"Demented, unfunny, and yet perversely fascinating." --Washington Post review of Observe and Report
The writer Susan Orlean says she's drawn to what she calls the idea of the "tiny master," a person "with a tiny domain over which they are the master." This seems true of writer/director Jody Hill as well. In his first (and funniest) film, The Foot Fist Way, Danny McBride plays a foul-mouthed Tae Kwon Doe instructor whose kingdom is challenged by his hero, Chuck "The Truck." On HBO's, Eastbound and Down, created by Hill, Danny McBride (again) plays Kenny Powers, a former pro baseball star and one of the most narcissistic television creations since Ricky Gervais's David Brent. On first try, I gave up on Eastbound after two episodes. It just felt too...cruel, the humor built almost entirely around Kenny damaging the largely good-hearted people around him. But I went back and, by the end of the sixth and final episode, it won me over. Like Gervais's Brent, McBride's Kenny is so oblivious to the destruction he causes that you can almost root for him, on some strange level. And now there's Seth Rogen's Ronnie in Hill's new film, Observe and Report. Ronnie's a bipolar mall cop who believes, like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (a professed influence on this film) that it's his sworn duty to rid his kingdom of the scum (in this case, a parking-lot flasher) who corrupt its innocent citizens (in this case, Anna Faris, as a mall make-up girl, by no means innocent). It's never quite clear how we're meant to feel about Ronnie and, unlike the protagonists of Foot Fist and Eastbound, his unchallenged rule within his "tiny domain" never feels believable. Can, for instance, his merciless smashing-up of the local teen skateboarders really remain unpunished? But this too is part of the point (I think): the mall's other residents are largely so caught up in their own fantasy worlds that Ronnie's ever-escalating sadism and actual emotional problems barely register for them. The film is crude and often cruel, easy for many to critics to dismiss, but if Hill evolves beyond these already-repetitive characters, I've got a feeling he might do something much more interesting (and actually write a film worthy of the kind of darkly comic character-driven pieces that obviously inspire him).
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Dr. X's Column: Dr. X. Dares to Watch A Film He Once Refused To Watch!
While Richard formulates some thoughts on Observe and Report and the oeuvre of its writer/director Jody Hill, Dr. X. steps in with a long-delayed review of Into the Wild, a movie he once trashed from afar while refusing to watch (to the annoyance of Richard and Beth) but which he now trashes from close range! His review also suggests that he's seen Twilight. What other dark secrets will we discover about his viewing habits? Stay tuned for this occasional column!
"See, now -- I have seen Into the Wild (I was bored in a hotel room at a conference last year). As much as I thought I would hate it... I hated it even more. I even found Eddie's Soundtrack choices lugubrious. And while I full well understand that the movie is a trueish story... I completely found Hirsch utterly unwatchable, the story stillborn (I know, ya can't change the truth.. but it's Sean Penn, so... Why not?) and the ending as worthless as the prospects of me paying 5$ to watch it.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: we have done this story a million times before. Hollywood continues to pick up properties that they think we'll watch because they have a tried and true tradition... but, in a climate of fiscal non-solvency such as the one we're currently mired in... I'm not looking for the same damned survival story again.
I mean -- I truthfully preferred the pinball game that was Speed Racer over this. Yes, the imagery is shot beautifully. Yes the cinematography was resonant. Yes, the acting was fine. I don't care. The cinematography in Twilight was beautiful (and if you throw a blue-cast lens onto the American NW, it really becomes beautiful) -- and it was still a piece of shit. Into the Wild was not necessarily a piece of shit... but it was an entirely forgettable moment of the year. It's just kinda another of a series of personal Hollywood pet projects where major named stars, auteurs or directors take on something that they have solipsistic passion about and then spend a bunch of money and then try and blame the rest of the world when we don't find the same value that they did.
And, I don't want to hear any of this art bullshit. We are not in the Wilde years. This is not literary decadence. There's no VITALITY to this nonsense. That's why it doesn't resonate even thought it's good. Jack Palence made a hundred films that were spot on and priceless to me... but very few of them were imbued with a timeless and ephemeral vitality that demanded that they be watched (Maybe Cyborg 2). The Duke. Same time period. Same manner of movies. Absolutely vitality. They could give him his own channel.
