Man on Film: Greenberg

It was not without a healthy amount of trepidation that I walked into Greenberg. While The Squid & The Whale was a solid outing, I'd hardly say I was in head over heels in love with the film. Margot at the Wedding was so fucking unbearable that I couldn't make it 20 minutes into the movie. Somehow I actually made it through Kicking and Screaming, but holy fuck do I wish I hadn't. And as a member of the faction of Wes Anderson fans (a fandom which has been waning for the past five-plus years) who still look at The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and sigh with disappointment, I hold Noah Baumbach largely responsible for its failure.

Does the fact that I was somewhat leery of what Greenberg had in store for me really need to be elucidated any further? I think the reticence has been justified.

What I got in Greenberg was a second solid outing from writer/director Noah Baumbach. In having seen three of his films entirely, part of the fourth, and another that he has co-written, it has become evident that there is going to be lacking in resonance on a personal level for me with his works. I guess that is to be expected, as there isn't much crossover between my middle-class, Midwestern upbringing and his privileged, Brooklyn childhood. It seems that he may very well have had a childhood like the one illustrated in The Squid & The Whale, and frankly it is one that most of us couldn't possibly have much in common with.

With Greenberg, I was able to find common ground with Baumbach's work where I'd previously been unable to--Ben Stiller's Roger Greenberg has willfully ignored conventional expectations for success, is largely a dick, and is easy to dislike, all things that could be said about me. That being said, it isn't always the most comfortable experience seeing characters that you share undesirable character traits with uncomfortably exposed on screen*.

*I had similar feelings after seeing Rachel Getting Married, as the self-absorption/-destructiveness of Anne Hathaway's character struck a little too close to home for comfort.

For the most part, this doesn't get in the way of the enjoyment of the film. While self-destructive, Roger is often scathingly funny. His letters of complaint to the varied businesses that he feels slighted by are funny. His sweet moments with Greta Gerwig's Florence Marr work well, as do the awkward ones.

Where the film does over-reach is in the presumption that Florence would somehow remain interested in Roger after his repeated abuse. She doesn't seem broken in the beginning, and his intermittent shoddy treatment of her should realistically drive her away. But it doesn't, which doesn't really feel believable.

The film does look good, as Baumbach's style actually works well in Los Angeles, and the pacing is actually pitch-perfect. While often veering into the realm of the uncomfortable, the film never drags. Stiller and Gerwig are great, and Rhys Ifans is serviceable. Generally speaking, I could do without Jennifer Jason Leigh, but she wasn't in the film enough to really bring it down in my book. In all, Greenberg was a nice little film, and it gives Stiller a chance to stretch his legs a bit.

Man on Film: Un Prophete (A Prophet)

For whatever reason, I've not been making it to a lot of foreign fare in recent years. There was a time when TSLF and I would see about 50% foreign and 50% domestic films. That isn't the case anymore.

Well, I took in A Prophet a few weeks back with Chad and Steve (my only friend in Austin who is also a Super Furry Animals fan), and I was floored. I knew very little about the film other than the fact that it was a French prison movie. Having seen a fair share of French films, I expected some cursing cheese-eating surrender monkeys munching on baguettes, wearing berets, and occasionally raping each other whilst smoking cigarettes. What I got was an exceptional movie-going experience.

This being the first Jacques Audiard film I've seen, I came into the film not knowing what I was about to be given. This is easily the best prison movie since The Shawshank Redemption, which I loved. The film chronicles the rise of an Algerian prisoner through the inmate power structure of a French prison. The closest parallel to his story I can think of is that of Don Corleone story in The Godfather, Part II. This comparison is apropos in both the narrative and the qualitative sense, as A Prophet really does deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the best of The Godfather films.

Malik el Djebena as played by Tahar Rahim* is essentially a slightly more passive young Don Corleone if he had the ability to assimilate himself into nearly any group. Malik's prison ascension is compelling, and as the Arab having to be a lap dog to the Corsicans for much of the movie, it is hard not to root for him.

