300: Rise of an Empire Movie Review

        “War! War! War!”  So King Leonidas’ 300 Spartans chanted as the battle cry of men that were sculpted to kill. They were built to brutalize. They were bred to maim. As anyone who saw the original 300 knows, they fulfilled their purpose. In one spectacular single-take sequence, time is warped to the rhythm of curved steel blades separating flesh from flesh. Blood smears the screen in explosions of comic book violence to punctuate the mayhem—the radical idea of slowing down time to intensify the buildup to a kill and to speed it up as the blade meets its mark. It’s crude but cathartic, and it follows the tradition of using slow motion in action movies that was partially begun by Akira Kurosawa in Seven Samurai. Such devices were used with a wink and a smile, and self-seriousness wasn’t ever one of 300‘s problems. Writer and director Zack Snyder knew better (although he didn’t on last year’s Man of Steel), and he understood Frank Miller’s graphic novel. Testosterone and manliness became satire, with the camera worshiping bulging pectorals, six pack abs, bouncing breasts, and, of course, buckets blood. It was a violent homo-erotic joke that, at the time, entertained. It began with a chest pumping montage: the grueling and barbarous training of each and every Spartan destined for battle. Like most I suspect, I recognized I couldn’t ever pass a test such as this on my own, and that kindled a feeling of deserved admiration for the towering heroes that are our good guys. This was 2006. Seven years later, I unsuspectingly found myself in an environment that rivaled that of Leonidas’ 300 hardened Spartans. It was an exercise equally as ruthless, and to some, even more sadistic, that demanded tremendous physical and mental discipline. I had to stay awake during 300: Rise of an Empire. 

        This is as clear an example of studio greed as any, where they manufacture sequels, prequels, and ...whatever this is... (more on that in a minute) as though they’re merely products on an assembly line. Artistic integrity is the last consideration. The movie business is still a business, one of the most lucrative in the world, but there still remains a thin veneer of romanticism for the movies. Films like 300: Rise of an Empire consume that feeling with the artificial corporatism of Hollywood. The irony is that the script, written once again by Snyder and Kurt Johnstad, is actually pretty good. The story came from Frank Miller, who’s set to make and release the graphic novel version of this film. Instead of Sparta, the prime location in Rise of an Empire is Athens. And, instead of Gerard Butler’s charismatic turn as King Leonidas, we have Sullivan Stapleton (who?) as Athenian general Themistocles. It’s not that he’s less buff or less charismatic, it’s that he’s just less. As a nearly naked speech-giving general that slashes and cuts and pierces and yells, he has to “bring it.” He doesn’t. In Rise of an Empire’s opening montage that seemed to span longer the film’s running time, we find out Themistocles shot the arrow that killed the Persian commander. His son? The future god-king, and we find out how he went from mere man to self-celebrated divinity. Xerxes sets out to exact revenge, and it’s up to Themistocles to rally the Greek nations together and defeat him. 

        There’s slightly more story than that, giving it a narrative edge to Snyder’s 300. It doesn’t count for much, but in more capable hands it could have. Rise of an Empire aspires to deliver a true sense of scale on multiple levels: political, city, state, and in battle. None are well developed, and dependence between them is never believably developed. Oh, there’s plenty of dialogue repeatedly exclaiming town A has to be with town G so that towns B and C help, but problems X, Y, and Z are in the way.  This is one of the films gravest mistakes-- the story exists as a separate entity to the action. By all accounts this should be a non-issue, since the action/story ratio strongly favors one over the other. But the action is static, lifeless, and altogether uninspired. Although the action scenes in 300 became instantly iconic, their reproductions have almost universally been loathed. This is sometimes referred to by critics as “The Matrix Problem,” where the action within The Matrix was justified by its exaggerated setting, but it wouldn’t make sense in the real world. In other words, we had an excuse for kung-fu ridiculousness that let the crazy become thrilling. Rise of an Empire obviously takes place in the same setting as 2006’s 300, but it never feels like the same world. This is because Rise of an Empire embellishes every quality of 300 to the point of incohesion. It’s too comic and too somber, too risible and too dour. As a consequence, the action scenes are an empty rehash of what was mastered 7 years prior. 

        More misguided than the monotonous “Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?” action scenes are the attempts to make audiences care about the characters. Great action exposition, usually in the first ten minutes, tells you everything you need to know about your hero. Look to Gladiator, where over the film’s opening act (even first five or ten minutes) you understand his feelings, his desires, what he believes in, what he doesn’t, and ultimately what he fights for. You get a tangible sense of who he is as a person. It’s incredibly easy to go along with him on his journey because he’s such a well-established character. Other than “FIGHT FOR GREECE! I AM A SYMBOL OF MASCULINITY!” Themistocles seemingly doesn’t want or care about anything. Unlike Leonidas who intimately said goodbye to his wife before leaving, Themistocles doesn’t have a family. He doesn’t want one. Worse still, he’s not any given parameters for change, or even room for the audience to get to know him as a character. As far as I know, there’s nothing to get to know. He’s meat, and not even a prime cut. He’s spam. To be fair, one of the most (read: ONLY) enjoyable parts of the film is his skills as a tactician, and what new strategy he’ll employ towards the invading Persian army. 

