Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Well, I have to say, you have no idea how nice it is to skip the whole muggle/Dursley thing and just get into the story. If for nothing else than that this one felt a little more palatable. Actually, this one almost seemed to launch too quickly into the action and exposition, but considering we've got over two hours of wizarding teenagers to sit through, it's hard to complain too much about that.

A lot of heated debate has cropped up in the wake of me watching these films so critically, which is maybe not so surprising. A lot of this tends to just be about telling me to lighten up and enjoy a simple kid's story without tearing everything apart and raining on the fun -- which, to put it bluntly, I respectfully reject, because you can learn a lot by applying criticism to pieces that don't immediately demand or warrant it, and frankly if it can't hold up to a little scrutiny then it's not for me anyway. Scrutiny and looking into the layers of a thing is how I enjoy a work. It's not like I'm complaining that the world of Harry Potter isn't believable or is too childish; I believe I've done my best to take the work as it stands and look at what it aims to be versus what it is, and I've tried only to judge it accordingly -- or at least I try to own up to moments of personal taste.

Anyway, the specific thing that keeps sparking debate is my claim that Rowling wasn't overly imaginative when constructing the architecture and rules of her world. Magic here is too literal, too direct and plain, too banal. I have quipped that Quidditch could only have been invented by a muggle. I have also quipped that the lady who wrote these stories about wizards has never even seen the inside of a Player's Handbook, let alone partook in a little role-playing in her day (or any other pastime that might give her insight into what being a spellcaster in a historied world of spellcasters might be like). Glib as they may be, I stand by these claims. In fact, especially considering how very Anglocentric the whole Harry Potter universe is, and how much magic and magick exists in the vast pagan-filled history of England, and considering works of fantasy by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Chia Miéville, it becomes all the more egregious how much wasted potential there is here. Imagine for a moment the Harry Potter series as written by Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore and maybe you'll see what I'm saying here. The same basic, simple hero's-quest storytelling but with a stronger sense of history, a more applied and inventive use of magic, and a more consistent use of character and archetype. It's not that Rowling and the filmmakers owe us this, exactly, but to not try for these things shows a lack of ambition, imagination, and initiative, and does not speak of a "great writer." But I'm beating a dead horse here, and so let's move on.

This comes up tonight because my one off-the-cuff idea from the last writeup about magically compressing large structures into smaller ones actually comes up here -- for all of a single shot, in the first ten minutes, showing the inside of a tent as something like a massive and comfortable blanket-strewn Turkish palace. Only here, instead of applying this concept to any storytelling, it appears as a sight-gag, there long enough for (a now awkwardly teenage-looking) Harry to remark, "I love magic!" before we move on with a story that looks like it has more to do with the world's various passions for football (combining the American pigskin-football arenas and budgets with the world's round-ball "soccer" passion and fandom) than it has to do with the concept of wizards or school or character growth. Okay, okay, I digress a second time... yeah, I hate Quidditch, but I'm talking about magic and its application: and here, with this Tardis-like tent, we see another overly literal, unapplied usage of magic.

As to the story itself: well, it's a bit frustrating, since most of the story is about something called the Triwizard Tournament. I have no idea how often it runs, but every once in a while three and only three (or four if your name rhymes with Barry Botter) kids get to compete in what we are told is a brutally dangerous literally life-or-death triathlon of dragon besting, merfolk wrestling, and hedge-maze completing. We are assured that people die doing this, though nobody does (the one casualty is unrelated). We are told it's highly competitive, though in two out of three competitions Harry ignores these rules and plays cooperatively -- and is mysteriously rewarded for such behavior. (But okay, so sports in the wizard realms are far more utopian than in the muggle world; can't fault them for that.) We are told the only prize is "eternal glory," which everyone seems to be taking literally without expecting it to mean literally anything. And we are told that the "contract is magically binding," so there is nothing to be done when Harry's name is slipped in despite it breaking very nearly every rule of the contest (there's an age limit, for one, and it's called the TRIwizard Tournament, for another). Anyway, almost no time is spent at the school learning spells and potions and such, unlike in previous installments (though there is time to introduce a new DOTDA prof, make him incalculably crucial to the plot, tie him into the overarching Voldemort narrative, and then eliminate him from the position by the end, so the apple hasn't fallen too far here). Instead 90% of the story is devoted to the Tournament, and to Harry falling out with Ron (over what it's never clear, but considering they're now 14 year old boys I wasn't too concerned), and to Ron and Hermione wanting each other in what must be the least-demanded most-squick-inducing case of ongoing series shipping since Jabba licked Leia. Oh, and to wizard prom.

One complaint I have that isn't limited to Rowling's world or teen wizards or anything of the sort is, I have a really hard time watching the cheap and artificial attempts of film and TV to depict the hormone-infused chaos and confusion of being a teenager without getting their hands messy. The self-doubt and relationship changes that occur in movies and TV are embarrassingly easy to cope with and clean up after, there's very little anger that can't be soothed out with a couple of words and a hug or two, and sex never even enters into it. It's ghastly the way they depict by-rote scenes of what they call "teens being teens," and -- well, I hate to harp on it, and I know I just said this isn't limited to Harry Potter, and it isn't, but -- the truth is, this looks to me like one more case of the artists being lazy with their material. They have to show "teens being teens," and here they did the bare minimum. Harry and Ron fight, but the reasons are too light (Harry's name being picked by the Goblet) and the solution far too simple (Ron decides Harry didn't put his own name in the Goblet, apparently?). Harry is a little more prickish, but only a little, and it only comes out when he's not busy being pawn or hero. Hermione and Ron have a falling out, but everybody (especially Hermione) is suspiciously honest and expository with their deepest, most vulnerable inner feelings, and so by the end of the movie that's taken care of, too. The one thing being a puberty-stricken teenager isn't is clean and tidy, but here just like all lazily crafted stories about cardboard teenagers, everything wraps up with a neat bow.

And then there's that other 10%, which is Harry's dreams and Harry being lured (suffice it to say through a scheme so convoluted as to make a Bond villain blanche) into a magical cemetery for a ritual to bring Voldemort back and finally give us a chance to cast Ralph Fiennes as the grand villain. (A side note: Goblet of Fire stars Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson, and Clémence Poésy, which makes three of the four main actors from a favorite recent film of mine, In Bruges, which was surprising and kind of cool.) Fiennes here is good and creepy, but it's basically just a teaser "first battle" with an appropriately video gamey "miracle" escape, setting us up for future terrors. That's okay, it's a decent introduction of the archvillain, though I'm a bit confused about how Peter Pettigrew went from supplicant captive at the end of Prisoner to the sycophantic Igor with the suspiciously familiar sounding name of Wormtail, but it doesn't seem worth splitting hairs over. In retrospect, I assume he was just lying to Black and Lupine, and he really was the eager betrayer all along, not just a victim of persuasion. Anyway, it all happens very fast, which is probably good, and plays out as creepy, but since you're never worried if something is going to happen to Harry it's not too scary. Plus, the other kid present, Cedric, dies so quickly there's nothing left to do but deliver the information packets (Voldemort returns, noseless and bald; Wormtail steals Harry's blood; Lucius Malfoy and the seniors Crabbe and Goyle are all "Death Eaters"), put up a bit of a fight, drop some ghostiness on us, and get Harry back in time to deliver the bad news to the guys who, really, should have known all along.

Oh, right, and "Mad Eye" Moody wasn't really himself at all, but was in fact Dr. Who (I'm kidding, but it was David Tennant, playing a villain with a name embarrassing even by Harry Potter standards: Barty Crouch, Jr.). There were plenty of clues throughout about the polyjuice potion (which, if you paid attention to Chamber of Secrets, or you have a girlfriend willing to drop hints for you, you'll remember is the shapeshifting serum), but there was never any call to suspect Moody was anything other than who he said to be because we've never met him before, and that struck me as a little weak. It makes the reveal of him a touch more non sequitur than it should be, which as I've said before is the difference between a really good late-game twist and plain old deus ex machina. You don't want it telegraphed, but if there's no reason to suspect (other than the story's unending pattern of using DOTDA professors as plot devices) then it's a suckerpunch, and unsatisfying. Or maybe I missed clues. Always possible.

Anyway, I suppose I'd rank this one about equal to Prisoner of Azkaban, in that it had less misery than Prisoner (almost no Quidditch, zero Dursleys) but also less interesting characters or advances in plot than Prisoner. Nice dark stormclouds brewing, though.

Ready for number five, about which I know pleasantly nothing.

Casablanca

There's not a lot to say about one of the most written-about movies in film history, is there? Jen had to watch this for class, and when you watch a classic film with someone who hasn't seen it before, you get something like fresh eyes again, which is always a joy. So here, already familiar with the politics and the double- and triple-crosses, and the thematic and symbolic gestures throughout, I found myself focusing so much more on the straightforward emotional core of these characters. Bogart's performance is a lot more raw and emotional, dark and brooding, than I'm used to seeing from actors from that era or from an actor like Bogart. It's still a little affected, still very much Bogart playing Bogart, but scenes of him as a broken, bitter drunk facing the darkest place in his own heart really resound, and I couldn't help but be moved by his presence and energy. (And as I write this, Jen is listening to Ebert's commentary track to pass time, and I overhear talk of how this was Bogey's first step up from back-up gangster characters and into an A-list role that would make him one of the most identifiable movie stars of his or any time. So, that's cool. Well earned.)

