Review: The Last Airbender

Yeah, I know this is late. I just caught it on DVD after missing it in the theater (boy did that turn out to be a good decision)

Dear God. How did this happen? How did M. Night Shyamalan, the once acclaimed director who dazzled the world with The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs fall so far? He was supposed to be the next Spielberg or Serling. With The Last Airbender he would seem likely to be the next Wiseau or Boll. As a onetime fan, then defender, then apologist for Shyamalan I had approached this film with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Could Shyamalan, working for the first time with a property that didn’t originate with him, break out of his rut that began with 2004’s The Village and seemed to reach its nadir in 2008’s legendarily bad The Happening? The answer is surprising not because it’s a no, but because it is a resounding, emphatic no. This is a film to end careers, and should prove useful in finally dispelling any hope for Shyamalan as a director to watch.

The Last Airbender is set in a world populated with “benders”, people who have the ability to magically manipulate the elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water. The diabolical Fire Nation has enslaved all the other ones because…well, they’re evil I guess. And brown. That’s a pretty good indicator of whether or not someone is supposed to be evil in this film. The darker and swarthier the character, the more treacherous they are. Before the film’s release their was a minor controversy about the racial politics of the film, but it died down soon after people actually saw the film, where their suspicions were not necessarily dispelled but rather put into perspective amongst Shyamalan’s myriad failures.

Anyways, the Fire nation has everyone under their brown, swarthy thumbs and their tyrannical rule has cowed the rest of the nations into submission. One day two bad actors standing in front of a green screen discover Aang, a young bald boy frozen in ice along with a giant CGI flying Bison-thing called Appa (incidentally, the coolest character in the film by a considerable margin). They discover through heaps and heaps of clunky exposition that Aang is the Avatar (or the Ah-vatar as the characters keep calling him). This means that he is the only one who can master all four elements and communicate with the poorly defined “Spirit Realm”. He must use all his abilities to learn the elements so that he can defeat the Fire Nation, return balance to the world zzzzzzzz. This hero’s quest thing has been done to death and the film does nothing to make it seem fresh or interesting. Understand, I’m not against these types of familiar stories as a matter of course. Just recently I have defended James Cameron’s Avatar (not to be confused with Shyamalan’s Ah-vatar) as an example of a conventional story told incredibly well. It’s just that there is no pleasure in watching Shyamalan joylessly beat this dead horse into the ground.

But the standard plot is the least of the film’s worries. Special mention must be made of the acting, or rather the “acting”. The three main leads are all black holes of screen presence, leaving absolutely no lasting impression. Dev Patel, the hero of Slumdog Millionaire is at least memorable in that he’s really terrible. He plays everything so dramatically that it becomes funny, then sad, then funny, then sad again. Here’s hoping he finds a project better suited to his limited range after this. Aasif Mandvi is, well, I’m not sure. He acts as if the whole thing is a big joke (actually he’s right), playing everything the same way he does weekly on The Daily Show. Mandvi is a talented guy, so I’d like to think he knew the whole project stunk and decided to have fun with it. Shaun Toub’s performance is the closest to quality of anyone in the film, but it’s all to no avail. Some of these actors have turned in good work in the past, so maybe we should blame it on Shyamalan’s direction. Yes, actually, we definitely can.

The whole film reeks of being directed by someone with almost no capacity for what makes a film work. Oh sure, it certainly looks nice for the most part. The shots are framed well I guess, and the film is in focus the whole time. Good work Manoj! But everything else is in shambles. The pacing of the film is bizarre, never really settling in to a flow but rather moving in fits and starts as seemingly unconnected scenes are unceremoniously stitched together with narration that simultaneously explains too much and explains nothing at all. The fighting, contrary to what I’d heard before watching, is extremely poorly shot, with none of the fluid grace or visceral impact that Western action directors such as The Wachowskis or Edgar Wright have been able to achieve. Watching the film is an excruciating experience as embarrassed (or embarrassing) actors mumble bad dialogue and stare portentously into the camera while much more interesting things (the aforementioned Appa, the interesting world design) seem to be purposefully sabotaged by the leaden direction and terrible writing.

I don’t know where Shyamalan goes from here, honestly. Even after The Happening (which remains a joy to behold and a bad movie classic), I had hope for the once promising director. After witnessing the depths to which he sinks in this film however, I find it hard to believe that he could recover his filmmaking talents at all. A painful experience on every level, The Last Airbender proves to be the final nail in the coffin for a man whose every film I once eagerly anticipated. Worst film of 2010? By every conceivable measurement, yes.

