The Rules of Attraction

"I no longer know who I am and I feel like the ghost of a total stranger."

It seems to me that our society has experienced a slow sexual re-emergence over the last half century, that after hundreds of years of puritanical guilt and obsessive secrecy people are really ready to be sexual animals and lustful beings again. The result of this reawakening though, is often a sort of ambivalence to sex itself that is becoming increasingly manifest in the actions of youths and twenty-somethings as they experiment with sexuality in ways that are breaking taboos and pushing boundaries at an increasingly frightful pace. The Rules of Attraction, based on the Ellis novel, explores these ideas and more.


Focusing on the exploits of the misanthropic, hyper-sexed and over-privileged students of Camden College, The Rules of Attraction follows emotionally void drug dealer Sean Bateman as he pursues the virginal and sexually unavailable Lauren, an art geek, who is, in turn, friends with Paul Denton: a bisexual boy who is seeking both of them, in different ways. Mixed in there somewhere is Lauren's wildly promiscuous roommate, a mystery girl obsessed with Sean and, wild party-boy, Victor.

These characters fuck and suck and chuck, and do all manner of terrible things to each other, some justified, others not, but it's the colossal mess of it all and the totally disgusting honesty with which it's presented that makes the whole thing meaningful and worthwhile. Much like Closer, anyone who's been through some really messy relationship drama will find a lot to relate to here, and for those that haven't, well...you'll be entertained, in any case. Entertained, enamored, and disturbed.

What makes this film work is just how well it captures the wildly frenetic pace of The Rules of Attraction, and Ellis' narrative style. It veers all over the road like a drunk driver, going backward and forward in its intertwining stories at a manic and fevered pitch. It may not succeed at quite the level that Mary Harron's American Psycho did, but is still well worth the trip, and the experience is like nothing else you've seen brought to the screen: love it or hate it, it is undefinably creative and totally original.

Alternatively hilarious and soul-crushing, glorious and grim, The Rules of Attraction is a soberly satirical slap in the face to the cookie-cutter romances that we've come to expect in film.

Way of the Gun

“I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen.”

So here we are folks: this one’s an all time personal favorite of mine. The pure bleakness of it all, the utter realism of a bunch of shitty people in a shitty situation; I mean I barely have to suspend my disbelief. It’s like coming home.

A couple of angry, young cynics; Parker and Longbaugh are what the modern media would refer to as ticking time bombs. Being petty drifters, they have a lot of anger to unleash at the world and nothing to lose should society choose to bite back. Together they hatch a plan to kidnap the surrogate mother of a very dangerous businessman’s child. In turn, they unknowingly pull the first spade out from a house of cards that has been long in the building. Now, as vicious mercenaries, old-school bagmen and the crooked authorities chase them down, they have to wonder just how far they’re willing to chase this fortune-and whether it’ll be worth the price.

You want a nihilistic script? Well this is your fucking dream come true. If you’re looking for a single person with honest motives in this movie, you might as well grab a Where’s Waldo. You’ll have better luck.

Ryan Phillipe, Benicio Del Toro, Taye Diggs, Nicky Katt, Geoffrey Lewis and James Caan are the players. Juliette Lewis, Scott Wilson and Dylan Kussman are the collateral damage. But no one is even close to innocent, for all of these wretched creatures share one common denominator: they will do anything to survive…and even more to come out ahead.

All of the performers are the essence of deadly serious. The sparse music matches them, rising only when the stakes are at their highest, and reaching its crescendo as the animals clash in a sandy pit of blood and bullets where it’s survival of the fittest.

Clever, deadpan and wildly original, Way of the Gun answers a question that no one ever dared to ask: what happens when you pit the scum of the earth against itself? “How come no one asked ?” You might wonder. It’s because the world is full of people like this, and like vampires, their reflection is poison.

Irrerversible

“With a little money, we can help you get revenge. The assailant drew blood. Blood calls for revenge. Vengeance is a human right.”

A black, horrifying film: Gaspar Noe’s terrible tale of rape and murder is not for the faint of heart. Told in reverse, Irreversible explores the repercussions of a devastating, perverse crime on those most affected by it.

The film opens with Marcus and Pierre, both lovers of a woman named Alex, searching for the perpetrator of some heinous deed. They find their presumed culprit in a nasty sex club and just as things reach a dire peak, manage to destroy him in a brutal fashion as the other patrons look on. Back and back in time, in increments of only a few minutes at a time, we see what brought these seemingly ordinary men to such disturbed acts of violence. In the end we are left with the sweetness of love, the joy of desire and the happiness of contentment…but having viewed the story in its entirety, we must live with the knowledge of what’s to come.

