brighn Reviews

Gun-Shy (2003)

Existentialist, but not incomprehensibly so

[8/10 · 16 March 2008]

The plot of this movie is simple: Lukas meets Isabella on a bus, he comes to discover that she is in trouble, and he takes steps to resolve the problem. This tale has been told myriad times.

The characters of this movie are superficial: Lukas is estranged from his father, but we never quite learn why, or why it's even brought up (as Chekhov's gun sits idly on the wall); Isabella refuses to talk about the cause of her problems when Lukas brings them up several times; Lukas, fulfilling his compulsory government work delivering food to senior citizens (in lieu of military work), meets several characters who are revealed to be tantalizing complex (such as a still-active prostitute who's on the dole) -- but are only lightly explored.

The depth in this movie is in the interaction of fear, rage, and eroticism, even though each of these get only marginal screen time. Some of the symbols do verge on being ham-fisted, such as the use of the gun as a surrogate for masculinity (and impotency). However, the denouement is existentialist in its understatement, especially in the final frame: There is still a lot of story that could have been told, but that story simply doesn't matter. The problem has been resolved, so it's time to roll the credits.

It is overall a lonely film, a mood that's established early with a single, immobile shot of Lukas walking past a nondescript building; he walks for a block but passes nobody, and the beige-and-glass of the building oppresses the image of him in his white delivery frock.

Boating on the river recurs in several forms, between Lukas's hobbyist nighttime scullery and idyllic afternoons with Isabella in a rowboat. It is an accident involving the former that attracts the police to him, but the detective, playing out a stock cat-and-mouse story, remains at the sidelines (held in tacit reserve for what might happen in the days following the ending).

Each person has their own experience of a film, but I don't see how this could be characterized, as it has been, as a comedy, even a dark one. It's a calm film, typical of its existentialism, well worth watching but even more worth discussing afterwards.

Peter Pan (2003)

Beautiful film, but definitely Parental Guidance

[26 December 2003]

When I first saw the trailer for Peter Pan, I was excited, but I also wondered who the audience would be. The original story of Peter Pan is very much a puberty coming-of-age tale, but Disney successfully made it for much younger children. Would tweens and teens avoid the live action version because the story itself has been coopted as a Disney cartoon?

I hope not. This is a beautifully made film. There are spots where it's slow, and there's a general stiffness to it, especially by modern standards. It feels like an old film: Overacted, but in that stiff "Are we still on stage?" way that's common in movies before around 1950. I think this was the intent, but it does drag the movie in spots.

There's a good deal of sexual tension in the film (not just between Wendy and Peter); as a puberty coming-of-age tale, that's appropriate, but if that's something you're sensitive to your children seeing, definitely see it first before taking them. (Note to critics who insist the protagonists are too young: Standards have changed quite a bit over the last century, and this is an attempt to be true to the original story. Going even further back to Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was 13 in Shakespeare's original play, and she's getting married. Times change.)

The film isn't as scary as the trailer I'd seen; it wasn't much more intense than a Harry Potter film, and about as well made. The themes are more complicated than Harry Potter, though; I sense that even many adult viewers don't "get" why Mr. Darling and Captain Hook *must* be played by the same actor (Hook represents Wendy's anxieties about adulthood and the loss of dreams, embodied in the "real world" in Mr. Darling), and see it as an affectation.

4.5 out of 5 stars

20 Dates (1998)

Quirky mockumentary

[7/10 · 23 September 2003]

The summary is a bit redundant: Mockumentaries, as a genre, are fairly quirky.

In this case, recently divorced Myles, also a wannabe filmmaker, decides to make a documentary about trying to find true love in L.A. He commits to going on 20 dates and recording the results. Unfortunately, halfway through, he falls in love with one of his dates and now has to figure out how to complete the project without alienating his new love.

What makes this different from standard mockumentaries -- and what some of the other IMDB reviewers seem to be missing -- is that, while it's clear that the final film isn't a true account of the events (some of the dates are obviously faked, and Elie the villainous producer can't really be THAT evil), it isn't so clear whether Myles Berkowitz (credited as writer and director, as well as star) started out with a serious intent to make a documentary, or whether it was meant to be fiction from the outset.

Most of the evidence points to Berkowitz' initial sincerity. This *is* his only film (except for a bit part in "No Small Affair," 16 years before this movie), and Elie *is* listed as Executive Producer. The official budget *is* the stated $60K. Most of the early dates seem real -- it's only the later ones that start to feel scripted, especially the feminist ballerina.