*It's weird but Rahim reminds me a lot of Maurice Compte, who I've always recognized as the guy from The Dream Catcher--not the shitty Stephen King adaptation--a film I recall having liked. Unfortunately, no one else in the world other than Compte himself would remember him. He was one of Gunn's peeps when Gunn was introduced on "Angel."

Generally speaking, the acting seems solid. I use the word 'seems' here because I hesitate to trust myself when evaluating the acting in a foreign-language film. Regardless, nothing seems to be amiss on the acting front.

Now I should note that the pacing of the narrative is very European. It takes its sweet time in getting rolling, but once Malik endears himself to the Corsicans, the film finally gets its legs under it. The slow start works in this case, and his efforts to embed himself in the backyard of the Corsicans and the ensuing double-/triple-agent life he takes on is fascinating.

All in all, the film is great, and it still seems to be playing in art-house theaters. Go see it. You'll be so happy you did.

Man on Film: Iron Man 2

If I'm not mistaken, this is actually the first time in the history of Inconsiderate Prick that I'll have ended up writing about the sequel to a movie that I have also written about. In that regard, I suppose this is a milestone of sorts. To celebrate this, I have treated myself to a bowl of Honey Nut in honor of Omar. Now I'm going to drop a dramatic deuce and engage in a self high-five*.

*All right, I just spent about ten minutes trying to find a video to no avail. The video was that of the short-lived mid-'90s Fox sitcom "Too Something," a show I can't say I ever actually remember having seen, but I do remember the promo that Fox surely ran about 10,000 times leading up to its lackluster premiere. Weirdly, the concept of the self high-five was emblazoned into my memory then and its execution still kind of amuses me. Unfortunately, there is no video that I can provide for you to lay down a framework for what I'm talking about.

Now, as far as the experience of seeing Iron Man 2 was concerned, it was an engaging film that left me thinking, That was pretty good. That may not be the most glowing reaction, but given my feelings about much of the high-profile films what I've seen lately, I was mostly pleased.

As was the case with Sherlock Holmes and the first Iron Man, Robert Downey, Jr., makes this film work. Both of those films could have failed easily if not for the wiles and charms of Downey, just as Iron Man 2 could have. His cocksure bravado is precisely what this franchise needed. It fuels this sequel, infusing it with an energy that is needed as the film comes to its close slightly anti-climactically.

Yes, Iron Man 2 does kind of rush into and through its conclusion. Some complaints levied against the film and its according narrative shortcomings chalk them up to biting off too much in regards to foils for Tony Stark. I would hardly say that is the case. X-Men or Spider-Man 3 this film is not. Mickey Rourke's Ivan Vanko and Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer both add much more to the film than their possible division of dedicated screen-time to villainy could take away. Rockwell is especially solid as the slimy defense-contracting douche.

As was the case with the first Iron Man, the staging of the climactic end fight scene simply leaves a bit to be desired. For starters, much of the flight/pursuit action borders on unintelligible. Perhaps this can be attributed to my second row seat, but there were 10 - 15 second sequences at the end that were a blur as much as anything else. When War Machine and Iron Man finally face off against Whiplash, the fight seems to end almost as soon as it begins.

Luckily, Iron Man 2 is ultimately character-driven, and it works entirely in that regard. While Justin Theroux's (holy hell, did I think it was weird that Theroux was writing this movie) screenplay may be unbalanced from a narrative standpoint, it succeeds on the personal front, and Stark's dealing with his mortality works exceptionally well.

Ultimately, the film's shortcomings don't do enough to detract from one's enjoyment of the film, and it does leave you looking forward to the eventual foray into the Avengers series of films down the line.

Reading Rainbow: House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

If we're being honest here, my reaction to this book is tepid at best. While there are passages in the book that are engaging, too often the book veers into prolonged passages of tedium.