The gorgeous Monica Bellucci and the talented Vincent Cassell headline as the lovers while Albert Dupontel plays Alex’s ex Pierre, still friends with the voluptuous beauty and yearning to be hers once again. The camera watches each heinous deed with a discouraging lack of bias, allowing each one to carry out as it would were there no one to stop them…which of course, there isn’t. It’s a very wild approach that some viewers find frustrating, while I simply view it as a realistic approach that is rarely shown in modern cinema.

Irreversible is unarguably a very challenging watch, but its unabashed honesty about the difficult subject matters it captures and its unflinching portrayal of the darkness of society and how it shatters our humanity is deserving of praise for its originality alone. It is a tough film to enjoy and an even tougher one to forget, but in the end it is worth the long, hard journey.

Minority Report

“I like you chief…you’ve always been nice to me. I’ll give you two minutes before I hit the alarm.”

 It is a world of paradox: a future where one is arrested and imprisoned for what one has yet to do. On the one hand, this saves the victim unnecessary bloodshed, her family the grief of loss. However, there is another side to this coin…for how can one be punished for a crime that has not yet been committed?

 As a man who lost everything to murder, John Anderton is someone who understands the need for Pre-Crime more than anyone. He is chief commander of the initiative, using the visions of three precognitive telepaths to stop violent crimes from being committed by their perpetrators. John’s beliefs are shattered irrevocably though, when he finds himself party to the knowledge that he will be the next killer for his agency to track and detain. Now a frantic fugitive on the run from his own people, John will use every trick in the book to remain a free man in hopes of proving the prediction wrong, thus invalidating everything he stands for.

 Based on the wonderfully imaginative ideas of a Philip K. Dick story, Minority Report opens a whole can of metaphorical worms when it comes to the ideas of justice and morality. Remaining as impartial as possible, the script forces the viewer to develop their own beliefs about the reality of a world where the repercussions of your wrong-doings are affecting you before you even commit them.

 Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Max von Sydow and Neal McDonough play a straight line of poker face performances, remaining calm and impassive to the events before them on the surface and allowing the viewer to read into their expressions what they will. The special effects are convincing, if a little over the top for the year they take place (but then this has always been an issue with sci-fi and it is a small quibble). Finally, Spielberg resists the urge to sentimentalize and the film works much better because of it. This is due to the setting being a cold, mechanical future where our very fates are there for the perusal of indifferent authority figures that care not for our hearts and minds, only our actions.

 Minority Report is one of those pictures that really only snowballs on you the more you consider it, simply because the notions it tackles and how it examines them are so effective; a truly awe-inspiring film.

The Ides of March

"Get out, now. Or otherwise..."

What a fresh and inventive film maker George Clooney has become. Who would've ever guessed that a man with so much talent and charisma in front of the camera, could have an even more visceral impact when he controls the frame? Well, here it is: with The Ides of March, Clooney has stepped into his prime as a writer, a director and a performer.

While Clooney is an equal headliner with his central star, as presidential hopeful, Mike Morris, he actually spends most of the film off-camera, as more of an idealistic, and inspiring, force. Here, Ryan Gosling takes the forefront as Stephen Meyers, an extremely talented, and articulate, democrat working on Morris' campaign as a speechwriter and political adviser.

Meyers believes in his candidate with his whole heart: he preaches for him, pulls for him and fights for him. But, when he is approached by an agent of the competing candidate, his life and career begin to unravel in the aftermath.

Now, I won't give away the revelations and developments that occur to these characters from there, because to do so would be criminal. What I will tell you is that The Ides of March is, primarily, a film about disillusionment. In it's own way, it's even a coming-of-age story, if only, in the sense of maturity and one's grasp on reality in parallel to it's truth.

Is The Ides of March cynical? Well, that's debatable. Are politics cynical? Was Obama who you thought he would be, who you hoped he would be? Is anyone? These are the questions the film is asking, and they're well worth exploring.

Finally, attention must be drawn back to Gosling once more. What a ferocious young actor he has become. While he was quite good in his earlier work, with films like Stay, The United States of Leland and The Notebook, Gosling has really come into his own in 2011. Between this film, and the equally excellent Drive, from Nicholas Wending Refn, Gosling has cemented himself as an actor to watch for this generation. I give you my word that this man will have an Oscar within the next ten years.

