Humpday

Bros on Film

2009 // USA // Lynn Shelton // July 29, 2009 // Theatrical Print

B - The aesthetic markers of the mumblecore current in independent film—handheld digital video, scruffy lighting and sound, improvised dialog, nonprofessional actors—have always seemed less essential than its scorched earth approach to the fertile comedy ground of socially awkward interpersonal situations. Mumblecore's acolytes seem to accept, as an uncontroversial given, that everything will not turn out for the best, contra Hollywood's usual comedic offerings. There's no gleefulness or operatic lustiness to this claim, as in the Coens. Rather, what emerges is a kind of woeful acquiescence to the fact that human beings will screw up everything good in their lives, usually out of narcissism. It's a bleak sentiment to be sure, but the better filmmakers can hew to this worldview while rendering the painful amusing and the amusing painful. Lynn Shelton's deliciously discomfiting Humpday, the latest offering that might reasonably be tagged with the mumblecore descriptor, is a fine example of a comedy that follows every jot of human unpleasantness while maintaining the spirited tone of an outrageous, notorious anecdote. Its Motel 6 production values are a perfect fit, but Humpday's comedy is genuine, and not dependent on indie scuzziness for its street cred.

The high concept that underlies the film would inevitably have been squandered in studio hands: two straight male friends agree to create and star in a gay porn film together. One can almost see the joyless, ugly thing that might have been born from such a story seed. Thankfully, Humpday is nothing of the sort, nor could it have been, for within its chosen stylistic parameters, anal sex wisecracks and nasty stereotypes just don't function properly. In truth, the film isn't really about homosexuality at all, except as a means examine hetero male intimacy, machismo, and anxiety. It doesn't hurt that Shelton's protagonists, Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard), are a couple of liberal Seattle natives, permitting the film to dispense with the Ick Factor and dive into nastier stuff, like doubt, hypocrisy, and selfishness.

Ben and his wife Anne (Alicia Delmore) are middle-class latte-sipping types, but they gladly offer sleeping space when Ben's college buddy Andrew, a manically affable bearded vagabond, shows up at their door at 3 a.m. Twenty-four hours later, after a wild party and a bit of pot, Ben and Andrew have somehow dared themselves to have sex on camera and submit the result to the HUMP! film festival. How they got themselves into this situation—and why they just can't back down from such a ludicrous challenge—is a part of Humpday's cunning. In a sitcom, it would all be the result of a grand misunderstanding, but Shelton arrives there incrementally, by escalating the situation in small, authentic ways. Her wit is aimed squarely at the impulse among people (straight men in this context) to define themselves according to absurd criteria: sexual "victories," unfulfilled ambitions and whims, and constructed personas that are fundamentally unsatisfying.

Most of Humpday's comedy is of the cringing variety, as Ben and Andrew—generally likable fellows, but self-absorbed and simmering with indefinite angst—fumble their way through one awful conversation and confrontation after another. Duplass and Leonard in particular are fearless performers, capable of smoothing away the traces of awareness and presenting their characters are graceless Average Joes ripe for mockery. It's downright painful to watch them, but only because it's so easy to forget that one is watching a fictional feature rather than a humiliating home video. Shelton breaks up the tone of sustained social agony with cathartic quarrels and the occasional bit of slapstick, such as a scuffle over a basketball or the downright uproarious sight of Ben and Andrew's first kiss, which requires a running start. Even these elements, however, touch upon Humpday's central concerns: discontent and the fear that expression of that discontent will stray outside of acceptable boundaries.

Shelton permits her characters to wander through the uncanny events of roughly forty-eight hours at a kind of goofy, anxious amble. The pacing never really works, perhaps because there's some wheel-spinning as the film draws out the revelations, prompting the viewer to wince and long for it to end. (Is it just me, or has The Office solidified the "more-is-more" principle for squirm-worthy comedic monologues?) The absence of any epilogue, when the story practically begs for one, is also disappointing. Still, Humpday's stumbles are primarily ones of rhythm, only mildly detracting from the essential funniness of the script and performances, which possess a faux-vérité tragicomic charm. What elevates the film beyond a forgettable farce is its generous exploration of human foibles within an essentially silly situation. It's hardly a masterpiece of coal-black comedy, but it is honest and genuinely interested in scratching at everything idiotic about relationships, particularly straight male ones: the inane rituals, the selfishness, the emotional secrecy, the posturing, the defensiveness. Thankfully, Ben and Andrew are amusing in their disheveled stupidity, and Shelton's approach is never mean-spirited or snide, ensuring the film's value as both a damn funny diversion and a gentle and emotionally thoughtful tragedy.

