Dan Mooney

I saw Avatar last week, and judging by the dollars that continue to pile up, I’m not the only one who didn’t rush out opening weekend.

Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am surprised it’s done anywhere near as well as it has. Having avoided the trailer, I saw only a few seconds of footage here and there, and what I saw didn’t impress me. Thought it would be another manufactured tentpole hit without much behind it. Thought Cameron’s ego would have swallowed his talent whole leaving nothing but some blue creatures patrolling around.

Wrong! Happily wrong.

I was absolutely impressed by Avatar. Just incredible. The kind of revolutionary moviewatching experience that doesn’t happen often. Jurassic Park was like that, and I saw a lot of that movie in this one. I also saw in it A Bug’s Life (blue creatures going about their lives around a huge tree), The Lion King (the learning montages, general forest revelry) and The Matrix (simultaneous levels of experience, one arguably as real as the other, but not quite). I did see it in 3D, which is the way to see it, but I didn’t see it in IMAX, which is just too much screen for me.

I do agree with the idea I’ve heard that James Cameron should win Best Director honors at the Academy Awards. Even if there are better movies out there, and I think there are, he’s the MVP for his project, having done more to realize more. Nothing against Tarantino, who made a wonderful movie (and killed Hitler), but my vote would go to Cameron.

It’s not all gravy, though. The shortcomings of his movie are obvious and numerous. Great directing, lackluster writing: flat jokes, dull dialogue, bad acting. Even Sigourney Weaver, as Grace in human form, can’t act her way past what’s been written for her. Giovanni Ribisi’s Jeremy Piven impression was adequate, since all he had to do was announce himself as a bad guy, and then tread water. Sam Worthington (ably understudied by Sean Avery) was earnest enough. (In the race between Ribisi’s Parker and Oliver Platt’s Mr. Anheuser from 2012, Platt’s character wins, for having more opportunity to be comic-book crazy. A separate race between Anheuser and the mother’s boyfriend in Rookie of the Year is too close to call.)

I was as pleased as hell to read the interview with James Cameron in Entertainment Weekly a couple of weeks back, when Cameron was up-front with his plain desire to make a movie that a lot of people would pay money to see. He succeeded, but he didn’t sell anyone short, and he didn’t make a movie that appealed to a lowest common denominator. It’s only broad insofar as it’s appealing to just about everyone who likes things that are fantastic and cool-looking. With audiences continuing to splinter and smaller films getting more recognition and praise, finally there’s a movie that brings moviegoers together again, surrending to the spectacle. If ever there were a movie to see in a theatre, this is it.

Oh, you’ve seen it already?

Oh, okay, then let’s continue with the discussion.

One odd question to start, one that kind of bothered me: When Sully finds his banshee – the one he has to tie up, get on the ground, and make his extremely personal connection with – he’s not raping that poor creature, in one way or another?

I must say I enjoyed the fight at the very end, between Jake Sully as a Na’vi and Colonel Quaritch in his robot suit from The Matrix Revolutions, for a couple of reasons. I like that each of the participants is in disguise, hiding behind technology somehow. It levels the playing field by making each rather super-human, but also calls attention to the already well-hammered conflict of the movie between, say, destructive technology and endangered biological life forms. I was also reminded of the fight between King Kong and the T-Rex in the original King Kong, in the forest, the film itself a landmark of visual effects.

I also liked a couple of moments with masks, playing up the title. When Grace dies after the transfusion doesn’t work, her mask is summarily taken off, echoing the shedding of her body by her soul. And, near the end when Neytiri finds Sully in the trailer struggling for air, she’s quick to put his mask on. It’s certainly to help him survive, but I think also because she’s used to seeing him in disguise, in another form. His “nakedness” is alarming. She’s in love with his soul, or whatever makes him who he is, but his human form at that point in their relationships doesn’t seem his natural state. That leads to the final switcheroo, the eyes opening, the percussion building, and… a comically cheesy end credits song. Terrible.

I am glad the parable moved on from being an allegory about the Middle East and oil and indigenous peoples to addressing the larger, worldly issue of, y’know, respecting our planet for the powerful and living creature she is. For a simplistic story on which to hang beautiful, vivid effects, there are worse choices for a moral. Sugar helps the medicine go down, anyway.

