Bad Movie Review: Surrogates

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Surrogates falls into that category of films that end up being much better than anticipated. Films that do not screen themselves for critics ahead of the release date are usually predestined clunkers, as not wanting a write-up in the Friday papers is a red flag that the distributors are almost certain that the weekend box-office is the only shot they have of recouping costs before word of mouth kills the film. Expecting the worst, Surrogates manages to surprise with a decent story and great performances, even if this welcome deviation from the norm only manages to set the viewer up for a different fall.

The opening, of Surrogates, featuring a series of news clips marking the advancement of technology over the years, is an immediate red flag. Films that feel the need to dump a mini history lesson on the audience in the very beginning are usually the product of screenwriters or filmmakers that are either too lazy to explain the film’s setting through natural exposition, or severely underestimate the intelligence of the audience. This is the reason, for example, that Iron Man starts with a brief comedy/action scene transplanted from the middle of the film: to camouflage the Tony Stark Bio Montage as a transitional scene, rather than a quick info-dump.

However, in the case of Surrogates, this crash-course to avoid answering question throughout the film actually works to the film’s advantage. In the world of Surrogates, neurologically linked prosthetics have advanced to the point that remotely controlled full robotic automatons are commonplace. Originally intended to allow the paralyzed and handicapped to function normally in the world, Surrogates are instead used by a vast majority of the population, who sit at home in docking stations while indestructible versions of themselves take their places in the real world.

What is most surprising about the film is that it actually touches on the many themes for which type of scenario has the potential, more so than you would expect. Surrogates never fully resemble their users , but instead take on the role of either idealized self-images (younger, more attractive) or starkly contrasting fantasy personae (men masquerading as women, white and nerdy scientists as seven foot tall black men). Personal identity, public role-playing, self-hating attitudes and vanity run amok are just a few of the sociological viewpoints under examination here.

Then there is Bruce Willis’ character, a federal agent with a growing uneasiness towards Surrogate usage, fueled by his slowly crumbling marriage. Ever since a car accident that killed their only son, the still-mourning couple now interacts almost exclusively through their surrogates, demonstrating not only the emotional impact that such a tragedy can have on a couple, but the alienation that comes with human interaction through technology. This is complicated even more by Willis’ wife, played by Rosamund Pike, whose accident-scarred face is tragic reminder of her son’s death, one that she can only escape by living a new life in an artificial body. Even an advertisement for new surrogates for children raises even more issues: when it comes to the safety of your child, where do you draw the line between protection and isolation.

With this much depth going for it, you would think that the film would weigh anchor and build a story around these themes. Unfortunately, this is where the film ultimately fails, and where it all falls short: the apparent need by the studio for the film to fall into traditional action/sci-fi conventions. Ever since Terminator 2, any film involving robots invariably involves chases with super-strong/agile robots leaping around and shrugging off insane amounts of damage. Surrogates could have easily sustained several action sequences without resorting to robots throwing parking meters like javelins and wirework leaping effects straight out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

This need to transform the future to such an extreme level leads to several illogical and convoluted premises. First, there is the extreme implication that ninety-nine percent of the world now uses surrogates; home computers and iPods aren’t even that popular, and it is seriously debatable if they would be even if they were free, which Surrogates definitely aren’t. Then, just to draw a sharper contrast, the film reasons that in such a world, those who refuse to use surrogates would end up living in homeless shanty-towns designated as Technology-Free Zones where shooting at federal agents and publicly burning dead bodies are acceptable under their own independent laws. The film then examines the religious implications behind surrogates long enough to make the anti-surrogate movement seem like a cult (complete with wild-haired Ving Rhames spiritual leader), yet not long enough to explain why the Vatican hasn’t led a holy crusade against soulless automatons that apparently enable risk and guilt-free sex for their home-bound users.

Surrogates is indeed far better than expected, but that doesn’t make up for falling short of its potential. Instead of taking the premise into new directions that few features seem willing to confront, the film instead forces itself into the predetermined molds cast from studio sci-fi films of the past. Shooting for a strange hybrid of They Live, The Matrix and I, Robot invariably ensures a swing and a miss, especially with an ending reminiscent of Escape from LA pasted on like a happy little bow. This is not to say that it isn’t worth watching. Just be prepared to be equally surprised and disappointed.