And I think this is a fairly true distillation of my point concerning the endlessly hip and disposable. For every good cum great piece of film, poetry, art... what have you... everything that makes the selfless grab their fecking PBR and admonish the supposed dilettante for being part of the total scene of which they neither know themselves or really care to explain (But they read that it was important in pitchfork/ New Yorker... and surely THEY know what they're talking about... because the magazine trade isn't dying or anything.)... there is a disposability about it that makes it unprofitable. It doesn't have a grasp of the zeitgeist nor the testicular fortitude to form it.
Great movies can lack soul. The Breakfast Club, god help me, had soul... Into the Wild had a couple of good Eddie Vedder songs and director of Photography that should work for the Nature channel. Is it wrong for one to like it/ love it? Abso-damn-lutely not.
But if someone tries to tell me how important that piece of shit is... well, yon best don your chainmail -- I'm coming at you with a fucking bludgeon.
--Oh, and Happy Easter everyone :)!"
"See, now -- I have seen Into the Wild (I was bored in a hotel room at a conference last year). As much as I thought I would hate it... I hated it even more. I even found Eddie's Soundtrack choices lugubrious. And while I full well understand that the movie is a trueish story... I completely found Hirsch utterly unwatchable, the story stillborn (I know, ya can't change the truth.. but it's Sean Penn, so... Why not?) and the ending as worthless as the prospects of me paying 5$ to watch it.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: we have done this story a million times before. Hollywood continues to pick up properties that they think we'll watch because they have a tried and true tradition... but, in a climate of fiscal non-solvency such as the one we're currently mired in... I'm not looking for the same damned survival story again.
I mean -- I truthfully preferred the pinball game that was Speed Racer over this. Yes, the imagery is shot beautifully. Yes the cinematography was resonant. Yes, the acting was fine. I don't care. The cinematography in Twilight was beautiful (and if you throw a blue-cast lens onto the American NW, it really becomes beautiful) -- and it was still a piece of shit. Into the Wild was not necessarily a piece of shit... but it was an entirely forgettable moment of the year. It's just kinda another of a series of personal Hollywood pet projects where major named stars, auteurs or directors take on something that they have solipsistic passion about and then spend a bunch of money and then try and blame the rest of the world when we don't find the same value that they did.
And, I don't want to hear any of this art bullshit. We are not in the Wilde years. This is not literary decadence. There's no VITALITY to this nonsense. That's why it doesn't resonate even thought it's good. Jack Palence made a hundred films that were spot on and priceless to me... but very few of them were imbued with a timeless and ephemeral vitality that demanded that they be watched (Maybe Cyborg 2). The Duke. Same time period. Same manner of movies. Absolutely vitality. They could give him his own channel.
And I think this is a fairly true distillation of my point concerning the endlessly hip and disposable. For every good cum great piece of film, poetry, art... what have you... everything that makes the selfless grab their fecking PBR and admonish the supposed dilettante for being part of the total scene of which they neither know themselves or really care to explain (But they read that it was important in pitchfork/ New Yorker... and surely THEY know what they're talking about... because the magazine trade isn't dying or anything.)... there is a disposability about it that makes it unprofitable. It doesn't have a grasp of the zeitgeist nor the testicular fortitude to form it.
Great movies can lack soul. The Breakfast Club, god help me, had soul... Into the Wild had a couple of good Eddie Vedder songs and director of Photography that should work for the Nature channel. Is it wrong for one to like it/ love it? Abso-damn-lutely not.
But if someone tries to tell me how important that piece of shit is... well, yon best don your chainmail -- I'm coming at you with a fucking bludgeon.
--Oh, and Happy Easter everyone :)!"
Monday, April 6, 2009
Nog Visits Adventureland! (But Dr. X Will Not Ride the Ride!).
“You take one step and miss the whole first rung.” --the Replacements, "Bastards of Young"
Well, although my “talkback” is already full of Adventureland material, I haven’t officially written about it, so now I will, real quick-like, before we all move on to Seth Rogen in Observe and Report!