        By dancing around the events of the first film, the typical problems that plague unnecessary franchise films are avoided, but that doesn’t stop 300 from being a bore. The bland, copycat direction of the film can’t be blamed on director Noam Murro, since, other than the poorly received comedy film Smart People, he’s never directed a major feature. If a major project is handed to you, a nearly nameless director, how can you refuse? I don’t blame him. But he doesn’t have the skills to ignite a spark a hundredth as powerful as the film’s smallest explosion. No, blame lies with the studio, or whoever thought it prudent to assign a largely talentless filmmaker an expensive major studio project. After all, who cares if it’s good as long as the director’s cheap! 

        Luckily, Eva Green is spectacular as Xerxes’ military leader. She is the film. She’s the price of your ticket. And, if the film didn’t otherwise suck the life out of you, and her, it would make 300: Rise of an Empire worth seeing. She dominates the screen with sizzling campy goodness, and even when the character falls into comic book villain cliché, like killing anyone who disappoints her (though, with generals this stupid, you could hardly blame her for tossing them off the sides of her ships), you can’t help but crack a guilty grin. The same is true for the movie’s best scene: a rage fueled sex scene that’s the film’s most honest and exciting moment. Good on Green, bad on everything else. 

D

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Nymphomaniac Part I Movie Review

        This review is broken, and there’s no fixing it. That’s because controversial art house contrarian Lars Von Trier’s latest opus became such a sprawling soirée of hardcore sex and provocation, it had to be bifurcated to be released. Instead of a five and a half hour long autobiographical account by a beaten woman from whom the film draws its provocative title, we are left with Part I and Part II. As a consequence, each part is being judged quite separately from one another, which is a bizarre and unfair straightjacket through which audiences, and indeed critics, must digest the film. Imagine if the first two hours of Lawrence of Arabia was strictly what first premiered with the final two hours available only a month later. Outrage! The film becomes an incomprehensible mess, and any dramatic structure is abandoned in favor of an abrupt and bizarre conclusion. Such is the case with Nymphomaniac Part I, and though where it was cut was likely the best option given the circumstances, a frustrating surge of incompleteness descended upon me and of course the film as Rammstein’s “Führe Mich” blared as the credits roll passed the screen. I protested the admittedly understandable decision at the time it was made, and I only review it now in keeping with the norm of others reviewing the film. It is entirely possible everything I feel now will be undone in the remaining two hours of the film, just as completing a sentence can inexorably alter its meaning. This is an especially obnoxious observation to make, since if Nymphomaniac Part I wasn’t cut off quite mid-sentence, it was close to doing so. 

        Nymphomaniac is made up by two forces that contextualize and tell the story. The first is Joe. She’s discovered in a back alley by a good Samaritan who promptly brings her back to his flat with the offer of tea. She’s a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac played with subdued sensitivity by Von Trier alumnus Charlotte Gainsbourg. She begins a novelistic account of her sexuality and life by declaring “I discovered my cunt as a two-year-old.” The film follows her sexual awakening from zero to 50, and the scenes during her younger years are played by newcomer Stacy Martin, who does a fine job. Joe hates herself. Like much of her story, what she feels should be included is implicitly linked to what pieces of trivia the second force behind offers. His name is Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), and by the film’s end he will have taught you everything you will need to know to start fly fishing, though he laments he doesn’t catch often. This is one of the film’s numerous in-jokes with itself, as Seligman constantly compares Joe’s increasing eroticism to his beloved sport of using funny feathered hooks to catch fish. You see, he’s a bachelor. -elbow nudge- He doesn’t catch often! If you think flirtations with comedic irony seem odd for an unforgiving drama about the darkness of the erotic, Von Trier proves you wrong. When it wants to be, Nymphomaniac is splendidly funny. 

        The relationship between Joe and Seligman is one of the most intriguing aspects of the picture, helped immensely by how strongly written Seligman is. His encyclopedic knowledge, accrued by a home full of books, does far more than merely tug at Joe’s memories. He’s full of trivia on Isaac Walton, Bach, and a hilarious and very possibly fictitious account on the Bolshevik Uprising and its relationship with cake forks. Skarsgård owns the role, and he’s the most easily enjoyed aspect of the film and, in many ways, the most important character. 

