Reappraisal Corner: Ang Lee's Hulk

A strange thing happened to me this last July while watching Captain America in the theater. Now, for the record, as much as I love dour, arty pieces of misanthropic pretension, I also can appreciate the ecstatic high achieved while sniffing the fleeting fumes of a throwaway Hollywood Blockbuster. I look forward to the summer movie season and try to see as many of these glittering baubles on the best possible digital screens with the most eardrum damaging sound systems available. I can grin like a contented idiot while the earth burns as well as the next American, but after the earnest, workmanlike origin of Steve Rogers was taken care of, I found myself beginning to become irritated and impatient.

What followed from the midway point was nothing more than a bunch of formless action montages with no discernible purpose other than to get our hero frozen in ice, effectively setting up next summers The Avengers. Marvel has done a hell of a job establishing their palatable universe of dashing cads and genetically deformed do gooders, but after, what is it now? 346 films in the last 4 years? I finally realized that my brain was shrivelling up inside my skull and retreating back down my neo-cortex in an effort to permanently lodge itself in my rectum. All these wannabe blockbusters and force fed franchises amount to so much shiny dross that is exactly good enough and definitively no better. All that star power and opening weekend calculation castrating our inability to critically assess how unnecessary it is for these stories to be told. Walking out of the theater after the obligatory Marvel post credit sequence that concluded Captain America, I felt drained of all interest or enthusiasm for superhero flicks specifically, but on a larger scale, for the summer movie season in its entirety and all that entails.

Back in June of 2003, America's Hulk fever was positively boiling over. Well, that's how I remember it in any case. Our nations collective movie malady cooled off quickly upon its release as most were bewildered and bored by Ang Lee's atypical approach to the burgeoning genre. His psychological art house take on the subject matter went over like the proverbial fart in church as even a cinema snob as open minded as myself couldn't wait for it to be over so I could rip it apart on the car ride home. But, like all interesting films, something about it stuck in the back of my mind and it begged to be revisited, an impulse I kept at bay until recently acquiring the bargain price bluray.

While far from a misunderstood classic and chock full of narrative flaws, there is considerable merit to be found in its obtuse insistence on being taken more seriously than some silly superhero movie. First, the Hulk isn't really a superhero, certainly not in this film at least. He's treated as the personification of bottled up, unchecked emotion resulting in the amplification of explosive rage. A post traumatic stress disorder case throwing a gargantuan tantrum that not only can't be controlled, but will horrifically escalate if you have the temerity to attempt to. While I can understand the thematic appeal a man with such a bifurcated emotional life would hold to a film maker as delicate as Ang Lee, it doesn't necessarily guarantee a compelling film story. The problem lies in the presentation and the format. On a comic page, you can visually accept a 6 foot man violently transforming into a 15 foot green behemoth. There is a consistency to the image. It's a drawing, none of it is real, therefore, in its own universe, it is all real. When Eric Bana becomes the Hulk in the film, it is painfully evident it's a special effect. Subsequently, we cease to believe a man and his complex oedipal issues are lurking inside this pixilated creation bounding from one side of the screen to the other.

Also... Note to Hollywood: Nobody cares about the Betty love story in a Hulk movie. The Hulk is more than enough visually and thematically for an audience to deal with. There is no need to tack on a paper thin romance that will never find resolution. If you're going to keep putting the Hulk in movies, please stop shoehorning this worthless character in there and forcing whatever brunette actress is enjoying a streak of employability at the time of its filming to stare wistfully at a tennis ball held aloft by a stage hand. Connely isn't nearly as bad as Tyler was, but she's pretty damn dull and Bana, who was so astounding in Chopper, is sadly milquetoast in this as well.

So what does work? The transitions are amazingly inventive. For the first half hour, the film is a hallucinatory blur with one scene cleverly melting into the next. It feels propulsive and exciting, so when Lee starts to lose steam, applying the technique less and less as it progresses, the movie suffers and begins to drag. Really beautiful stuff for a while though and his nature photography in the desert is stately, restrained and wonderfully cinematic. While I think the effects detract from ones ability to take any aspect of the story seriously, I do like the cartoonish look to them and feel the Hulk comes across as fully realized, just not believably integrated with his flesh and blood counterpart. The dogs look good as well with an interesting mutation design and Nolte's powers mix it up with a varied take on the dangerous allure of science run amok.