Moon

Here I Am Sitting in a Tin Can, Far Above the World

2009 // UK // Duncan Jones // July 25, 2009 // Theatrical Print

A- - Feature science fiction cinema is looking a tad moribund these days. One can count on a single hand the milestones of the past five years, and one of those would be a children's cartoon: Children of Men, A Scanner Darkly, and WALL•E. (The Host and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow might warrant nods if one were feeling generous.) It would seem that quality "hard" science fiction—i.e. narrative fiction that explores political, social, or ethical conundrums within a futurist or speculative setting—is becoming a rarer and rarer beast. Thank goodness, then, for the appearance of Duncan Jones' Moon, a film that is so smartly constructed, so effortlessly engrossing, and so thought-provoking, that it feels like a monsoon after a long drought. Jones and riveting lead Sam Rockwell have created a sterling example of what science fiction can achieve at its most disciplined, empathetic, and imaginative. Moon seems destined to be a topic for countless late-night discussions—not about what happened during the film, necessarily, but about the implications of those events and about the unpleasant choices that a comparable future might someday demand of us.

Rockwell, who is on-screen throughout most of the film, portrays Sam Bell, a corporate astronaut finishing a solitary stint on the dark side of the moon, where he has spent three years harvesting helium-3. Excepting a brief introductory commercial promoting Bell's employer, Lunar Industries, Moon develops its setting incrementally, without the tedious exposition or irksome condescension that are the fatty building blocks of so much excruciating sci-fi. Indeed, because Bell's job is a one-man operation, much of what we learn about the lunar base emerges from the film's observation of this diligent, homesick man going about his work. Bell's only companion is the base's computer GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) a disconcertingly calm and obsequious artificial intelligence that unavoidably calls to mind 2001's HAL 9000. Bell regards GERTY with a familiar wariness, as though the computer were a cross between overly fussy butler and a housecat with questionable loyalties.

Moon devotes just the right amount of time to establish the broad outlines of Bell's circumstances—weeks to go before his return to Earth, with malfunctions aplenty on the base—before adding strange happenings into the mix. Irrespective of some creepshow flourishes and tasteful Kubrickian nods in its production design, Moon never succumbs to either stale formula or unearned grandiosity. Its aims are decidedly gritty and humane, rooted in vexing and urgent questions rather than pseudo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Such constraints to its ambitions contrast with the clumsy, bloated striving for "vision" that characterizes so many entries in the genre. Moon is a much more grounded, visceral, and respectful work of fiction, a treatise on the possible evolution of our essential definitions. What do we mean, the film asks, by "human," "worker," and "happiness"?

Perhaps the most pleasantly unexpected aspect of Moon is that while it is a pure science fiction film (straight up, no chaser), it is not the science fiction film one necessarily expects. The trailers for the film suggest that Moon's technological preoccupation will be space exploration (and exploitation), but this proves not to be the case. While the mental effects of long periods of solitary space living comprise one avenue of Moon's investigations, its primary concern is a wholly different aspect of the brave new world. The viewer may begin to suspect the nature of the film's secret at about the half-hour mark, and when it is finally stated openly, it has a matter-of-fact quality.

Moon's central conceit flows smoothly from its traditionalist science fiction suppositions, particularly the fundamental inhumanity of corporations and the illusory nature of intimacy in a universe of isolating machines and scarce resources. Jones operates within these thematic conventions without succumbing to their historic baggage, maintaining a sense of disorientation and expectancy by means of a lean, urgent directorial style. Moon keeps us guessing by placing us almost entirely within the firsthand experiences of Rockwell's Bell. This seemingly straightforward approach quickly twists into a nightmarish state of confusion as doublings proliferate through the sets and the story, with incredibly gratifying results. As Sam stumbles through his experiences, Rockwell often portrays him as oddly uncertain of what his reactions should be, an appropriate stance for a character who is accustomed to both solitude and surveillance.