3.5 stars

I’d planned to watch this movie the weekend of my 10th high school reunion, in place of actually going to the reunion. I figured that between watching the movie and catching up with classmates on facebook for the last few years, all my vicarious bases would be covered. Well, my reunion came and went the Saturday of Thanksgiving. Saw some of the lead-up discussion online, saw some of the pictures. Didn’t watch the movie again until recently.

I’m sure I didn’t watch it again because the last time I did, I really didn’t enjoy it. I’ve seen it several times, and I find that I’m willing to suspend a little less disbelief each time. I’m getting older, of course, and that the movie deals with that subject isn’t lost on me. Some movies do not age particularly well – I heard Annie Hall dropped into a conversation about this last week – but I don’t think Grosse Pointe Blank falls into that category. I’m the one who hasn’t aged well. But neither has my initial, most flattering perception of the movie.

Looking back, I could see it making sense to my younger self that I would appreciate the movie even more as I get older, perhaps culminating at the very point at which my graduating class would celebrate its own 10th anniversary. But those things that struck me during this most recent viewing were generally negative. Now, of course, when you see a film a number of times, you may pick up more, or at least different, things each time. But I’ve seen other movies more times, and those repeat viewings deepen and enhance the joy I feel about what I’ve seen, unlike with this one here.

Two small personal notes: The song over the opening credits, “I Can See Clearly Now,” by Johnny Nash, is the first song I listened to my senior year of high school after getting into the school I wanted to attend. Though, unlike Martin Blank (John Cusack), I was not about to kill someone when I heard the first news of my reunion.

My biggest complaints with the movie this time around involve the pacing and, well, the premise itself. Regarding the premise – I know it’s a movie, and I know it’s also a black comedy – but I was put off by just how long it takes, and how much it takes, for anyone to realize Martin is what he says he is. He’s got to be covered in blood holding a freshly used murder weapon for Debi (Minnie Driver, who if I didn’t recently see in a trailer for something might have shrunk and turned into Amy Winehouse) to react (run away at the school), then overreact (in the hotel room, when talking would have done), then underreact (when she rides away with Martin cheerfully at the very end, his having saved her life completely having changed her mind about what he’d done).

I found it somewhat disingenuous that a bunch of glib characters and their precious dialogue would be so shocked at such a reveal. I’d think anyone jaded enough, with an ironic enough stance in their humdrum lives, wouldn’t suddenly remember how to be aghast. Maybe I’m jaded myself.

I also thought the last sequence, from looking at the red dossier to picking up Debi’s father, to the shootout at the house, all goes by quickly and abruptly, as if just to get the two main characters together and off toward the sunset in time for the credits to roll.

And – I thought Martin could be spared the humiliation by not insisting he crash Debi’s radio show, instead waiting for her to be done and talking to her then. But, if that happens, that’s just real life and there’s no movie. But also, for a guy who disappeared for a decade, and who makes his living not being noticed, with a symbolic last name, it sort of doesn’t make sense for him to be so blunt and so conspicuous. A grand sweeping gesture but ultimately not even romantic. So, I believed it up to when the character loses his integrity, which I think is a fair point.

I do find interesting just how often Martin says, “You look good.” Just about everyone he meets again receives that compliment. I don’t know what exactly to make of it – several things, I guess. I like that someone who disappeared has such an interest in other people’s appearances. But in the conversation with his teacher, especially, we see he probably hasn’t changed much – just a very nice guy, ready with a compliment, but ready to kill you if someone’s paid him too. There’s the rub, and a nice juxtaposition.

On that note, I can remember why I liked the movie very much to begin with. Martin’s an interesting, watchable character, for sure. The jokes are still there, and many are still funny. That my perception has changed this much might have less to do with the movie than with me, but, that’s part of it.

Two stars – down ~1/4 star each viewing from Three stars, ten years ago.

Why do we call them movie reviews, and not movie previews? And movie reviewers, not movie previewers? Who are these little chestnuts written for, anyway?