For those not in the know, the book can be most succinctly described as follows:

A young man finds a manuscript in trunk in an dead old blind man's apartment. The manuscript is essentially an academic work dedicated to a film that does not exist within the world in which the manuscript is found and the myriad mostly fictional works cited in 400-plus often lengthy footnotes. And that film is a documentary about a prize-winning photographer (fictional in the real world in the book) and his house in which a hallway leading to an impossibly large, metaphysically anomalous black labyrinth suddenly appears.

There's some more going on here, but the important part is the footnotes and the long tangential elements of the book that ultimately hurl the book into the realm of books that prove to be more trouble than they are worth. Sure, there is some merit to the book, but the labyrinthine task of reading the book and the psychological manipulation that Danielewski exacts upon his readers eventually cross the threshold into the realm of grating.

The great pains he goes to so that he can satirize academic criticism ultimately cost the book any chance it has to evade being an exercise in turgidity. While the wearying formatting may have been the goal for Danielewski, that doesn't mean the reader needs to be a willing participant. By the time the psychologically-suggestive, oddly formatted sections of the book arrive, the bullshit detectors are going off violently.

Any compelling sections of the novel are almost immediately undermined by pages upon pages of dull scientific exposition or faux academic criticism. Any momentum that could be gained is lost, and the reading experience ends up being an ultimately unsatisfying one.

Reading Rainbow: Moneyball by Michael Lewis

This is the first of a few catch-up posts for the Reading Rainbow segments of the blog here. I know the Reading Rainbow stuff is probably the area of the blog that y'all are the most indifferent* to, but whatever.

*And, yes, I'm using the degree of indifference as a qualifier, as we all know that this entire blog is met with an indifference that can only be categorized as resounding.

Let's begin.

Moneyball is one of the most compelling non-fiction books I've read in ages. One part business, one part baseball, ten parts awesome.

Why I hadn't read it yet is baffling to me, but I hadn't and am upset with myself for taking so long to get around to it.

For those not familiar with the book at all, its primary goal is to show how the Oakland Athletics under General Manager Billy Beane managed to exploit the market inefficiencies in baseball to field a playoff-caliber team while having the second-lowest payroll in all of baseball. While that may not seem all that interesting on the surface, there is a reason why Michael Lewis finds himself atop the non-fiction bestsellers lists routinely. He is a great writer and manages to intertwine 30 pages of loosely related tangents engagingly and with ease.

Even if you are not a baseball fan, this book is enthralling.

Billy Beane is a fiery former prospect who flamed out when he got to the Majors. Rather than continue on as a player at a certain point in his career, he went and asked his General Manager if he could take a job as an advance scout (if I remember correctly). As he worked his way up through the ranks of the front office, his quest to discover what sort of players actually succeeded at the ML-level in relation to the tools they possessed began to be supported by the writings of Bill James (as he discovered them - they were written before Beane retired as a player), or the theorizing of Voros McCracken.

As Beane becomes united with Paul DePodesta, it becomes clear that this Athletics front office was head and shoulders above the rest in baseball.

While it could have been an insular story just about baseball, Lewis's Moneyball is a compelling, character-driven story about how an organization does more with less.

Look for another completed Reading Rainbow entry that will be posting tomorrow morning at this time.

Man on Film: Hot Tub Time Machine

If ever there were a title that screamed for a movie to be seen, it was that of Hot Tub Time Machine, the newest film directed by Steve Pink. Serving as the ultimate example of the high-concept film, it is a raunchy homage to the still pleasing if not mostly predictable fare that is the '80s teen/college comedy.

Hot Tub Time Machine also marks the multi-tiered return of John Cusack. On the one hand, the audience is treated to a return to the fore in a successful comedy. On the other, he is returning to the mountain--the site of what some (namely, Adam Tecumseh Schwitters) would argue is the place where he reached his highest point as an actor. While I tend to think Cusack's best work didn't happen until the late '80s, there is an element of getting to see the young Cusack we all know and love in that familiar element here that gives HTTM an otherwise unattainable nostalgic essence.

