x-men first class: seriously.

x-men first class: movie starring mr. rochester as magneto, the dude from wanted as professor x, kevin bacon, and many others...

why did i delay so long in writing this review?  i saw this movie, twice, like two weeks ago (or maybe it was one week), and i thought it was awesome, so why the delay?  i think it's because there are a lot of things that i thought it did unusually well, and they're kind of complicated to talk about...and i am lazy.  note the entire lack of capitalization in its proper grammatical place anywhere on this blog.

so let's start with the simple stuff.

1. magneto's little soundtrack motif: awesome.  it's an awesomely james bond-esque sound (that rubber band snapping bass sound) without being at all corny.

2. magneto period: awesome.  i knew michael fassbender could do something great if given half a chance.  in x-men first class, he's given that chance, and he takes the heck out of it.

3. kevin bacon speaking russian: not 1000% convincing, but totally awesome.

4. the art on the walls of kevin bacon's blimp: i don't know enough about modern art, but it looked like faux thiebauds or something.  anyway, AMAZING.*

5. BEST USE OF NAZI COIN EVER.

6. young mystique: beautiful, complicated, funny, intelligent performance by jennifer lawrence.

stuff about the movie that was complicated and good:

sexism.  one of the things i loved about this movie was that it depicted without condoning sexism.  professor x's line that he uses on every girl, the way the cia treats its lady operative (threatening her with the typing pool), the way shaw uses emma frost as a glorified ice machine, the way magneto, even, in treating mystique as close to a person, both highlights the sexist conditions she endures and the way she sees herself as enduring them... this is all good stuff, people.  and--and, the way the woman characters don't quite rebel against the treatment.  they take it.  they don't fight it.  the way that the american agent lady deals with it is by ignoring it, focusing her energies away from it, and not begrudging professor x his assumption of her support.  mystique has a complex relationship with being a woman, because she's got a lot more to deal with than just having boobs--her self-esteem is overly wrapped up in a lot of different factors--and hence magneto's call for her to regard herself as lovely in her natural state seems to have something to do with her femininity as well as her mutantinity...  anyway, it was just interesting.

hetero-ism: i have a friend who objects to what he thinks of as closeted attractions between characters who might as well be gay (i may not be doing you justice, brian).  in the case of x-men: first class, i liked the absence of...like, considerations-of-gayness, because i think it made room for the magneto/prof x relationship that there wouldn't have been if the movie were set at a later date.  much as i love a lot of judd apatow's stuff, the question of just how gay the bromances he depicts are is an overriding one ("you know how i know you're gay?  you are eagerly awaiting the response to this question").  they're stories of men trying to love each other in a world in which men loving each other is gay.  they're about more than that, too, but that question--how do we know how gay we are--is a real concern (i'm talking all lit theory right now--i apologize).  but in the world of x-men first class, that question isn't exactly a concern.  gay isn't something that you might be--you either are it, or you aren't.  and so magneto and prof x aren't gay for each other.  they're in love with each other, but they aren't gay for each other.  and that gives their relationship a lot of freedom, and that freedom is explored really thoroughly and honestly by the film.  professor x comes off as a bit of a leightweight who has never suffered for his ideals; magneto comes off as a freaking badass (and much more convincing speaker of german than kevin bacon, much as i laud mr. bacon's attempt).  but magneto's slightly pathetic eagerness to accept professor x's friendship shows how much he needs help, companionship--their relationship may be flawed and in the end unsustainable, but it's based on a really sympathetic platform.

and there totally may be gay characters in x-men: first class.  it's just that gayness isn't part of the landscape yet, so they don't depict it.  mystique could yet become bi; she's just at the beginning of figuring out her own identity.

that's what it is: they all are able to discover as much about themselves as the cultural landscape of the world of the movie will allow.  when homosexuality becomes a part of the discussion, they will probably be able to develop along with the questions it asks.  because those questions haven't been asked yet, they haven't been answered, and prof x and magneto can this healing and growing connection thing and it's cool and stuff.

in short, x-men first class is totally first class in my opinion**.  and it's so much fun to watch, that's the other thing.  really really fun.  of course at this point literally everyone in the world has seen it.  i just hope you all agree with me. 


*i wonder how one would check up on this.  google "art on walls of sebastian shaw submarine?"  i tried it, and didn't come up with much.  oh well, at least i've given my all.

**i had one objection: guess which named character dies first?  yes, by pointing it out in my completely insignificant movie blog, racism in america will someday be wiped out entirely!  you're welcome, dr. king.  you're welcome, sun-ra (space is no longer the only place!).  you're welcome, america.

bridesmaids: what has a cornfield done for kristen wiig lately?