Speaking of Nolte, he's far and away the best thing about this picture. He gamely tackles this unglamorous role and imbues it with a mountain of palpable world weariness. It's the flip side to his role in Affliction, in this case he's the purveyor of the paternal abuse and positively swirling with conflicting emotions and motivations. It's actually a fascinatingly drawn character and Nolte colors it with a great deal of nuance, humor and humanity. I'd also like to single out Josh Lucas, who seems to be the only other person in the film who knew how to approach their role. He's deliciously smarmy and aggressive. A fun villain who has a great exit, but leaves too soon.

The ending though, is truly something to behold. Most Marvel films botch the conclusion, leaving you shrugging in disinterested dissatisfaction. Hulk however, wraps things up with an audacious, experimental exercise in conveying conflict resolution by the expulsion and transference of emotional pain. An interesting choice to be sure and one that decidedly disappointed action fans. I find it more and more interesting every time I watch it. It begins like a play, boldly focusing on Nolte and Bana in an enormous hangar with only two spotlights illuminating them. There's a stark intimacy to the scene and playing off Nolte, Bana finally comes alive in the role. After Nolte commences with some memorable speechifying, the scene electrically switches settings with the stunning motif of these two titans travelling through the clouds in fresco flashes of painted images. Easily my favorite visual idea in the film and it culminates in a billowing cloud of repressed rage and sadness being annihilated by the military. I flat out love everything about this bizarre and overtly psychological denouement.

So yes, it still has problems, but it dares to be unique and challenging. In this era where the studio system has the assembly line production of superhero films down to a fine point, I miss a film like Hulk. I miss not knowing what I was going to get going in, even if I was less than impressed by the results. I'd rather someone swing for the fences with their own vision than simply point and shoot, part of a committee approach resulting in one homogenized and carefully practiced product. Even if it's a "silly superhero movie", I want art out of it, not soap.

It Stinks! Dario Argento

I usually try to write only about that which I love in this blog because I feel the Internet is filled with enough negativity as it is. After reading through some old posts however, I couldn't help but notice my hyperbole is growing stale and my adjective choices (being of the positive leanings) have grown quite repetitive. So, in the interests of mixing it up, breaking out of my rut and plain old exorcising nasty demons, I present the inaugural "It Stinks!" entry. Let's begin by deflating that sallow, greasy bag of Italian hot air, Dario Argento.

To these jaded eyes, Dario is far and away the most over rated genre film maker to ever come down the pike. I understand that his influence on vastly better film makers has been monumental and his films are stylish and gleefully violent at times. This doesn't excuse how pointless they are, not to mention thinly written and atrociously cast. In fact, I don't recall a single line from any of his films off the top of my head. I don't need Aaron Sorkin pounding the keys for my misogynistic murder movies or anything, but good god man! He let Adam Gierasch and his wife script the final entry in his three mothers trilogy for the love of Jeff! But, "it's not the script that matters!", protest his ardent devotee's, "it's all about the lyrical style." Now, I consider myself a huge fan of style over substance. I've even written at length in these pages about my interest in a break from slavish adherence to predictable narrative machinations. So the fact that Argento's angles, colors and lighting leave me cold is most troubling.

I have put a lot of effort into enjoying Argento, hell, I'd settle for tolerating him at this point. Problem being, I have yet to find his films the least bit compelling. I find the protagonists as one dimensional as the victims and the victims as perfunctory and unimpressive as the killers. Take Deep Red for example. To me, this is the most embarrassingly over rated genre film perhaps of all time. I know of very few people who don't consider it an out and out masterpiece, usually the same people who bemoan art house pretension and movies without effective plotting. I hate to break it to everyone, but Deep Red is a crushing bore. Like all Argento's Giallo films I've had the displeasure to slog through, it begins with some uncharismatic asshole stumbling onto a murder I have no interest in seeing solved. Then follows some painful attempts at humor and romance, glacially paced and violently boring exposition, a half decent murder every 38 minutes and it's all capped off with a reveal of the killer that makes you shrug and say "Whatever man, anything to wrap this shit up." There isn't enough style in the world to make these boiler plate, sub-CSI mysteries the least bit interesting to me.