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Deliciously Bad Movies: Hausu (1977)

Warning: watching this film clip from the seventies Japanese horror film "Hausu" might cause extreme confusion or brief psychotic episodes.

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Oscar Watch Review: The Blind Side

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Film: The Blind Side
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress

The Blind Side is one of those films that people just can't help but rave about. It's the touching true-life story of Michael Oher's rise from the projects to the NFL thanks to the loving efforts of his adopted wealthy white Christian family, and everyone you talk to either loved it, really liked it, or is dying to see it.

There's no real reason why this shouldn't be the case. The film is expertly written, well-crafted, flows effortlessly, and pulls all of the predetermined heart strings in the proper order. And while no movie based on actual events is ever one hundred percent accurate, there don't appear to be any overly judicious edits or white-washing of the story like A Beautiful Mind; elements and details have been tweaked for dramatic (or comic) effect, but no one is coming out to challenge the story or its merits. This is just your average true-life Horatio Alger Rags-to-Riches story, delivering the heart-warming message that anyone is capable of achieving their dreams.

So why does it leave a bad taste in my mouth?

There's nothing bogus or unbelievable about the story; the Tuohy family did indeed take Oher in as one of their own (presumably because people with hard to read last names need to stick together), looking beyond the barriers of race. The fact alone that this actually happened should make me feel all warm and fuzzy about how far we've come in this country as far as race relations go. But after awhile, it feels like the whole racial element of the story has been sort of glossed over or, excuse the pun, white-washed. (On second thought, don't excuse that pun. I don't need your sympathy).

I know, I know; the Tuohy's overlooked race, why can't I? But no matter how much I try, it still nags at me. While the film does take a couple of brief trips to the projects where Michael came from to provide a little contrast, the rest of time is spent following a specific pattern. Racial prejudices or tensions are brought up briefly in solitary conditions, laughed off or comedic effect, then quickly stowed away again so we can get back to main task of watching this big lovable oaf blunder around winning our hearts while Sandra Bullock barges into every scene doing her best Erin Brockavich impression. The latter isn't surprising considering Julia Roberts was originally approached for the roll, but it also isn't what I would call a breathtaking Oscar-worthy performance.

This approach towards racial differences isn't just casual, it feels almost dismissive. Yes, it is brought up, but always in single moments with solitary characters seeming almost out of place in their reactions. Take the scene at Michael first football game. Are we really supposed to accept that not only is there just one racist spectator at a southern private school sporting event, but that the best insult he can come up with is "Black Bear"? I'm not suggesting that outraged bigots should have rushed the field for an impromptu lynching (is there any other kind?), but one extreme seems just as unlikely as the other. And don't forget the Tuohy's private conversation at the beginning of the scene, "Have you ever seen so many rednecks in one place?" This decidedly self-conscious attempt to separate this charitable and colorblind family from the rest of society is the film's way of almost admitting how unrealistic this race-free zone eventually becomes.

Maybe it would have been easier to take if the filmmakers had just pretended there was no such thing as racism. Then it would have been easy to become immersed in the multitude of heart-warming scenes involving this loving family taking this young disadvantaged child under the wings and showing him how to fly. But it just can't help but set up little laugh-at-racism tension breakers every ten or fifteen minutes, whether its a drunk uncle calling to ask if they know there's a "colored boy" on their Christmas cards, or Leigh Tuohy shaming her  "unenlightened" sister for asking if she's nervous about Michael being accessible to her teenage daughter. If racial equality is such a non-issue, why keep bringing it up for comic relief?

But does the film really need to delve into such murky waters when all it is trying to do is entertain and inspire? Well, no. But then again, race is why this became such a popular story in the first place. Plenty of black football players have escaped the ghetto, and there are plenty of upper-class white families with sons in the NFL. The novelty of a rich white family adopting a black teenager and lending him the family structure he needed to excel far enough in his studies to even be eligible for a football scholarship, is what makes it a story worth making a major motion picture about. You can't tell a story that is a testament to overcoming prejudice while being almost completely dismissive about the reasons why it is a testament and not the norm. It would be like making a film about teenage pregnancy that avoids the subject of sex; well-intentioned, but missing the point.