Never mind Adventureland's deliberately misleading “bromantic” marketing campaign: the film is more akin to two films that I love: Barry Levinson’s Diner and Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming. In Diner, a group of young men head their various ways after high-school but hold on to their old haunt, the diner, as a sort of place-out-of-time, somewhere they can rehash old conversations and pretend they aren’t growing up and drifting apart. Kicking and Screaming concerns a group of just-out-of-college friends lingering near campus, hitting the same old bars, nostalgic, as one of them puts it, “for conversations I had five minutes ago.” Adventureland is not quite as perceptive as those two films, but it’s a near pitch-perfect late 80’s period piece about a young college graduate, James Brennan, whose knowledge of the humanities, at least in the short term, makes him fit for nothing but a summer job at a run-down amusement park, a waystation on the way to grad school, but one that also puts him in contact with the kinds of people his narrow intellectual world usually keeps out of sight (such as Kristin Stewart’s Em, a sharp girl with a thing for bad boys). Brennan is a virgin, and the film’s opening suggests that it might become an American Pie-ish, lose-your-virginity flick, but it doesn’t play that way. Brennan is not the clueless nerd of those films, but rather the sensitive smart guy who once decided not to sleep with a girlfriend because of an epiphany gleaned from a Shakespeare sonnet (“You mean you didn’t go ahead and fuck her anyway?” asks Kristen Stewart when informed, unaware that guys like Brennan exist). At the heart of the film, of course, is the romance that develops between Brennan and Em, which is threatened by her nowhere-bound relationship with a married amusement park janitor and his flirtation with a beautiful but ditzy employee. Formulaic, sure, but unlike most formulaic romances, it feels honest. Even its happy ending feels earned. Plus, Brennan gets laid, which is nice.
Dr. X retorts: "Admittedly, I bought the soundtrack to A-land... and I broke! I broke hard. But then I foundout it was rarify sissy water and not a fine Kip's Chicken Fried Steak from Montana Mikes... and I passed."
Well, although my “talkback” is already full of Adventureland material, I haven’t officially written about it, so now I will, real quick-like, before we all move on to Seth Rogen in Observe and Report!
Never mind Adventureland's deliberately misleading “bromantic” marketing campaign: the film is more akin to two films that I love: Barry Levinson’s Diner and Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming. In Diner, a group of young men head their various ways after high-school but hold on to their old haunt, the diner, as a sort of place-out-of-time, somewhere they can rehash old conversations and pretend they aren’t growing up and drifting apart. Kicking and Screaming concerns a group of just-out-of-college friends lingering near campus, hitting the same old bars, nostalgic, as one of them puts it, “for conversations I had five minutes ago.” Adventureland is not quite as perceptive as those two films, but it’s a near pitch-perfect late 80’s period piece about a young college graduate, James Brennan, whose knowledge of the humanities, at least in the short term, makes him fit for nothing but a summer job at a run-down amusement park, a waystation on the way to grad school, but one that also puts him in contact with the kinds of people his narrow intellectual world usually keeps out of sight (such as Kristin Stewart’s Em, a sharp girl with a thing for bad boys). Brennan is a virgin, and the film’s opening suggests that it might become an American Pie-ish, lose-your-virginity flick, but it doesn’t play that way. Brennan is not the clueless nerd of those films, but rather the sensitive smart guy who once decided not to sleep with a girlfriend because of an epiphany gleaned from a Shakespeare sonnet (“You mean you didn’t go ahead and fuck her anyway?” asks Kristen Stewart when informed, unaware that guys like Brennan exist). At the heart of the film, of course, is the romance that develops between Brennan and Em, which is threatened by her nowhere-bound relationship with a married amusement park janitor and his flirtation with a beautiful but ditzy employee. Formulaic, sure, but unlike most formulaic romances, it feels honest. Even its happy ending feels earned. Plus, Brennan gets laid, which is nice.
Dr. X retorts: "Admittedly, I bought the soundtrack to A-land... and I broke! I broke hard. But then I foundout it was rarify sissy water and not a fine Kip's Chicken Fried Steak from Montana Mikes... and I passed."
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Nog Sees Sir Ben Kingsley in Elegy! (a film in which Sir Ben does NOT make out with an Olsen twin)
"When you make love to a woman you get revenge for all the things that defeated you in life." --David Kapesh (Ben Kingsley)
You don't hear too much praise of Sir Ben Kingsley these days, perhaps because he stars in too many movies or perhaps because he starred in a movie in which he makes out with an Olsen twin (The Wackness...not exactly the title you'd expect from a Ben Kingsley film). But he's very good in Elegy, an adaptation of a Philip Roth novella called The Dying Animal, which I haven't read, although my understanding is that, like most of Roth, it's energetic and outrageously vulgar. Elegy has a more sedate tone, befitting its new title, and a female director, perhaps itself a bit unusual for a Roth adaptation (like Updike, Roth is not exactly known for his sensitive views of women). Kingsley plays David Kapesh, an aging professor whose new book praises unchecked sexuality in opposition to societal "rules": his marriage has failed long ago and the implication is that he's banged his way through a lot of ex-students and finally drifted into an affair with a businesswoman (Patricia Clarkson), one which they like to believe is based strictly on sex. But the film is about him unexpectedly falling in love again, with a grad student named Consuela (Penelope Cruz, her second excellent performance of 2008 which no one saw, despite the Oscar for the other one). Kapesh finds himself falling prey to the entanglements he seeks to avoid, becoming very jealous, very childlike in his affection. The film seems to suggest there's a strong infantilizing tendency in a certain kind of male affection (note the scene where Kapesh, heartbroken, is tended to by his colleague, a poet played by Dennis Hopper). The film is strongly acted, worth a look, but it doesn't exactly succeed as either a love story or as one of the recent spate of "reawakening of a stodgy old professor" stories. It's better than Knowing. But not as funny.