As a performer, Rockwell has a profound ease with characters that elicit a tinge of revulsion even as they beg for our sympathies—his scene-stealing portrayal of Charley Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford being the preeminent example. Thus, while Sam Bell is necessarily and desirably the vessel for the anxieties that Moon confronts (about our labor and our bodies), Rockwell is sufficiently confident to paint him as dimwitted, callous, or petulant, as appropriate. Spacey does well enough as GERTY, but his presence is less memorable than the computer's place in the story, which both capitalizes on and subverts the viewer's expectations about artificial intelligence as it has previously been presented in the space thriller subgenre.

This is but one manifestation of the single element that most impresses about Moon: its respect for its audience's intelligence. While Jones works within what is for all purposes a traditional narrative framework, he never spoondfeeds the viewer. Much of what is revealed emerges through Sam's investigations, which are at times meticulous and at times frenzied. Jones invites us to discover the secrets of his tale by gazing over Sam's shoulder, rather than by listening to characters pontificate ludicrously about plot points or by staring for endless minutes at flashing monitors. The film's grander revelations, when they arrive, have the desired impact precisely because Jones soft-pedals so many of the details in Moon's story, allowing them to enter our awareness and simmer there. Fittingly, one of the film's most gloriously effective moments occurs is its final scene. As a vessel hurtles through Earth's atmosphere in a riot of flame, Jones permits a upwelling of unexpected giddiness to overtake the film, evoking dormant memories of space travel as high-velocity adventure. In that instant, radio and television transmissions float gently into the soundtrack, foreshadowing the profound and uncertain consequences of the film's events. It's a triumphant moment, an ending simultaneously joyful and probing that speaks to the film's achievement as a stimulating work of fiction.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The End Is Near

2009 // UK - USA // David Yates // July 22, 2009 // Theatrical Print

B - It seems safe to say at this late date that pining for a rigorously faithful adaptation of a Harry Potter novel is an exercise in fanboy/fangirl futility. Devotees of the Potter series—and I count myself among that ubiquitous club—are inevitably better off appreciating each new cinematic incarnation as a freestanding indulgence of a dense and often daring fantasy aesthetic. More substantively, and with varying success, each Potter film has attempted to evoke a distinctive tone and set of themes, an endeavor that has always been constrained by the fact that each film is but a small segment in an epic saga. The visual excitement that Alfonso Cuarón brought to Prisoner of Azkaban has not yet been matched, and for a time it seemed as though Mike Newell's adept juggling of Goblet of Fire's pubescent terrors—physical, emotional, sexual, and existential—would also prove to be a high point. Fortunately for the series's long-term relevancy, director David Yates has bested all his predecessors save Cuarón with the thrilling Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and that includes himself. Although Yates rose to the occasion in delivering a satisfactory Order of the Phoenix two years ago, the result was in some ways disappointing. Phoenix often seemed a hodgepodge of scenes that lacked both cohesion and dramatic propulsion, with the notable exception of the terrifying climactic battle in the Department of Mysteries. As a storyteller, Yates exhibits a significant evolution with Prince, evincing a clear understanding for the source material's most affecting narrative arcs: Malfoy's torment, Slughorn's shame, and the overdue germination of love between Ron and Hermione. At the same time, the director demonstrates a deft handling of mood, alternately evoking giddy joy and chilling horror without subjecting his audience to whiplash. In other words, Half-Blood Prince does fantasy adventure exactly as it should be done.

Given that the Potter franchise has now reached its sixth film, one question has become more salient than ever: How essential are the novels and prior films to an appreciation of the latest adaption? Or, to put it more acidly, if a viewer hasn't followed the Potter story up to this point, should they even bother? With Half-Blood Prince—and, to be honest, every film since Chamber of Secrets—the answer is decisively in the negative, but that's less a condemnation of these particularly films than the essential limitations of the format in telling such an episodic, sustained tale, especially one that relies on discrete school years for its structure. Anyone who hasn't followed the series along in one form or another is likely to be lost in Half-Blood Prince, both narratively and emotionally.

