Appealing to the base


Hollywood has the same problem with the Oscars that the Republicans are having with their primaries. They can't seem to agree on a candidate with a broad appeal to the base. All nine Oscar finalists were, like Mitt Romney, good enough to be nominated. But none of them appealed to average multiplex moviegoers, just as it's said Romney doesn't appeal to the GOP base.

What the Hollywood establishment would love is a Best Picture winner that was also a box office winner. In their dreams, the Oscar goes to "Titanic," "Forrest Gump," "Silence of the Lambs," or "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King." In reality, the Oscar just as often goes to "The Artist," "The English Patient," "American Beauty" or "A Beautiful Mind." When "The Hurt Locker" defeated the all-time top grossing film "Avatar," there was wailing and the gnashing of teeth among those who count success in grosses.

The problem is that the taste of the Academy voters is too good. An argument can be made that the Best Picture, year after year, is at the very least a good picture. Most films produced every year may be mediocre or bad, but the nominees tend to be pretty first-rate. The days are gone when Mike Todd could steamroll the Academy into honoring "Around the World in 80 Days," or Cecil B. DeMille could crown his career with "The Greatest Show on Earth."



Such observations could point us in a number of directions. For the establishment, they point in only one: These Oscars will not translate into much of a surge at the box office. I didn't think "The Artist" was the year's best picture (that was "A Separation," in the foreign language category). Nor was it the best of the nominees ("The Tree of Life" or "Hugo"). But "The Artist" was a wonderful film, and it's possible that it provided the most pure entertainment for a general audience. It will open on additional screens on Friday and do good business, but no one will be trampled by the rush into the theater.

This can partly be explained by the audacity of Michel Hazanavicius in daring to make a silent film in black and white. People have gone out of their way to inform me that they won't go to silent films and don't like black and white. Like all critics, I've also run up against two groups of anal retentive readers. (1) When I said it was "silent and black and white," I was savaged for ignoring the fact that it has a little sound and color. (2) When I said it was "almost silent and almost in black in white," I was accused of committing a Spoiler.)

It's pointless to argue with someone who tells you they didn't like a movie. By definition they must be right. How can they he wrong about themselves? My hope is that perhaps "The Artist's" Oscar win will inspire some people to relax their standards and allow themselves to see a black and white silent film. It won't be that difficult. Do they complain about those stretches of "sound" films with no dialogue, only music? Do they dislike "color" films that are shot in murky dimness and have a noir feeling? No, now that you mention it.



Odds are they have an idea of silent films shaped by brief shots of the Keystone Kops running in speeded-up action. They've never seen a good silent film properly presented. And it hasn't occurred to them that if a black and white film is "missing" color, so also is a color film "missing" black and white. I don't have the heart to inflict on you yet again my reasons for often preferring black and white. And many silent films place me into a deeply satisfying state of reverie.

For me, "The Artist" is delightful above all for the performance of Jean Dujardin, who is graceful and charming, who bubbles with warmth and humor, and who can dance as very few people ever have in movie history. Pity they don't make musicals anymore--not musicals, anyway, depending on the charisma and presence of individual singers and dancers. I wonder if anyone will have the imagination to figure out how to use Dujardin in a musical? How about a remake of "Swing Time?"

The Los Angeles Times published a well-researched article last week determining that the average Academy voter is white, male and over 50. We already knew that. What does it mean? That only boring box office blockbusters are nominated? No, because the old white men gave no major nominations for such hits of 2011 as "The Hangover Part II," "Horrible Bosses," "Captain America," "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," and the franchise entries from Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Transformers. In overlooking such titles, they were essentially dissing their enormous audiences, and it's likely that many younger moviegoers didn't even watch the Oscars because they didn't have a horse in the race.



When I wrote above that "The Artist" provided the most pure entertainment for the "general audience," I noted even while typing that it was not the most entertaining for me. That would have been Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris," as magical a whimsy as I can imagine. One of the problems with the "base" is that the average moviegoer has little knowledge of, and less interest in, such figures as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Luis Bunuel, Picasso and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was a film requiring the viewer to have a light working knowledge of 20th century literature, art and cinema. If you lack one, it must have seemed inexplicable.