Tethered by a stellar cast of supporters, including Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachael Wood and Jeffrey Wright, The Ides of March is a timely and introspective film that forces us to examine both our morals and our politics on an equally tenuous footing.

Eyes Wide Shut

“If you men only knew...”

 In Stanley Kubrick’s final film, the audience receives an eerie, cryptic look at the psychology of sex and lust. It is a compelling, mysterious film that opens many more doors than it closes-but then the same could be said for many of Kubrick’s masterpieces.

 Meet Dr. Bill Harford and his wife Alice: young, wealthy, content and happily married. But all of this is thrown into question after an eventful night of temptation forces the lovers to speak a little more honestly with one another. This in turn sends a somewhat shattered Bill onto a journey of sexual odyssey in which he contemplates adultery, views disturbing representations of New York’s sexual underbelly and confronts his own changing views about lust and fidelity. By the time he’s decided where his loyalties lie though, it may be too late.

 Eyes Wide Shut is an extremely daring film, not just for that devious auteur Kubrick but moreover for the stars (and extras) who bare all in explicit detail. Cruise and Kidman are never better than here, as Bill and Alice, each alternating between the acceptable sociological archetypes that they portray to the world and their more deviant counterparts. The intricate narrative that paints this portrait is unflinching in its conception and flawless in its execution. Lastly, a mention must be given to the sparse but effective score that turns single piano keys into knives in the dark.

 Like its progenitors, Eyes Wide Shut met with a very uneven critical reception upon its initial release but great art is like a fine wine and so has it been with this film, growing only richer with each subsequent viewing.

The Sandlot

"Let me tell you something kid; Everybody gets one chance to do something great. Most people never take the chance, either because they're too scared, or they don't recognize it when it spits on their shoes."

You know, it's a sad fact of growing up: that things which were once magical to you as a kid, often lose their luster. It's a part of maturing I guess; you get older, and your tastes age with you. That's why it's so rare to find something you enjoyed as a kid not only retain its value, but actually improve for you as an adult. The Sandlot is such a rare gem, a film like Stand By Me, Up or The Plague Dogs, a film that is truly enjoyable for people of all ages, if for different reasons.

The Sandlot mainly concerns Scotty Smalls, the narrator and protagonist of the story. Scotty has recently moved to a new town with his mom and step-dad, and, as such, he has no friends, and very little confidence in himself. This all changes, though, when he is taken under the wing of cool, self-assured Benny Rodriguez. Soon, he has a circle of friends that would do anything for each other...which is good, because Scotty's gonna need all the help he can get after he makes a fatally prideful mistake.

What makes The Sandlot special is that intrinsic, unquantifiable quality that speaks to the heart of the youth in us all. This is something that is easy to attempt but very hard to succeed at. Why? Well, because it's very hard for an adult to tap into the nostalgia of childhood with any sense of honesty or authenticity. To Kill a Mockingbird did it, Stand By Me did it, and, well, The Sandlot does it.

Through some strange combination of story-telling, acting, music, and truth, The Sandlot manages to remind you exactly what it was like to be a kid. The need for acceptance, the longing for approval, the sense of adventure, and the appetite for imagination: this was what it was like to be young, in all it's facets.

Summer, friends, and fun...isn't it amazing to think, that once, long ago, this was all there was to life?

Shite Films: The Wicker Man

"How'd it get burned?"

 It's very important to remember what makes a good film, and there's no easier to be reminded than with an atrociously bad one. Take The Wicker Man remake for example: this is a film that features Nicolas Cage running through the woods in a bear suit and punching women to save the day.

 Yes, this film is that ridiculous. In fact, The Wicker Man enters a very special place of so-bad-it's-good cinema; it is a film so bad that it's worth watching simply for the great fun of enjoying it ironically.

 So, the plot. Well Cagey is a police officer who watches a mother and child blow up in a car one day. That's not really important or anything, so much as it's kind of there at the beginning to make things interesting. In any case, after this he's whisked away to an island of Pagans where's he's to seek out the missing daughter of his ex-wife.

 The investigation is more a series of weird events than any real stream of logic. Cagey finds a burned doll in a graveyard, gets evasive answers from townsfolk, sees the little girls name crossed off of a school registry, blah-blah-blah. Anyway, so after some silly antics like yelling at witnesses and knocking masks off of children, old Cage thinks he's got 'er cracked: the cult, a community that subsides on honey, wants to bring their honey back, by burning the young girl as a sacrifice to whatever gods they worship.

