The A.V. Club - Scenic Routes

Film: Scenic Routes: Rounders

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:01:00 -0600

In 2003, an amateur player by the improbable name of Chris Moneymaker won the main event in the World Series Of Poker, netting a prize of $2.5 million from an initial investment of less than 40 bucks. (He won his $10,000 seat by taking first place in an online satellite tournament.) Just three years later, no-limit Texas Hold ’Em—a relatively obscure game up to that point, played almost exclusively by professionals—was popular enough to serve as the third-act showpiece for the James Bond reboot, Casino Royale. Of course, it was still Movie Poker, predicated on combinations ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Reservoir Dogs

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:01:00 -0600

Twenty years ago this month, Reservoir Dogs premièred at the Sundance Film Festival, kicking off a vigorous, impassioned debate that I’d seriously consider hacking my own ears off with a straight razor to avoid ever having to endure again. The nature and purpose of onscreen violence is a worthy topic, and I have opinions about it, though honestly, my tolerance for gore and my sense of what qualifies as “gratuitous” fluctuate wildly on a case-by-case basis, usually in concert with my feelings about each film as a whole. But the initial conversation about Dogs—still, to my mind ...

Film: Scenic Routes: The Arbor

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0600

In my experience, the fastest way to alter people’s behavior is to point a camera at them. The moment we know we’re being recorded, we start performing (even more than usual, that is), which is why most people’s forced smiles in staged portraits look nothing like their actual happy face. Consequently, I tend not to fully trust documentaries that purport to present unmediated reality—even those made by a towering giant of the form like Frederick Wiseman, who insists that his subjects (in such classics as High School and Welfare) behave exactly as they would were he ...

Film: Scenic Routes: It’s A Wonderful Life

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 12:01:00 -0600

There are two major rites of passage associated with the Christmas season, both of which involve scales falling from one’s eyes and initiation into the world of adult cynicism. The first, of course, is the day you find out (SPOILER ALERT!) that there is no Santa Claus, though I imagine 4-year-olds are digging up that info on their iPads these days. Less remarked upon, however, is the second: Your sudden realization, late in an annual viewing of It’s A Wonderful Life, that this venerable holiday classic isn’t as heartwarming and life-affirming as its joyous ending insists, but ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Seven

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0600

When David Fincher announced that he’d be following The Social Network with an American remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I announced to nobody in particular that I’d be following that day’s lunch with a series of painful dry heaves. Even now, as the completed film receives measured praise from embargo-breaking weasels (only David Denby’s review has appeared as I write this), it’s hard for me to work up any real excitement. Fincher has long been one of my favorite directors, but I couldn’t care less about the Stieg Larsson phenomenon: My ...

Film: Scenic Routes: The White Gorilla

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:00:00 -0600

Because I was in college during Mystery Science Theater 3000’s breakout years, I never saw much of it—just a handful of episodes and the feature film. Consequently, I’m not as well-versed as I might be in the so-bad-it’s-hilarious genre. Tim Burton’s Ed Wood led me to Glen Or Glenda? and Plan 9 From Outer Space, but I made the error (from an entertainment standpoint) of learning a bit about how Wood’s actual life diverges from Johnny Depp’s portrayal, which tends to make his pictures—Glen Or Glenda? in particular—way less uproarious. And ...

Film: Scenic Routes: In The Mood For Love

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0600

One of the most commonly heard clichés about acting is that so-and-so could command attention just reading the phone book. Sometimes it’s a grocery list instead. Doesn’t matter how banal the text may be, is the idea—this actor can somehow make it interesting, just by virtue of his/her sheer magnetism. What we sorely need, though, and to the best of my knowledge lack, is an equivalent expression for directors. Maybe something along the lines of “could make a quick jaunt for takeout noodles seem world-shattering.” Surely we can all agree that there’s nothing inherently ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0500

With the exception of outright Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker-style gagfests—a lost art, judging from reviews for the likes of Date Movie and Vampires Suck—Hollywood comedies like to throw in a dash of pathos, see if they can’t make you care a little about the clowns onscreen. It’s a tactic that goes back at least as far as Chaplin, and it can come across as either unexpectedly heartrending (City Lights being the archetypal example) or cheaply pandering (way too many offenders to pick just one). In the latter case, the protagonist has generally been allotted some shallow life lesson to ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Forbidden Games

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:01:00 -0500

Movies trade in death, and always have—one of the early Lumière shorts depicts the electrocution of an elephant—but not many movies dare to actually tackle death as a subject. The rare exceptions, like Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru and Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste Of Cherry, tend to be portraits of people staring their own mortality in the eye, rather than examinations of the grieving process. Which is understandable, really, as only so much dramatic traction can be wreaked from people feeling sad or bereft. Directors who rely on that dynamic too heavily are likely to wind up making ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Modern Romance

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 12:00:00 -0500

A few months ago, while shopping for new headphones in a major chain store, it occurred to me how much more difficult the job of the retail sales clerk has become in the information age. One poor fellow did hesitantly approach me to see if I had any questions, but I barely looked up from my iPhone, which I was using to look up reviews of every single product in my price range. Just a few years ago, you had to do that sort of research in advance, and few people bothered; if a clerk seemed friendly and knowledgeable, chances ...