Of course, raising questions like these threatens to land you smack in the middle of a classic Catch-22 scenario. One group of people complains that the film is yet another racist example of rich white people thinking that they are the only ones who can solve the problems of lower-income minorities. Another group responds by claiming these reverse-racist accusations are what white people get for actually doing something right for a change. Then another group describes the film as an elitist-liberal-democrat wet-dream, which prompts another group to identify it as a one-in-a-million story used as a shield to hide the white guilt of rich pseudo-conservatives. Everyone's either being too sensitive or not sensitive enough. If you think I'm exaggerating all of this, just do some Google searches and see what pops up.

So maybe that's why the simplicity of The Blind Side's story leaves me feeling a little uneasy. Because if the reactions from all of these groups (none of whom I think I want to personally identify with) are any indication, the racial implications and ramifications aren't as simple and easy to overlook as the film might want you to think, no matter how true-to-life its true-life-fairy-tale origins may be. And while simplistic might be the perfect recipe for a well-received feel-good hit of the year, it isn't exactly what I would call a top priority for a Best Picture nomination.

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Oscar Watch Review: An Education

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Film: An Education
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress, Adapted Screenplay

The Oscars just wouldn't feel right if there wasn't at least one obnoxious period-piece British romance to pander to the tastes of the more "sophisticated" members of the Academy. Surprisingly, even with the number of Best Picture nominees bloated to an inexcusable Ten this year, there's only one real qualifier among the chosen. Even more unusual, it takes place in a different decade instead of a different century. For the Academy's consideration: An Education.

An Education follows the delightfully un-torrid affair of sixteen-year-old Jenny, a witty and intelligent daughter of a stuffy middle-class family with a bright scholastic future waiting for her at Oxford. All of that takes a backseat the moment she gets a ride from an older man who introduces her to an extravagant lifestyle and seeks to steal her away from her parents, school, and oh-so-bright future.

All of this is way to obviously good to be true, so the minute these two meet the entire film becomes a rather drawn-out exercise in waiting for the other shoe to drop. Cinematic tours of sixties-era England and France punctuate countless scenes that are drearily low on charm and sexual tension, two things you would expect a storyline like this to stock up on. By the time the big reveal of David's horrible secret (which is almost as dull and underwhelming as his previously revealed "secrets"), all you can do is wonder how long they're going to take to wrap up Jenny's end of the story.

It doesn't take long, and that's probably one of the most frustrating things about the film. This is a story about a young teenage girl who is seduced by an older man, lured away from her home, sexually propositioned, pulled out of her scholastic career, and left to pull the pieces back together after the whole thing falls apart. Not only does she manage to do so, but she does it with such a minimum amount of time and effort wasted that by the time the credits role there appear to have been no consequences whatsoever. Coming-of-age stories usually involve major life-changes, positive or negative, that alter not only the evolving character's world view, but their present and future as well. By the time An Education neatly wraps itself up, the only thing that seems to have changed in Jenny's life is her answer to the "Are you a virgin" question. Middle-school crushes end more dramatically and devastatingly than this. Being lied to by a man trying to get in your pants isn't an education, it's a undeniable fact of life.

It doesn't help that the characters in the film don't sell you on any of it. Jenny is played up as such a smart, intelligent, and resourceful young woman, it's hard to feel sorry for her when she willfully ignores glaring reality after glaring reality just so she can go to concerts and feel grown-up running of to Paris. It seems more important for the deceitful David to be boyishly charming that his cons feel more like childish pranks than criminal deceptions; sort of like Mamet's House of Games starring the Little Rascals. And let's not forget Jenny's proper English father, the strict disciplinarian with far-reaching plans for his daughter's future, who switches from "Oxford or Death" to "Drop Out and Marry the Older Man" so fast it almost gives you whiplash.