I won't outright assert the man has had no positive effect on cinema though. He did produce Dawn of the Dead (though butchered it with his tone deaf cut), Phenomena admittedly has a fun, ghastly charm to it and Inferno has that one great scene in the alchemists basement, but other than that, the dude is pretty much a total wash for me. Perhaps it's because I didn't see Suspiria (my first foray into his films) until a scant three years ago and my expectations were too astronomical. Whatever the reason, after immersing myself in his career and forcing myself to choke down his back catalog out of some misplaced sense of obligation to the horror genre, I can finally admit to myself that I find the films of Dario Argento to be tedious swill.

No longer will I groan my way through the Golgothan march of Opera, surely the ugliest movie ever made in such a beautiful setting. Never again will I endure the repugnant, pointless unpleasantness of Tenebre. I will not abide the blistering banality of Deep Red solely to groove on the funky Goblin track during the credits. I would sit through a thousand Katherine Heigel rom-com's before again subjecting myself to his animal trilogy, a troika of cinematic sleeping pills that verily challenge you to complete them. To put it as kindly as I care to, Dario Argento is an energetic hack left unchecked in his shallow end of the sandbox for far too long. When I see genre enthusiasts saying terrible things about Romero and demanding he hang it up while giving this buffoon a pass, I weep for the dispensation of the modern horror fan.

But, to each his own and all that. I'm not singling anyone out in particular with this inflammatory screed. This invective toward the "Edgar Allen Poe of Italy" (Jesus, that reminds me how belligerently awful his Black cat with Keitel was) has been building up in me a long time. Given my ever swaying opinion though, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if I was all about the dude in another three or four years. Well, only time will tell.

Valhalla Rising

Valhalla Rising is like Michael Keaton's life in Tim Burton's Batman. It's.....complex. I saw it several months before Drive came out, and without that more initially palatable aesthetic touchstone, I was somewhat lost. I knew it's poetic barbarism appealed to me on an elemental level, but felt at arms length from this Danish auteur's peculiar stylistic approach. Frankly it struck me as underwhelming and more than a little boring. After seeing Drive three times in the theater and drooling all over Refn's shot compositions, I felt that I was beginning to grasp what this preternaturally gifted film maker was going for. Perhaps it took witnessing his virtuosic milieu grafted on to a more recognizable genre to acclimate me to the manner in which he presents a story, especially in the case of one as compelling, distant and esoteric as Valhalla Rising.

This week, I purchased the film and began re watching it in manageable chunks each night before sleep. Some nights I would watch half of it or more. In all, I'd say I've seen the film 3 times now and have developed a need to view at least some of it before succumbing to slumber. No longer simply to utilize its leisurely pace as a cure for insomnia, but to solemnly study, to contemplate and to savor. I suffered from sudden cardiac death in early august of this year and was technically dead for several minutes before being revived. Since rejoining the land of the living and beginning my long road to recovery, I've been preoccupied with my own mortality, the meaning of life and the potential for a level of existence beyond the corporeal. Needless to say, Valhalla Rising is a much more striking proposition to me now for reasons beyond a heightened understanding of how its director works. If you're at all curious, I saw no light at the end of no tunnel during my ordeal. Take from that what you will.

In any case, the film concerns a mute, one eyed warrior held captive by a tribal chieftain in an unnamed Scandinavian setting. He is forced to fight other men to the death until he breaks free of his bonds, slays his captors and takes a young boy under his protection. The pair come across a group of "holy men" looking to travel to New Jerusalem and reclaim it for the Christian God. They join up with them and the quest becomes a convoluted, meaningless descent into the hell of the new world at the ends of the earth. I detest synopsizing and clearly have no skill at it, but it bears spelling out to effectively highlight the strange, meandering path this hallucinatory tone poem takes. The characters motivations are unclear, the exact time and place are open to interpretation and its overall meaning is as much a mystery as whether or not a meaning even exists. So, the film is a lot like life.