While on the subject: I love Humphrey Bogart, I just love him, and I consider the best romantic co-star to pit against him Lauren Bacall, because she's got a kind of ball-buster fearlessness that bounces against Bogart's sensitive tough-guy behavior perfectly -- but here, against Ingrid Bergman, so much classier, so much more delicate and ladylike, and that her Ilsa can wreck Rick the way she does says more about who Rick was and how he became who he is than if he'd simply met a woman as jaded and cynical as he is, like Bacall.

My favorite thing about this film is the same as most people: the relationship between Renault and Rick, the back-and-forth of the sleazy corrupt official and the noir anti-hero club owner, each of whom hide their own self-confessed "sentimentalism" underneath cynicism and opportunism. They are such different characters, and yet so the same, and in the end Renault is clearly not meant to be merely the "consolation prize" for Rick, who lets Ilsa go. If we accept that Rick is the man "Richard" was changed into by heartbreak, then Renault and Rick are soulmates in just the way Ilsa and "Richard" once were. If the film allowed Rick and Ilsa to escape together, it would do a disservice to the progression of change Rick has undergone between the flashback and the start of the story, and would cheapen the nature of his character into some bland rose-colored tripe. But no, here love can break your heart, and your heart can't always be unbroken -- and this story is Rick's, not Richard's, and such a huge part of it is accepting that who he is now is more than just the shell of a man once named Richard. Accepting himself as Rick and accepting his new soulmate, Captain Renault, is a beautiful and crucial turn for the character: a step forward, not a step backward. Plus, it's the American bucking up and saying, I can't stay neutral forever; time to fight. Considering the exact timing of the film, it's hard not to take that into account. But watched now, almost seventy years later, it's the drama and character that resonate today more than the political activism.

I don't know what else to say. I mean, this is a great movie, just a nice beautiful film that does everything right. Maybe watching this -- one of the most respected pieces of populist art ever, a film that didn't aim to redefine cinema or push any boundaries but just managed to have a near perfect storm of talent, skill, and drama -- should put a slightly different spin on my recent rant about 2010's film output being unambitious. I'm not sure it entirely does (after all, I never claimed that unambitious was bad; I just missed the joy of films ambitious enough to aim for greatness), but it definitely reminds me that you don't have to transcend form in order to be transcendently good.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

This is my second time seeing this. I really liked it the first time I saw it. Even though it seems a little poppy or silly, it was loosely around the mid-point of a roughly imagined unwritten "Top 10 of 2010" list already. I loved it on second viewing. It's just fantastic. And I like the end a lot more now, too; now that I wasn't hoping for the comic book end to show up I don't feel disappointed really at all. (Still, all that stuff in the books about going inside Ramona and the many different sides of her all fighting the one side of her that still loved Gideon, and Scott actually having to come to terms with his black-outs and constant prickish behavior toward women... that stuff was still the most powerful part of the whole series.)

It's so goddamn ADHD, video-game/music-video hyper, but it doesn't feel like it panders to the short-attention span so much as embraces and celebrates it. In fact so much happens with so much deliberation and forethought -- the effects alone are so smooth and complicated despite the rapid-fire delivery of them -- that it is clearly not a work by or even for those who don't want to pay attention. It's a labor of love that took a lot of concentration and patience to put together. I don't know for sure, but maybe it's all that loving detail that keeps the movie from feeling like a seizure-inducing headache. Or maybe it's just that it's a very simple, very good story. And the endlessly entertaining, understated stunt-casting doesn't hurt. Honestly, so many great roles for so many great young actors, really nailing the tongue-in-cheek, deliberately one-note characters from the book. Almost every character, I wish I could spend more time with. That's rare. And considering how shallow and poorly-developed many of them are, that's crazy.

My friend Chris and I got into a conversation where he said he couldn't believe Scott would fall head over heels for Ramona. I have to confess, I found that kind of surprising. Because honestly, 22-year-old me would have gone apeshit for a girl like Ramona Flowers. 32-year-old me, well, I still think she's pretty cute but she's awfully shallow, full of herself, and doing that unforgivable young-girl thing where instead of dealing with her problems she's just telling you they're there so you'd better deal with them for her... but when I was Scott's age, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't fight seven deadly exes for a chance to rub up against those damaged goods. That's part of the appeal of the film, I think, is how right it gets the way guys can just go stupid for a girl who is just the right kind of trouble. It's almost like the answer to the whole Manic Pixie Dream Girl phenomenon, because rather than having our mopey sadsack hero find a muse who's just a little too perfect and a little too charming, here our pixie dream girl is aloof, difficult, and she comes with baggage. Here we not only acknowledge that Ramona's a mess, but we admit that there it wouldn't be any fun if she weren't a mess -- and Scott is exactly in that place where you see it, but you don't really see it. This film captures that in a way that really hits a secret inner me, a leftover me from a long time ago, and for that I find it actually a kind of emotional experience. For that it deserves to be somewhere in the same orbit as films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Punch-Drunk Love, films that really capture how it can feel to be in love. At least, how it feels when I'm in love.

Plus, on top of all of that, the action sequences really work, and there is something infectiously awesome about watching Michael Cera in convincing, surreally exaggerated fight scenes. He's an actor I've always found charming -- but, alas, just charming, and frankly one-note: one of those actors who plays himself over and over and you can only take so much of that in a lead role. But here the Michael Cera persona is a strength. Some people don't see him as the Scott Pilgrim of the books, but I really do. His mumbling, introspective delivery and exaggerated facial expressions keep the character appealing but cartoony, but those same mannerisms also help him seem like an un-self-aware asshole, which the character needs. I really like him in this role. The fact that he's so preposterously miscast as a fighter and an ass-kicking bass player really work in the favor of the role. For the world of Scott Pilgrim, I wouldn't believe it if Scott Pilgrim were believable in those fights. It would feel less video-gamey, and less fun.

Anyway, I'm gushing. But I just watched it straight through with no complaints or criticisms. I want to spend more time in that crazy silly world, and I was moved by the plight of the main character in ways I felt were both genuine and ironic (the Venn diagram of those two seemingly incompatible terms is most definitely the Edgar Wright model). What more could I ask for?

Naked Lunch

For about eight or nine years I've had an idea for a story that begins with a man picking up someone else's lost keychain in a convenience store. The basic plot involved him becoming convinced the owner of the keys had been kidnapped, and he spends the story uncovering "clues" and building a complicated, paranoid narrative -- but the trick is, he's imagining all of it; nothing is actually wrong and it's all in his mind. The further he would go the deeper and crazier the conspiracy would seem. The idea started as a novel and never got much farther than fifty or sixty pages of escalating madness, but I always held fondly onto the idea of it. I always considered it my modern-day Don Quixote by way of David Lynch and Dostoevsky, about a man who reads too much Raymond Chandler and, I don't know, John Le Carré maybe. The paranoia and subjective reality always appealed to me, but I never knew how to convey the world as the hero saw it with enough realism that the audience would know what's going on. Well I hit some classics in my mind-webbing of this story, but I forgot an obvious choice for a story of this type: Kafka (which seems weird now, but you know how it is). When Cronenberg put together this script, he definitely didn't forget about Kafka. I wonder if a better, more Kafkaesque film has ever been made.

Rewatching Naked Lunch makes me realize two things. First, I was overthinking the "how" of my character's subjective reality and second, I was underthinking the "what" of that reality. Naked Lunch is such a seductively unpleasant trip, a world where the ground is never really stable to begin with and a hero -- Peter Weller is amazingly nuanced as the keeping-it-together-while-falling-apart Bill Lee -- who sinks deeper each minute. There seems to be no end to the depths of madness and paranoia, assisted here by impossible fictitious drugs that, too, are part of the possibly-hallucinatory whirlwind, and here the boundless sinking becomes its strength. It's perfect to populate this world with Cronenberg's creepy organic models and sexualized, oozing mutants; you can't bear to look at the fascinating grotesqueries but you can't bear to turn away, either, and the deeper Bill spirals into paranoid philosophies of espionage, addiction and homosexuality the more engaging it is to see.

I've never been formally educated on topics like schizophrenia or delusion but I've been around those who've had it, and it feels to me like this is a story that does it right. Each new twist of the crazy screw in Bill's world could be the ravings of a hurt, confused subconscious or the truths of a universe out of control. And I haven't even mentioned the metatextuality of the story, combining elements of the life of William S. Burroughs (who used the pen-name William Lee) and the accidental homicide of his wife into some of the more lucid portions of a stream-of-consciousness novel with no real center. If any of the universe of Naked Lunch exists outside the character's (Bill's) head, then it still only exists, presumably, in the novelist's (William's) head -- or else it is a strange creation plucked right out of the director's (Cronenberg's) head. So when opinions and philosophical musings about the nature of art, editing, addiction, sexuality, gender politics, or anything else come up -- well, it's a mess. To top it off, the character Bill inside the story is, apparently, without his full understanding or cognizance, sending his "reports" to his two best friends (a Kerouac analog named Hank and a Ginsberg analog named Martin). Only this report is a novel, a novel Bill is writing, called of course Naked Lunch.

But none of this ever feels confusing, within the confines of the story. Much of that is due to the careful timing and pacing of the new twists in the conspiracy, the transmutation of each character from ally to enemy, the evolution of drug from bug powder to black meat to Mugwump jism. Each of the increasingly weird typewriter-bugs feeding him stranger and stranger information about the people and world around him but it always feels like an impulsive thought Bill might be having already, a crazy notion of who is his friend and who is his enemy that a sane person would disregard easily. And they come at opportune times, corresponding to moments of solitude, often when he has just or could have just taken drugs, or has a moment to pause and think. Call it insanity, call it drug-induced hallucination, or call it unpeeling layers of the world, but they come in precisely placed points to keep the ground constantly moving without feeling disorienting and confusing. Believe it or not. But most of what I think grounds the story is Peter Weller's performance, and the shifting-but-nuanced performances of those around him, especially of course Judy Davis. It's hard to imagine how you'd go about directing these actors in these roles, even for a man who by this point in his career had been directing people covered in prosthetics and goop for decades. That everything feels pitch-perfect right when you don't even know what key the song is in speaks volumes to Cronenberg's mastery and sure-footedness. Easy decisions aren't made; interesting ones are. The story is fearless, and rushes headlong into new territory with a kind of mad-bastard confidence that I frankly envy.