None of this blame deserves to be heaped on the performers. Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard and Alfred Molina all turn in wonderful performances, and they can't be blamed for the fact that the shallow characters they play change emotions and perceptions not when they should, but when it is convenient for the script. All of these actors manage to make you feel more for these characters more than they should, and almost make their illogical actions seem human. This is especially true for Molina as Jenny's Father, a character that makes the split personality of Doctor Octopus seem like a rational internal debate.

Most credit An Education to being based on the memoirs of Lynn Barber, when the truth is more along the lines that both the Nick Hornby screenplay and Barber's memoirs are based on a previously published article by Barber, which almost reads like a synopsis for the film. This leaves us with another overly-dry and forcibly-witty Hornby screenplay based on a memoir expanded from an article whose autobiographical validity has been questioned by some critics, and which broaches the topic of the seduction and deflowering of a young girl with the cool distance of a self-aggrandizing socialite (The sex was lousy and it was all daddy's fault). To this end, you can't really begrudge Hornby his Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, as he did remain faithful to the source material. But when it comes to Best Picture, you have to ask yourself if the source material was worth all of that effort in the first place.

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James Cameron's AVATAR = Satanic Pandering to the Illuminati!

If there's one thing I enjoy more than bashing Avatar, that's religious conspiracy theories. Now, much like the proverbial bar of chocolate and jar of peanut butter (isn't it sad that advertising is our generation's Aesop?), these two great tastes are now better together!

Join J.R. Church and his guest as they discuss the religious implications of Avatar, how James Cameron has twisted the teachings of the bible (yep, add God to the list of authors ripped off by Cameron), attempting to make us believe that possessed demons are good and man, the Son of God, is inherently evil.

Is Avatar to the Illuminati what Battlefield Earth was to Scientology? Will the novelizations of the film tie-in with the Left Behind series? Is James Cameron the Anti-Christ? Watch the videos below, get informed, and stop letting those heathens in Hollywood pull the wool over your eyes!

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Oscar Watch Review: Avatar

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Film: Avatar
Nominations: Art direction, Cinematography, Directing, Film editing, Original score, Best picture, Sound editing, Sound mixing, Visual effects

In our goal to give somewhat fair (we're not going to pretend to be completely unbiased here) and fully-informed coverage of the Academy Awards this March, Joey and I are determined to not only view every film up for a major award, but to review them as well.

With this in mind, it would seem a bit unfair not to mention Avatar with the others as we review them. However, our opinions have been broadcast quite clear; we have talked about the film in ad nauseum on the MovieSucktastic Podcast, and have covered it in numerous blog posts.

So, just consider this a quick recap:

Avatar is, without a doubt, the most popular film of the year, and most likely one of the most popular films of the decade. A mega-budget sci-fi fantasy space epic that takes place on a completely CGI-rendered alien planet, Avatar is filled with some of the most impressive displays of computer animation and 3D film-making to date. It is truly a stunning visual spectacle to behold.

It is also a film that features a shallow, thin, and decidedly unoriginal plot. Pointed out by many critics to be nothing more than a literal copy of Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, and even Ferngully (which has seen a rocketing increase in sales and rentals due to the unfavorable comparisons), Avatar has received so much deserved criticism regarding the screenplay that director James Cameron has had to come out and publicly respond to accusations of blatant plagiarism. It is an overly simplistic plot that is more suitable for its cartoon feature predecessors, and barely manages to hold together the overly-long 162 minutes special effects extravaganza, especially considering that the PG-13 film was geared towards children and family audiences.

Avatar deserves most of its Oscar nominations. The sound, score, direction, editing and visual effects are all noteworthy for what they achieved. But primarily, all of this is driven by a film's story, the vehicle that drives everything that takes place on screen. As a whole, the excellence of what takes place on the screen in Avatar is weakened and diminished by the inadequate and generally lazy screenplay. The fact that this shallow spectacle has actually garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Picture is nothing more than an insult to all of the other films, past and present, that bothered to lend as much attention to the craft of the storytelling as they did for the visual effects utilized to enhance it.