One thing that gives this movie its charm, then, is that while Myles (the character) fumes about the way in which his original vision for the movie is eroding away from pressure from Elie, Berkowitz (the filmmaker) seems to be going through the same genuine quandary for a different reason -- it didn't take his full 20 dates to find love, and NOW what's he supposed to do?

The cover job is both charming and disorienting: He goes back over the old footage and edits it so it looks like it could have been a mockumentary from the start, but plays it from the hip so it looks like a mockumentary pretending to be a documentary.

Wouldn't Robert McKee be proud?

Others might not have the same sense of pride. The film will come off as either a clever if ham-fisted attempt to make lemon footage into lemonade, or a pretentious and annoying trip into the avenues of Independent Film by a blind drunkard.

Viewer's choice, and it seems to depend on what the viewer thinks of Myles: Is he annoying, or is he cute?

I thought he was cute, and while the film is hardly a classic, it's worth a try. Look for it on cable (that's where I found it), and if you're sick of it after half an hour, turn it off and not much lost.

Underworld (2003)

Entertaining, but tries too hard to capitalize on trends

[8/10 · 19 September 2003]

The typical comments from people who have only seen the trailers bear true here, to a degree. This premise had a lot of potential, and when it focused on that potential, it was a good film. Unfortunately, the filmmakers too often tried to exploit obvious cultural trends in movies like "The Matrix" and "Blade," and that's where they tripped up. This was especially true in the action scenes, where an obscene number of bullets were fired for no other plausible reason than because that's what they did in "The Matrix." There was also far too much black with blue filter, again seemingly because of "The Matrix" and "Blade."

Unfortunately, discussing the "good parts" means discussing the original parts, which means discussing spoilers. To tread these waters without diving in: The movie relies on its own mythology for both werewolves and vampires. This might annoy some vampire purists, but I found it a fairly interesting and convincing mythology. Logic holes? Sure. What the heck, it's a movie, people. Nothin' but a show.

There's social commentary in the movie, too. Vampires seem to be a recurrent metaphor for some social ill or other (usually bloodborne illnesses, as in Stoker). In "Underworld," the social commentary makes for a more complicated plot than in "Blade," one I wished they'd explored more, instead of spending so much film time on cliches.

Super Sucker (2002)

Fun, timely farce

[7/10 · 2 February 2003]

Being a fellow Michigander (with Jeff Daniels), I can see part of where this movie came from. It's a satirical look at Midwestern family values and sexual mores (like Daniels' other, more well-known, and overall better "Pleasantville"). Unlike "Pleasantville," where the attacks on sexual puritanism are subtle enough for some casual viewers to miss, "Super Sucker" is blatant.

The premise: A down-and-out vacuum cleaner distributor (Daniels) in a moderate-sized Midwest town (based on and shot in Jackson, Michigan) has been given 30 days to outsell his overbearing and obnoxious competitor. Whoever sells the most systems gets sole rights to distributorship. Daniels seems destined to lose -- the competition has much more advertising money, and is willing to throw any rules of fairness out the window -- until he discovers a special use for a long-discontinued attachment. He puts the attachment into rapid production, and offers it as a "special bonus" that only his distributorship has available. His fate changes radically, buildi ng up to a raucous farce of a climax.

The buildup is, in my opinion, slow, and bits are ham-fistedly predictable; the "cat" scene belonged in a Farrelly Brothers movie (and that's not a compliment), but it was thankfully brief. But once it gets going (around the midpoint), and writer/director Daniels decides that whatever real world logic he had been attempting to follow should be thrown out the window in favor of over-the-top absurdity, it has some truly comedic scenes. In a time when Michigan's sexual more pendulum appears to be swinging back to the left, the film is a nice push in the right direction. And, sociosexual politics aside, it's a darn fine piece of unpretentious independent comedy -- something we can never have enough of.

TV buffs will likely enjoy a cameo from Gilligan Island's Dawn Wells, making fun of her own stereotyping as Mary Ann.

Purple Rose fans will note that, except for bits of body-humor comedy and Daniels' affably hapless good guy (a persona he started with "Something Wild"), this is a much different film than Escanaba in Da Moonlight (also a good movie, although I enjoyed the play more). Like "Pleasantville," it has more national appeal ("Escanaba" was rife with Michigan in-jokes), and despite some of its stageplay-like shots, it's obviously based on a screenplay, with many more scenes and a much larger cast. I hope Purple Rose works out its own kinks in distributorship (leaving me wondering if Daniels' frustration here didn't contribute to "Super Sucker"'s premise), because these films deserve a larger audience than they seem to be getting.