Inspirational and insane. This has always been one of my favorite films by one of my favorite directors.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

The Harry Potter movies seem hellbent on punishing you for the first half-hour of each sitting, don't they? My fuck, each movie in the series gets some momentum once it gets into act two and the mystery is moving but it has the hardest time depicting what is ostensibly the real world. Every second -- every frame of film -- I have to spend in the company of Harry's hate circus of a family is like torture, and it's such a strange decision to make the opening act of your film so gleefully sadistic. It smacks of poor judgment but more than that, it smacks of lazy writing. There is a story here, and again it's an improvement on the previous one -- in style and tone, in pacing and performance, in aesthetics and plot -- but like every Harry Potter movie, it takes almost an hour to get there, almost an hour before I care in the slightest. For that first hour, I am so close to turning it off that the truth is, my dedication to finish the series and blog about them as I go is the only reason I didn't switch it off and find something less punishing to watch, like maybe Irreversible or Martyrs.

I have to admit it's pretty frustrating that each film follows such a predictable model -- muggle foster family, misery, hijinks, unauthorized magic, escape, diversion, train (or car) ride, up the stairs into school, a couple of pointless classes whose lessons will be shoehorned in later but feel far more interested in showing off pointless new teachers and pointless new magic spells that are all variations on the same idea (wave wand, incant some really ridiculous sounding faux-latin crap, and pow! magic), and during all this every single person seems to be talking like a 1980s video game NPC, doling out morsels of exposition that add up very quickly to whatever this year's big mystery is that Harry's not supposed to know anything about even though it directly involves him and he'll inevitably step in and save the day, and in the end Dumbledore will wander through with his benevolent smile and say that was very good Harry, like that's how he'd had it planned all along. Along the way we'll meet the new Defense of the Dark Arts instructor who will be incontrovertibly linked to the primary mystery of the story in one way or another, and Snape will show up and act sinister (but if you wait long enough, it will turn out he's acting as the good guy, so don't worry about mean old Snape), and by the end the DOTDA teacher will leave. Harry will clash with Draco in some of the most time-wasting, exhaustingly overwrought scenes that don't involve the Dursleys, presumably because the author assumes audiences wouldn't enjoy a story about high school without some half-assed obligatory bullying scenes, and then -- sigh -- there will be a Quidditch match, and eventually Harry'll start acting out, he (or he and his buddies) will sneak out or do something they're not supposed to, get caught, get away with it, talk with Hagrid, uncover some piece of the big mystery, and away they go on their adventures. Ron and Hermione will each have their chances to save Harry's neck before Harry steps up to the plate and hits the grand slam to win the -- oh wait, wrong lame sports metaphor, let's try that again -- before Harry catches the Golden Snitch and invalidates the score to that point. (Honestly, though, the puzzle of "It would take a great wizard to do what we saw happen, Harry" was solved by "I realized I'd already done it, so I just did it again, it was that easy." That's precisely resolution by grandfather-paradox, and that's precisely a crap end to what should have been a tense and moving scene.)

Don't get me wrong. I actually liked Prisoner of Azkaban pretty well -- a lot compared to the low bar set by Sorcerer's Stone and the slightly-less low bar set by Chamber of Secrets. But that enjoyment comes at a price, which is a heftier dose of suspended disbelief than I'm usually comfortable giving. The world is just so illogical, poorly thought out, and weakly motivated, with so many winking nods to the audience and so many moments of shoehorned exposition and rushed growth, it's a task to let go and say, okay, all right, show me what you've got, I'll overlook what I can. For instance, the characters of Lupin and Black are interesting, and Pettigrew too for that matter, but we went from "Sirius Black is the scariest murderer in the history of scary murderers, and he wants to kill Harry Potter" to "Sirius Black is my father's best friend and a wrongfully imprisoned man who's very gentle and kind and not the worse for wear or bitter at all despite twelve years in a scary prison" all in the space of a single David Thewlis-shaped hug, and I couldn't keep up. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the truth behind this second, all-too-easy lie to be revealed, but nope. The all-too-easy was the end of the matter. Likewise, the mystery of Lupin was telegraphed so much -- I mean, assuming the name alone wasn't a giveaway -- that I was sure there was more to it than that, that another layer was going to be revealed to the mystery of the Teacher Who Disappears Every Full Moon And Makes Other Teachers Paranoid About Werewolves, but nope -- thats it. He's just a werewolf. And he's "used to" the shitty treatment he receives, end of story, so even if it's a tiny bit sad we shouldn't dwell on it -- that's the way the world works.

Part of the thing with the story here is it's rather guileless, and I think this plays into my previous comments that the world is surprisingly unimaginative and blandly conceived. Quidditch isn't the only example of a system that could only be conceived by a muggle. A good writer comes up with a neat idea and writes it out completely and is pleased with that; a great writer comes up with a neat idea and then finds a way outside that idea, looks at it from every angle, and has neat ideas about that neat idea. Think of The Minority Report or Asimov's Laws of Robotics (examples that came up earlier today in a conversation with my friend Rex) -- both show us concrete systems, rules of governing the fictional world (precog crime units; laws of robotics) built on conceits of the story (precognitive mutants; sentient robots), but neither story just shows you this world and calls it done. Both then challenge their own systems from a variety of angles and come up with pleasing stories that show imagination and cunning. In the world of Harry Potter, it is sufficient that magic wands and funny words make things happen; the author felt no need to explore these concepts any deeper than that. When Harry goes to a boarding house -- or whatever the hell he goes to, after running away from home and before getting on the train -- it occured to me that, following the triple-decker bus doing it's "squeeze" routine, it would have been really cool to see the hostel/hotel as a series of essentially plywood walls with doors, almost like a maze and less like a corridor, but every door opened into a large, comfortable room -- compression of space within each wall, via magic. That would have been cool. What they had instead were kids pouring tea from a floating teapot (yawn) or waving their hand to make the spoon twirl in their cups on their own (double yawn). There's no imagination applied to the potential of the world Rowling has created, and the world she's created has pretty boundless potential. In a world so amazing, why are things so literal at all? If you can manipulate reality and defy physics, why are you content to show us the "wonder" of a floating teapot?

But I am caught in a critical digression it's hard to escape. Despite everything, this movie worked a good deal better than the others. It's just a kid's movie after all, and if the motivations are more obvious or the twists more predictable, well, remember that no matter how many adults love it it was written for thirteen-year-olds. The guilelessness is appropriate, the directness of the characters, even to an extent the moral black-and-whiteness of it, it does all work for the demographic age we're writing for here. In fact, by that standard, the unorthodox storytelling and grandfather-paradoxic overlap (though done too bluntly and too blasé for my tastes, not to mention just rewarming stale Back to the Future II plot devices) could be considered kind of bold and daring. That the monstrous villain is so readily a friend and that the rat (which, by the way: the rat? okay, whatever... I'll admit: that twist wasn't predictable, but this time I don't mean that as a good thing -- non sequitur storytelling is just another form of deus ex machina, after all) was the real villain in disguise, and that even he was "kind of" innocent because Voldemort is a hard guy to say no to, and the truth is this movie actually has no villain -- all that's different from your average adventure tale for tweens. The villain is of course the looming shadow of the omnipresent never-there Voldemort, but the only real antagonist in Azkaban is rumor, hearsay, and committee. The Hippogriff and Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew/Scabbers and Professor Lupin are all under fire from the same nameless, faceless foe -- the rules or laws that do not always have the facts right but force men to come to a judgment anyway. (Hey, an actual theme that ties together all the action throughout and actually affects the primary and secondary storylines impactfully? My, we have come a long way!)

In a way I wish the Harry Potter movies hadn't been made when and how they were. If the first one was being made today, with the same cast and art design and all that, it might have been made into an HBO or AMC style television series, one where separate episodes could explore the worlds and rules and systems, and characters could be given their proper due, and the overarching mysteries could be given enough time and attention to really have impact. The plotholes or inconsistencies could be ironed out, much like when we adapt Lord of the Rings or Narnia, or Philip K. Dick, or Roald Dahl, or anything ever from one format to another. As is, though, it feels weirdly disjointed, its episodic structure feels more stilted and unsatisfying. In each film we meet a couple of new teachers -- usually exactly one ringer (always obvious; also maybe always a woman? in 2 and 3 it was) and exactly one who ties into the main story. Our "regulars" like McGonnagal and Snape sometimes feel like walk-ons. (I've been watching a lot of 90s Star Trek lately, and occasionally Geordi La Forge will be in a scene for no reason, and he'll have one line that could have been said by anybody, and you realize that this is probably a contractual thing, to make sure everybody has at least one line and picks up a paycheck that week, even if the story doesn't need them; anyway, McGonnagal here and Snape in the last one kind of felt like that to me.) It'd be nice to give the world some breathing space, but it would require someone with stronger skills than Rowling, if I may dare say, to whip the world into a better kind of shape.