And it really is a return to form for Cusack. Having spent the past few years bouncing back and forth between forgettable films like The Martian Child, War, Inc., and The Ice Harvest, and bigger budget numerically-titled films that are mostly below him like 1408 and 2012, Cusack gives us hope that maybe this was just a lost ten years. Where War, Inc. failed to rekindle the tone successfully struck in the fantastic Grosse Pointe Blank, Hot Tub Time Machine goes back to the well of Cusack's past successes and comes up with a perfect marriage between the Better Off Dead-era Cusack audiences fell in love with (hetero-/platonic love here, reader) and the High Fidelity/Grosse Pointe Blank riddled-with-pathos. The film's success owes largely to the fact that it finally puts Cusack back in a role fit for him.

Well, that and the fact that it is often uproariously funny. The laugh-out-loud descriptor is certainly apropos in the instance of Hot Tub Time Machine. Not only does the ludicrous premise richly lend itself to successful situational comedy, but the film outside of the time-period humor is legitimately funny. The most successful lines (not to give away too much, but they are related to Stargate and assholes) work entirely outside of the premise of the '80s homage. Clark Duke and Craig Robinson both deliver in their complimentary roles. Rob Corddry is pitch-perfect as the dickish, self-absorbed friend.

Most importantly, the film is entirely aware of its own ridiculousness. The time travel element of the narrative isn't taken too seriously. The shout-outs to the 80s movies it owes to are great touches, but all along this film is entirely aware of how brilliantly-dumb the premise of the Hot Tub Time Machine is, which is what enables the film to work. And work it does.

Man on Film: Kick-Ass

With a name like Kick-Ass, any failure to deliver on the name could only be seen as an utter embarrassment, leaving the film open to countless barbs incorporating plays on the title. With that in mind, I've got the following to say.

Fucking Hell this movie was fun.

For starters, the action scenes were kinetic, well-choreographed, and underscored with good humor. The deaths (and there were many) were always awesome and mostly hilarious.

Everything with Hit-Girl (whose introduction is in the red-band trailer below) was golden. Nicolas Cage* was pitch-perfect as her father Damon "Big Daddy" Macready. Their adorable if not a bit deranged father/daughter relationship worked exceptionally well. Their joking relationship is sweet but superbly counter-balanced with their righteous ass-kicking.

*By the way, this marks the sixth straight live-action Nic Cage movie that I've seen in the theater. He catches a lot of flak from a lot of short-sighted people, but I really feel like this point needs to be made again: Cage is the shit. He does whatever he movies he wants--always giving his all--but he chooses his films because he wants to make them, not because they'll somehow further his career. He secured the rights to The Wicker Man to get that film made because he wanted to remake it. Go back and watch the original. Holy fuck is that a weird, orgy-soaked film. Bravo, Cage. Bravo. This all has meant that Nic Cage has spent the past few years making movies that appeal to him, which in this case do not necessarily equate to films that the typical Oscar-winning actor appears in. And this has been a surprising boon to the moviegoer.

As for Kick-Ass himself, Aaron Johnson channels the everyman--er, everyboy--well, seemingly embodying the younger self of David Eigenberg (Steve Brady from "Sex and the City"). This would seem to be a conscious decision as he is actually quite British as is evidenced by this interview:

Johnson's turn as Dave Lizewski is an endearing one and would tend to point towards a bright future. His friends Todd and Marty (played by Evan Peters and Michael Cera's best friend, Clark Duke) are the complimentary pieces necessary to provide comic relief vital to this film's success.

Across the board, Vaughn & Co. have crafted a laugh-out-loud action-comedy with a healthy love for the superhero genre but a self-aware wit with as good a heart as is possible in a movie that makes you laugh at people getting killed by a little girl. The film never drags, and there really isn't a weak link in the cast or the narrative.

Most importantly, Kick-Ass lives up to its name.

Reading Rainbow: Fletch Won by Gregory McDonald

Years ago, I read and loved Gregory McDonald's Fletch, the first book written in what was ultimately an eleven-book series of mystery novels. This was, of course, also the book that the 1985 Chevy Chase eponymous star-vehicle was adapted from. It should go without saying that I would not have read the novel if I were not a big fan of the film, but when I read the novel I was surprised to find it much darker and edgier than its filmic counterpart.