You don't hear too much praise of Sir Ben Kingsley these days, perhaps because he stars in too many movies or perhaps because he starred in a movie in which he makes out with an Olsen twin (The Wackness...not exactly the title you'd expect from a Ben Kingsley film). But he's very good in Elegy, an adaptation of a Philip Roth novella called The Dying Animal, which I haven't read, although my understanding is that, like most of Roth, it's energetic and outrageously vulgar. Elegy has a more sedate tone, befitting its new title, and a female director, perhaps itself a bit unusual for a Roth adaptation (like Updike, Roth is not exactly known for his sensitive views of women). Kingsley plays David Kapesh, an aging professor whose new book praises unchecked sexuality in opposition to societal "rules": his marriage has failed long ago and the implication is that he's banged his way through a lot of ex-students and finally drifted into an affair with a businesswoman (Patricia Clarkson), one which they like to believe is based strictly on sex. But the film is about him unexpectedly falling in love again, with a grad student named Consuela (Penelope Cruz, her second excellent performance of 2008 which no one saw, despite the Oscar for the other one). Kapesh finds himself falling prey to the entanglements he seeks to avoid, becoming very jealous, very childlike in his affection. The film seems to suggest there's a strong infantilizing tendency in a certain kind of male affection (note the scene where Kapesh, heartbroken, is tended to by his colleague, a poet played by Dennis Hopper). The film is strongly acted, worth a look, but it doesn't exactly succeed as either a love story or as one of the recent spate of "reawakening of a stodgy old professor" stories. It's better than Knowing. But not as funny.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Things Nog Knows About "Knowing, With Special Guest Commentary from Nog's Partner-in-Film, Dr. X (AKA Joe!).
"Knowing is among the best science-fiction films I've seen -- frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome." --Roger Ebert.
Knowing is not among the best science-fiction films I've seen. Knowing is about the "whisper people," who give small black stones to children and force them to do complicated math problems involving latitude, longitude, and various disasters. Knowing is a better Cage film than Wicker Man, but not better than the two-minute Youtube cut of Wicker Man ("The bees! Are in! My eyes!). Neither is it better than Cage's Vampire's Kiss (he eats a live cockroach in that one). Knowing is directed by Alex Proyas, who gave us a near-masterpiece with Dark City, earning him the everlasting love of Roger Ebert. But then he gave us I, Robot. And then he gave us this. At one point a fiery moose runs directly at the camera and I thought to myself, Man, I wish Knowing were in 3-D...and that I were very drunk! At one point Cage asks a man on fire to wait and answer some questions. Knowing is sort of like Left Behind, but with Cage as Kirk Cameron. But it's not exactly about the rapture. Or is it? Was the woman behind me crying because she wanted to be raptured, or because she was very moved by the sight of young children ascending to spaceman-heaven holding large bunnies, or because she wanted the movie to be over? At one point Cage fights a tree with a baseball bat. Knowing is not quite as funny as another recent "horror" film about math, The Number 23, in which Jim Carrey spends most of the film furrowing his brow and shouting out various number combinations that equal 23. Knowing is not the best movie about numbers. The best movie about numbers is, I don't know, Pi, maybe?
And here's Dr. X with an analysis of why the film is tops at the box-office (easily besting a quality bromance and a Julia Roberts star-vehicle in its opening weekend):
"This is it in a nutshell: Take two parts numerology mumbo jumbo and pass it off as Sci-Fi, then take one part knavish apocalyptic bullshit (so you turn yer spacemen into angels) -- and that brings in your 40+ "The whole world is gonna end" crowd... sprinkle in the freaks that thought Ghost Rider kicked ass... and you have about 25 million in sales!
--I don't even know why Proyas directed this. I suspect it was because it involved men in dark coats (as every Proyas movie MUST has strange men in dark coats!)