Review: Hereafter

Death and the possibility of an afterlife are rich and contentious subjects, subjects that should easily provide a movie with much to ponder and discuss. Seeing this subject tackled by Clint Eastwood, whose films before this have often dealt with issues of mortality more indirectly, would seem to be the beginnings of a poignant and thoughtful film, particularly if Eastwood brought his traditional, no frills directing style to the project. Alas Hereafter, while containing a few moments that threaten to save the entire project, feels like a wash; a ponderous and dull film that mistakes overwhelming solemnity for importance and narrative sprawl for thematic complexity.

Hereafter stars Matt Damon as George Lonnegan, a sad-sack man living in San Francisco. Toiling in a factory by day, he is a man possessed of a gift that haunts him: the ability to, upon merely touching hands with another person, experience a direct connection to that person’s dead loved ones. This gift (or curse as he calls it) has prevented him from having anything resembling a normal life with normal human relations. As his scheming brother (played by Jay Mohr) puts it in one of the many lines from Peter Morgan’s script that is way too on the nose, “A life that’s all about death is no life at all.” But Damon’s is not the principal storyline; indeed Eastwood and Morgan have decided to make this one of those oh-so Oscar-ready multiple narratives, with Damon’s story thread being interwoven with two others. The film opens with the story of Marie Lelay (played by Cecile de France), a French journalist on vacation in Thailand with her married lover, who has her own experience with mortality when she is caught up in the horrific 2004 tsunami. This leads her to bring her journalistic skills to bear on the question of what exactly happens after we die, a line of inquiry that threatens, for rather contrived reasons, to torpedo her career and reputation. Finally, there is the story of Marcus, a young boy living in London with his twin brother Jason (both are played, inexpressively, by twins Frankie and George McClaren) and his junkie mother. When a tragic accident befalls Jason, Marcus loses the only stabile relationship he had and is compelled to seek out wherever his brother may have gone.

All of these stories are intermittently compelling and Eastwood brings a steady, restrained hand to the proceedings. The problems lie, principally, with Morgan’s script, which is unfocused and features dialogue that is far too pat and simplistic much of the time (Jason to Marcus on the possibility of their mother quitting her habit: “It would be just like having a real family”). Additionally, none of these intertwining stories has much narrative thrust; the characters are given their one connecting characteristic (their interest in the possibility of an afterlife) and then spend the rest of the film just hanging around; Damon’s character takes a cooking class, Marie becomes more and more distanced from her friends and coworkers due to her newfound beliefs, Marcus seeks answers from psychic charlatans and religious proselytizers etc. Some of these threads hold interest on a scene-to-scene basis (Damon’s interlude with the cooking class, wherein he meets cute with a friendly and damaged young woman played by Bryce Dallas Howard, is warm and moving, with an emotional payoff that manages to be quietly devastating). On a broader thematic level, however, there is nothing to connect these three stories satisfactorily. The end of the film brings the characters together in a rather unconvincing manner, resolving the narrative without really paying off the deeper questions raised by the film.

In fact, this remains my main problem with Hereafter. In past Eastwood films (from classics like Unforgiven to lesser works like Blood Work) the director has dealt frankly with issues of death. Hereafter would seem to present an opportunity to deal head-on with the issue of what happens afterward. However the film doesn’t even seem to be interested in that, portraying the hereafter as an out of focus cosmic realm with everyone’s loved ones just…standing around. Except for some rather vague comments about “being everything all at once” and a feeling of weightlessness, what precisely the afterlife is isn’t dealt with. I’m fine with the film not taking an explicitly religious stance on the question of life after death, but a little more specificity would have been nice. Furthermore, the existence of an afterlife doesn’t seem to impart any special insight on any of the characters that are aware of its existence. They all arrive at bland platitudes about moving on with your life and living it to the fullest etc. Theses generic revelations are especially insulting considering that the film utilizes real world tragedies, such as the 2004 tsunami in Thailand or terrorist bombings in the London Underground, in order to arrive at these bland conclusions. One would think that catastrophes of such scale and magnitude would prompt larger questions about the role of suffering and death in human existence. Unfortunately, the film uses these events as cheap and easy routes to unearned pathos. So cheer up everyone! Horrible things may happen, but eventually you’ll go to a fuzzy waiting room where you hold hands with your loved ones. And maybe they’ll lead you to that most cherished of Hollywood ideals: romantic fulfillment!

Eastwood has, of late, been a hit and miss filmmaker. His commitment to churning out a film or two a year has, much like the similarly prolific Woody Allen, taken a toll on the overall quality of films. While this film is a misfire it at least contains moments of promise, unlike the (intentionally?) hilarious Gran Torino. Hopefully for his next filmmaking endeavor Eastwood will find a script worthy of his considerable talents. For now however, Hereafter is an occasionally interesting, but largely unsatisfying misfire.