The truly sad part of it is, Avatar might not have gotten its Best Picture nomination if the Academy hadn't bloated the size of the category to ten nominations The previously sufficient five slots wouldn't have left them enough room to also nominate District 9, so they wouldn't look like complete idiots for passing over a film that managed impressive special effects and a great screenplay (which it has also been nominated for, by the way) at a fraction of Avatar's ridiculous budget.

It is also my theory that the only reason they didn't try to nominate Avatar for screenplay isn't because it was a weak script, but because it would be hard to rationalize whether it belonged in the Original or Adapted category.

There, I think I'm done now.

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Oscar Watch Review: In The Loop

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Film: In the Loop
Nomination: Best Adapted Screenplay

A while ago, I surprised a lot of people by expressing my lack of enthusiasm for the film Superbad. My reason perplexed them even more, as it was the incessant vulgar language, which comes out of the gate at top speed in the opening scene. While being far from easily offended type, and not adverse from using my own collection of colorful language, I couldn't really find the humor of these teenagers cursing up a storm while raiding a convenience store for snacks. It just felt forced, and despite some actually humorous scenes scattered throughout the rest of the film, I couldn't get past the feeling that the film's main motivation was to shock the audience with a cacophany of cursing.

Why do I bring this up? Because In the Loop contains enough foul language to make Betty White blush, enough inventive insults to put Don Rickles to shame, and enough F-Bombs to start a war of its own.

It is fucking brilliant.

Of course, there is so much more to In the Loop than the language. This spin-off of the popular British television show The Thick of It is a political satire involving the behind-the-scenes events taking place during the run-up to the Iraq War, and the mid-level government officials in both England and America scrambling to either jump-start the war or stop it dead in its tracks. This might sound like a topic for a serious made-for-TV mini-series, but the approach that writer/director Armando Iannucci and his co-writers successfully finds the dry and abrasive humor in the origins of a war that both nations are still mired in today.

Many critics and reviewers have chosen to compare In the Loop to Dr. Strangelove, no doubt because both are political satires with a strong anti-war message (and both featured British comedic talents), but this comparison tends to ignore the vast difference between the nearly surreal slapstick comedy of Strangelove and the exceedingly dry and uncomfortably abusive humor of Loop. With this in mind, Loop would be far better described as an Anti-West Wing crossed with The Office, on crack and with Tourette Syndrome.

Did I mention the abusive language? Much like Kevin Spacey in Swimming With Sharks or Jeremy Piven in Entourage, most of the cast of In the Loop bulldoze through their scenes verbally assaulting anything that gets in their way, while the remaining dazed and startled characters do their best to get out of the way. But unlike Superbad, here the language is not only justified, but an integral part of the atmosphere. The dog-eat-dog nature of these behind the scenes power plays and struggles are so brutal and bare-knuckled, you keep waiting, even hoping, for someone to snap and throw a punch. These profane diatribes and stinging insults are the weapons of choice for this battlefield leading up to the real battlefield, and fit right into the hectic, paranoid and franticly paced atmosphere these characters work in on a daily basis.

This might be a bit oppressive for some viewers, especially when considering that there are few if any characters worth rooting for. Armando Iannucci has a talent for presenting characters multifaceted enough to prevent them from filling the traditional roles of Heroes and Villains. Initially meek and soft-spoken characters (in comparison to others, at least) such as those played by Tom Hollander and Chris Addison are charming and likable at first, but they eventually show weaknesses and flaws that prevent you from fully feeling any real sympathy for them, while even Peter Capaldi's complete and utter bastard Malcolm Tucker (one of only two returning characters from The Thick of It) is given a moment or two of undeniable humanity. There are a couple of points in the film in which you will be unsure of who to root for, and other's still when the side you chose might shock or even shame you a little. No clear lines are really drawn here, even when it comes to where the humor stops and the serious issues begin.

It is this kind of complexity that makes In the Loop a strong contender for Best Adapted Screenplay, despite having more foul language than a double feature of Scarface and Reservoir Dogs. But you don't have to take my word for it. IFC has made the screenplay available for free download. Read it and judge for yourself.      

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