Bad Movies

I guess the official protocol is to say: "Spoilers ahead!". However, I will be doing you a favor. Don't ever watch this movie: Swordfish. It's been a while since I sat through a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad movie. In a funny way....I feel a bit refreshed by it. No need for seriousness in thinking about this. No Nietzschian metaphors within the bad guys like The Dark Knight. No serious commentary on society's rejected ones as in Monster. No thought provoking commentary on the war in Iraq like In the Valley of Elah.
Nope! This movie is just so bad, it should be illegal to have "making of.." featurettes on the DVD like this one does. You know the ones, where the actors and others involved in this semi-crime against humanity talk up the movie like it's the next Citizen Kane. And the actors? Well...we're talking some of the best actors out there in this movie: John Travolta, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman and Don Cheadle. I guess when there's too many good actors, that should be a sign of some kind?

Apparently this movie is trying to make a STATEMENT about how terrorism is to be handled. You see the key is (I am not making this up): Hit them back harder!!!!! TAKE THAT! That's what settles for profound thinking in this movie. Travolta says that the first few pages of the script are what sold the film for him. Basically the movie begins with Travolta explaining what is wrong with Hollywood films. Big long attempt at Tarantino-esque dialogue. Kinda ironic - an incredibly bad movie talking about....but I guess that was unintentional. This movie is so bad that their idea of a chase scene involves actors rolling after each other down an incredibly steep hill. I'm not kidding - rolling down a hill. It was an excruciatingly long chase sequence, too. Really.

Travolta is posing as a bank robber in order to be a terrorist of terrorists (like Dexter, but poorly edited and with lots more explosions). He's supposed to be our American hero, although we just think he's really a crazy bad guy, but is Halle Berry a DEA agent or is she just his main squeeze after all and we get to see her topless for no other reason than guys can go around and say they saw her topless. That's the movie...a big long run-on sentence. Oh, and Travolta randomly kills people in the middle of LA and gets away with it. I guess that's not as much a stretch as I thought it was initially.

Anyhow - Berry's topless. However, the filmmakers don't seem to understand that in well made movies, there is a reason for things like toplessness or shooting up senators or blowing up LA. In this movie, there's really no reason for any of it. It's so choppily edited that it seems more like a highlight reel and a poorly made highlight reel at that. Now there was toplessness in In the Valley of Elah, too, but it made sense and revealed something about Tommy Lee Jones's character(No, he wasn't the one that was topless. Sorry, ladies.) I won't tell you about it because that would entail spoiling a good movie.

Another test of a bad movie suddenly came to mind: I bet everyone who saw Swordfish remembers that HB was topless for all of ten seconds or so. I also bet that everyone who saw In the Valley of Elah and has been reading this is thinking: "I don't remember any toplessness in that movie...." That's a sign of a good movie - even boobs don't distract from a well made film.

Shakespearean?

I recently got around to renting The Departed , Martin Scorsese's oscar-winning film, and was impressed. Many go out of their way to put down this movie just because of the violence or the use of the 'f word'. Both seem to fit in the culture that is displayed here. Jack Nicholson's character (forgive me - I have a terrible memory for the character names, so I'll use actor names) says something to the boy he's training to be an insider (cop) for him, something like: "You can be a cop or a criminal. Is there any difference?" That's the main idea of the entire movie there. Is there really any difference? I was struck by the tragic ending and couldn't help but think of how the continual battle, the struggle to be insiders (Matt Damon vs. Leo DiCaprio) seemed to be so like a Shakespeare tragedy. I don't know how else to describe it except to say I felt the same way after seeing any of Shakespeare's plays, such as a Hamlet or, perhaps this movie better reflects: Macbeth. Some of the reviews talk about how long the movie was, but, I must admit, I was so caught up in the story of how Matt Damon was leaking info to Jack Nicholson while Leo DiCaprio was an undercover cop leaking info to the police from inside Jack's own organization - that I was surprised by the abruptness of the ending. However, in reading some reviews for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, I recognized the kind of violence: realistic. In reality, people live their lives, can be quite happy and BANG! violence intrudes brutally on their reality, shattering the moment. This is a movie to meditate on and think about. This is real film making at its best!

He Don't Need No Steeking Gadgets!

I just saw the latest Bond movie, Casino Royale and WOW!Daniel Craig presents us with a different Bond. He bleeds, rarely looks neat and tidy and even eats with his mouth full. He is definitely the closest Bond to the original Bond featured in Ian Fleming's novels. Craig is a Bond who is polite only when it gets the job done. He is sort of the 'MacGyver' of Bonds, using whatever is at hand to pummel his enemies. His only true gadgets are ones any of us could buy at the local electronics store - laptops, cell phones, etc. He has a gun every now and then, but it usually gets lost and he just pounds the other guy. He runs after a guy more often in this film that I ever remember a Bond doing. The best chase sequence I have ever seen is right at the beginning and - get this - there's no cars involved! Well, there is a bulldozer, but only for a few seconds...
He has few one liners. He is a very cold Bond. After he kills someone, he only looks coldly down to make sure that the other is truly dead. I thought for sure he would say 'Nailed him!' after killing a guy with a nail gun, but....nothing and that shows how well done this movie is. It avoids the camp and cartoonish-ness of the previous Bonds. Brosnan came close to this kind of coldness in The World is Not Enough, but not this close. He still was too neat and tidy. I appreciated how this movie took the time to tell the story, although I did find the double and triple crossing hard to follow, but maybe that's the point - Bond is new and he's learning what life as a double '0' really is like. It's not an easy to understand this life and the only one he can really trust in is himself. And the 'bad guy' isn't always so easy to identify. It's a lesson he learns over and over in this movie and we learn it while having our breath taken away.