*review contains spoilers.  SPOILERS people.*

bridesmaids: film starring kristen wiig, maya rudolph, melissa mccarthy, rose byrne, wendi mclendon-covey, ellie kemper, jon hamm, chris o'dowd, and some others

due to the ambiguity of the title of this blog, i want to clarify right off that i liked this film very much.  i thought the premise was funusual (combination of "fun" and "unusual"--you're welcome!), the acting was incredible, and the writing was often very funny.

melissa mccarthy!!!  in a daringly makeup-free performance, melissa mccarthy was freakishly dead-on comedic.  she got the broad stuff just right (speech to the air marshall was incredible), the weird stuff just right (more of a six dog than a nine dog person--amazing), and the sensitive characterization stuff just right (whole pep talk to kristen wiig character done very, very right, i thought.  i mean, she was that character exactly while she was doing it, so it made me really respect the woman she was playing, and not in a grudging way [it would have been grudging if melissa mccarthy hadn't been so fabulous; i would have (being the paranoiac asshole that i can be) been like, "meh, this movie wants me to respect this character now so i guess i will because i have no reason not to, but i don't want to because this is kind of coming out of nowhere," but melissa mccarthy didn't make it come out of nowhere, she made it an integrated part of who the character was, and that toughness-through-vulnerability thing was quite awesome]).  it was like melissa mccarthy asked the question, "how does this woman survive--nay, celebrate--being who she is?", found the answer, and went with it full-bore.

it's pretty super-easy to steal the show when you're playing melissa mccarthy's character, and i thought she did, so i'm not going to ramble about anyone else quite so much, but i really thought everyone was super-good.  wendi mclendon-covey took her three jokes about the grossness of her marriage and really sold them; same to ellie kemper (some way in which she described wendi as like a disney princess and smelled good or something--very funny); i think rose byrne played her petulant, paranoid, managing, spoiled and vulnerable hot girl role very well, hitting all of that stuff at one point or another so that we did end up feeling sorry for her and liking her.  i also really thought maya rudolph was pretty fantastic insofar as she didn't let her character get any less sweet despite her increasing gentrification.

a lot of what i'm talking about is attributable to the writing--i think, anyway, not knowing ANYTHING ABOUT FILMMAKING.  i mean, like, rose byrne character could have been a managing maneater, but she wasn't; maya rudolph character could have gotten entirely and enthusiastically lost in the wedding stuff, but she didn't (that is, she got lost in it, but it wasn't for stupid superficial reasons like some films like to offer us--rose byrne character didn't have a stronger personality than maya rudolph character, for instance, and maya rudolph character was hardly a social climber or anything like that; her getting lost in the wedding stuff seemed eminently reasonable, is what i'm trying to say).

which is why when the film occasionally veered into algorithm-driven rom-com territory, it was kind of disappointing.  i love the IT crowd, and i think chris o'dowd is a hilarious and pretty sensitive actor, but all the algorithmic rom-coming happened on his time, so he gets evaluated accordingly.  okay, so let's break down exactly what leads up to his reconciliation with kristen wiig character: 1., they sleep together (oh, spoilers--why do i always forget to warn about spoilers?  i'll do it now).  2., he asks her to bake with him and she refuses.  3., this pisses him off extensively.  4., she bakes him something he ignores.  5., he eats racoon food and then kisses her with that mouth.  now, i'm not getting all the subtleties down here exactly, but the point is that chris o'dowd character, even taking into consideration the fact that he likes kristen wiig character a lot and that therefore her hurting him is extra-important and deserves a more sulky rom-com-esque punishment than it otherwise would, is either underwritten at this point, or is being sucked into rom-com algorithmia.  she's already told him she doesn't want to bake, so he is actively ignoring her expressed thingee in getting the baking ingredients.  of course she ought to bake, of course it's what's good for her, and he can go ahead and purchase the materials if he wants, he can push her, but if she refuses, it's kind of not her fault that she's not ready, and it's not realistic that he wouldn't acknowledge that without a more pressing reason than what we're given (that he really likes her and is a sensitive guy).

in most romantic comedy situations, the whole "it's not realistic" argument is...what's the phrase i'm looking for...completely irrelevant?  sure, i'll go with that.  but bridesmaids is good.  sure, it has a little too much of kristen wiig falling apart in front of a cornfield, but she does it so well.  her refusal to take care of herself is interesting and relevant and uplifting in a weird way and, like, doesn't gloss over failure stuff, really reflects what it's like to lose everything and have to self-destruct over it (aside from the super-cute outfits--when i get depressed i never bother to dress nice [though i know everyone is different, it would have been nice if she'd owned some sweatpants, but this is a very fine point]).  and chris o'dowd's character is well-written and well-played too, as honest and gruffly charming dude.  so why does a super-generic plotline have to swoop in and steal the sensitive sanity right out of the movie?

maybe it's because we don't know how to settle romantic conflicts in movies--maybe bridesmaids is trying to assure us it's more 40-year-old virgin than juno (though they're both awesome, and wildly popular, movies, and i don't see why a movie would want to be one more than the other).  but i really don't have the answers.

final analysis: see movie!  (keeping it simple.)  for yea verily it is most enjoyable.