Anyway I daydream because I think it'd be a worthwhile endeavor. I see what people like about these, and each one is a significant step up from the last (though I'm warned not to get my hopes up for the 4th? seems like every film in the series needs the apologies and caveats of someone or other -- not a great sign), but I just can't as easily overlook a lot of the silliness and laziness of both plotting and world-building as my friends can, it seems.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Well, the story at least has a lot more plot cohesion here, and in fact for the most part I wasn't bored or irritated in general, though there were an awful lot of suspiciously plot-hole shaped questions I had about the story as we went along. It's also making aims at themes, though I'm not sure to what end, to be honest. So much talk of racial purity and class warfare, but I can't tell you how either of those things factor into the story in a meaningful way. The Malfoys scoff openly at Ron for being poor and Hermione for being common muggle trash, but it's odd because Harry is equal to or superior to them in both categories (I keep wondering why that mountain of gold he inherited in Sorcerer's Stone never comes back up, or why he doesn't help out his struggling friends the Weasleys), and while we are led to believe that perhaps Harry is the direct descendent of Salazar Slytherin (I think I got that right) he turns out to be, apparently, the heir of Godric Gryffindor instead, though Tom Riddle calls his mother a Mudblood (mixed breed). Still, if what Hagrid says is right and nobody's got pure blood, then Harry's as well off racially as any, or better.

Additionally, Tom Riddle has apparently hypnotized Ron's sister Ginny and made her write hateful things on the walls about the Mudbloods and seems intent on killing them, until he admits to dropping the ruse as soon as he sees he can lure Potter in instead. He also mentions that he, too, is born of muggle parents, and so I'm just confounded as to what bloodlines have to do with anything here. As Hagrid says himself, it's all "codswallop," but why include it in the story? As a way of building tension around Harry's revealed bloodline? To call into question the whole Slytherin-versus-Griffindor thing and allow us to learn from Dumbledore that Harry pulled a Rogue on some of Voldemort's powers (like confidence and resourcefulness, apparently? or so says Dumbles) during that scar-making attack on him as a baby? The whole repeated theme of who is pure wizard and who is part or all muggle seems bizarre, especially since (as Hermione, Harry, and Voldemort all prove, at least) magical skill seems to have nothing to do with it. Maybe there's some commentary for kids here that racism is a bunch of malarkey, because I'm not seeing the value otherwise. Likewise the moneyed-versus-unmoneyed thing, but that one doesn't come up quite as directly (though it sits one layer behind an awful lot of the story, in things like Dobby, the Yoda-fucked-Jar-Jar-and-look-what-you've-got-now abomination that is apparently the Malfoy's indentured elf servant). So yeah, in short: there does seem to be a smattering of themes here, but I don't know why because they feel arbitrary and poorly integrated into the central story.

As to the plot, it's an awful lot like the first film, though a fair bit tighter. If you accept the Inspector Gadget conceit that the adults are bumblers or somehow "busy" all the time and that the Pennys and Brains of the world have to maintain order and solve the mysteries for them and just generally save the day, then the story works reasonably well. How and why our characters keep being in the right place at the right time seems to work a lot better, even if the number of times they happen to be in the right place at the right time still seems a touch high. Dumbledore and Hagrid fell into and out of peril so rapidly and so arbitrarily I got a little bit of vertigo, but at least the storytellers gave us a reason they weren't around at the story's climax -- though I find it tough to buy that Snape, who seems intent on quietly keeping Potter alive and doing good from the dark side, would risk so much to show up Lockhart by sending the blowhard in alone to fight the monster and save the school. I guess you could argue Snape never expected Lockhart to know where the Chamber was, or that he'd be brave enough to go in if he did (and of course Lockhart wasn't), but it still leaves Snape backing out of active duty and allowing the school to be closed down without even trying to save the day. That hardly sounds like the Snape who chased Quirrell all around the place and thwarted his every scheme against Potter in the background of last year's story. But whatever; the bottom line remains, if you don't stop to wonder what the adults are doing or why, the story moves along a lot better than in The Sorcerer's Stone. Any improvement is good, right?

The only other thing I have to say -- which is true of both films but I had a lot to say about the first one and didn't get around to mentioning this -- is how awful, how terribly fucking awful, the opening scenes of each movie are. Harry's muggle aunt and uncle and their Augustus-Gloot-meets-Veruca-Salt son are so unbearably loathsome that it takes me another ten or fifteen minutes after their departure from the film to start caring about anything. They are drawn so broadly, and are so bland, so unrealistic and unfunny, that in both films (which start depressingly similarly, by the way) I basically don't care anything about the lame adventures on the ride to Hogwarts, and only check back in once things settle down. In Sorcerer's Stone that meant I didn't get into the movie until somewhere around the stairwell confrontation with Malfoy and the Sorting Hat sequence. Here it meant I barely registered the ridiculous and thoroughly unnecessary flying-car ride or pounding they take inside that tree monster thing. I didn't get into the story until Snape catches Ron and Harry and threatens to have them expelled. In each case, the despicable opening scenes keep me at a disdainful distance from the story until about forty minutes in, and make act one a bitter pill indeed. I cannot express to you how much I hate those two, and I know I've seen both Fiona Shaw and Richard Griffiths in other, more respectable roles, but I honestly hope I never have to look at their faces ever again. I'm already recoiling in horror at the mere thought that I have at least five more films that no doubt each open with those two and their stupid, poorly written and poorly conceived comedy-of-hate routines.

Ha. But overall, yes, Chamber of Secrets is a big step up from Sorcerer's Stone. I've made it through the two crummy movies that everyone seems to need to apologize for, and varying reports say the next one, Cuarón's Prisoner of Azkaban is either the last shitty one or the first good one. I tried to watch it once and just couldn't get engaged -- I wonder if I made it past that forty-minute mark, when the foul taste of the Dursleys has been cleansed off the palate, or not. Soon I'll watch it and let you know.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Now that the series is wrapping up, I promised I'd actually watch the movies through, seriously, critically, with sober adult eyes, and so here I am. I quipped that everyone tells me if I sit through five or six hours of mediocrity I can finally start watching some neat kids films, and that about sums it up the opening movement here, to be honest.

It's a tough thing to start a franchise, especially one so overly developed as Harry Potter. I have talked a lot about the joy of feeling like the world exists beyond the edges of the frame in a film, but I do believe this is an example of taking that concept a little too far. Like the post-Episode I Star Wars series, too much time is given to frivolous explorations of the world around the story. Efforts are made to incorporate it into the plot, such as the extended sequence with the bank... goblins?, wherein Hagrid seeks out a You-Know-What from You-Know-Where for You-Know-Who, but a lot of it feels like a contrivance to show off some fancy wonderful idea for magic locks or goblins that work at banks. Plus, it keeps resulting in our titular hero happening to be in the right place at the right time to see or hear or witness some thing that just happens to be crucial to the overarching mystery of the series, or the backgrounded mystery of this particular film (the film's central plot feels relegated to subplot status, which is trouble). I think Sorcerer's Stone comes off as 40% backstory, 40% world-building, and only 20% actual plot. The plot -- the mystery of the (also titular) whatsit being guarded by the cerberus and what it's for and who is plotting against everyone -- reads like an Encyclopedia Brown or Hardy Boys story to me, with a core mystery that the adults are involved with but conveniently keep allowing the children to get in the way of, only the children keep miraculously solving riddles and eliminating obstacles. At the end it's played off as the hero's-quest Chosen One thing, because Harry is So Special and all that, but along the way Harry's specialness takes a backseat to ordinary pluck (Ron beating the magic chess game; Ron defeating the troll in the ladies' room) and cleverness (Hermione learning who Flamel is; Hermione knowing how to get past the ivy monster thing). It is really, really difficult for me to look at this story and piece together what the adults are up to during all this. What are Dumbledore and McGonagall up to while all this is happening? Why is it important to pull the Stone out of storage and hide it on school grounds? Why did the magic mirror need moving when it did, and why did putting it in the room with the Stone seem like a good idea? Did Dumbledore know Harry and his Scooby Gang would show up, time and again, and if not -- what was he expecting to happen?

Further, it's odd to watch this because Harry looks and acts like such a geek, but he's a rich, popular athlete who isn't very good at his studies (he gets by, but he doesn't excel) and gets out of trouble more than once on account of his ability to play sports so well. He's the jock. Since this story is so clearly and deliberately a going-to-school analog I don't feel this line of thought is inappropriate; it's not just a lark to point it out. It's the point of the story, when you get down to it. It's a story for children about going to school and feeling out of place and finding out you are special, so the nature of that specialness is absolutely tantamount to understanding the story here, seems like -- at least for the first one (we'll see, but it feels like that theme pretty much permeates the whole thing). The point is, Harry looks and acts like the outcast nerd of the school, but almost immediately he is given a massive fortune and a star position on the school sports team. In fact, he seems all poised to befriend the school's other first-year rich, entitled jock, Draco Malfoy, and even the Sorting Hat wants to put him in Malfoy's house, Slytherin -- and house leader Snape is obsessed with protecting him, after all. It certainly seems that, if Harry hadn't bumped into the Weasleys on the terminal platform or hadn't shared a train car with Ron and Hermione along the way, it would have been Harry and Draco as best buds, and who knows how things would have gone. Anyway, Harry doesn't have to work for much apart from bearing the burden of being the wizard Luke Skywalker, and it's a funny message to kids. I guess when you're little and reading adventure stories the message of "be patient, and be yourself, and everything will come up Millhouse" isn't so bad. We'll have to see how the message evolves as the story continues, and Harry (and the audience that he is surrogate for) gets older and more mature.