Gandhi

I just recently finished reading Mahatma Gandhi: His Life and Influence by Chandra Kumar and Mohinder Puri (London: Heinemann, 1982). I have seen the film version of Gandhi's life and, while it was very well done - I wished for more of how Gandhi came to the conclusion of acting the way he did. The film was great for highlighting why he is such an impressive man and what he stood for. This book helped me to understand some of the 'why' behind his life and work. I don't want to clutter this entry any more with my words, I want to just add some quotes selected from the end of the book:

"I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could do. In doing so, I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors. Life and its problems have thus become to me so many experiments in the practice of truth and non-violence..."

"I look upon myself as a dull person. I take more time understanding some things, but I do not care. There is a limit to man's progress in intelligence; but the developments of the qualities of the heart knows no bounds. It is literally true in my case that God provides the man of faith with such intelligence as he needs. I have always honored and reposed faith in elders and wise men. But my deepest faith is in truth so that my path though difficult to tread has seemed easy to me."

"I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw myself to cranks, faddists and madmen. If I had no sense of humor, I should long ago have committed suicide."

"I disbelieve in the conversion of one person by another. My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith. This implies the belief in truth of all religions and respect for them. It again implies true humility, a recognition of the fact that the divine light having been vouchsafed to all religions through an imperfect medium of the flesh, they must share in more or less degree the imperfection of the vehicle."

"I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world."

"Love never claims, it ever gives. Love ever suffers, never resents, never revenges itself."

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good it does is temporary, the evil it does is permanent. I do not believe in violent short-cuts to success...however much I may sympathize and admire worthy motives. I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes...experience convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence."

"Means and ends are convertible terms in my philosophy of life. They say 'means are after all ends', I would say that means are everything. As the means so the end. There is no wall of separation between means and end. Indeed the creator has given us control over the means, none over the end..."

"I value individual freedom but you must not forget that man is essentially a social being. He has risen to his present status by learning to adjust his individualism requirements of social progress. Unrestricted individualism is the law of the beast of the jungle...Willing submission to social restraint for the sake of the well-being of the society enriches both the individual and the society of which one is a member."

"Democracy disciplined and enlightened is the finest thing in the world. A democracy prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious will land itself in chaos and may be self-destroyed."

"By education I mean an all-round drawing out the best in child and man - body, mind and spirit. But unless the development of the mind and body go hand in hand with a corresponding awakening of the soul, the former alone would prove to be a lopsided affair. By spritual training I mean education of the heart."

On Hypocrisy

In the most recent Reader's Digest, Margaret Wente writes about David Suzuki - "Canada's Prophet of Doom". It talks about his opposition to Kyoto - even though to fully implement will meant bankrupting Canada's economy. He also opposes genetic modified foods -which he should know are really the only key to fighting hunger around the world. I wonder how consistent he is with his beliefs? George W. Bush, Suzuki says, is "the ultimate eco-terrorist on the planet." I wonder what Suzuki would say if he knew that the Bush ranch is eco-friendly? I wonder how cosistent Suzuki's beliefs are with his lifestyle.


This article made me think of a book I have just finished reading. It details how US liberals actually live and make their money. Michael Moore, for example, talks about how he owns no stock, but actually owns quite a bit. He even owns stock in the very companies and corporations that he speaks against, like Halliburton. I have had such a struggle with Michael Moore since his last "documentary" - Farenheit 9/11. When he tried to get senators to sign up their own kids into the army, I felt like shouting at him: "But parents CAN'T sign up their own kids in an all VOLUNTEER army!!!!" His criticisms of the war were criticisms of war in general. He actually had very little to say about the war in Iraq, other that the oil connections - which is no news to anyone. It was there that I lost most of the respect that I had for Michael Moore, or whatever was left of it. I have a copy of Stupid White Men which I will hand over for free to whomever asks for it, by the way - I found his prose even more irritating than the movies. The only thing he did that I'm hanging on to is Canadian Bacon, which is a really funny movie...

The books basic premise is that the major liberal spokes people like, Ralph Nader, Moore, Barbara Streisand, Noam Chomsky and Al Franken fail to live the anti-capitalist lifestyle that they say they do. None of them are doing what they're saying, in other words.

The book is a fun read, although I do want to say I'm taking it with a grain of salt. I found it very interesting that the hypocrisies are so dramatic, though.

Bibliography:

Schweizer, Peter. Do As I Say (Not As I Do). New York: Doubleday, c 2005

Wente, Margaret. "Canada's Prophet of Doom" Reader's Digest (Canada), April 2006, pp 135-138.