Film: Scenic Routes: For A Few Dollars More

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

About two-thirds of the way through A Fistful Of Dollars, Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” gets the living shit kicked out of him. That in itself isn’t especially notable—Eastwood has taken almost as much physical abuse over the years as Mel Gibson, the better to rise up later and do some serious smitin’. But you’ll notice that temporarily immobilizing him in this particular instance requires the combined effort of an entire gang of lawless thugs, who take turns, laughing, as if he were a tetherball. A Fistful Of Dollars is good cynical fun, but it ...

Film: Scenic Routes: The Underneath

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Early in Fight Club, Edward Norton’s nameless narrator muses cleverly about single-serving friends—people with whom you share a brief, essentially meaningless interaction while you’re seated together on an airplane. But I’ve always been a sucker for what you might call single-serving performances, in which an actor you’ve never seen before, or at least never previously noticed, proceeds to steal the movie for the duration of just one unforgettable scene. It’s a category distinct from the more familiar cameo appearance (before someone brings up Bill Murray in Zombieland), and it’s also slightly different from ...

Film: Scenic Routes: A Night At The Opera

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Once upon a time, on an ocean liner bound for New York, there was a very small stateroom occupied by a very large trunk. Here’s how you build one of the greatest gags in cinema history, one step at a time. 1. Groucho. As in all of the brothers’ escapades, his unflappable nature beautifully undercuts the escalating madness. You can readily believe that his first instinct each time there’s a knock on the door is to invite the person inside, just to see how they’ll react. (Arguably the funniest moment is his delighted “No! Come on in ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Scream 2

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Film critics see most movies in a somewhat artificial environment. Low-budget Sundance indies, documentaries, the latest Almodóvar or Haneke flick—they’re all shown in small, private screening rooms, where critics watch them surrounded entirely by other critics. (That’s assuming the distributor didn’t just send out a DVD, which is becoming more and more common.) The major Hollywood studios, however, are still having none of that. They want critics to see their big fat crowdpleasers with a regular audience, so they generally rope off a few choice rows at a sneak preview packed with civilians who received ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500

More and more frequently, it seems, directors are opting to omit opening credits altogether, save for the film’s title (and sometimes not even that). The phenomenon dates back at least as far as Apocalypse Now—no doubt there are earlier examples—but used to be pretty rare. Nowadays, it’s fashionably momentous to dispense with all the throat-clearing and just go full steam ahead right from frame one. This trend helped me out enormously a few years ago, when I saw the entire Competition slate at the Cannes Film Festival without knowing in advance who had directed the pictures ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Something Wild

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Moments of bliss are relatively rare in movies, and fleeting when they do happen. It can’t be otherwise, really. After all, a happy character is a boring character, devoid of conflict; the very nature of drama (in the broadest sense of the word, encompassing comedy) demands that something must immediately go wrong. If you happen upon an unknown film at random on TV and the star seems ecstatic, it’s a fair guess that you’ve stumbled into the story at the very beginning or the very end. But it’s those occasional blissful interludes in the middle that ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Dont Look Back

Tue, 31 May 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Even though I attended the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month, I learned about Lars von Trier’s idiotic Nazi remarks the same way that you most likely did: via the Internet. (Press conferences tend to conflict with actual movies, which are the reason I’m there.) And for days thereafter, as I followed the story—Von Trier apologizes, fest declares Von Trier “persona non grata,” etc.—I did so entirely in various “print” media, not bothering to seek out the footage itself on the Cannes website or on YouTube. Didn’t seem necessary. Having read umpteen interviews with the ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Hero

Mon, 16 May 2011 00:00:00 -0500

I first saw Zhang Yimou’s Hero under unusual circumstances. Having spent nearly two years resisting the temptation to watch the film on DVD—Chinese imports were readily available, and many of my friends were raving—I finally got the opportunity to catch a print at the 2004 Rotterdam Film Festival, where it was suddenly announced as a surprise screening. Stoked beyond measure, I took a seat smack in the middle of an extremely long row with virtually no legroom… only to discover, almost immediately, that there were no English subtitles, only Dutch. (Almost all movies at international fests have ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Psycho

Mon, 02 May 2011 12:28:00 -0500

When Gus Van Sant announced in 1998 that he was planning a shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, I got kind of unduly excited about the project, largely because I took the phrase “shot-for-shot” way too literally. Somehow, based on remarks Van Sant made in interviews at the time, I got the impression that he intended something truly avant-garde—that he was going to do his best to duplicate every single one of Hitchcock’s compositions, except in color and with a different cast. To prepare for this off-the-wall experiment that existed mostly in my head, I watched the original Psycho three ...

Film: Scenic Routes: Network

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:00:00 -0500

When Sidney Lumet passed away a week ago, it was interesting to see how many of the tributes and eulogies characterized him as a filmmaker with no real aesthetic sensibility. For the most part, people managed to spin that in a positive way—nobody wants to speak ill of the dead, after all—but the idea that Lumet was a visual chameleon, uniquely devoted to serving the material rather than imposing his own personality upon it, cropped up again and again. Many of these pieces, following the lead of the New York Times obituary, quoted Lumet himself on the subject ...