Freak Engine

The recent spate of post apocalyptic films is interesting.  I understood when it happened in the eighties since the US and Soviet Union were always rattling sabers with fingers on their proverbial buttons.  Nuclear arms became The Beast in our collective consciousness and that filtered its way into our art.  I get it.  I don’t even know if nuclear missiles even exist.  I’ve never seen one.  Have you?  And yet the number of films about the world before, during, and after a nuclear “event” makes me feel as though I’ve experienced, first hand,  every possible outcome in a thousand different parallel universes.  This is a subject that has been milked to death, no pun intended.  So what is it about our world today that makes these projects viable again?  Probably 9-11 and those idiots in the middle east who give the middle east a bad name.  Even though the attack was doled out using planes, not bombs, it was the closest US citizens have come to the results of a nuclear attack on home soil.  And it started minds, both smart ones and greedy ones, tumbling.  Which brings us back to The Road.

Australian director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall have crafted a disturbingly memorable and realistic account of a world shrouded in the effects of nuclear winter.  It is to their credit that the standard repertoire of post-apocalyptic imagery is still effective here, unlike in other recent films like The Book of Eli where that same imagery comes across as hackneyed.  I think that’s due to the overwhelmingly sad human drama at work here and the effectiveness of the performers.

The Road is, first and foremost, about choices.  Are we good or bad?  Are we going to do the right thing or the easy thing?  Is humanity basically good or evil or both?  Heady stuff for a Hollywood film to take on but Hillcoat attacks these themes as if they aren’t there.  By that, I mean the characters are presented as realistic people not as pawns of plot and theme as is the case with most big budget films.  Even the cannibals, groups of people who band together and live off humans because that’s really their only food source, are understandable to a degree.  Yes, this is a horror movie, and a love story, and a fable.  And it’s the most gripping film I’ve seen in years.  I think the only thing that kept it from being a larger force at the cinema was the fact that the general public has simply seen images similar to these way too frequently and they chose to pigeonhole this as another Mad Max ripoff.  I’d say it owes more to Deliverance than to Mad Max but the people saw the trailers and made their judgement.

Back when I saw Viggo Mortensen costarring as “generic hot guy” in A Perfect Murder, I would have never thought that one day I’d claim him to be one of the best American actors ever, but here I sit claiming just that.  His performance in The Road, along with that of the boy, Kodi Smit-McPhee, is so grounded, so rooted in honesty, that the tragedy is made visceral and my heart was broken.  I understand that Viggo basically starved himself during filming so he would lose weight and also so he would feel the constant hunger that plagues his character.  I’m not sure if he bathed but there is anecdotal evidence to support the claim that he was thrown out of a local restaurant during filming because they thought he was a homeless person.  That really has little to do with what we end up with on screen but it does indicate the lengths to which this man will go to achieve his best work.  I’ve often scoffed at method actors as I think most of them are wanna-bes, but Viggo justifies the means here.

I should also mention that the film uses very little in the way of CGI.  Yes, there are some doctored shots that couldn’t be achieved any other way, but most of what we see is real.  I was most impressed with the Mt. St. Helens locations and respect the difficulties that must have plagued the crew there.  Still, nothing works as well as the real deal and Hillcoat should be applauded for not taking the easy way out.  I was surprised to learn that there was as little CGI as there was, not because it looks like CGI but because the images are so sad and the land so devastated that it was hard for me to accept that they could possibly be real.

After the movie, I felt spoiled.  I looked around me at all that I take for granted and I felt like a heel.  So often we (especially in America) see those who have more than us and we wonder why we aren’t them.  Why don’t I have a Mercedes?  Why don’t I have better clothes?  Why don’t I have a perfect family?  We also take the low road so frequently and it’s not out of need but out of convenience.  I can see that Cormac McCarthy’s vision is real and that makes me sad in spite of the hope represented by The Boy’s desire to be good.  Is it only a matter of time before his fears make him as bad or worse than The Man?  Is there any way out?

I’ve read a lot of comics (I’m sorry but I refuse to call them graphic novels) but I never much cottoned to the superhero books.  Batman was sometimes good but my tastes ran toward manga long before most people even knew that was a word.  I also enjoyed Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot and a few others that were off the beaten path but all that changed when computers got involved.  Much like film, computers have just about destroyed comic art for me.  I find very little stylistically different from one boldly computer-colored, gradient-filled comic to the next.  That’s why I’m always surprised when I find something I truly enjoy, like The Walking Dead series.

