the hundred of “friend zone” memes online, I’m inclined to agree. There’s a sense of entitlement to these posts, a “how dare they?” tone I found discomfiting.
When I clicked back to the article, I was suddenly struck with recognition: these comics aren’t just vocalizations of frustrations – they’re revenge fantasies. They’re attempts to subvert a narrative that has characterized women as villains simply by behaving as normal human beings.
90’s Band Name: At first blush, “LL Cool J” sounds pretty 90’s. But really look at that name with fresh eyes. It actually sounds like a rap nickname from the early 80’s, when people weren’t exactly sure how rap nicknames worked, they just knew they wanted one. “What’s your rap nickname?” “LL Cool J. You?” “Fresh Man Dope-De-Dope.” “Nice.” Since LL’s first album actually dropped in 1985, it’s possible this is a true story, though I won’t know until I finish his 1998 autobiography, I Make My Own Rules. (3/10)
90’s Musical Stylings: A simple beat, shouted raps, and lame, unmelodic choruses? Yet it still somehow manages to sample five different songs within the track, including two Sly & The Family Stone songs, and one of LL Cool J’s own songs? Yup, this is early-90’s hip hop, right here. (6/10)
90’s Cred: This song made the list because multiple people asked me to cover it, even though my memories of the track are pretty vague. Reviewing it here just made it more obvious how unremarkable this song really is – it reached #17 on the Billboard chart, then disappeared. It is, however, clearly a track of its time: it takes numerous shots at Kool Moe Dee, which, as rap battles goes, is definitely a war LL ended up winning long term. (5/10)
Pop Culture: It was featured on a couple different 90’s standards: the soundtrack to Encino Man, an episode of “Kenan & Kel,” but the thing I really want to focus on is its appearance on the soundtrack to the Michael J. Fox action comedy The Hard Way, which also featured the acting debut of one Mr. LL Cool J as the unforgettable “Detective Billy.” Without this song, his work as a tech-savvy naval investigator on “NCIS: Los Angeles” would just be a pipe dream, guys. (5/10)
Music Video: Somehow, even though it’s a different song, I seem to be watching the same music video as last time, guys. Could video cameras in 1990 only shoot in sepia or something?
The video doesn’t seem like a train wreck at first. LL, his face moodily lit by harsh downlight, raps and points energetically into a dangling announcer microphone. Seems like a good place to stage part of your music video, as long as we aren’t here for too terribly long.
It seems we won’t be. LL opens the door to his basement, then poses like Peter Pan on the top of the stairs for a moment.
And they said the man wasn’t hard. After a brief pause, LL descends the steps, sits down, then takes off his shirt, which is an order of events I have never duplicated.
Why does he wait to sit down to take off his shirt? Does he end up walking into things or falling over if he tries to take it off while standing? I’m betting yes.
Now the boxing ring footage is interspersed with quick cuts of LL’s sweaty biceps and abs. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to seem tough, or sexy. Either way, it’s neither.
Now there’s more weightlifting footage. Was this video made by the same guy who made “I Wanna Be Rich”? Several minutes of Googling reveals only that whichever individuals directed these two videos both did a very good job of removing these credits later in life.
LL now tries to do what I’m relatively sure is the first ever attempt at a “bad ass spit take.”
He fails.
Our boy is still in the boxing ring, pacing about, totally ready to face any boxer that his mother indicates is worthy of being defeated. Since no one shows up, he contents himself with punching the air frenetically.
And shouting angrily into the blackness.
I guess LL is starting to feel pretty alone. His hand slides tenderly up his own thigh.
I’m beginning to get worried about where this video is gonna take us.
LL’s look is clearly supposed to be “tough guy boxer,” but the hoodie obscuring his eyes just makes it look like he’s going for “very aggressive monk.” Not great for street cred, I bet.
DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT WATER IS FOR?
This whole thing is starting to feel more and more like I’m making a list of “worst homoerotic videos of all time.” Let me tell you, this video would score better on that list than this one.
The video ends with an appearance by LL’s mom (+2), unless it's an actress playing LL's mom who has no acting talent whatsoever.
And then LL hurling what I’m pretty sure is a boxing glove at the camera lens for no reason.
Once again, this video does not grade out particularly 90’s. Or particularly 80’s. It’s mostly just a snoozer from start to finish, intercut with barbells and glistening abs. It’s the sort of fever dream a sexually confused boxer would get after eight or nine concussions, and I award it a score of only (3/10).