McDonald's Irwin M. Fletcher was a self-serving bastard who was holed up in a beach apartment with a sixteen-year-old who ends up overdosing. While still every bit the quick-on-his-feet smart ass Chase portrays him as, the Fletch on paper isn't running around in goofy disguises.

Of the remaining Fletch novels, the one that stuck out to me the most has had my interest piqued for more than a decade. This novel is Fletch Won, and its rights have been kicking around since Mallrats came out, when Kevin Smith bought the rights with the intention of it being a Jason Lee star-vehicle. Since Smith's involvement ended, the project fell into the hands of "Scrubs" creator Bill Lawrence and now sits on Steve Pink's perspective to-do list (more on him later this week). Each person who has been attached to the film has shared the same feelings: They badly wanted to make this film.

Having finally read the book, that desire is entirely understandable. As an origin story, it would allow its director and studio a chance at a new franchise. As source material, it is great.

The story begins with a young Irwin Fletcher being chided at work for his smart-ass approach to obituary and headline writing before getting re-assigned to the society pages. When the subject of his first story turns up murdered in the parking ramp outside of the newspaper, Fletch finds himself sitting on top of a murder, only the story gets re-appropriated to a lazy veteran reporter with a vicious mean streak.

As Fletch balances this story with a piece requiring him to go undercover to expose a prostitution ring and his impending nuptials, nearly everything that can go wrong does. And then some. Along the way, Fletch somehow keeps his bearing about him and manages to out-maneuver the wrathful senior reporter at every turn while dodging all of the stray bullets that cross his path. More importantly that path is completely entertaining and engaging.

McDonald knows how to craft a taut mystery novel with a healthy dose of humor and an expert level of unpredictability. Moreover, his style makes for an effortless read, and an easy, unpredictable page-turner makes for an ideal change-of-pace after reading momentum-killing dreck like Girl in Landscape.

All that being said, it is nearly impossible to read the book without this song playing on a loop somewhere in your subconscious.

Man on Film: The Ghost Writer

Having been a great director through the decade in which political paranoia films reigned supreme, I suppose it only makes sense that Roman Polanski's newest film The Ghost Writer embodies everything that was great about that genre. In ways reminiscent of Alan J. Pakula and Sydney Pollack at their finest, The Ghost Writer is a deliberately paced, slow burn of a film in which our protagonist (deftly played by Ewan McGregor) finds himself taking over the role of ghost-writing [auto-]biographer of a Tony Blair-like figure whose transgressions while in office are coming back to bite him.

His predecessor turned up dead on a beach mere days prior to his taking the assignment. As the circumstances surrounding the previous shadow-biographer's death begin to look more and more suspicious, The Ghost begins look into Prime Minister Adam Lang's (Pierce Brosnan) past. With conspiracy, misdirection, and subterfuge running rampant through the film, Polanski successfully keeps his audience on edge throughout the film, enthralling all from beginning to end.

In short, The Ghost Writer was a great political thriller harkening back its compelling 1970s cousins Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, and All the President's Men. To be in that company speaks to the quality of this film, and I assure you, it's top-notch.

So if you're looking for one of the best political thrillers in years, look no further than The Ghost Writer.

Reading Rainbow: Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem

So I am waaaaayy behind on these entries (try six books)...

Anyway, a little while back I read this book having heard good things about Jonathan Lethem. It is a post-apocalyptic novel in which largely ineffectual characters settle on a foreign planet with the primary character being 14-year-old Pella Marsh. If none of that sounded good, it is because it wasn't.

Now the back of the book sold Girl in Landscape as a "genre-bending, mind-expanding tale of sexual perversity on a new frontier." Look elsewhere, brave reader, because there is little in the way of what that promises. The prose is tedious, the narrative is surprisingly unimaginative and entirely dull, and the characters lack any qualities that would give cause to care.

I would commit more words to this, but what is the point?

Coming soon: more posts.