But we’re here to talk about Kick Ass, right?  Well it started life as an underground comic but I’d not really heard of it before the first trailer for the film hit the street.  I tell you that because I want you to understand that my opinion of the film isn’t that of a fan of the comic.  I had no real idea what I was getting into when I plopped this one in the old blu-ray player.  I’d seen the trailers but that was it.  And what did I think?  I loved it!  So much so that I’ve already watched it a second time.

After the fact, I sat back and wondered who the hell they made this movie for.  Me, of course, but who else?  There are quite a few people who might like this film but based on the marketing it probably drew the entirely wrong demographic.  I can imagine a lot of people walking out on Kick Ass simply because it’s not what they expected.  If you walked in expecting a comedic parody of Spiderman (and in a way, you wouldn’t be wrong to think that), you might be jarred by the effusive use of ultra-violence or the over the top gore.  You might not like an 11-year-old using the C words or capping people in the knees before landing a series of splattering head shots…but I did.  I think this film was made for people who know the names Manic Panic and Jim Carroll.  That would make them older than the standard demo for superhero flicks, but somehow that got past the radar of the folks at Lionsgate who distributed the film.

This movie, while strung along by a fairly simplistic plot, enters the realm of post-satire.  Look, if art can be post-modern, films can be post-satirical.  It’s like a satire on steroids that becomes it’s own thing that’s beyond the material it’s satirizing – teen movies, mob movies,  superhero movies, comics culture, American society, network television, YouTube, you name it.  While it isn’t a serious film on any level, it usurps it’s own silly conceits with Tarantino-esque, foul-mouthed, violent goodness that is self-aware enough to directly refer to the subjects it’s satirizing and surpassing at the same time.

Director, Matthew Vaughn, presents the spirit of the original material but he isn’t precious about changing it so it will work on screen.  He cut his teeth as a producer for Guy Ritchie and that fact hints at the dirty little secret of this film.  Kick-Ass is an independent British production.  Let me write that again because it’s kind of hard to believe.  Kick-Ass is an independent British production.  Perhaps that’s the secret of it’s success.  Since no studio suits were staring him down, Vaughn was able to stick to his guns throughout.  Since he’s British, he had a unique, outsider perspective on the American superhero film.  Admittedly, he didn’t have much money to work with, but even he has stated that the lack of funds helped the crew to make more creative decisions throughout.  I just wish this guy had been hired on to direct the Star Wars prequels.

Most of the direct to video DC Comics movies have been total crap.  Oh, there have been exceptions like the Batman Beyond movie, Return of the Joker, but overall the stuff that Bruce Timm’s been rubber-stamping his name onto has played like what it is – product.  Under the Red Hood is the exception to that rule.

I’ve followed Bruce TImm, who here serves as producer, since his days at Animaniacs.  His leadership role in the development of Batman The Animated Series was one of the key factors behind that show’s critical success.  Just watch an episode or two of THE Batman (or The Brave and the Bold) and you’ll wish Timm had been involved.  While he’s often taken a backseat on the Warner Animation DVD features, usually as executive producer, here he’s the principal producer.  What does that mean, you ask?  It means that in this production he’s fulfilling essentially the same role he had in BTAS and it shows.

Each iteration of Batman builds upon all the works that came before.  BURH is an amalgam of BTAS and Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies that’s one step beyond both.  Except for some ridiculous elements here and there (Black Mask’s face appears to be anything but a mask, etc.) it’s fairly credible stuff involving characters who react in realistic ways.  Yes, Batman can still drop a hundred feet and not get hurt and way too much action happens at the rooftop level but all in all, the story maintains the logic of its own universe.  It’s also exciting and quick on its feet.

The brutality of this feature (it’s PG-13 so it’s not for most kiddos) is balanced by its hilarity.  Batman’s lack of a sense of humor is at the forefront here and he’s constantly being jabbed by Nightwing.  I’ve never been a big fan of the Robin character(s) but Nightwing is fun as a Robin with balls and he’s voiced quite capably by Neil Patrick Harris.  Amazingly, I don’t see Harris’ face when I hear the voice and that’s a very good sign.  Speaking of voices, while stalwarts Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill are missed, their shoes are filled by some capable talent.

John Di Maggio is especially good as Joker.  I’d even say that he does a better job than Hamill but that impression is at least partly due to the writing here.  This Joker is closer to the character I thought we’d see in Nolan’s Dark Knight.  He’s not making a bunch of intricate plans or prolonging the inevitable just so he’ll get caught…AGAIN.  This Joker’s an insane sadist and all he cares about is his next violence fix.  He’s truly scary for the first time ever.  I loved Heath Ledger’s take on the character, but I thought Nolan’s screenplay hobbled the violence to steer clear of an R rating.  No such hobbling takes place here and the clown prince runs wild to the bitter end when Red Hood asks Batman the one question that has haunted most of us bat-fans for years.  Classic.