 On paper this is a bit disturbing and could make for an interesting thriller (see: the 1974 original). However, any kind of suspense that might be possible, using the concept as a jumping point, is erased very quickly by the ham-fisted script and Cage's increasingly silly over-acting. Scenes like Cage yelling at everyone he meets, striking several different unarmed women, drawing his weapon so he can steal a bike, or getting bees poured on his head, might make for some fantastic absurdist comedy...if only the film weren't trying so hard to be taken seriously.

 In fact, The Wicker Man is one of the worst scripts ever penned to paper, and the screen treatment is made even worse by the fact that they somehow got a competent director to take the helm...and he did nothing with it at all. What the hell happened to Neil Labute anyway? Did he lose a bet the producers or something?

 I think only one biting quip can really hammer home just how bad this all is, and here it is: The Wicker Man is the worst film that Nicholas Cage has ever been in. Now why don't you roll on over to his IMDB page and let this sink in for a while.

Evidence:

 Grizzly Punch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo_5ZKcYROw
 Not the Bees!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Gad...eature=related
 How'd It Get Burned!?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&fe...&v=nmLQ_Qh8INg

JFK

“Who grieves for Lee Harvey Oswald? Buried in a cheap grave under the name "Oswald"? Nobody.”

 In Oliver Stone’s magnum opus, he explores the question that has plagued the nation since the latter half of 1963: who killed Kennedy? Well, to this day, we still don’t have a concrete answer on the subject; just more questions and the bitter, stagnant smell of corruption.

 On November 22nd 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed by a lone gunman. Enter New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison, a man who takes three years to wake up and see what he’d been blind to for all that time: that it’s all wrong, that it doesn’t make a lick of sense. So the odyssey begins, Garrison’s one man crusade for justice against all odds. The investigation, though, in the end, produces nothing but a long list of co-conspirators and yes-men; the truth is never revealed.

 A lightning cast including Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Joe Pesci, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Bacon, Sissy Spacek, Donald Sutherland, Laurie Metcalf, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau storm the bastion of performance art…and they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Stone seamlessly blends archived footage with old style camera technique to create a convincing look at the era of the Warren Commission.

 JFK is one of the most ambitious, controversial films to fire out of the gates in the last twenty years. Regardless of your opinion on the assassination itself, there is no way you can look anyone in the face, in the eye, and tell them that you believe the official story. Why? Because BS has a certain odor that everyone can sense, because there are simply too many questions.

 It’s more than likely that the whole truth will never come out, even when the secret files are finally released in the near future. Like so many events in our history, we will never know what really happened all those years ago, but brave films like JFK will postmark the event in stone for future generations. So that as long as the viewer lives, there will always be someone who asks the question: why?

Hanna

"I just missed your heart."

In a sort of spiritual successor to Luc Besson's The Professional, director Joe Wright has brought to life the story of Hanna, a young girl trained since birth to be the ultimate tactical machine, killing, eliminating and adapting at will.

Much like The Professional, Hanna concerns a young girl with motive and ambition to strike down those who have made her life unbearable. The difference here is that Saorise Ronan's Hanna is a far more evolved creature than Natalie Portman's eerie, yet sweet, Mathilda. Where Mathilda existed in a world of fantasy and vengeance, Hanna has grown beyond these things, becoming almost machine-like in her intelligence, precision and cunning.

The talented and underused Eric Bana serves as her mentor, training her in a snowy, picturesque woodland, while every-woman Cate Blanchett nails the role of Marissa Viegler, the CIA agent charged with covering up the conspiracy which set these events in motion. The supporting cast also includes the wonderful Olivia Williams, an actress who evokes a young Tilda Swinton, and whom you may recall from Polanski's Ghost Writer and the Whedon vehicle, Dollhouse. In both, she was a terrific highlight.

What I really love about Hanna is how much respect it has for the audience. On the surface, many of it's concepts come across as old-hat and overdone (government experimentation, spy vs. spy, fighting the system) but screenwriters David Farr and Seth Lochhead show that the only problem with these concepts is lazy writing and lack of originality, and that both can be overcome with a solid script.

Take for instance the taboo nature with which Hanna's sexuality is explored. Here we have a budding young woman who has never even kissed or touched a boy, let alone become intimate with one. The way these issues are explored in the film are succinct and brimming with depth. Furthermore, the film has the courage to sexualize Hanna's desires without ever exploiting or sensationalizing them; no mean feat when dealing with an underage actress.

Featuring a groove-inducing soundtrack from the Chemical Brothers, and some stellar cinematography, Hanna is a gorgeous, well-acted revenge vehicle that is catapulted by it's performances.