Well, to start, how would I describe a movie review? I’d say it’s something a prospective moviegoer reads to get a sense of what some unseen movie is about, the crux of the plot, a hint of a theme, probably a take on the nuts-and-bolts of it all, the technique or the performances, all of this arranged for explanatory purposes, sure, but also argumentative ones. It’s one person’s judgment of whether a cinematic experience matches or exceeds the value of the money it’d take for another person to get in the theater.

I might also say a review is just about all it takes to ruin that same moviegoing experience. Spoiler alerts notwithstanding, some of the freshness of the surprise is surely drained by reading a review.

Let me try this, then: a hands-off style review of the movie Primer (2004).

I’d never heard of it until I saw an entry about Mindfuck movies on the famous aggregator site kottke.org. Two of the three movies mentioned at the top of the post were Dark City and Memento, so I clicked through to see which others made the list provided by the link. Some I’d seen, some I hadn’t. Further down was the little write-up of Primer. But I didn’t read anything about it. Didn’t watch the trailer. Its title and its place on the list made it interesting enough, and a small note of support at the original post led me to queue it up quickly.

What a great, freeing, unique experience this would be, watching a movie without knowing much of anything about it! I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know, the premise, who was in it, anything more than I did, which was only that at some point some guy in a shirt and tie would do something or have something happen to him, or probably both. My only thought was that it reminded me of a Pink Floyd cover, which seemed okay to me.

So I watched it. And I’m not going to tell you what happened. But I recommend it.

Unsatisfied with that?

I would be too. Seems pointless, a review like that. But that’s more or less what it’s like to go into a movie with few if any preconceived notions about it. Unusual. So often I’d read seasonal movie previews, watch trailers, IMDb the living hell out of all these new movies so that by the time I ever got around to seeing any of them, I’d already nearly taken the journey upon which the movie is supposed to lead me. The experience was always compromised, though I also actively aided in compromising it.

So, fed up, I stopped watching trailers, and for the trailers of the movies I most anticipated I was doing all I could not to see a second of them except for actually leaving the theatre for those few minutes. Childish, embarrassing, effective things.

Time ticked on. Still I’d read up on new movies. I’d see what projects were in whatever director’s pipeline. And layer upon layer notions and expectations would pile up. And then when I saw a particular movie, the poor thing was fighting at a disadvantage because of whatever expectations I had. Often my assessment of a movie was not of the thing in itself but mostly whether it matched my expectations. Doesn’t seem fair.

But then, experience is part of it. Context, hard as it is for me to admit, is part of it. That which you know might enhance the experience even more than it detracts from the experience. Maybe expectations are part of the joy, when a movie is truly enjoyed. Maybe a movie that doesn’t meet expectations just isn’t very good. Maybe those that get a bum rap are fewer and farther between than I think.

So, after all this: the conclusion I’ve reached is that in my own mind, movie “reviews” are just what they sound like: a writer views a movie, then “re-views” the movie in his mind, writing about it, adjudicating the experience and passing along word of mouth as he or she thinks the movie deserves. They’re not just marketing tools, though they certainly can be. They serve a purpose, and I do think that purpose can shift from person to person. Now, I read one really only after having seen the movie, so I can agree or disagree and in continuing to think about it, also eking a little more out of those ten or twelve dollars than I thought I would. Maybe I’ll write them with an eye towards those more open-minded than I.

Now, what I really thought of Primer, in broad strokes:

It’s a short movie, without a whole lot of time between my hitting play and scratching my head at the end of it. I was satisfied when, maybe a third of the way through, the main characters didn’t even know what was going on. There’s an image on the internet explaining just what the hell happens, and I couldn’t even understand that. But I can say that I understood enough, and it was enough for me to enjoy it, and to recommend it. I don’t always think that movies that require multiple viewings are successful, more often than not it’s just ineffective, unclear storytelling that I’m not able to grasp the first go-round. I’d compare this to Mulholland Drive, a wildly different movie in almost every way except in that I know I like both, I’m pretty sure I can say both are well-made movies, but that I can’t explain either and instead of trying would rather just go back and watch either again right now. To me, that’s a good sign.