As to the film itself, well... it's got hokey acting, an aggressively spot-on score, dated CG, and a script that emphasizes expository vignettes over active protagonists or cohesive backstory -- more in love with the whimsy and the mystery than the nuts and bolts of a good story. Every line feels so winking that you never forget you're watching a children's movie. It's forty-two minutes in before Harry makes a decision for himself that affects the story (stand up to Malfoy; defend Ron), and it's just a series of right-place/right-time sequences that channel everything toward a surprisingly easy climax. (The Stone just shows up in Harry's pocket because, as Dumbledore explains, it will only appear to someone who wants it but doesn't want to use it; doesn't that mean that if Harry hadn't shown up at all then Quirrell/Voldemort would have been unable to get near it? Didn't Harry's appearance endanger everything?) Harry's touch kills Quirrell because of love. It's all very easy for him.

And don't get me started on Quidditch. Actually, do, because Quidditch is an apt microcosm of the problem with the fantasy world being shown here. First, the rules are needlessly complicated; you are basically playing three separate games simultaneously on the same field, and because of the enormous amount of points for winning the third separate game, only one game matters: the Golden Snitch one, which ends the game and almost necessarily determines the winner (you'd have to have a 15-goal/150-point spread for the game not to be decided by whoever catches the Golden Snitch). Secondly, in a world of wizards and magic this game is decidedly unimaginative and literal -- in fact, it could only have been designed by a muggle, whose best idea for a game is to combine existing sports together, put them in the air, and call it good. Third, and worst of all, because first-year players (not named Harry Potter) aren't allowed to play, everything going on for the ten minutes of the Quidditch match is relegated to a bunch of extras as all the characters we've been learning about sit in the stands and gape, at best helping out by interfering when they spot cheaters; plus Potter can only hover above and make shocked and frustrated faces for most of the action, until it's time for him to have one little chase with the buzzing Snitch ball, and when he catches it, despite all the drama we just watched (involving nameless characters we do not know, extras essentially), the game is over and he wins. The rest of it doesn't matter. Like this first story, where a lot of stuff seems to be happening all at once (new school, learning spells, mysterious Stone, Snape's a jerk, Harry's mysterious fame and lineage) but we stay with characters who are ostensibly on (or meant to be on) the sidelines, and then Harry Potter, having done not much more than stand around gaping for the entire story, steps up and does one presumably impossible but surprisingly easy-to-accomplish task, and the rest of it doesn't matter. His one moment outshines everything else, the ups and downs, and the story wraps itself up. In fact, this same theme/structure is repeated one more time, in an even tinier microcosm, as Dumbledore announces the "points" earned by each house, and then proceeds to dole out new points for a last-minute task -- like the score from catching a Snitch -- that nullifies the efforts of the other players (in this case, would-be winners Slytherin) and creates a new winner.

So that's the plot for you. A bunch of stuff, some kids interfering from the sidelines, and then a hero who goes from passive info-dump recipient to one-time derring-doer and eradicates the balance of the game played beforehand. To quote a humorous webpage, Harry Potter could be summed up as "Celebrity Jock thinks rules don’t apply to him, is right."

Despite this though, the world is intriguing, and the end feels uplifting enough (it's probably that cheating music) that once it's over, it feels at first like a positive experience. I do like the idea of a wizarding school in modern England, and I'm a sucker for a good Joseph Campbell Hero's Quest, for hidden adversaries and epic adventures of good vs. evil, for prophecies and long arcs and growing up with characters. Plus, I'm promised that after the first two (or, depending on who you ask, the first three), the series picks up and gets interesting. I mean, I'll be the judge for myself on that, but the idea of the world, even in its thoughtlessly baroque, questionably paced form, is just intriguing enough that I would like to see what all the fuss is about. I'm actually looking forward to the next one, and the one after that, and seeing where the whole thing goes. So, they certainly didn't excel at winning me over, but they left me wanting more, and there's something to be said for that. It's clearly not a total failure.

I still hate Quidditch, though.

Punch-Drunk Love

It seems fairly well accepted, at least by my circle of friends, that There Will Be Blood is the work of a master, a Great Film, and an almost faultless piece of cinema. But I look at Punch-Drunk Love and I see the same strengths and control and complicated, beautiful emotional power on display here as there. In both films we have a very, very unlikeable hero who we love despite everything, who doesn't play well with others, who runs his own business (and has one trusted employee who overlooks his proclivities), who has a more-than-strained relationship with his family, and who is adversarial with self-serving religious men who exploit the dogma of their faiths. But where There Will Be Blood feels like a confident step into Wellesian or Kubrickian psychological drama... I was about to declare Punch-Drunk Love a response to all the quirky romcoms-for-hipster-dudes like Garden State or the films of Michel Gondry, but it turns out Punch-Drunk Love preceded them all by at least two years. So call it a zeitgeist film, the spirit of the times, the quirky romance turned on its head. Either way, the tone and scope here is quite different from Blood, but both are handled with the same even-handed mastery.

In my estimation, this is about a perfect film. It moves along so fast that you are never bored, and it's so tense with so many things under high pressure that you can't bear the wait for that pressure to release. Each time it finally does, it's both unexpected and fully rewarding. Each scene is a masterpiece of colliding subplots (the exact opposite of Up in the Air, with its compartmentalized storylines; also: today's theme has been men who collect frequent-flyer miles). It is told with the precision of films today that I have focused on so much of late, but with the kind of right-brained subjective reality and filmic poetry that I have been half-lamenting the lack of. For all of its careful camera moves, orchestrated (and subtle) performance cues and strictly structured timing, the story is more abstract than concrete, more irrational than straightforward. I love it.

We watch Barry Egan act like a shy monster, at turns awkward or terrified or violent, and even though he almost never says or does anything that is traditionally pleasant or charming -- he is never comfortable in his skin enough to be nice -- he is one of the most hypnotic and engaging and sympathetic characters in a long time, and that's because we are undeniably living inside Barry's head, hearing the musique concréte soundtrack that clutters his thoughts, whirlwinding through tiny events that feel huge and huge events that feel telescopically far away, right alongside him. Every single moment of joy in the story (a side note: it feels, roughly, like for every positive action in his life there is an equal and simultaneous negative action to correspond; this plays into the "colliding subplots" observation), we are thrilled and cheer him on. Or at least I am and do.

My two favorite romantic comedies of the modern era, if not all time, are undeniably Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and this jagged/polished, cool/tense, manic little gem. I could watch it over and over again. And will.

Up in the Air

The first portion of Up in the Air plays like Fight Club declawed, with a sardonic voiceover using lists of products and concepts to reassure us that our lifestyles based on nihilism and cynicism are thoroughly justified. I know it's based on a novel (and I know the book has a major subplot about Ryan Bingham suffering from cancer, that I can't help but wonder what the movie might have been like with, but in the end I think I like it just fine as-is), and I can't say if the style comes out of the novel or not, but it's hard to imagine this story existing if someone, either Walter Kirn or the screenwriter Sheldon Turner (or maybe Reitman himself, also credited) hadn't seen the Fincher film or read the Palahniuk book. Of course that's just the set-up of the book, and after act one the two tend for the most part to part ways. Where Fight Club goes on to challenge your expectations of anarchy, masculinity, and taking back your agency from a castrative culture, Up in the Air is a challenge to concepts of isolation and casual objectivism and of course, a romantic dramedy about unemployment and getting older, wanting to settle down. Like Juno and Thank You For Smoking, there are themes present but they're pretty unfocused, hitting broad swaths that do not necessarily complement each other, but at least they don't often clash. Reitman, I think, works in thematic subplots more than thematic throughlines. That is to say, sometimes every single scene in a film speaks intelligently to whatever the "theme" or "themes" of a story are, often being about two things at once. Here it feels a little more to me like a sitcom, with an A story, a B story, and a C story, and each plotline has its own intelligent theme and subject matter, but they do not necessarily contribute to each other directly. In Juno this left me feeling like the story was schizophrenic, and began as one thing (a coming-of-age morality tale about a quirky, strong-willed girl and her unexpected pregnancy) and ended as something else (a romcom about picking the right guy and staying with him, dependent on the dull, milquetoast charms of an underplaying Michael Cera in shorty gym shorts). The charm was good but the story felt like two trains colliding. Here the charm is just as good (smarter, wiser, less quirky) and the various plots and themes at least weaved together into more of a single dramatic story.

On a dramatic front, it was fun to look at the characters in this. Anna Kendrick's Natalie kept pushing caricature to the point of breaking, but every time I was on the verge of hating her she'd redeem herself by making interesting choices in performance and character. (An easy example is the moment when she cryingly meets Alex, which is both funny and telling of her character in many ways.) It felt like Natalie had an outer layer of faith in the systems around her (marriage, love, education, her firing-my-videochat system) but that covered an inner core of extreme vulnerability, uncertainty, and doubt bordering on panic. Likewise it felt like Ryan Bingham had an outer layer of cynicism and disdain for those systems, with an inner core of loneliness, regret, and doubt. The inner turmoil and the reversed-polarities of these two made them a nice, if artificial, match-up. (Almost everything about this film feels artificial; you either accept that or you don't.)