The Futility of Plot: Michael Bay and Transformers 2

So, I am a Michael Bay fan. Yes. It's out there. I said it. I think that he makes films that are undeniably visceral and thrilling, but which also bear a distinct personality and style. So what if that style and personality are resolutely juvenile and shallow? He is a frat-boy auteur, possessed with a keen eye for the visual and an admirable economy in his storytelling which happens to be exclusively in service of ridiculous and bombastic action spectacles.

Which brings me to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It is, simply, Bay's best movie. Oh as a film it is pretty bad, failing in some of the most basic aspects of filmmaking, such as plot, characters and even basic shot to shot continuity. But it is so aggressive in its disregard for these tenets, so baldly uncaring in the way it discards them that it achieves an anarchic quality altogether missing from the staid American blockbuster scene.

Take the "plot" if you will. It makes literally zero sense in any traditional way, but this only serves Bay's greater purpose. Bay knows that the plots of these films are utterly inconsequential and only exist to frame the expensive action set pieces. By virtue of the plot being so incomprehensible as to be utterly void, Bay is both giving the audience exactly what they want and exposing the trappings of his chosen genre. While other films cynically pretend to be interested in the "plot", Bay gets right to the heart of the matter. The greasy, clogged arteries of modern blockbuster cinema.

The final battle of Transformers 2 is also instrumental in understanding the wonders of Bay's approach. It is almost hallucinatory in its flow of imagery; hundreds of indistinguishable robots clanging up against each other in an utterly incomprehensible spectacle. I've seen the film several times now and still I cannot explain what is supposed to be happening in those final 45 minutes. Something about a matrix and robot truck nuts. I don't know. But that's the brilliance of it. It's almost like watching an animated Dali painting while bombs go off in the background and someone pelts you with paintballs while you take unbelievable quantities of LSD. Bay has whittled every soulless blockbuster spectacle into its purest essence. While other blockbuster directors (lookin' at you Roland Emmerich) only flirt with the abyss, Bay dives headlong into it. Sheer genius.

Michael Bay has made good films (The Rock, The Island) and he has made bad films (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor). But Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is Bay's masterpiece. The summation of who he is as a director, his style, his themes etc. Those who say it isn't good are missing the point. Bay isn't concerned with your trivial concepts of good or bad. He's concerned with giving his audience what they want, but at such an absurd scale as to force us to contemplate what we are seeing, to recognize the absurdities inherent in things like story and character, especially within this genre. The man is an artist, and this is his Mona Lisa.

Let's Do This

As a typical 21 year old, internet savvy young person I do not lack for places to have myself heard on the internet. Between my Facebook and Twitter profiles I have ample opportunity to keep in touch with friends, share funny internet videos and generally waste time by posting random thoughts that come to my head. However, recently I have been thinking that I needed a place to display some of my more thoughtful writing endeavors. You see, I am something of a film fan. Actually, that could be considered an enormous understatement. I adore film in all its forms. I love its ability to show the audience things it has never seen before, its capacity to show us our own world in a way never before considered. Film has the potential to inspire, uplift, confront, challenge and provoke. I want this to be a place where films are considered and appreciated within the context of when they were made and what their content says both about the film itself and the world at large.

Director Joe Dante once said that there are two kinds of people: "Those who love movies and those who love the movies they love". At this place I will endeavor to be the first kind of person. The last thing that the internet needs is one more blog talking exclusively about how awesome Star Wars/Star Trek is, how badass the fight scenes in 300 were or how eagerly they are awaiting the latest comic book series' transition to the big screen. I want to avoid that kind of narrow minded, fanboy-ish adoration, which lends nothing to the discussion and ultimately does a disservice to the films they claim to adore. But I should say upfront that I will also not apologize for the things that I like. My tastes, as I suspect most to be, are fairly wide-ranging. This taste stretches from enjoyment of such high-brow fare as the works of Michael Haneke, to the appreciation of low-brow works from Michael Bay (and I realize that featuring a sentence containing those two names within could send the internet itself into convulsions).

I will also be, from time to time, lending my thoughts on a wider variety of topics, ranging from music to literature to politics to anything else I see fit to write about. No matter what topic it is I promise to be thoughtful in my consideration of it. Again, the last thing I want is for this to turn into a simple "this rocked/this sucked" style of blogging so widespread in the clutter of blogs the internet has to offer. So without further ado, here it is, in all its (potential) glory. A new film blog that might actually have something to contribute to the conversation. Meditate on that.