Mads Mikkelsen (the best name this side of Dieter Laser) is so visually arresting as One Eye, you can be forgiven for not understanding how remarkable his performance is the first few times around. He somehow can imbue every look with a million possible meanings, all the while retaining an air of unknowable, alien indifference. Like Gosling in Drive, the films efficacy hinges entirely on his presence, yet unlike Driver, Mikkelsen's One Eye has no lines whatsoever and is so unearthly it's difficult to relate or sympathise with him at all. Yet, like the misguided men who claim righteousness as their guide, you would gladly follow him into hell. A large part of my fascination with this film is wrapped up in attempting to interpret what exactly this character symbolizes. Like so many elements in the Refn oeuvre, it is not blatantly explained and you are allowed to use it as a mirror to reflect your own preconceived notions and beliefs.

The film is a litmus test in some ways for what you expect out of cinema. It's a colossal undertaking in the same way that reading Nietzsche or Moby Dick is. People can bellow about its pretension all they want, but you get out of it what you put into it. I really don't mean to come across with that lamentable "You don't like it cause you didn't understand it" attitude. Valhalla Rising is not necessarily a smart movie. It's primal, barbaric and structurally simplistic. You can choose to engage with it or not. The same option is presented to us whether we watch 2001 or The Chronicles of Riddick, and as Vin admonishes a group of Crematoria slam inmates before attempting escape in the latter, "Don't step up if you can't keep up". You have to want it with Valhalla, and considering how I've been drawn back to it time and again, I apparently want it a great deal.

There is a scene toward the end that is perhaps one of the most beautifully haunting I've ever had the privilege to see. One of the party following One Eye who has been bleeding out after suffering an unexpected incision is seated atop a hill overlooking a stunning tableau of mountains and valleys. The camera hold on the mans face in profile for what seems an eternity as his life force ever so slowly ebbs and eventually dissipates. Then.... cut to a shot of the seated man from behind with the grandeur of nature spread out before his empty vessel. It's a transition and an image so breathtaking it hurts the eyes with its forceful, nearly vulgar purity. In a film chock full of caustic moments that make life seem a hellish struggle for survival, it is this instance of aquiescence to nature that stays with you longest.

Changeling

It was sometime after seeing Mystic River and Letters from Iwo Jima in the theater that I wrote off seeing any more Clint Eastwood films. Those cinematic exercises in relentless misery were well constructed and all, but watching them made me feel like drowning myself in the bathtub would be a whimsical endeavor in comparison. I don't know where it was exactly that Eastwood essentially became Gaspar Noe with a more melancholic bent, but a little of that goes an awful long way. In my estimation, Eastwood's finest moment will always be Unforgiven, that perfect marriage of gentle poetry and ass whupping that deservedly netted Clint best picture and Director. Other than sharing a comedy bit with my friends in which we imitated Clint's hilariously over exaggerated grimacing done in Absolute Power while watching Gene Hackman's POTUS murdering a woman, nothing the man has done in the last 2 decades has appealed to me much. Apparently my wife was unaware of this opinion and took Netflix's suggestion of Changeling to heart. So, it was chagrined and with a wary, distrustful attitude that I sat down last evening to begrudgingly give this Hollywood legends work a fresh appraisal.

I had no idea Eastwood had finally decided to make an out and out horror film, but that's exactly what Changeling is. Sure, it has sumptuous period detail, top notch acting and sturdy, patient direction, but at heart this is a skin crawling genre film. A deeply unsettling dissertation on death, evil and loss. The film is a dizzying descent into the depths of this woman's hell. One atrocity and indignity after another is uncovered and suffered as the layers of sadness threaten to suffocate both protagonist and viewer alike.

I've never been sold on the merits of Angelina Jolie, but she is quite good in this. Her hallowed, skeletal beauty suits her characters martyrdom nicely and her exasperated rage is impressive in certain scenes, if a tad overdone and one note in others. Jeffrey Donovan is a hoot playing the despicable cop railroading Jolie out of corrupted laziness and plain old misogynist spite. His Irish policeman trying to be smooth in L.A. schtick is pure gold and perhaps the only area in which the film allows itself to have any fun. He's a magnetic presence and I look forward to seeing more of him. Michael Kelly brings an assuring, welcome stoicism to his decent (but not that nice) cop role. Amy Adams character however seems an afterthought not entirely fleshed out and whose pragmatic narrative purpose is jarringly at odds with the rest of the films more lucid tone.