The only fault I feel like pointing out here is, on second viewing, it's a lot harder to ever sympathize with Alex, Vera Forgmiga's too-good-to-be-true counterpart for Ryan. As a dark reflection and a worst-case foil for Ryan's emotional and moral states, I get it, but there are a number of times where it becomes clear she's simply living a double life. She may justify it any number of ways, but her no-nonsense strong-woman routine just hides the kind of lying scoundrel men are traditionally considered monsters for being. She's practically the creepy father with a different family in every city he visits. It was good of the movie not to soften that by letting Ryan forgive her entirely (or immediately, anyway; because let's be realistic) but it was odd to breeze over just how bad she was to everyone who loved her in her life. Maybe that's my own personal morals showing through, but for a film about Ryan Bingham's self-examining soul-search to slide right by what felt like a major blow to his self-image -- to have the person you think of as "just like you but with a vagina" revealed as so deceptive (and self-deceptive) seems... well, it feels like in classic films when they'd try to sneak something by the censorship boards, but in reverse. Anyway, something in her character doesn't sit right on second watch, maybe because there aren't enough clues or hints about the nature of her life when the subject comes up, and that paints her as a baldfaced, unabashed liar (worse than a cheater). But for the most part, the film is fun, breezy, but with some dramatic heft and thoughtful stuff going on under the surface. For my money, this is the follow-up I wanted to the very similar Thank You For Smoking. I'll continue considering Juno an aberrant blip on the director's trajectory, until he proves me wrong.

True Grit *

Now that I've seen it once and read copious reviews and critiques of it (in defense of as well as criticisms against it) it's hard not to remember some of those comments when rewatching it. The thoughts in this review especially stick with me, like pointing out the lack of rich character actors and the flatly unpopulated world around our heroes, and the opinion that the epilogue seems to undo the story.

At first, I felt I agreed entirely with the two comments. For one, the Coens are usually the very best character-actor casters in the business, and every walk-on in every film usually feels distinct and well developed, but here it's hard to deny the dearth of developed bit parts. The auctioner, the funeral man, the bear-headed dentist, the young man shot in the leg, everybody feels a little Coenesque (Coeny?) but nobody feels as fleshed out or gorgeously quirky as the gas station man in No Country For Old Men or the girls telling Marge about the "funny lookin'" guy from Fargo. But then I started to think, maybe (surely!) it's not an oversight: maybe it's to keep the emphasis of the story on Mattie, Rooster, and La Boeuf (and to a lesser extent the antagonists of the story, Ned Pepper and Tom Chaney). Dramatically, it's a road movie about three distinct characters all chasing a man who's done wrong. Dramatically, the interplay between them and the intricate mismatches of their desires drive the story. Thematically, they each have different representative motives for chasing Chaney: Mattie represents direct eye-for-an-eye vengeance; La Bouef represents the law; Rooster Cogburn represents mercenary killing. One hunts for family/personal reasons; one hunts for legal/community reasons; one hunts for the value of the prize. That's oversimplifying, but the dynamic exists whether or not I overcategorize things. The point is, both dramatically and thematically, with such a simple story, it might actually muddy things up and diminish the impact if we gave too much credence to the world around these three. Or anyway, that's a thought.

And then there's the end. [SPOILERS!] I'm really just not sure what to do with it, but to be fair I felt that way about No Country at first, and the only way I got over it was to let go and allow it to be what it is. The "missing reel" ending of No Country For Old Men, in which Llewellyn dies offscreen, demands you accept it without justification, and that feels like part of the message. Similarly, the "quarter century is a long time" denouement to True Grit seems in part to exist specifically to undermine and subvert all or most your assumptions about how "these kinds of stories" are supposed to end. In fact, the tone shift begins earlier, and is much more gradual. I'd have to see it again to say for sure, but I think it happened just after La Boeuf shot Ned Pepper and got brained by Chaney, and just as/before Mattie murders Chaney for killing her father and tumbles backward into the mine shaft. From that point on, the plucky-adventure tone fades away and -- just when you assume the mission is over and the heroes can all rally together, congratulate each other and begin the long journey home -- things get, for lack of a better word, real. The romanticism dissolves and the viscerality and mortality of the old west rears its head. What looks like a solution to her problem (the soldier's desiccated corpse and the shiny knife in his belt) proves much deadlier than expected, as her would-be savior's chest cavity is full of writhing, just waking rattlesnakes. Before Cogburn (almost literally appearing out of nowhere) can save her, transformed from one-eyed drunken oaf into knight in shining armor scaling down into the well (rather than up into the tower), Mattie is bit, and despite efforts to suck out the poison (this itself a visceral and frightening moment that feels like a dash of "realism"), there's nothing to be done.

And so Cogburn abandons La Boeuf on the cliff face, dazed but mostly all right (and this is the last we will see or hear of him; even Old Mattie does not know if he ever came down the mountain alive), and races her pony Little Blackie wildly back toward civilization. The ride is exhaustive, and in order to keep Blackie racing at full speed, ignoring the horse's own failing body, Cogburn stabs him in the flank. This only buys them a little more time, however, and eventually thee horse succumbs and collapses with them on it, and Cogburn is forced to euthanize the animal with a single resounding shot. (Last time I talked about the crucial role guns play in the story; here is another example, the gun as brutal mercy.) Each step of this arduous journey back to civilization is harsher and harder to accept than the step before it, each showing a little more cruelty and coldness in the world. And to top it off, even when Rooster Cogburn carries her in his own arms the rest of the way, collapsing about twenty yards from the door and firing his gun (!!) to wake the inhabitants of the cabin, it wasn't nearly enough. Mattie loses her arm. Cogburn disappears away, to die some twenty-five years later as part of a traveling roadshow parody of the man he and others (like Cole Younger and Frank James) once were. Mattie grows up with the same hard-minded, icewater-cold demeanor, and at some point between fourteen and forty that stops being charming. One-armed and slightly shrewish, she never marries, misses her chance at reconciliation with the men with whom she'd bonded so beautifully, and presumably dies alone. And that's your ending, as unromantic and stark as you can get.

According to the review-link above, this end suits the book because the book is told entirely from Old Mattie's point of view and in essence, part of the story is that the joke is on her, our unreliable narrator. But here we do not know Old Mattie, and the actress is frankly kind of a lump who speaks only two or three short, curt non-voiceovered lines, and so the ending can't help but feel jarring. Again, maybe (surely?) this isn't an oversight or accident. Maybe (surely!) the Coens knew just what they were doing -- in fact, it is hard to imagine otherwise. So I have to assume this conscious de-romaticization and distancing is part of the point here, and that like the "missing reel" in No Country For Old Men, we are absolutely meant to have our assumptions denied and yet our dramatic expectations answered. If you include here the (wonderful) ending of A Serious Man, it's clear with their recent films that the Coens are confident enough in their storytelling that they want to leave you on very unsure footing when you walk away. These are not certain worlds with easily tied-up endings and convenient morality, but neither are they chaotic worlds with unraveling loose-ends and nihilistic moral anarchy. In fact these are carefully messy worlds that reflect just what the Coen Brothers want to reflect from our world.

So I guess the bottom line is, I can't quite dismiss the criticisms people have raised against this film, though maybe I can see some logic behind the choices made. Also, like those raising the criticisms in the first place, I do think this is an undeniably amazing film, but they have set the bar so high with their last two that True Grit can't help but feel simpler, plainer, and more straightforward, even with some of the challenging choices made. It's hard to complain about filmmakers making a couple of movies so good that their follow-up can't quite top it. Maybe it should be said, it was wise of them not to try.

Seen at the Regal Fox Tower.

The Fighter *

It feels fitting that this is the last movie I'll watch in 2010. In a way it's pretty emblematic of this year in American cinema: it's very good, but it's not really great -- and to be fair, like much of what I saw this year, it doesn't seem to be aiming for greatness. It's got really great direction, but the story is so basic and by-the-numbers that it was impossible not to play along in my head. It's perfectly cast, and really well-directed, there's some really nice sound design and editing choices that help the story rise above the ordinary, and some understated but very intentional camerawork that does the same, but for the most part The Fighter is about as straightforward as the film's title. I know I've said this before, but 2010 seems like a year where Hollywood forwent any kind of ambition or pretense toward excellence, and settled for solidly made, workmanlike, unchallenging fare. The reason there's no lock for "Best Picture" for me is because nobody shot for the stars. To follow that metaphor, they all seem to have agreed to aim collectively for a low orbit. Successful but not transcendent. Worth your ten bucks but that's it.

But enough about the state of cinema. The Fighter feels like it's really Christian Bale's story more than Mark Wahlberg's, or rather Micky (Wahlberg) is clearly our protagonist but like a million stories (off the top of my head, think The Great Gatsby), the guy who the action is about is not always the guy the story is about. I think it's the right choice, letting Dicky (Bale) outshine his little brother the hero, as he's the larger than life character here. The cadre of shrill women led by Alice the mother was almost too much for me to bare, but they made a nice tidal force that showed the character of Charlene and especially Micky's father George, and without them to stand as obstacles the story would have collapsed. Still, I'm glad I'm not stuck in a room with them. Yikes.

The story moves a little fast, but it has to, and other than a couple of overly obvious lines (like Charlene telling Micky that his family runs his life -- yeah, okay, we get that by now, thanks) it's a pretty sharp script. Again, everything about this works, but it doesn't even approach a best-of list for me because it's all so plain. Maybe I'm just not into the kitchen-sink drama approach to filmmaking; clearly I want film to be more and do more, to aim higher. Originally I felt my perspective on this year's films felt more or less objectively qualitative, but maybe the trends of the year are just going against my more personal, obviously subjective expectations and desires. I'll have to talk to some of my friends, like my dear roommate Joseph, who appreciates the more down-to-earth storytelling more than I (of late) do. Stuff to think about.

But I stand by my original comment, that 2010 was a year without ambition for Hollywood and American independent cinema. Well, so it goes. Even without greatness, we've had a large number of good films this year, so maybe I should stop complaining. (Yeah, that'll happen.)

Seen at the Regal Fox Tower.