With that disclaimer out of the way, Prince is as involving and visceral as the series has ever been, balancing long-term payoffs with the immediacy of its fantasy wonders. To select just one example, while there wasn't so much as a whiff of Quidditch in the past two films, Prince devotes a healthy chunk of its running time to Ron's travails as keeper for Team Gryffindor. Yates doesn't provide the context that Rowling did, but it's for the best; dithering over team politics and the sport's finer points would be deadly nightshade to the film's brisk pacing and tone of swelling doom. Yet Prince retains the heartfelt essence of this aspect of the plot—the triumphalism of Ron's athletic victory—to provide a respite from the gloom and also hint at future turns in the story.

Yates and go-to Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves adopt much the same approach throughout Half-Blood Prince, necessarily slicing away swathes of the novel and reducing the story to its dramatic skeleton. Most conspicuously, many of the relationship subplots have been excised completely (Fleur and Bill) or merely alluded to (Lupin and Tonks). Yet Prince mostly avoids the limp and ragged character that bedeviled the previous films, which often rushed to tick off of the Potter mythos checklist while failing to elaborate on any of the details. At their worst, the Potter films have proven to be lifeless tracings of Rowlings' dizzyingly intricate universe. Yates dodges this bullet deftly during this outing, with a couple of discouraging exceptions. (Most annoyingly, the identity of the eponymous Prince is revealed with a grandiose gesture, but without further explanation, it proves to be meaningless moment.) The film focuses on the drama of the primary storylines, and even has time for an original scene in which Bellatrix Lestrange attacks the Weasley Burrow. Whether this offends the hardcore fan is irrelevant. The scene serves Yates' overarching purpose nicely; namely, to maintain the tension and terror of the film's action sequences and establish an authentic aura of danger within his fantastical milieu. The series has achieved this before, but never so consistently, or with such an keen eye towards a disciplined pace. (Remember Azkaban's invigorating time-travel sequence? Do you remember that it went on for far, far too long?)

Ever since Chris Columbus blessedly gave up the reins of the series, the Potter franchise has proven to be an inventive and pleasurable journey into the visual and aural texture of Rowling's world. While many of the plot elements from the novels are given short shrift, the films are furiously detailed works where production design is concerned, exhibiting uncommonly inventive and stunning conceptions of both the series' iconic set pieces and its tiniest ornaments. The consistently compelling (and remarkably animated) vistas that Yates brought to Phoenix find rivals among Prince's sights, most notably a Room of Requirement that seems part scrap heap and part museum, the cthonian vault for one of Voldemort's artifacts, and a series of magical flashbacks that drip with grimy menace.

The performances are serviceable enough, with the adults providing the gravitas and the kids the charm and adolescent relatibility, as usual for the series. Michael Gambon's sprightly, prickly Dumbledore has long surpassed Richard Harris's magisterial but colorless performance, and here Gambon reaches the gratifying endpoint of his portrayal, achieving all the impact that his final scenes warrant. The other standout in Prince is Tom Felton, who delivers the waxy fear, venom, and desperation that the film's canny focus on Draco's plight requires. Daniel Radcliffe, for his part, bestows Harry with a tinting of previously unseen strength, though whether this is due to a conscious decision or Radcliffe's own (belatedly) maturating talents is not clear. As with the previous outings, Half-Blood Prince is never as poignant as the film-makers imagine. However, Yates has created what might be the series' most effective episode, if only for its skillful blend of satisfying drama and deep wonder.