Final Score: For a song with clear 90’s name recognition, it certainly didn’t test out very 90’s. My big takeaway was just that LL Cool J has a lot to learn about hydration. (22/50)
The Offspring – Pretty Fly For A White Guy (1998)
90’s Band Name: I guess? There’s something indefinably 90’s about the band name, which I guess is the pattern of a band name that starts with “the” and then has a vaguely off-putting noun afterwards, i.e. The Flies, The Breeders, The Hives, The Faint, The Suicide Machines, The New Pornographers, etc. It’s certainly deserving of a few points. (5/10)
90’s Musical Stylings: Well, there’s 90’s elements here: the pop-punk elements, electric guitars infused with 90’s distortion, plus the chanted female vocals and that cowbell. If a rock music fan was hearing the song for the first time, he could likely pin it as “1997-2005,” as it’s very indicative of that era. But that just makes it tougher to call it “90’s.” (3/10)
Am I doing the wrong Offspring song? I’m doing the wrong Offspring song. I should be doing “Self Esteem.”
The Offspring – “Self Esteem” (1994)
90’s Band Name: We’ve done this. (5/10)
90’s Musical Stylings: This is more like it. A lot of punk, a little pop, a touch of grunge. Riff-heavy. Tons of raw, yell-along-with-the-radio singability. When in public, I try and avoid joining in on “and I wonder why She! Sleeps! With! My! Friends!” and then vigorously air-drumming, but it can’t be done. (7/10)
90’s Cred: The Offspring are clearly a 90’s band: the had two top-10 rock singles in 1994, three more in 1998, and no other singles of note. “Self Esteem” was a number one single from Smash, an album that sold a record 16 million copiesfrom an independent label (+5).That record is not going to be broken any time soon. “Self Esteem” was a worldwide smash, going number one in Sweden, Latvia, and Norway. Would not have called that before starting this. (8/10)
Pop Culture: Tons and tons of MTV airplay, but no appearances on any soundtracks or TV shows. (2/10)
Music Video: Oh, 90’s from the outset! I’m so glad that we switched. The opening shot is x-ray footage of a skeleton singing along to the opening lyrics, and it only gets more 90’s from there.
Watching the video, I’m immediately struck by not just how 90’s it is, but by how 1994 it is. The band is all wearing punk t-shirts with cut-offs (+1), with long hair or thin cornrows (+1) spilling out from under non-fitted baseball caps turned backwards (+1). Sometimes they’re wearing other outfits, but when they are, they’ve just changed into other punk t-shirts and cut-offs.
There’s clearly no “concept” to the video. The band is in a big room with a curtain on one side of it. Someone turned on a fog machine and a couple of black lights (+1), and they started jumping around. “We’ll cut it really fast,” the director told them. Forty-five minutes later, the video was done.
The video also includes this fellow, who I’m pretty sure is a Hanson brother. Not Taylor, one of the other ones. Len? Len Hanson? Something like that. (+2)
His footage is intercut with teens skateboarding on a lawn and… huffing oxygen, I think? Maybe they’re actually sick and need the oxygen. It’s hard to tell. “Story” is not a big element in this director’s video work. “Cross-dissolving” is more his game (+1):
Ye gads. Don’t worry; Len Hanson is here to investigate.
Later, the kids throw eggs at the camera (+1), and stock footage (+1) of Evel Knievel taking off in a rocket is shown. Also, this happens.
I didn’t understand any of that. (9/10)
Final Score: The Offspring are a much more 90’s band than I anticipated – huge success that ended as the millennium did, plus a sound and a look that fits perfectly into one’s recollection of 90’s music. If they were featured on more movies and TV shows, they’d be a real force to be reckoned with in this competition. As it is, a strong - but not remarkable - (31/50).
This movie won this award going away. Believe you me, this was not close.
I had meant to go see Les Misérables on the day it came out, but it turns out I, shall I say, grossly underestimated the fervor with which this movie would be received. I arrived at at mid-afternoon on Christmas Day to find over a thousand people celebrating their holiday by standing in a shivering line on the sidewalk outside the theater. I decided to make other plans.
When I eventually did see the movie a few days later, it was with my friend Brady*, who had already seen it but wanted to watch it with me because it was, and I quote, “the best movie he’d ever seen.”
*The name may be familiar to anyone who follows me on Twitter.
You will not be surprised from the title of this post to discover that I did not agree with that assessment. At the end of the movie, though, I was reluctant to admit my true feelings to Brady, who had stayed in the theater to sing along with the end credits – undeterred by the fact that the end credits didn’t actually have any lyrics. This was a man who loved this movie unconditionally.