...the reason why the thing was a great idea [was] to scare an audience into thinking it was having fun... but the minute you begin to think about the fact that "Why in hell, would the whisper people give the girl in the fifties the code when she A couldn't do anything about B wasn't gonna do anything about it C couldn't save her daughter... etc and Why does Nic Cage even matter in the movie as A he can't do shit about the numbers B Can't stop his son from leaving C The Whisper people are gonna take him and the girl anyway!?"
--Essentially the movie broils down to: "Shit that will scare grandma and a plot that needed contrivances or the movie would ended in five minutes. Also: SHIT. WILL. BURN!"
Knowing is not among the best science-fiction films I've seen. Knowing is about the "whisper people," who give small black stones to children and force them to do complicated math problems involving latitude, longitude, and various disasters. Knowing is a better Cage film than Wicker Man, but not better than the two-minute Youtube cut of Wicker Man ("The bees! Are in! My eyes!). Neither is it better than Cage's Vampire's Kiss (he eats a live cockroach in that one). Knowing is directed by Alex Proyas, who gave us a near-masterpiece with Dark City, earning him the everlasting love of Roger Ebert. But then he gave us I, Robot. And then he gave us this. At one point a fiery moose runs directly at the camera and I thought to myself, Man, I wish Knowing were in 3-D...and that I were very drunk! At one point Cage asks a man on fire to wait and answer some questions. Knowing is sort of like Left Behind, but with Cage as Kirk Cameron. But it's not exactly about the rapture. Or is it? Was the woman behind me crying because she wanted to be raptured, or because she was very moved by the sight of young children ascending to spaceman-heaven holding large bunnies, or because she wanted the movie to be over? At one point Cage fights a tree with a baseball bat. Knowing is not quite as funny as another recent "horror" film about math, The Number 23, in which Jim Carrey spends most of the film furrowing his brow and shouting out various number combinations that equal 23. Knowing is not the best movie about numbers. The best movie about numbers is, I don't know, Pi, maybe?
And here's Dr. X with an analysis of why the film is tops at the box-office (easily besting a quality bromance and a Julia Roberts star-vehicle in its opening weekend):
"This is it in a nutshell: Take two parts numerology mumbo jumbo and pass it off as Sci-Fi, then take one part knavish apocalyptic bullshit (so you turn yer spacemen into angels) -- and that brings in your 40+ "The whole world is gonna end" crowd... sprinkle in the freaks that thought Ghost Rider kicked ass... and you have about 25 million in sales!
--I don't even know why Proyas directed this. I suspect it was because it involved men in dark coats (as every Proyas movie MUST has strange men in dark coats!)
...the reason why the thing was a great idea [was] to scare an audience into thinking it was having fun... but the minute you begin to think about the fact that "Why in hell, would the whisper people give the girl in the fifties the code when she A couldn't do anything about B wasn't gonna do anything about it C couldn't save her daughter... etc and Why does Nic Cage even matter in the movie as A he can't do shit about the numbers B Can't stop his son from leaving C The Whisper people are gonna take him and the girl anyway!?"
--Essentially the movie broils down to: "Shit that will scare grandma and a plot that needed contrivances or the movie would ended in five minutes. Also: SHIT. WILL. BURN!"
Monday, March 23, 2009
Nog Gets "Bromantic" With I Love You, Man!
So I’ll admit I’m a sucker for this new genre of raunchy “bromantic comedies.” It will fizzle out soon, likely, but at the moment even the lesser ones are far more entertaining than most other comedies you’ll find at the multiplex right now (sappy chick flicks; the endless strain of Disaster Movie/Date Movie/Epic Movie drivel; and Tyler Perry movies!).
I Love You, Man is the logical, inevitable culmination of the recent “bromances”: this time the central relationship between the two “dudes” plays out exactly like the stereotypical boy/girl romantic comedies (they meet cute, they “fall” for each other, they “break up,” they reunite). It’s moderately clever and generally very well-performed. Paul Rudd has become the go-to guy for the endearingly goofy but square role (he’s essentially the same dude here and in Knocked Up and in Role Models, but it still works…what straight guy wouldn’t want to party with him at a Rush concert, very heterosexually). Jason Segel steps comfortably into the crude slacker role (often filled by Seth Rogen in these films). And the supporting cast is sharp, keeping things afloat even when the film overplays its running jokes.