But she's just the beginning of the problems with this film. A harbinger of tonal recriminations that begin to pile up and threaten to torpedo the uneasy, unknowable queasiness the film impressively exudes for the first ninety minutes. It begins to degenerate into maudlin, predictable set pieces that ground the film back in a safe reality its previous invention had so deftly avoided. For the first hour and a half of this two hour and fifteen minute film, it felt like a waking, Lynchian nightmare. A bottomless emotional hole designed to collapse your soul and prolapse your sense of right and wrong. So you can imagine why shoehorning in trite, A Few Good Men courtroom histrionics and sub par R. P. McMurphy sticking it to the man moments would ruin the momentum. The tacked on and totally unnecessary message of hope at the very end is particularly out of place and nearly unforgivable in the way it seems to suggest all is well when it clearly is not.

Still, that first hour an a half admittedly shattered something within me and I have not been able to get the more murderous moments of the film out of my head. I've decided against detailing the unsavory elements of this film because I don't have much of an idea how many have seen it and would prefer not to be the one that spoils it if you choose to. Needless to say, I went into this film not knowing much about how the story would play out and frankly, it does so in an unexpected, devastating fashion. It's a damn shame that through loss of directorial nerve and structural compromises made in the script, what could have been something truly great became something only frustratingly good. You can't go as far as this movie does, then try to take it back.

Drive

Seeing Drive brought me back to the overwhelming, breathless awe I felt while first witnessing films like Goodfella's, Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction, Heat and The Crow on the big screen. Not because it necessarily shares any narrative, thematic or aesthetic attributes with those classics, but because it reawakened my sense memory to a time when cinema could seem dangerous and beautiful to behold all at once. In the early to mid 9o's, I was coming of age and had the good fortune of sharing my new found freedom through gaining my drivers license with the release of an onslaught of seminal, game changing movies. As fun as 80's films were and as much as they were instrumental in cementing my adoration of the cinematic art form, it was discovering the complex nuance of something like The Usual Suspects or the Gothic nihilism of Se7en that made me realize my childhood interest could blossom into a life spanning and full blown adult obsession.

Drive is in every single aspect a perfect film. People will say it's a hollow, pretentious exercise in style and a narrative black hole with oversimplified connections between thinly drawn characters. They won't be wrong, but they're missing the bigger picture. The greatest movies don't need to mean or be about anything. They don't need to tell important stories or preach universal truths. They need to be powerful examples of an art form, which people tend to forget film inherently is. Sure, it can raise consciousness or unite an audience behind a hero in the interests of spawning a franchise, but I feel no more transcendence than when a film sucks me out of my life and into the world it has created, leaving me desperately wanting to return to it the instant the end credits begin to roll. Drive is such a film.

From the opening sequence, it's clear that you're in the hands of a master visual stylist. A true auteur working with supreme confidence to achieve a singular vision. No notions of audience concession or studio interference are allowed to touch this film. Refn seems to be wielding some sort of Kubrickian control over this project and his results under these circumstances speak volumes about the need for a return to 70's era directorial reverence and the preferential treatment afforded such gifted craftsmen. Drive is a liquid dream, gliding and floating with effortless control through the lives of bad men and the unfortunate women drawn to them. It presents Los Angeles as a hazy world without rules or structure where waitresses, gangsters, auto mechanics and film industry professionals all occupy the same space, bumping into each other to tragic, detrimental effect. It's a world of allure, danger and ghostly silence. Otherworldly and dreamlike in a classic 1980's Michael Mann capacity.

The story and characters aren't important here, its the raw elements that are. The colorful criminal menace, the bruised but beautiful moll, the sad sack father figure, the doe eyed dame with the cute kid and most importantly, the hypnotic, magnetic force of the enigmatic Driver unifying them all. Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman are pure gold in only the way 2 such brilliant character actors can be, but it's in the inspired pairing of them that we are given something altogether hilarious, dangerous and strangely realistic. Cranston wholly inhabits his chain smoking, limping nefarious manager role with a warm, preternatural paternity, grounding the film with his recognizable humanity. Hendricks is pitch perfect despite the brevity of her appearance, displaying the terror and exhaustion of her character without requiring unnecessary back story or dialog. Oscar Isaac continues his ascension in my estimation through potently and memorably rendering a stock character, elevating the whole film in the process.