If you, like Brady, are a true believer, I can do nothing for you. You can stop reading right now, if you even made it this far, since I don’t think we will have much to talk about
I know that even true believers are willing to quibble about some of the flaws within the movie – even the film’s biggest supporters have problems with the film’s constant insistence on close-ups, and with the miscasting of Russell Crowe.* But I doubt that outside of that, we will find much in the way common ground. Because I thought the film, though not without its high points, was a butchered by directorial mistakes on the macro level. I thought the entire effort was wholly misguided. I thought the film failed.
*As a longtime Crowe fan, I was pretty stunned at how much his film presence proved dependent on his ability to gravely intone his lines in a low monotone, something he never got a chance to do here.
Les Mis, as you probably already know, is a “sung-through” musical, a work in which almost every line is conveyed through song. America has produced a handful of these works (outside of Les Mis, the list includes only a few shows you’d recognize: Cats, Evita,Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and maybe one or two more), though few have found their way to film. Les Mis is a good example of why.
This is a good time to warn you that this post is going to delve immediately into a discussion of (or diatribe on) cinematography, directorial choices, and “film language.” I could promise to do my best to neither insult your intelligence nor become too obscure, but I don’t think you need to worry. The overwhelming theme here is “frustration and dismay.” You’ll follow along.
Les Misérables, as a musical, is very effective at what it does on the stage because it conveys what’s happening in each of its scenes plainly and immediately. A show like Phantom of the Opera requires masks and mirrors and boats and hundreds of candles and a descending chandelier to really sell its story, while Les Mis requires only a pile of old chairs, some grubby makeup, and a little imagination. The characters tell you where they are, what they want, even the backstory of their characters.
Film, as a medium, doesn’t require that much description – in fact, it abhors it. The schlockiest and most ham-handed movies are the ones where the characters describe their motivations on screen. It’s a mantra repeated a million times a day in film classes everywhere: “show, don’t tell.”
When you transport a stage show to the screen, you have to acknowledge that medium’s strengths and weaknesses. The film’s director, Tom Hooper, is enamored with one of those strengths – the ability to show the actor’s performance is close-up – and completely oblivious to all other details. The film is shot on dozens of what seem like ornate and interesting sets (there is a truly magnificent set at the tail end of the film we get only a glimpse of), but Hooper eschews action and conversation for the chance to let us get his camera up close and stare unblinkingly into the actors’ faces. Each time a character sings a song – which, if you weren’t paying attention two paragraphs back, is literally all the time – the film stops, and sits and waits and watches as the actor warbles and gasps and emotes and feels things until the song draws to a close. Only then are we allowed to continue on with the story.
I am not knocking this as an occasional convention – Anne Hathaway has won lots of well-deserved attention for her choking, breathlessly sad version of “I Dreamed A Dream,” sung just a few moments after Fantine has sold her body to a passing soldier, in a coffin, in the belly an abandoned warship. She is in what could charitably be called dire straits, and we stop and mourn with her at how life has turned out so differently from what she expected. It is an unquestionably powerful moment, but it’s undercut by the fact that just a few minutes before, we’d paused to watch another character sit and sing us his thoughts, as Jean Valjean sang alone in a church about deciding to become an honest man.
As the movie continues, we pause, and pause again, each time a character is in distress. Javert stands on a balcony and debates his dedication to his task. Cosette curls up on her bed questions her life story. Marius sits alone, sad that all his friends are dead (uh, spoiler alert). The movie’s plot is like a car that keeps stalling jerkily to a halt.
On stage, each of these songs is a big emotional moment that allows the audience into the story, because how else would we know what the character thinks other than what they tell us? How would we sense the emotion other than in the timbre of their voices? You’re playing to the cheap seats, kid. Make us feel it.
But on film, there’s a succinctness of language that isn’t evident here. Emotions should be conveyed with just a glistening eye, decisions explained with the smallest of looks. But here, we watch Eponine tell us what the pavement looks like in the moonlight. Girl, we can see the damn pavement. Stop walking around in circles and go do something.
The entire first chunk of the film could have been covered in only a few minutes time, springing Jean Valjean from slave to peasant to mayor in the blink of an eye. But instead we watch Valjean pace endlessly at the church altar, debating what the course of his life would be. Movies aren’t for debating, Jean. They’re for doing. The French Revolution is happening any second, and you’re still sitting here.
Speaking of that revolution: perhaps it’s blasphemy to suggest this, but... is it fair to note that parts of Les Mis aren’t actually all that good? The show has half-a-dozen showstoppers and another few solid numbers (more than enough to make a great stage show), but most of the recitative stuff in the middle abandons melody and rhythm for simplicity of exposition. It’s weak on the stage, but it’s murder here.