But why are these movies so popular right now? Part of it is simple enough, I think: the combination of raunch and sweetness is capable of drawing in both a male and female audience. But I also think these films get at certain “realities” (about relationships, gender expectations, etc) that don’t really get explored in what has become the pure fantasy-land of chick-centered romantic comedies. I’m not sure where the genre is headed, but maybe it’s got a little life left in it yet, and apparently it’s starting to trickle out of the mainstream and into the indie-world, where it will get a little “edgier”: one of the Sundance hits this year is called Humpday and concerns two straight male friends who decide to make an “art project” in which they sleep with each other. I think it’s safe to say Humpday will not appeal to the fratty audience currently cracking up at I Love You, Man.
I Love You, Man is the logical, inevitable culmination of the recent “bromances”: this time the central relationship between the two “dudes” plays out exactly like the stereotypical boy/girl romantic comedies (they meet cute, they “fall” for each other, they “break up,” they reunite). It’s moderately clever and generally very well-performed. Paul Rudd has become the go-to guy for the endearingly goofy but square role (he’s essentially the same dude here and in Knocked Up and in Role Models, but it still works…what straight guy wouldn’t want to party with him at a Rush concert, very heterosexually). Jason Segel steps comfortably into the crude slacker role (often filled by Seth Rogen in these films). And the supporting cast is sharp, keeping things afloat even when the film overplays its running jokes.
But why are these movies so popular right now? Part of it is simple enough, I think: the combination of raunch and sweetness is capable of drawing in both a male and female audience. But I also think these films get at certain “realities” (about relationships, gender expectations, etc) that don’t really get explored in what has become the pure fantasy-land of chick-centered romantic comedies. I’m not sure where the genre is headed, but maybe it’s got a little life left in it yet, and apparently it’s starting to trickle out of the mainstream and into the indie-world, where it will get a little “edgier”: one of the Sundance hits this year is called Humpday and concerns two straight male friends who decide to make an “art project” in which they sleep with each other. I think it’s safe to say Humpday will not appeal to the fratty audience currently cracking up at I Love You, Man.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Nog Watches the Watchmen!
So the big mistake I made with Watchmen was reading the graphic-novel just prior to seeing the film. But I felt a sense of geek-necessity here, that I should at least be reasonably familiar with what many consider the single greatest graphic-novel ever. It was my first experience with the art form, and I dug it, and I felt like I “got” it, mostly, although not as much as I might have twenty years ago if I’d known what the hell a graphic novel was at that time. But being so familiar with the work going in, the visual experience wasn’t as impressive as it should have been. Despite a few big changes that have left many of the fanboys in an uproar (“Where’s my squid?”), Zack Snyder is really almost shockingly faithful to the text, so much so that there was no real element of surprise or discovery here for me. As many critics have argued, perhaps the most original and impressive sequence occurs during the credits, an (alternate) history lesson set to Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. Here Snyder takes some liberties, and completely succeeds. But at the same time the otherwise loyal adherence to the text is understandable and probably necessary: you’ve got to please the fanboys these days, first and foremost, or they might destroy your film with their on-line snarkiness before the thing ever hits theaters. Snyder’s film looks amazing, but it doesn’t work on the “human” level that Dark Knight does (or even Iron Man), not that it’s necessarily trying to. With a movie like this, the performances don’t get mentioned much, although they probably should, since the movie has a lot of characters! Jackie Earle Haley kicks ass as Rorschach (and his mask is super-cool!). Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian also makes an impression in his short screen-time. The critics have had fun trashing Malin Ackerman, but I didn’t mind her acting that much and I’d totally bang her on an airship while listening to Leonard Cohen. And Billy Crudup, well, what can one say: he walks around with a blue penis and the audience giggled a bit. In fact, the sold-out first-day IMAX crowd seemed largely puzzled as they left, and the film is fading quickly at the box-office. Will its reputation grow over the years, once Snyder gives the true fans their DVD “director’s cut” restoring a few things that pissed off the faithful? Maybe. I’d be willing to take another look on DVD (although I personally think that splicing in a great deal of animated footage will further alienate the ‘mainstream’…but I suppose they’re not the ones buying the DVD anyway). In the meantime, the “visionary” Snyder’s film (as the studio insisted on referring to him in their ads) has, on the whole, not been hailed as particularly "visionary" by most critics. I respect it without actually enjoying it very much. For all the fanboy complaints that the theatrical-cut is a “compromised” vision of studio-enforced cuts, it doesn’t feel that way to me. It still feels pretty complex and non-commercial for a big studio action picture, which is nice, because this summer’s action crowd will have to settle for…Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen!
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