        On one hand he proposes the philosophy of Nymphomaniac as a film, questioning religion, sin, and social order. But, more instantly important to the movie, he tells the audience how they’re supposed to react to Joe. Or, rather, how Von Trier ideally hopes an audience would react, while realizing many won’t. The sympathetic and dryly funny Swede discovers perfectly logical explanations to relieve Joe, and perhaps the audience, of anguish. They aren’t so much rationalizations to excuse her morality but rather interpreting her behavior through an academic but still humanistic voice. Certainly, these tricks might not have worked on my grandmother, but, to the horror of Von Trier fans around the world, they probably would on average viewers. 

        Despite an amazingly offensive ad campaign featuring numerous trailers with copious amounts of cocks, vaginas, and sex-related fluids, Nymphomaniac is largely conventional. The worst you can say about it is that there’s a lot of sex. But in a world where many filmmakers push the boundaries on what is or isn’t acceptable, like Gaspar Noé’s flawed but unforgettable Enter the Void or last year’s beloved romance Blue is the Warmest Color, this neutered cut is hardly enough to get many parents screaming for the hills. The punk-rock elite of art house cinema that include the likes of Von Trier and fellow Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn go for love or hate. They wish to elicit a powerful response in any direction, and once they’ve done it, the job is done. When promoting the panned Only God Forgives after the hailed Drive, Refn frequently said the difference between love and hate is so slight he couldn’t care less. Von Trier’s filmography is famously polarizing, but it’s entirely possible merely to kind of like-- or kind of not like -- Nymphomaniac. It doesn’t have the maddening strength of Antichrist or Dancer in the Dark, and it’s easier to watch than his recent breakout hit Melancholia. This reaction has only been exasperated by the ads, and had I seen the film blind, I may not have thought so. But such is life in the trailer-filled age of 2014. 

        The other issue with Nymphomaniac is how it is at once too broad and too specific. Nymphomania and eroticism quickly can become metaphors for almost anything, since they surely do not stand for themselves. One quick interpretation is Joe acts as a proxy for Lars Von Trier himself, with her insatiable lust for sex the same as his lust for insurgent filmmaking. Joe even starts a rebellious club against love and the relationships caused by it, and in it they sing the incantation, “Mea vulva, mea maxima vulva.” The club even has a manifesto with which its members must comply, including the rule no member can sleep with the same person more than one time. Like Joe, Von Trier began a club with a dear friend (named Thomas Vinterberg) that was conceived out of rebellion and resentment to the status quo. And, also like Joe’s club, they adopted, or, depending on your perspective, mutilated, Christian phrases and words for their own ends. This was the famous Dogme 95 movement, which inspired influential films like The Celebration (first film to use digital recording) and The Idiots. Their own manifesto was called “The Vow of Chastity.” And, just as Joe’s crew couldn’t sleep with more than one person, neither Von Trier nor Vinterberg made more than one Dogme film. 

        There are many deeper comparisons to be made between Joe and Von Trier, but this is only one of many possibilities. As a consequence, despite all the film seemingly has to say, and it does say a lot (some obvious, some not), it never coalesces into a focused thesis. I wish this didn’t all sound so harsh since the truth is Nymphomaniac Part I was an incredibly compelling experience. Not to sound like an ad for a Swiss Army Knife, but it’s got it all- laughs, great performances, heart, wit, intelligence, fine film craft, suspense, richly developed themes, the worst attempt at an accent you’ve ever heard (courtesy of Shia LaBeouf), and it’s even got Uma Therman’s best performance maybe ever. It’s just that when you order a taco with extra spicy salsa, you’re disappointed if it’s merely mild. Bring on Part II! 

B+

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The Wolf of Wallstreet Movie Review

Walk into your bathroom and turn on the shower. When it’s a comfortable temperature, go in. Once your body is covered in water, turn the shower off, and exit into the bathroom. Grab a paper clip, and without drying off, walk to the nearest electrical outlet. Unwind the paper clip, and with a firm grip around its metallic coating, jam it into the electrical outlet. BBZHZHZZHZZBZBZZ! 

This is the closest you’ll come to experiencing The Wolf of Wallstreet without paying the price of a ticket, but you’d be losing more than ample skin tissue and brain cells. The Wolf of Wallstreet is one of the best in Marty Scorsese’s long and classic career, and it’s one of the must-see pictures of 2013. It’s like getting shocked by electricity for three hours, and it’s gunna be a classic. Maybe because it’s so stylistically similar to Goodfellas, I don’t know, but Scorsese hasn’t seemed this comfortable and confident in 20 years. His agile camera whips around offices and restaurants, often with perfectly punctuated cuts that give the film a writhing kinetic energy that sustains itself ‘till the credits roll. The film is bolstered by a brilliantly buzzy cast, lead by Dicaprio and with  supporting players Jonah Hill (the best he’s ever been), Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, and newcomer Margot Robbie, who gives a surprisingly dynamic performance. We’ve never seen Dicaprio more energized or magnetic; it’s easy to call his the best performance of the year. It’s as though he’s had years of training, with each picture subsequently getting farther and farther from his comfort zone so he could unleash the full range of his talent. It’s surprisingly physically demanding, particularly in a scene involving lem(m)ons. You’ll see. The Wolf of Wallstreet is hilarious, heart-accelerating fun with well-struck emotional depth, and half of all the credit is to Leo. If there’s any justice, he’ll walk away with his long-coming statue, but there isn’t.