the dolph lundgren the punisher: no, thank you, america

the punisher: '80's version starring dolph lundgren

i have been waiting to see this movie for a long long time.  the tom jane the punisher is one of my favorite movies ever--can't exactly explain why (something about its extreeem baroque aesthetic), but i love that movie.  and so naturally seeing one version of the punisher that makes one feel all fuzzy and violent inside makes one wish to see all versions of the punisher, and hopefully thereby achieve more fuzzy, violent feelings.  the ray stevenson version was, as far as i remember, okay--i mean, it was awesome*, but was it anything more than awesome**?  i don't know.  i think i was drunk.  i'll have to give it another shot.

the dolph lundgren version was...yeah.  it had all the elements.  the twisted moral platform, the racism against japan...the eyelid surgery by which dolph lundgren was made to look perpetually on psychotropics...  no, i really enjoyed it.  not as much as the tom jane version, but it was up there.  here's the thing: it was totally racist, but it was more than that too.  i mean, you can't just sell the mobsters' kids into white slavery, yakuza!  that is uncalled for!  BUT the pre-o-ren ishii female yakuza lesbian (?) boss (which just proves that quentin tarantino is a filter for everything that is cool) and her adopted mute (america's own deadly little miho) of a sidekick (who has next to nothing to do but is awesome nonetheless) in their ratted bangs and pleather are, like, really worth seeing.  in the same manner that the tom jane version is baroque in its execution--that is, filled with ornate, replete details, crafted in ways that do not augment but rather become the point (which details are, in some ways, the essence of action movies, but most action movies aren't up-front about this, and most action movies don't spend enough time to make the details that they're really actually about as complete as they need to be), so that this "outside stuff" actually sucks right back to the center of the movie and the whole thing turns into some kind of tone-poem with a beating singularity at its heart (i really like the tom jane the punisher)--the dolph lundgren version has an almost rococo approach to violence and human suffering. 

as opposed to sin city, which is much more italian rennaissance in its aesthetic.  or to kill bill, which is definitely an el greco.  WHAT?

what's the conclusion we draw here?  that all punisher movies are NEAT.  and that they should really re-release the dolph lundgren version on something other than videocassette.

and that die hard is attributed to peter bruegel but was probably actually a copy painted in the 1560's.  here is a poem about it:

Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spotWhere the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.


...and here is another (dub-cee williams, the filter for everything that is cool):

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was plowing
his field
the whole pageantry 

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning


the above is an example of the moveable foot.  the dolph lundgren the punisher, on the other hand, was an example of the kicking-ass foot.

*like hotdogs
**like, for example, a billion hotdogs

check-up time

here's the thing: i began this blog as a way (in part) to find out what reviewers are thinking, how reviewers do what they do.  i think i've learned a lot from it (not just about reviewers, but about aesthetics and the process of judgment), and i'm not going to stop doing it, but i have to step back and ask myself,

"is this honestly okay?"

now, i'm up-front about the fact that i'm not a trained moviemaker (am i up-front about it?  i think i am--must go check--yes, i appear to be up-front about it [check the sidebar if you don't believe me]).  a performer myself, i tend to be generous with actors and downright rude to producers.  i profess to hate the hollywood machine (see entries about government-generated algorithms being used for writing evil scripts), and i draw a distinction between reviewing a multi-billion dollar industry and the kind of reviews that make me pretty mad--that is, the completely unsympathetic slams that get delivered to certain local performance companies who are trying to get by with about five dollars and a dream.

but how real is this distinction?  should i be more sympathetic to...

wait a second.  no.  i am sympathetic.  to a certain extent.  i appreciate the struggles that people who are trying to express something go through--often...  i don't appreciate it when there are no struggles and nothing gets expressed (except sometimes, in the case of dance movies, i really really do appreciate it).

or maybe i'm not sympathetic.  i slaughtered the imaginarium of dr. parnassus--in my defense, i thought the movie sucked, but it still wasn't nice of me. i mean, is the epistolarium of clive and his cellist really a legitimate example of the hollywood machine being hollywoody and machinistic?  i can profess to say, but i don't really know.  i just didn't like it, and thought it looked high-budget.

the end diagnosis is that i have no idea if what i'm doing on this blog is right, or morally reprehensible.  considering that i've probably gotten about six views TOTAL, this probably shouldn't matter too much to me.  on the other hand, considering the fact that i occasionally scour google for my name, and end up hurt when reviews are anything but absolutely stellar...maybe i should be worried about the people i'm slamming.

okay, people i'm slamming (michael bay springs to mind, as does james cameron): if by some chance in hell i've hurt your feelings, i am truly sorry.  i will probably not stop hurting your feelings, but as much as i like to pretend otherwise, i can't truly see into anyone's aesthetic soul, and therefore all that my whining about your movies really boils down to is "i don't like (many of) them."  and what do i know?  nothing.  nothing period.  and we all know what comes from nothing (hint: it's nothing.  "nothing from nothing" is one of the best philoso-math-related relationship songs ever, in my opinion).

what have we all learned?  sra admits to, a., being kind of a jerk, and b., thinking that she knows stuff but not actually knowing stuff.  oh, and that billy preston plus parmenides equals awesome math funk.