Brüno

2009 // USA // Larry Charles // July 15, 2009 // Theatrical Print

C+ - It was inevitable that Brüno would prove to be less radical than the utterly pitiless Borat, the prior "ambush comedy" collaboration between director Larry Charles and the fearless Sacha Baron Cohen. Unfortunately, it's also less funny. Brüno, a ludicrously flamboyant Austrian fashionista who dreams of American celebrity, is simply not as fun to goggle at as Cohen's clueless Kazakh, perhaps because Borat's aspirations were simpler and his ego less gargantuan. Never mind his Teutonic origins; Brüno is portrayed as the apotheosis of American narcissism, shamelessness, and fame-addled stupidity. The film slumps when Charles relies excessively on scripted story or tired "Gays Are Gross" humor, and, on balance, its provocative subtext is less amusing than Cohen's exceedingly game jackassery. The biggest laughs are coaxed from absurdities like Brüno sneaking naked into a redneck's tent at 3 a.m. (because a bear ate his clothes, you see), or jumping out a window in terror to escape a dominatrix. While Cohen's characters, Brüno included, aren't exactly brilliant creations, they do shuffle on the bleeding edge of comedy, juggling a plethora of pop culture's most uncomfortable traits. Even if Cohen fumbles half the time, it's still a worthwhile show.

Public Enemies

Men in Trenchoats

2009 // USA // Michael Mann // July 3, 2009 // Theatrical Print

B - Public Enemies seems like the sort of film that was made for Michael Mann. Tackling the story of John Dillinger's final months, Mann enters terrain with which he is intimately familiar. In Dillinger, he rediscovers his reliable archetypal protagonist: a man with a disciplined code of behavior, a code tested by allies and rivals and by the sheer capricious character of life. Like any period American epic worth its salt, Public Enemies examines the national soul from a variety of angles, pitting conflicting impulses against one another and commenting on contemporary agonies with a cunning reserve. Mann's captivating style is as welcome as ever, even if it is unfortunately hidden by the murk of digital video. Despite this questionable choice, Public Enemies is peppered with stunning cinematic moments, matings of color, sound, and motion that linger long after the context has vanished. It's a shame that the surrounding film is unexpectedly rote, a collection of lively sequences that lack the narrative thrust or consistency in tone that might have made for an outstanding criminal fable. It's a gratifying and expressive film, to be sure, but Public Enemies doesn't even aim for the psychological and social complexity of other late Mann works.

In 1933, Dillinger, played with customary meltaway charisma by Johnny Depp, was both Public Enemy Number One and a Depression-era folk hero. He revels in the thrill of a bank heist and the public adoration that the American public showers on him, shying away from crimes that might tarnish his image. By robbing only from bank vaults, never bank customers, he wins over hearts and minds; the fact that he is an unrepentant cop-killer doesn't seem to matter. On the other side of the law and order coin is Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), a straight-arrow FBI agent who J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup, hamming it up agreeably) tasks with Dillinger's capture. For all the criticism lobbed at Bale's grim performances in the Batman films, tapping him to portray Purvis is dead-on casting. Bale brings the exact Golden Boy sleekness and ambition that the role requires, with just a whisper of uncertainty. Purvis is a Hoover acolyte, dedicated to the notion of a modernized federal law enforcement agency. The hunt for Dillinger, however, eventually demands that Purvis call in some rock-ribbed Texas Rangers to supplement his office, most prominently the steely Agent Winstead (Stephen Lang).

Structurally, Public Enemies is perhaps best distinguished by its dissimilarity to Mann's most renowned films. Although it splits its time fairly evenly between Dillinger's gang and the FBI, the resemblance between Enemies and Heat ends there. The new film's sympathies and descriptive concerns lie decisively with Dillinger, and therefore Enemies lacks the distinctive thematic and narrative twinning of Heat's epic cops-and-robbers tale, not to mention that film's stunning inertia. Nor is Enemies truly a biopic, certainly nothing like Ali with its impressionistic coilings, being far too attentive to its secondary and tertiary characters. No, Public Enemies is, resolutely and a bit disappointingly, a straightforward crime drama, albeit one executed with Mann's characteristic flair and jostles. The director's storytelling is, as always, expansive and unconventional, not so much proceeding through the story as roaming through it: occasionally accelerating along the dull stretches, slowing down to admire the scenery, or indulging in side trips. For aficionados of Mann's luscious stylings—and I freely admit to being a member of that cinephile subspecies—Public Enemies has plenty to feast upon. The director's longtime collaborator, cinematographer Dante Spinotti, delivers a look that is slightly off-key, characterized by the claustrophobic close-ups and arrhythmic cuts that have become Mann hallmarks.