What’s more, in its effort to hack Victor Hugo’s 1,500-page novel down to size, most of the nuance is lost. It’s impossible to tell what revolution these characters are fighting, since there are no causes here, just passions. We watch dozens of characters die, but for what? The only thing the movie really seems in favor of is not pre-judging people just because they stole bread. And if you do, you should probably go ahead and kill yourself (hey, more spoilers!).
Too say nothing of the fact that Tom Hooper just doesn’t seem to know what to do with the camera. I’ve seen a fair bit of Hooper’s work at this point, and while he’s a magician with actors, he has the tendency to conflate ‘unconventional’ with ‘daring.’ He shoots every shot with an wide-angle lens, come hell or high water. If he finds a shot boring, he makes it so the actor’s head is facing towards the wrong part of the frame, or tilts the camera to the side. Tom, if it’s a boring shot one way, it’s a boring shot sideways. Find a better shot.
I find myself physically frustrated, wanting to physically tear the camera away and reframe the shots myself. It would be one thing if these shots were telling us something – they are unbalanced because the character feels unbalanced, they trap the character in awkward framings because the character feels trapped.
In Gus Van Sant’s Milk, every time Harvey Milk interacts with his future killer, Dan White, the shots are framed with the characters stuck to the very bottom, highlighting the sense of uncertainty White feels every time he interacts with Milk. Even if you aren’t keyed in to what’s happening, you sense even in their blandest conversation that something deeper is happening here. The framing tells you something.
Here’s a random assortment of still frames from some of Hooper’s films, and they tell me only that Hooper’s trying to distract from what he thinks is a dull scene.
Look, I’m not the LesMisophile* that many are, but I’m enough a fan that I wanted to see someone do justice to its material. I wanted the drama and emotion of the story to be told with the immediacy and awe of large-scale filmmaking, but all I got was a stage show that got dressed up and pretended to be film.
*patent pending, yo.
Also, Ross asked me to make sure I made a “I went to see Les Misérables, and I wish that it had made me less miserable!” joke, so there you go. I don’t think it translates so well to the page, because you can’t see me do my saucy finger-waggle.
The idea of this movie is so straightforward it’s distinctly expressed in its four-word title. A couple (Jason Segel and Emily Blunt) falls in love and gets engaged, but before they can tie the knot, life gets in the way. You’ve seen conceits like this before. Hundreds of times, probably.
The problem is that the way the movie deals with their engagement undercuts the premise of the movie. A “five-year engagement” implies waiting, and I don’t mean in just a prudish sense – it denotes unfulfilled commitment. But how much more committed could these two people be? Segel and Blunt’s characters already live together at the start of the movie, and when Blunt gets a promising internship in Michigan, Segel quits his job as an up-and-coming San Francisco chef and moves with her. They get a house and settle in, delaying their wedding until after the end of the internship; which naturally keeps stretching out longer and longer, putting constant strain on their relationship.
But the wedding, of course, doesn’t mean anything. The movie pretends that its central premise has some importance when in fact it has almost none. The couple is married in all but name, and what we’re watching is not a long-unrequited love story, but a struggling young marriage. Their wedding, as an event, is just a symbol. Even if it happened midway through the movie, these people’s lives would be exactly the same.
I liked the movie just fine as a dark, somewhat wandering romantic comedy, but it’s a film caught between two ideas – one a bright, happy will-they-or-won’t-they love story, the other a dark, Blue Valentine/Revolutionary Road story of dying dreams and quiet unhappiness. The movie is too serious to have too much fun but too scared to go dark. Defter hands might have made the balancing act go a little smoother, but instead it’s a comedy that doesn’t know if it wants to be fantasy or reality. It ends up being neither.
The problem with the slow release of these high-profile award films is that by the time they’ve traveled from film fests to critics’ screenings to limited release and finally to local theaters, we already know what to expect. I don’t mean in regards to “spoilers”, the bane of film fanatics and perhaps human existence as a whole, because critics are mostly pretty careful about that. Even in a movie like Zero Dark Thirty, reviewers are careful to dance avoid excessive detail despite the facts of the story having been printed in every newspaper in the country a few years ago. If you don’t already know the story of Seal Team 6 and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, I don’t know why you’re in the theater in the first place. 
Even the climactic raid isn’t cut-and-dried heroism, but an unsettling look at what a military strike of a home with women and children inside really looks like. The soldiers are portrayed as daring and capable, but not conquerors drenched in blood victorious. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a war movie that ever felt so truthful.