There was also the complaint that we movie critics liked "The Artist" because we're "biased" in favor of silent black and white films. (Most people making complaints like this in internet comments, I notice, have no idea what "biased" means and think it is spelled "bias," as in: You're bias agains ... Well, it's true that having spent our careers at the movies we appreciate a loving homage to traditions of cinema. But never mind us. I am naive enough to believe anyone should have fair chance of enjoying "The Artist." How does this apply to the Republican primaries? I have no idea.

Hollywood's highway to Hell



My negative review of "The Raid: Redemption" violated one of my oldest principles, and put me way out of step with other critics. In my review I gave it one star. The movie currently stands at 8.4 on IMDb, 83% on the Tomatometer, 76 on MRQE, 73 on Metacritic, and 65.4 on Movie Review Intelligence. When my review appeared online at 12:01 a.m. Thursday morning, "The Raid" was hovering near 100% at Tomatoes. You need a 60 to be a "fresh" tomato.

These numbers of course are not drawn from the same pool of viewers. IMDb and RT are weighted toward a wide selection of mainstream reviewers. MRQE and Meta monitor more serious critics. MRI does an interesting thing; it surveys local and national markets and tries to estimate the actual box office effect reviews have had.

These numbers in themselves have no significance compared to the words in the reviews they reflect. But they tell me my review violated one of my oldest reviewing guidelines. When I began, I found the star rating system to be absurd. I still do. But I thought I'd found a way to work with it. I'd take a "generic approach." Instead of pretending a star rating reflected some kind of absolute truth, I'd give stars based on how well I thought a movie worked within its genre and for its intended audience. A four-star rating might indicate the movie transcended generic boundaries. For example, what genre does "The Tree of Life" or "Synecdoche, NY" belong to?



Most accounts agree "The Raid" is a superb martial arts film. Because it wasn't filmed in English, it found itself opening mostly in art or specialized theaters, where it did big numbers. In English, it might have done even better, because it truly is full-bore wall-to-wall action. I suspect its first audiences knew exactly what they were in for, and found exactly what they wanted. The trade paper reviewers, whose job is to advise exhibitors what kinds of audiences a film is likely to draw, were ecstatic. It was "hard-driving, butt-kicking, pulse-pounding, bone-crunching, skull-smashing, blood-curdling" (Hollywood Reporter) and "a hand-to-hand, fist-to-face, foot-to-groin battle, with a few machetes and guns tossed in for good measure" (Variety). "Extraordinary stunt and fight work and nonstop excitement, but a warning...this may be the most violent movie I've ever seen." (Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor). "A slam-bang, knock-your-socks-off action bonanza with some of the most peerlessly shot, performed and choreographed fight sequences you're likely to see on screen." (Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times).

These reviews are accurate. I agree with them. According to my generic approach, I should have written a favorable review. Why didn't I?

Here's a paragraph from my review: "'The Raid: Redemption' is essentially a visualized video game that spares the audience the inconvenience of playing it. There are two teams, the police SWAT team and the gangsters. The gangsters have their headquarters on the top floor of a 15-story building, where they can spy on every room and corridor with video surveillance. The SWAT team enters on the ground floor. Its assignment: Fight its way to the top, floor by floor."



This will be dismissed by some readers as a manifestation of my lack of enthusiasm for video games. Perhaps so. I think it springs more from my affection for characters, plot, human nature and other elements possible in movies. "The Raid" is monotonously single-tracked in showing one gruesome scene of hand-to-hand combat after another. Heads are destroyed like targets in a carnival sideshow booth. Bones are crunched as if Army Rangers are building a campfire. The corpses piling up in great numbers are disposed of, apparently, by invisible clean-up crews. Why are there no shots of the living stepping with difficulty over the bleeding mounds of the dead?

A plot? "The Raid" supplies only Plot Markers, which are handy signposts indicating "There would be a subplot here if we had the time to stop for one." One Marker says, "Brother." Another says, "Betrayal." The movie's first one says, "Pregnant Wife."

Fans of this genre are long accustomed to two brothers finding themselves on opposite sides of a conflict, and eventually forced to meet each other in a brutal standoff. Good movies have been developed around this theme; consider Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale in "The Fighter" (2010). In "The Raid," we're being signalled, "We could take the time to plug in a back story here, but why bore people?"