At first blush, Depp's sparkle might seem a bit out-of-place in Public Enemies' world of hard-nosed gangsters and Depression grime. Like Brad Pitt as Jesse James, however, Depp;s magnetism and real-world celebrity bolster his credibility in a role that is fundamentally about stardom. Unlike Pitt's ambivalent, self-destructive outlaw, however, Dillinger thrives on fame. In a pivotal, almost Spielbergian scene, he wanders incognito through the Chicago police department's "Dillinger Unit," where the evidence of his crimes electrifies him and jolts him out of any thought of giving up the game. Depp's smoothness lends cool ego to Dillinger, casting him not so much as a vicious mook—as Stephen Graham's Babyface Nelson seems to be—but as a typically avaricious, thrill-seeking Big Man. "What do you want?," asks Dillinger's resolute moll, Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard). His response is quintessentially American: "Everything. Right now." Billie, who confesses that nothing exciting has ever happened to her, also wants everything right now, and for that she is willing to tolerate the doubt and peril that comes with being the squeeze of the most wanted man in America.

The qualities of Mann's characters are never gratuitous; they illustrate motivations, morals, and temperaments that are sharply defined and yet authentic. Public Enemies is no exception, and the dualities that it presents are stimulating and multitude. Thus, while Dillinger and Purvis are the film's most conspicuous pair, Mann also highlights the distinctions between Dillinger's coolness and Nelson's cavalier bloodlust; between Purvis' zeal and Winstead's unexpected wisdom and propriety; and between Dillinger's crowd-pleasing theatrics and overlord Frank Nitti's smoothly whirring criminal engine. No less fascinating is the film's critical examination of unforeseen historical consequences. While Mann has never shied away from sociopolitical bite in his works, he has not previously explored a period setting's implications for the contemporary. Without overstating its case, Enemies suggests that the culpability for our present-day justice system's excesses lies in part with the short-sighted judgment of men like Dillinger and Purvis. Their toxic, symbiotic relationship provides nourishment to the militarization of law enforcement, complete with automatic weapons, wiretapping, and “enhanced interrogation.

While these elements lurk intriguingly just below the surface, Mann seems reluctant to engage with them, save on a cursory level. The drama of blazing Tommy-gun battles and Dillinger's repeated, jaw-dropping escapes hold his attention to a greater degree than cerebral matters. Even Mann's long-standing thematic fixation—the centrality of masculine honor, especially under duress—doesn't receive the airing the source material might suggest. The result is that Public Enemies feels uncharacteristically conventional for Mann, despite the fact that it's as visually compelling as anything the director has done. (Never mind that video has no business anywhere near a lavish period film; Enemies is still a great-looking film.) There's also a vexing lack of urgency in Enemies' bloodstream. It often seems as though the set pieces, while stimulating, squat within discrete chambers, with only the expository declarations of characters to tie them together. The film lacks the tonal through-line that would complete the intriguing, half-formed thoughts that seem doodled in its margins. Fortunately, Enemies remains delicious drama, with sufficient cinematic vitality and thematic vistas to satisfy.

Food, Inc.

2008 // USA // Robert Kenner // June 24, 2009 // Theatrical Print

B - If you've already devoured Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation or Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, you won't learn much in Robert Kenner's provocative documentary, Food, Inc., that you didn't already know. That might have something to do with Schlosser's producer credit, or the fact that both authors appear in and provide narration for the film. Kenner, in his theatrical feature debut, works within the comfortable confines of Alex Gibney's style, presenting Big Issues in a breezy, ever-so-slightly caustic package that preaches to the choir and looks damn slick while doing so. Fortunately, Food, Inc. refrains from indulgent stunts and cheap shots, preferring to lay out its case against industrial agriculture firmly, relentlessly, and with a warm, affirmative tone. Like any polemicist worth his salt, Kenner knows that a film like Food, Inc. won't convert his natural antagonists, but it may shift the perspective of viewers who weren't aware of the costs of modern agribusiness. Accordingly, the film's most enduring aspect is its human element: the mother who lost a son to E. coli poisoning, the seed cleaner financially ruined by Monsanto, and the ebullient organic farmer who emerges as a captivating advocate for a better way of eating.