Toy Story 3

I don't have a lot to add to what I said last time I watched this. I'm impressed again by the economy of the script and how it pays its due to the themes and relationships of the first two films. There isn't a single beat that happens just because it "has to"; everything comes first and foremost out of character.

To rehash: The first Toy Story movie sets up a world of sentient toys and their relationships to their kids, and challenges its two heroes by having them compete for position of alpha, all while teaching them the nature and value of being a toy (and not a real space ranger, or cowboy, etc.). It's clearly a story about new toys and favorite toys -- that is, it's about a toy's novelty. The second movie considers the nature of toys as collector's items and mass-produced consumer goods, and it challenges and threatens the characters' idea of what they think a toy should be. It's clearly about the middle-stage of a toy's life and about lost toys -- that is, it's about a toy's legacy. And here, in part 3, we explore what happens when toys aren't wanted anymore, we challenge the faith and loyalty toys put in their kids, and we deal with some hard truths about the finite nature of love, youth, fantasy, and devotion. It's clearly about the final stage of a toy's life, retiring, moving on, and being forgotten; it's about the finite lifespan of things, even if those things are cyclical -- and so, if Toy Story is about novelty, and Toy Story 2 is about legacy, then Toy Story 3 is about a toy's mortality.

I put this on after a discussion of how dry the year has been. There's been a good number of good films, but a dearth of great ones. Not many have risen above in that way where I can pretentiously say, "Wow, now this is cinema." What I mean is, not a lot of films feel like they'll be discussed ten years from now. The Social Network maybe, and on a smaller scale films like Winter's Bone and The Ghost Writer. And then there's Scott Pilgrim and, of course, this film -- which led me to say, only half kidding, "Hell, maybe Toy Story 3 really does have a shot at the Best Film Oscar this year." (In truth, I'd put my money on The Social Network, but nothing feels remotely like a lock.) So I watched it again. It's certainly worthy of a nomination, though it feels weird to reward a part-three of anything, even one so goddamn strong. (Though it wouldn't be the first time.) Anyway, it holds up to a second viewing, without question, and actually moves a lot faster than I remembered. In fact, it kept my attention long after when I should have gone to bed.

Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire)

Of course I like this movie. It's such a poetically humanistic movie, relishing in the small pleasures and tiny magical moments of being alive and human. It's not the first time theology or literature has suggested that angels live in awe and envy of mankind (if memory serves, Neil Gaiman's short story "Murder Mysteries" is one of my favorite explorations of this theme), but here it's done so viscerally and with such straightforward simplicity that you aren't simply told that angels envy us, you're shown how and why. At a remove, the angels aren't burdened with the distractions of being human and see the beauty of it instead, tiny inexplicable moments like a woman closing her umbrella in the rain and allowing herself to get soaked, that the angels here call "spiritual moments." This is a cinematic poem to what's so great about being alive.

It's also a story about being "at a remove" from life, of the importance and value in being more than just an observer of human nature, and getting your hands dirty in the muck and mess of it all. It's not nearly enough to sit back and watch, appreciate, admire, ponder; in Wings of Desire the pleasure of cold hands, smoking and coffee, or kicking up sand outweighs the most poetic thought or seemingly transcendent observation. All art falls victim to this distancing, and is therefore inferior to mere life, to mere living, even to suffering or distraction. It's a lesson I fight with every day myself, to be honest, and so again: of course I love this movie.

There's not much I can say about it, only because there's so many little things I'd love to say about it. Its use of color, light, performance and photography are all brilliant, intricate, and stunning. The editing especially carries the story as we cut from disparate scene to disparate scene or even intercut an unrelated but beautiful image into a moment. When Marion delivers her monologue at the end to Damiel in the same tone and rhythm as the onslaught of inner voices we've heard throughout, we know that what she is saying carries the weight and vulnerability of truth; she is revealing herself completely in this moment, speaking the language of the secret inner self. The interjections to Cassiel, to Peter Falk (!), to Homer lamenting a changed world, are all profound and perfect counterpoints to the main story of Damiel's fall (and his fall for Marion, so to speak).

The movie always stays with me in a million ways, leaving me wondering about life, the universe, and everything, but this time I'm also left with a strange thought: [SPOILER] if Peter Falk fell from grace as an angel twenty or thirty years ago, then who is the grandmother he is thinking about when wandering the wrecked plaza and seeing "the station where all the stations end"?

Robin and the 7 Hoods

Musicals are a funny genre. I guess I did grow up on some, but only a special few, and they were never really my thing. So watching them now, with critical eyes, is interesting. The thing they remind me the most of are Muppet movies, with winkingly hammy performances and an obtuse and circuitous plot that doesn't really reward much inspection. Despite them not being "my thing," they sure are a lot of fun. It's hard to disapprove when everybody is having so much fun. Watch Peter Falk do an Italian crime boss (with the ever-so-Italian name "Guy Gisborne"); watch Bing Crosby roll through a rat-a-tat assault of three-dollar words; watch Sammy Davis, Jr, do a surprisingly funny song and dance routine about loving his guns. It's just a fun world.

To the extent that the plot or themes matter, this is the story of a smalltime hood who becomes a celebrity for giving to charity. Somehow this makes him a more successful hood (the best I can figure is, more people come to his speakeasy and gamble/drink because he gives the proceeds to orphanages and soup kitchens), and this continues to snowball until the jealous mob boss Gisborne and the confusingly devious Marian each want a piece of the action. Considering that crime is the name of the game here, it's hard to see how Gisborne can't win with his 7-to-1 manpower, massive empire -- stolen from Marian's father, Big Jim (a cameo from Edward G. Robinson, no less), though he managed to convince the revenge-hungry Marian that the sheriff was behind it all. Plus, Marian seems to drop the whole "I'll pay you any amount to avenge my father" as soon as Gisborne has the sheriff murdered, even though it sure looked like every crimelord in the city (except Robbo and his "merry men") partook in the murder simultaneously. Once dropped, Marian becomes a conniving mastermind, convincing the weaker willed men around her one by one to front her as she counterfeits money and hides behind Robbo's Robin Hood image.

It's interesting that every (halfway successful) attempt against Robbo is done by using public opinion against him. First he's framed for the Sheriff's murder, but it doesn't stick because Gisborne and his cronies try a little too hard. Then the funny-money gig blows up in his face (even though it was started by Little John and Marian while Robbo was being tried for murder) and again, it's public opinion vs Robin Hood. That's a nice touch.

I'm not sure what to make of the end -- our three main heroes dressed as Salvation Army Santas and ringing bells while Allan A. Dale (heh) runs off with Marian and -- as far as I can tell -- the accompanying fortune. Our plucky sort-of-anti heroes accept their fate with something akin to humility, sing Alan A. Dale's own song "Don't Be A Do-Badder" and carry on. Sure, they're merry men to the end, and Robbo and his men never do any real wrong (except for gambling and liquor, and some destruction of private property and so forth), but what does it mean that the prissy man who runs the orphanage gets the (evil) girl and the (dirty) money, and our relatively upstanding heroes get the shaft? Your guess is as good as mine.

But musicals are fun worlds. Like I said, everybody has fun, and it doesn't quite matter if it makes sense. And now, I'm neglecting a houseful of family on Christmas Eve, so I should get going.

The New World

I know there are significantly longer cuts of this film, but the original DVD release is the only version I have, and the only version I have seen. I also know Terence Malick is somewhat notorious for his shooting and editing style, but I do not know the details of that style well enough to speak with authority. All I can do is judge the film based on the version I've seen, and speak of the pacing and style of what there is, not how it was made or what is missing.

All that is a prelude to saying, despite it's two-plus hour length and feeling of completeness (and pleasanty slow pace), it feels like this film should be about an hour longer, at least. It feels epic in that impossible, Malicky way, and it deals with such a broad swath of history so breezily that it ends up feeling like it wants more. Entire patches of proto-American history, or of Pocahontas's life, whip by in a single shot -- elements as crucial as John Smith's deposition or Pocahontas's pregnancy and childbirth. Rarely does the dialogue carry the story directly, though one beautiful scene between John Smith and Pocahontas in England does a wonderful job of letting the characters finally speak with meaning ("Did you ever find your Indies, John? You will," she says. He looks at her sadly, and after a moment replies, "I may have sailed past them.")

But the real story here is in the subtext, which is rich and could probably be unpacked for ages. Single images convey so much information -- John Rolfe pokes his head out the window of his house to watch "Rebecca" in the field: Rolfe leans out from the security and safety of civilization without ever leaving it, and admires the lady gently taming the wilderness. John Smith spends the majority of his story in shackles of some sort, including the shackles of being President of Jamestown, and has very little agency of his own in the story -- that he does not buckle, that he exercises what little will he has in service of his own heart is telling.

That this story gets away without having any real antagonists is also telling. This is a history without victors and conquereds, and of our three primary male leads (John Smith, John Rolfe, and Chief Powhatan) are all acting out of love, not out of malice, or greed, or jealousy, or possessiveness -- and not coincidentally, all are motivated by believing Pocahontas is the greatest treasure the world's ever seen. Although the backdrop of this story is the pre-infancy of America and the intersection of English colonists and Algonquin "naturals," this is actually the simplest love story of all time -- a love triangle where nobody fights anybody over anything. In fact, so little conflict actually happens (w.r.t. the story's primary plot, the love story) that the entire thing could be boiled down to a simple: She falls in love with suitor 1, but suitor 1 is forced to leave her; he lies and convinces her he's died so she can move on, and she allows herself to be wooed and married by suitor 2; she discovers suitor 1 is still alive and feels conflicted; suitor 2 loves her enough to let her go, and she explores her feelings for suitor 1, discovering that things have changed; she returns to suitor 2 a happier woman. (That's the complicated version! The short version might be as simple as "She has to choose between her first flame and her faithful husband and chooses the faithful husband.")