In a movie involving a conflict between the police and criminal forces, we expect that one or more turncoats will be involved, a high level operative will be working for the enemy, and so on. "The Raid" has characters indicating they have such a function, but doesn't go into much detail.



The Pregnant Wife is always effective. If the hero kisses his pregnant wife goodbye before setting out on his mission, that's an efficient substitute for 15 pages of dialogue setting up the character. He's good, we like him, and let the killing begin. In some movies, the plot will find a way to hold the pregnant wife hostage, but do you have any idea how much time that can take?

So what am I saying? "The Raid: Redemption" failed as a generic success because it simplified its plot too much? Not really. It is a generic success. And yet my heart sank and I asked myself: Is this all they want? Are audiences satisfied with ceaseless violence, just so long as they can praise it for being "well choreographed?" Is there no appreciation for human dimension, meaning, and morality? Westerns were the first Hollywood morality plays, and it was always clear who was good and who was bad. Now it doesn't matter so much, and the cops and robbers in "The Raid" agree with Red Sanders: "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."



Another quote from my review: "There's obviously an audience for the film, probably a large one. They are content, even eager, to sit in a theater and watch one action figure after another pound and blast one another to death. Have you noticed how cats and dogs will look at a TV screen on which there are things jumping around? It is to that level of the brain's reptilian complex that the film appeals."

I can't take this much longer. I can't function like a butcher's scale. Is it enough to spend two hours determining if a film "achieves its generic purpose?" Shouldn't it do more than that? Perhaps provide some humor, humanity, romance, suspense, beauty, strategy, poetry. Not all of those qualities, but at least several of them. "The Raid" didn't even supply a single good-looking publicity still.

I've seen some incredibly brutal South Korean films recently, like "The Chaser," that contain enough violence to stun any fan of "The Raid" but also have the advantage of being very good films, with intriguing characters, puzzling plots, and ingenious situations. I watched spellbound. "The Raid: Redemption" is dead in the water. The butcher slams the raw slab on his scale and asks, "How many are you feeding?"

These thoughts, some readers inform me, are a function of my age. I'm too old to appreciate a movie like this any longer. That may be true. It doesn't mean I lack the ability. It means I have grown beyond that stage. I am not as easily satisfied. When I began as a film critic, the word "genre" suggested a type of film that had highly developed traditions, possibilities and richness. Now it suggests a marketing decision.



These days, audiences enter a film like this with tunnel vision. They know what they want, and they'd better find it. A film surpasses the requirements of its genre only at hazard. One of the best recent crime films, "Drive," was close to a masterpiece. Sarah Deming, a Michigan women, filed a lawsuit against its distributors claiming its trailer was misleading. Entertainment Weekly summarized her complaints:

• "Drive" was promoted as very similar to "Fast and Furious," when in actuality, it wasn't.

• "Drive" bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film, for reasons including but not limited to "Drive" having very little driving in the motion picture.

In other words, she was offended that the film surpassed its genre. This news item got a good deal of publicity at the time. I wonder if it was a billboard on Hollywood's highway to hell.

Terrence Malick's new film is a form of prayer. It created within me a spiritual awareness, and made me more alert to the awe of existence. I believe it stands free from conventional theologies, although at its end it has images that will evoke them for some people. It functions to pull us back from the distractions of the moment, and focus us on mystery and gratitude.

Not long after its beginning we apparently see the singularity of the Big Bang, when the universe came into existence. It hurtles through space and time, until it comes gently to a halt in a small Texas town in the 1950s. Here we will gradually learn who some of the people were as the film first opened.

In Texas we meet the O'Brien family. Bad news comes in the form of a telegram, as it always did in those days. Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain) reads it in her home, and gives vent to grief. Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) gets the news at work. We gather a child has died. It is after that when we see the universe coming into being, and Hubble photographs of the far reaches.

This had an uncanny effect on me, because Malick sees the time spans of the universe and a human life a lot like I always have. As a child I lay awake obsessed with the idea of infinity and the idea of God, who we were told had no beginning and no end. How could that be? And if you traveled and traveled and traveled through the stars, would you ever get to the last one? Wouldn't there always be one more?