Yes, this is essentially a tragedy, as most of the best incarnations of the caped crusader are.  Batman’s own code and the fallibility of the people of Gotham and the locks at Arkham form a perfect circle that our hero must traverse for his entire purgatorial existence.  I’m always interested in seeing him face the consequences of his own struggles with right and wrong.  His failings always mirror the failings of our own society wherein there’s almost never a way out without someone getting hurt.  That doesn’t mean we don’t strive for that perfect solution though, does it?

What is it with the resurgence of desaturated, post-apocalyptic, BAD, sci-fi fare these days?  Now we can add Book of Eli to the list of films that just shouldn’t have been made.  It’s not that it’s a terrible movie.  It’s not.  It just doesn’t have anything new to show us or tell us or whatever.  I felt like I’d seen it a hundred times before.

Yep, there was some nuclear war thing thirty years ago.  Yeah, shit people need’s kinda scarce.  Yeah, some mean kingpin (in this case, Gary Oldman) has cornered the market on the shit folks need.  Yeah, he wants something Denzel’s got.  Yeah, Mila Kunis is hot.  Yeah, they might as well have shot the whole damn thing in black and white.  Yeah, there’s some great music.  Yeah, there’s lots of recycled tech all over the place and most of it’s broken.  Yeah, the costumes are straight outta Mad Max.

The only reason I can imagine for the Hughes Brothers even approaching this script is that they wanted to make a black Mad Max movie without the cool cars because cool cars must piss them off.  Seriously.  This is a well-made film with A-list talent.  How they attracted this group of actors to this turd of a film is beyond me.  Maybe they left out the script when they sent packages out to agents.

The only shining light here is the score and it almost makes it worth sitting through this mess.  For some reason, however, three composers were needed.  Hey, if you need two directors you gotta have at least three composers, right?

Look, since I’d seen this one a hundred times before I could have skipped this viewing.  I’d suggest you skip it too and just listen to the soundtrack unless you’ve never seen anything like it in which case I’d suggest you crawl out of your cave more often.  Please, please, please, if you want to see something great that’s in this vein, check out Children of Men instead.

I’m a Romero fan.  There, it’s out in the open.  No, not Caesar Romero!  I’m a fan of the Zombie film catalog created by the one and only George Romero.  One of his lesser-known works, The Crazies, has been remade into a slick, Hollywood feature and the result is much like the other remakes of Romero’s works.  It’s classier, faster, and more entertaining than the original in a lot of ways but it’s also been stripped of its political satire.

Romero’s work is many things to many people.  Some folks just like the gore, others his commentary on modern life in America.  Sometimes his films work (Dawn of the Dead) and sometimes they don’t (Diary of the Dead) but they almost always end up on someone’s short list of horror classics.  Is this rep deserved?  Probably not.  Romero is more of a by-the-numbers filmmaker than you’d think, and he really doesn’t have the auteur chops needed for the capital-D Director title.  He’s more like the Kevin Smith of horror, serving up some interesting stories and writing via serviceable, if somewhat bland, direction.  That’s where Hollywood comes in.

Romero’s movies provide the near-perfect starting points for modern productions.  Even Romero sidekick Tom Savini directed a technically superior production of Night of the Living Dead in 1990.  There’s something about these films that makes you actually want them to have been technically better.  The ideas are there but the presentation is somewhat lacking.  What better fodder for Hollywood remakes could you find?

I’m sure this is one of the things that drove the creative team behind The Crazies.  This is a top-notch production, no B-movie look and feel here.  The cast delivers great performances, the script is tight, and the visuals are beautifully rendered.  The trouble is that while this film is much more fun to watch than the original, it has absolutely nothing to say.  Much like the excellent Dawn of the Dead remake helmed by Zack Snyder, director Breck Eisner (Michael Eisner’s son) has managed to ramp up the heartrate of the patient but he’s also inadvertently removed its soul.

Romero’s original is largely about the military and the way its members do or don’t follow the orders they’ve been given.  It’s about the government and how they treat their constituency in the face of a viral emergency.  It’s about everything that pissed Romero off in 1973 and it gets a little tiring, to be honest.  The remake is the exact opposite.  It’s scary and exciting and beautiful, but in the end it says nothing.  I think there’s an absolutely brilliant film that exists as a marriage of both of these.

As a side note, I should mention that huge chunks of the new Crazies were shot in and around my home town of Macon, Georgia.  Maybe it’s just the heat and humidity but Georgia seems to be attracting more than its fair share of Zombie films these days (Yes, I realize The Crazies isn’t technically a zombie movie, but let’s not pull the wool over our own eyes, okay?).