Whiplash - Sadist Bebop

A mentor can be the best person in your life, or the worst.  If they're the latter, you're in for some very bad years.  This is the pedagogy of pain.  Even now I'm sure you can remember that one teacher, coach, or Bar Mitzvah-prepping rabbi who truly infuriated you like nobody else ever can again.  They pushed you more than was fair, beat you down, and seemed to enjoy it, the sick-os.  There is a method to this tough love, and maybe the cruel mentor is actually brilliant teacher who pushes out of love.  You can thrive, coming out stronger than ever thanks to being pushed beyond your limits.  Hell, you might even come to thank them for their punishment.  Then again, they could be pushing just for the sake of pushing.  Pushing to knock you down and indulge in your tears of failure.

"Whiplash" dances enigmatically across the motives of a cruel mentor.  It is the story of an ambitious young music student, Andrew (Miles Teller), who falls right into the hands of the most brutal conductor in New York City - probably also the world.  That man is Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), a name that rings with fear and respect across the halls of the fictional Shaffer Conservatory.  Andrew sees Fletcher as his ticket to stardom, the one figure he needs to convince of his greatness who can then convince the world.  He wants so badly to be noticed, even if in the worst ways, that he seems wicked taskmaster as the best guide to greatness.  However, Fletcher's own reasons for thrashing Andrew's body and soul may not be quite so benevolent.  In a film about really only two characters and a drumset, "Whiplash" creates a stirring and thrilling collision of two characters in a very warped non-sexual courtship.

If you thought Amazing Amy from "Gone Girl" was the most manipulative character of 2014, then obviously you have not yet seen "Whiplash".  J.K. Simmons steps into this movie completely bald, lanky but with clear muscle tone.  He can bark and scream and belittle like the best of R.L. Ermey's "Full Metal Jacket" monologues.  If you're gay, he'll torture you for sleeping with men.  If you're Irish, he'll torture you for having red hair.  Hilarious stuff to watch, probably not very nice to be the victim of.  His tight elderly skin stretches and warps as Fletcher warps between human and demon, breaking his students into dust.  However, it is not the screaming you need to watch out for.  It's the moment he's not screaming, the moment he tries to be your pal.  That's when he finds the weapons to truly smash you into nothing.  Give me him a little trust, just a hint of your psychology, and he'll betray you to stab right where it hurts most.  It is a tremendous character at the heart of a great movie, well deserving of it's Best Picture nomination today*.

The Gambler - How Cool is Too Cool?

Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is cool.  He dresses cool, he acts cool, he wears cool sunglasses, he sits under the sun in a sissy umbrella cool, he asks dating advice from random Mexican ladies on parkbenches cool.  As a professor he makes nihilistic arrogant speeches to his literature class, dashing their dreams and their foolishness to even try.  He dumps incredible fortunes for the empty thrill of it cool.  And even after proving himself to be a paramount asshole, Bennett remains chill.  So cool in fact, he freezes into a dangerous Wahlberg iceberg, threatening to smash his movie into the brink.  "The Gambler" is so enthralled with how cool its star can be, it actually forgets to explore the character.

Somewhere within "The Gamber"'s DNA is a sleazy 1970s-style antihero flick about a man who has everything, looks cool while having everything, and then meaninglessly tears it out down just for the Hell of it.  Those pieces lie in the original James Toback film from 1974 starring James Caan*.  Marky Mark's character begins the film marching into an underground gambling den, blowing several hundred thousand dollars on a ridiculous bet on blackjack.  Then he borrows another forty thousand dollars and blows it just as quickly.  Bennett's demeanor obviously shows he is too cool for the entire world - too relaxed to care that he has entrapped himself into monstrous debts with ruthless crime lords that he could never hope to pay off, and too calm to care what happens to him.  One starts to wonder:  is there anything beneath the chill?  Are there eyes underneath the sunglasses capable of weeping?  Is there really a person below that messy "Boogie Nights" haircut?  Or is it all just a very fashionable prop?

"The Gambler" is a movie with style.  It's well-shot, it's fantastically acted, and importantly, it carries it's story with an original wit and energy.  There are wonderful performances across the board from a selection of fantastic actors, relishing their moment to play viscous mobsters and give grand Shakespearean speeches.  Director Rupert Wyatt sets a strange darkly humorous tone to the entire affair.  From the use of entirely diegetic musical score (many in-jokes are made about the source of songs being car radios or choir practices) to brilliant use of montage and color, "The Gambler" feels like a movie with it's own identity and refined tastes.   It is all rather compelling on the surface.  What we have here is a near-triumph of style over substance, but still ultimately not dramatic or human enough to be a truly great film.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya - Sublime Beyond Words

Studio Ghibli in "The Tale of Princess Kaguya" takes a new direction in both story and animation style and adapts a traditional Japanese folktale.  Disney movies have been inspired by fairy tales for generations now, adding cute animals and happy endings to what were actually often very dark stories.  "The Little Mermaid"'s title character in the original Hans Christian Andersen tale dies alone and ignored by her dashing Prince.  In the Disney version Ariel has a happy wedding under a rainbow, with a reprise of 'Part of Your World'.  Studio Ghibli does not hide from the ending of it's source material, 'The Bamboo-Cutter's Tale'.  It uses the tragedy of the ending of its source material to take a particularly Ghibli statement.