In my mind there has always been this conceptual time travel, in which the universe has been in existence for untold aeons, and then a speck appeared that was Earth, and on that speck evolved life, and among those specks of life were you and me. In the span of the universe, we inhabit an unimaginably small space and time, and yet we think we are so important. It is restful sometimes to pull back and change the scale, to be grateful that we have minds that can begin to understand who we are, and where are in the vastness.

Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life's experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer "to" anyone or anything, but prayer "about" everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.

We all occupy our own box of space and time. We have our memories and no one else's. We live one life, accumulating it in our minds as we go along. Terrence Malick was born in Waco, Texas, and has filmed much of "The Tree of Life" in small Texas towns; the house of the O'Brien family is in Smithville. I felt like I knew this house and this town. Malick and I were born within a year of one another, and grew up in small towns in the midlands. Someone else, without my memories to be stirred, might be less affected by its scenes of the O'Briens raising their three boys.

I know unpaved alleys with grass growing down the center,. I know big lawns with a swing hanging from a tree. I know windows that stand open all day in the summer. I know houses that are never locked. I know front porches, and front porch swings, and aluminum drinking glasses covered with beads of sweat from the ice tea and lemonade inside.I know picnic tables. I know the cars of the early 1950s, and the kitchens, and the limitless energy of kids running around the neighborhood.

And I know the imperfect family life Malick evokes. I know how even good parents sometimes lose their tempers. How children resent what seems to be the unforgivable cruelty of one parent, and the refuge seemingly offered by the other. I know what it is to see your parents having a argument, while you stand invisible on the lawn at dusk and half-hear the words drifting through the open windows. I know the feeling of dread, because when your parents fight, the foundation of your world shakes. I had no siblings, but I know how play can get out of hand and turn into hurt, and how hatred can flare up between two kids, and as quickly evaporate. I know above all how time moves slowly in a time before TV and computers and video games, a time when what you did was go outside every morning and play and dare each other, and mess around with firecrackers or throw bricks at the windows of an empty building, and run away giggling with guilt.

Those days and years create the fundament. Then time shifts and passes more quickly, and in some sense will never seem as real again. In the movie, we rejoin one of the O'Brien boys (now played by Sean Penn) when he grows to about the age his father was. We see him in a wilderness of skyscrapers, looking out high windows at a world of glass and steel. Here are not the scenes of the lawn through the dining room windows. These windows never open. He will never again run outside and play.

What Malick does in "The Tree of Life" is create the span of lives. Of birth, childhood, the flush of triumph, the anger of belittlement, the poison of resentment, the warmth of forgiving. And he shows that he feels what I feel, that it was all most real when we were first setting out, and that it will never be real in that way again. In the face of Hunter McCracken, who plays Jack as a boy, we see the face of Sean Penn, who plays him as a man. We see fierceness and pain. We see that he hates his father and loves him. When his father has a talk with him and says, "I was a little hard on you sometimes," he says, "It's your house. You can do what you want to." And we realize how those are not words of anger but actually words of forgiveness. Someday he will be the father. It will not be so easy.

Jonas Agersø wrote:I can't take a man seriously, who gave "A Clockwork Orange" 2 stars. and "2012", "Junior" and "Anaconda" 3 and a half stars.
- Taste is taste. but thats just stupid.

Pratham wrote:

Jonas Agersø wrote:I can't take a man seriously, who gave "A Clockwork Orange" 2 stars. and "2012", "Junior" and "Anaconda" 3 and a half stars.
- Taste is taste. but thats just stupid.

But you see Mr. Jonas, that doesn't mean Ebert thinks A Clockwork Orange is shit compared to 2012.
His ratings are not absolute but relative to other films in same genre.

Jonas Agersø wrote:True, thats the same way I rate. But it means he thinks 2012 is better a disaster movie, than Godfather II is a good Crime/Drama film. (just to mix in another strange rating)

Jonas Agersø wrote:I can't take a man seriously, who gave "A Clockwork Orange" 2 stars. and "2012", "Junior" and "Anaconda" 3 and a half stars.
- Taste is taste. but thats just stupid.

Vader182 wrote:His words leave me wishing my reaction wasn't far from his.


-Vader