In other words, The New World is a meditation on the politics of staking claim to another's property (land, wife). The wife realizes, after some deliberation, that the newer claimant is the proper one, though she dies when she leaves her original love behind. The land, we know, after much "deliberation" of sorts, will remain in the hands of its new claimant as well, and perhaps it too dies when it leaves its original love (the "naturals") behind. But Pocahontas assures her husband that all things pass, and because they leave behind a child who lives all is well. Is it crazy to wonder if Malick is suggesting that yes, it's tragic that America went from the hands of its natives into the hands of colonists and takers, but all eras must pass, and because America's children live on, all is well?

Food for thought, which Malick films are beautifully, resplendently, amazingly full of.

Black Swan *

Upon second viewing, I'm really left with the same impression as from my first viewing, only heightened: the same antsiness or impatience with certain repeated beats, the same detachment and distance from what's going on and who it's happening to. It occurs to me, in fact, that my emphasis on the precision of the storytelling (which led me to think on precision in filmmaking in general) comes right out of the story's themes -- how could I not come away pondering the dichotomy between precise attempts at dramatic "perfection" and the looser, "losing oneself" naturality that must be achieved to really "transcend"? It's right there in the text.

And in that sense, I think Black Swan plays out like the most direct metaphor for artist-versus-art Aronofsky has laid out yet. Just as how everybody read Inception as a manifesto for Nolan's approach to filmmaking, this might be an analogy for Aronofsky's style, and maybe Nina Sayers is an analog for how Aronofsky sees himself. The majority of his fims are precise, philosophically rich, clinically well-produced films about characters either struggling to or struggling not to let go. If the line is drawn between control and imprecision, Darren Aronofsky clearly (and accurately) places himself firmly as one on the controlled camp, though he seems to look longingly across the divide. He acknowledges that the best of the best are the times when the two sides come together impossibly, and he seems to yearn almost desperately to find that place himself. But like the Coens, both Andersons (master P.T. and hipster Wes), Nolan and Fincher and others, he isn't known for letting go. The argument makes me want to revisit The Fountain, which feels to me like it might be his boldest move toward letting go and losing himself to a story that's more poetry than prose, but I haven't seen it in years and I can't say I'm not tainting my memory by trying to place it as a fascinating outlier among his works.

Black Swan holds up for a second viewing, but for me it still feels a little too arm's-length, too deliberate and tightly plotted, and Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassell -- though they all give really good performances -- never rise above feeling like performances. In fact, the whole film reminds me of a Sean Penn or Daniel Day Lewis performance: a profound impersonation of every tic and subtle gesture that's just a little too spot-on and accurate, and comes off as calculated rather than organic and real. Most Coen Brothers films strike me like this to varying degrees (and I love and respect them, and Aronofsky, and Day Lewis and Penn, quite a lot, so bear that in mind as I lay down the critical hammer here), but it's always the ones that feel like more and less than mere performance that for me will stand out and rise above. Black Swan isn't quite that for me. It's too perfect.

Seen at the Regal Fox Tower.

TRON: Legacy *

What worked about TRON: Legacy: For one, the mythology is strong, interesting, dynamic. It's a pretty good evolution of the world. For another, the themes and philosophy are generally strong, in that there are themes and philosophy and they suit the story and, for the most part, the story takes pains to (very lightly) explore them as it goes. For a third, the aesthetic of the world takes a little getting used to (3D is notoriously dimmer than the glasses-free 2D, and for this story to rely on so much endless black with shimmery glass and white neon challenges that a little) but once you do it's pretty good. The world is built well and feels consistent, lived-in, and larger than just the scenes we're given.

What didn't work about TRON: Legacy: In a word, the script. The script does not work. It's like someone took a lot of work structuring your classic hero's journey and building up the protagonists and antagonists on interesting paths, made sure all the beats made sense, and then handed the script to a tenth grader. The characters do just what is needed to keep the story moving but about half of their actions lack any cohesive motivation (most notably [SPOILER] the surprise reveal of TRON and his reversal from bad guy to good guy). The pacing and plot itself stumbles about as often as not and more than once fails to stick a landing (like the weird Ziggy Stardust-Merovingian sequence and the "light-jet" fight). And the dialogue... oh good lord, what dialogue. I can sum up what's wrong with the script with the following exchange, between Quorra (a program, curious about the real world) and Sam Flynn (a user), as they discuss a sunset:

Quorra: "What's it like?"
Sam: "The sun?"
Quorra nods.
Sam: "I've never had to describe it before." (He thinks. The music is soft, thoughtful. They lean close together -- an intimate moment, as he shares his world with her.) "Warm. Radiant. uh... beautiful."
She is clearly moved by this poetic description.
(end of scene.)

It really smacks of an early draft, with placeholder dialogue that nobody ever went back to spruce up. This kind of flimsy exchange is peppered throughout the story, whenever a good kicker of a line or bit of clever back-and-forth is meant to advance the characters or story. It is painfully obvious that nobody even tried.

So on the plus side, we have mythology, theme, and world; on the minus side, dialogue, plot, and characterization. So in fact, TRON: Legacy is actually a perfect sequel to the original. TRON wasn't exactly a perfect film either, in fact. The original was full of heady, exciting concepts I hadn't seen explored much before, like the user-program/god-man parallels and the idea of an infectious self-awareness spreading from Flynn's interruption of business-as-usual in the computer world. The sequel, too, is full of heady, exciting concepts I haven't seen explored much before, like spontaneously self-aware, functionless programs sprouting up inside the Grid, or the strange dynamic between Clu and Flynn. But neither film even tries to go anywhere with these ideas, preferring instead fight sequences, chases, shoot-outs, and shouty confrontations. It's really surprising how much like my reaction to the first TRON film my reaction to this one is. And in that light, though this film is far from perfect, it's kind of hard to fault it much. And so I'm left with: I'm glad I saw it. But I'm not in love. I'm not even sure if I liked it much or not.

Two closing thoughts: One, there's a weird fake-out where Cillian Murphy shows up at the beginning playing the son of David Warner's Ed Dillinger, the villain from TRON, which is a total waste of both Murphy and the legacy of Dillinger (I'd have absolutely loved to see David Warner show up again, in some capacity) since it went nowhere. He sat in a board meeting, proved himself a genius at computers and spoke with an authority that shut up a panicked room, and then never appeared again. (I suppose in retrospect that he is a plant for a third TRON film, which... whatever... but I'd much rather have seen the return of David Warner.)

And lastly: I miss the Bit. It didn't make any more or less sense than anything else; they should have brought it back. Or brought in a Byte, with 16 different possible opinions and no more.

It's been a weak year, overall, for new films. Plenty of very good ones, plenty of "good enough" ones, not much I've seen this year makes me sit up and say, "Oh my god, this is real cinema," the way I have in years past. I think Winter's Bone is the standout on that list.

Seen at the AMC Century City 15, in 3-D.

The Proposition

There's a point in the movie when Samuel asks Arthur what a misanthrope is. "Is that what we are?" he asks. "Good lord, no," says the brutal, savage, monstrous killer Arthur Burns. "We're a family." It's not terribly subtle, but there's a reason this story can get away with that kind of handholding; there's a reason we are made to see so plainly the contrast between the bandits with the poets' souls and the more cold-hearted citizenry (and especially Eden Fletcher and the British soldiers under Stanley's command). We get it, the civilizers are uncivilized and the rogues are the ones quoting poetry and admiring sunsets. It's not like that reverse-dichotomy hasn't been explored before, is it?

But Nick Cave and John Hillcoat are doing two things here that justify this (in addition to the usual stuff like gripping performances, stunning photography and tightly scripted action). One, they're showing us a world where savagery is beauty, and where violence is poetry -- and not just in a hyperbolic sense. It makes you really feel it, as if it's perfectly rational that a man's head being blown off, or a sudden spear through the chest, are elegant things to behold.

And then there's the end, the reminder that these poet's souls we've been admiring, the seductive legend of a man Arthur Burns and his creepy-charismatic follower Samuel and the rest, who admire nature and live as a family and only want to be left alone, truly are as savage and monstrous and evil as their reputations suggest. The casual, business-as-usual invasion of the Stanleys' Christmas dinner leaves no doubt in your mind who the bad guys are.

But they do make such wonderful, complicated villains. One of my favorite telling lines is Arthur's, when Charlie has a gun to his head. Arthur has just delivered a non-killing (or slowly killing) stab to poor, racist (and oddly-named) Jellon Lamb, and Charlie cocks his pistol at his brother's head. Without even turning, Arthur says in a weary voice, "Why can't you ever just stop me?" I think Arthur is the monster he is because Charlie is his conscience, and in fact Charlie spends the entire film in an almost Hamlet-like fit of indecision, unable to act even though he knows he eventually must. If Charlie can't stop Arthur, then Arthur simply must keep going, keep pushing, keep on being the monster he is. It's not exactly, I think, that he wants to be caught, or stopped, or punished; it's that he wants to find the threshold he cannot cross, or the line that Charlie (his conscience) can't let him step over. He finds it, eventually, in the end, I suppose, but by then so much damage is done, and who's to blame for all we've seen here? "You never should have left us, Charlie," Arthur tells him early on. "We're a family."

Many stories are only as good as their villains. The Proposition has countless strengths beyond just the one, but it doesn't hurt how fascinating a character Arthur Burns is.