So, Wolf follows Jordan Belfort, a crooked stock market guru who, after the historic stock market crash on Black Monday, started out in penny stock pink slips and slowly built a mega empire. Like The Social Network did in constructing a web (no pun intended) of complex data algorithms and code, Wolf makes stock market parlay about the why rather than the how, and the consequences that follow. This is smart, and helps give Wolf a razor sharp focus on the film’s real content, which happens to be three hours of wild debauchery that has incited theater walk outs, pans by major critics, and even the heckling of Scorsese at a WGA screening by an Academy Member. Pornographic, they call it. Offensive to the senses. Others label it as indulgent, referring to the thick three hour running time. It’s inarguable that Wolf is designed as uproarious fun, unapologetic entertainment at the expense of the wolf-eaten prey. Unapologetic, they say, is the problem. A guest piece in LA Weekly condemns Wolf for not sufficiently demonizing Jordan Belfort as the crook he really was, giving a personal testimony to how his actions have had heartbreaking consequences. In real life, as well as in the film, Belfort galloped so furiously towards endless riches, riches that allowed for a lifestyle of hedonistic mayhem to continue unhindered for years, that he left a multitude of victims in his wake. A similar controversy arose earlier this year with Michael Bay’s real-world based Pain and Gain, which was similarly accused white-washing. 

See, as I see it, they miss a crucial ingredient of Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter’s design. The filmmakers don’t condemn, but nor do they condone. Mistaken for moral apathy or ambivalence, the filmmakers transition control of the tale to Jordan Belfort himself, giving their dramatized version the narrative reigns. He narrates, he breaks the fourth wall, and he leads the audience through his world by talking to us: it’s always clear that it is only through his voice that the story is heard. Thus, the film is prone to all the dangerous subjectivities that come with such a device. In other words, it’s the equivalent to the first person narrative in a novel. It’s not long before Belfort is painted as an unreliable narrator through his misremembering, and later correcting, of the color of his luxury sports car in an early scene. By framing the sprawling story through Belfort’s highly subjective memory, many of the film’s creative decisions begin to make sense. He’s not portrayed as a villain, because he doesn’t think of himself in that light, or at least doesn’t want to. When he’s portrayed negatively––and during many of the film’s most dramatic moments, he is––these are the moments he regrets. He feels bad about them. But, if you lived a life of endless indulgence and fun, wouldn’t that be what you mostly remember? 

By handing the story to Belfort, Scorsese takes an analytical step back, and he asks the audience to do the same. There was something about this story, and Belfort’s perception, that Scorsese and DiCaprio both felt would push people’s buttons, and indeed it has. To maximize this effect, the film orientates the audience’s point of view with Belfort’s, so our experience is designed to, at least superficially, mimic the Wolf’s. We’re so busy having fun that we enjoy his breezy nonchalant attitude even when we know we shouldn’t. As a consequence, when neither Belfort or the narrative account for his actions, we don’t either. Since the film is such a fast moving fever dream, it’s only as the falling side of the “rise and fall” kicks in can we catch our breath and ruminate on the implications. 

All film long, Belfort has addressed us through narration and through breaking the fourth wall, ensuring we’re trapped in his perspective, eating up his charismatic bullsh*t as well as the people around him. In an ending that recalls Vittorio De Sica’s iconic ending to the neo-realist masterpiece Bicycle Thieves, it starts to become clear that “audience address” was the final magic touch on the picture. When Leonardo DiCaprio addresses the camera, it looks as though he is addressing us, the audience, like he had done many times throughout the film. But, instead of us, a stylistic change has taken place––he addresses an expansive and generic crowd of people, of which we have become a part. The audience of the film has suddenly become Belfort’s audience in the film, and with the empty promise of riches, greedily, we’re hooked. This film is about greed, money, power, those that seek it and why. But, as it turns out, that’s everyone, and by pushing us into the uncomfortably pleasurable point of view of a corrupt capitalist, Scorsese makes damn sure we know that includes us. You’d have to go back to Treasure of the Sierra Madre to find a film that equally conveys the demons of unhinged consumption to an audience, and Scorsese’s made one for the ages. 

A+