The director of "The Tale of Princess Kaguya" is Isao Takahata, one of the two great directors in the Ghibli house.  This will probably be Takahata's final film, considering he has not directed since 1999's "My Neighbor's the Yamadas".  Seventy-nine year old directors do not have many more projects left in them that take eight years to be completed, such as "Princess Kaguya".  Takahata previously directed the classic "Grave of the Fireflies", a movie about two war orphans starving to death in the ruins of Hiroshima.  The question is:  how could a movie about a magical princess from the Moon be just as depressing, if not more so?

The art style of "Kaguya-hime" is based on traditional Japanese painting, kakemono scrolls.  There is a very exact use of delicate lines, never quite covering every object they represent.  Most eyes of characters are a single brushstroke, unless they are the Princess herself, who gets fuller anime eyes.  Watercolor-esque colors are used for most of the film, besides more energetic scenes which appear to be made from more abstract black and white charcoal.  (These are the very same aims and techniques of the video game, "Okami";s art-style.)  Much like the paintings of Ghibli's inspiration, "Princess Kaguya" is deceptively simple:  there is a sophisticated use of negative space between many of the objects in landscapes, giving the film a unique look.  Much as it's artwork, "Princess Kaguya" itself is far more than it seems.  On the surface it is just a fairy tale, but it is in fact a highly complex story of growing up, the dissatisfaction of human life, and the beauty of our human suffering.

January 2015 Look Ahead

BH is back.  Posts are now flowing at a nice almost-schedule pace.  I think it is time to resurrect an old series, the "Look Ahead" posts.  I guess bringing this thing back is more or less my 2015 New Years resolution.  Links to the trailers are provided if some reason you mistrust my snap judgment.

Unfortunately the first month of every year is January.  January is the shithole season of the film calendar, when the leftovers of the explosive month of December and high-minded Oscarbait choke out Hollywood's usual garbage.  Movies that get released in this month do so only because there is virtually no serious competition.  This means that you are paying money to watch things that are just barely above "straight-to-Redbox" fair.  We will just have to hold each other through this dark period and hope for the best, while knowing that everything is going to suck.

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (January 2nd) - It is the height of the London blitz in WWII, so small easily-scared children must be evacuated to a haunted house in the middle of a godforsaken swamp.  The original "the Woman in Black" was an average horror film starring Daniel Radcliff of whose existence I completely forgot.  I guess some people remembered it because it is getting a sequel.
--Chances to be Good:  0%.  It's a January horror release.  I'm a realist about these things.

Big Hero 6 - Making Superheros Cuddly

With Disney having purchased the entire Marvel catalog lock stock and barrel, it was only a matter of time before we saw a superhero film joining the Disney Animated Canon.  Luckily Disney's main studio resisted the temptation to animate a recognizable character for easy cash.  Imagine a big budget blood-soaked Wolverine cartoon coming out of the same workshop as "Winnie the Pooh".  Instead they picked one of the most obscure titles in the Marvel line-up.  The "Big Hero 6" comics were originally a minor team made up of various X-Men rejects, recycled scientist characters, and monsters that only appeared about eight issues.  Ignoring all of the comic canon and the live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney tore apart that dull plotline to mold into their own original creation.

The animated film "Big Hero 6" is a delightful animated experience.  The comic book elements are retained mainly just to add a final action climax, though little about this movie is written or designed like a superhero film.  This is not a deconstruction of superheroes like "The Incredibles", but rather a movie which throws them at the last minute just to add flavor.  This is a movie about crimefighters with a bright world and a bright frame of mind - an old timey Golden Age of comics kind of tone in a movie set in the distant future.

Actually the main focus here is technology and robotics.  "Big Hero 6" takes place in the cyber-city of San Fransokyo, a fantasy world where the Pacific collapsed, merging San Francisco and Tokyo into one megalopolis.  Science is the prime mover of society.  The local university seems to be based entirely around young people using their minds and creating amazing inventions - and being cool while doing it.  Neo-Tokyo is a nerd paradise - one of the most positives views of the future that modern cinema will supply.  The heroes of "Big Hero 6" are not angry emotional wrecks as in a typical superhero film, but rather engineers brimming with optimism about what their creations can do for the world.  When an masked villain threatens the town, the young people gather up their respective creations to make a decidedly non-violent and protective team of superheroes, saving the world without wrecking it.