But truthfully, the film is a make or break proposition resting on Goslings shoulders to bring across the nearly silent and certainly off putting lead role of the Driver. To say he pulls off this fearless high wire act of acting with aplomb is a gross understatement. With a character so hard to read who has no history spelled out for the viewer and rarely speaks, Gosling takes this golden opportunity to turn in a performance so fascinating, I dare you to take your eyes off him. He makes every affectation of his posture its own universe of endlessly fascinating intricacy. The pointing of his finger, clenching of his gloved hands or his sly, dispassionate grin all serve to draw you in, yet keep you at a frustrated distance. The controlled nervousness of his fingers fluttering across the steering wheel during a heist speak volumes more about the inner workings of this sociopath than ten pages of dialog could have, and good lord is this character ever a sociopath.

The Driver isn't just familiar with or adept at committing violence. He embodies violence. It follows him and flows from him as naturally as water distributing itself into a tributary. There is a scene where after exploding in jaw dropping rage, he turns and faces his ostensible love interest and tries to compose himself , the effect comes across like someone attempting to suppress a werewolf transformation. It's but one of a thousand such haunting and unforgettable images in the film. I won't spoil the particulars, but there's a scene with Perlman and Gosling on a beach toward the end that is so powerful and laden with iconic magnificence, even if the rest of the film surrounding it was total garbage, it would still be the best film of the year, just off the strength of that one scene.

I've enjoyed a lot of the films I've seen this year and would even go so far as to say found a few to be quite impressive, but none have had the instantaneous and revelatory effect of Drive. I've been hearing the hype and expecting something good, maybe even great. In no way was I prepared for the masterpiece it truly is. It is without doubt a film that will be talked about, analyzed and worshipped for generations to come.

Attack The Block

Attack the Block is a perfect example of what happens when everything comes together just right on a film. There's a reason this is one of the most fawned over and relentlessly hyped movies of the year. A film so hyped up by the internet cinema dorks that I almost didn't want to see it out of spite for their incessantly slobbering, slavish worshipping. Well, I noticed it was playing at my local AMC, so with the caveat that I would at least be able to see it screened in a decent theater with good sound and comfortable seating, I ventured out, ready to scrutinize and shoot down this behemoth of internet adulation. Suffice to say, this movie had an uphill battle to win me over. On top of my irritation with the aforementioned lemming like praise it's engendered, I detest hip hop fashion, music and attitude, not to mention English slang, all of which this film traffics heavily in. Plus, its central characters are teen gangster dickheads, and after an ongoing spate of similarly misguided youth killing each other in the city I live in, I was less than receptive to get behind them as protagonists. But, like all great movies, this one is more than the sum of its parts and vastly more than meets the eye upon first glance.

Attack the Block is an alien invasion movie that has nothing to do with an alien invasion. Attack the Block is about responsibility to your fellow humans, it's about forging friendship through empathetic understanding and most importantly, it's about acknowledging that your actions have consequences. Unlike another recent low budget alien invasion film I watched today entitled Monsters (also much hyped), the message and subtext didn't overwhelm the film, crushing all the fun and life out of it. No, Attack the Block is a breezy and exhilarating ride during which I fell in love with the characters, no small feat considering how much I hated them after their introduction mugging a young woman. Moses, the lead character played by John Boyega is instantly one of the most compelling heroes in modern cinema. Mark my words, Boyega is going to have a huge career if he plays his cards right. This kids screen presence and charisma is off the charts. The emotional dexterity he instills in this complex character is both fascinating and heartbreaking to watch, especially considering how few lines of dialogue he has.

The aliens are a marvel of artistic restraint. So many low budget films botch the usage of CGI. Attack the Block gets it just right. The aliens are galloping pitch black entities with glowing teeth and ear shredding screams. The creature design is perfect in that it is unique, allows for the maximum suspension of disbelief and subtly serves as a visual allegory for the darkness surrounding this economically distressed housing block in general and the demon of hopeless criminal recidivism and escalation bearing down on Moses in particular.

I won't get further into this because I want everyone to give this film a watch free of spoilers and I know it isn't widely released or available as of yet. I'll just say that I went into this with a scowl on my face and left the theater emotionally drained, hopeful for humanity and happy as hell. If that isn't the point of art, I don't know what is.