Choke

I’m a firm believer that filmmakers should not be loyalists when making pictures based on novels. More important than correctly portraying every plot point and character detail is capturing the tone of the story in a visual form. Where David Fincher succeeds in nailing the cult griminess in Fight Club is exactly where Clark Gregg fails with Choke. The raunchy pop nature of Chuck Palahniuk’s fiction is completely trivialized by Gregg and the strange journey of Choke comes off as campy and gimmicky rather than a hostile social observation on human nature. Even for those who have never picked up a Palahniuk novel I imagine Choke would still fail as it is plagued with classic filmmaking mistakes. The pacing, editing, cinematography and soundtrack were soft and inconsistent, as if decisions were made without any forethought to how they affect the overall concept of the film. Gregg’s lack of attention to every detail takes Choke from what should have been an instant offbeat dark comedy, to a shallow teen buddy sex picture.

Choke is a story about a man, Victor, who works at a colonial theme park and happens to also be a sex addict. When he isn’t attending SA meetings or trying to sleep with his milkmaid co-worker, Victor runs an elaborate choking scheme where his wealthy saviors feel responsible for Victor’s life and continually send him money. His deception allows him to fund his mother’s medical care and hopefully find out the truth about his childhood.

Clark Gregg was very ambitious by choosing this project to make his directorial debut, and his ambition ends with his face in the dirt. Palahniuk’s style is not one that easily translates onto film, which is why many of his book adaptation projects have quickly been abandoned by filmmakers. The rumor is that there are movie versions of Invisible Monsters and Haunted in the works; one can only hope that these brave directors take their cues from David Fincher rather than Clark Gregg and fully appreciate the components needed to visually represent Palahniuk’s satirical self-destructive horror stories.

Mad Maggie's Final Say- 1.5 out of 5 stars
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Rachel Getting Married

Unnerving yet cleverly done, Rachel Getting Married is a draining picture about the dysfunction of families in even their happiest of moments. Jonathan Demme employs an independent style of filmmaking with heavy use of hand held camerawork that has the effect of making the audience feel like an intrusive voyeur. Throughout much of the film I continually shifted in my seat, as some sort of reaction to the invasive uncomfortablilty of feeling transported directly into the living room of this suburban Connecticut family. Many viewers may quickly be turned off by long scenes of rehearsal dinners and wedding dances that Demme uses, but it effectively gives the audience the feeling of being an ingredient in the wedding festivities. Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Debra Winger give an unsettling reality to their characters that makes them in every respect relatable, but still leaves the audience feeling completely unsympathetic. There is a certain brilliance in Rachel Getting Married that is a product of many obscure filmmaking techniques aligning in just the right way.

Kym has been a junkie for most of her teenage and adult life; with nine months of sobriety under her belt she leaves the safety of rehab for her sister’s wedding. Kym’s manic behavior and her family’s inability to cope with her disease threaten to spoil the weekend nuptials. The dynamics of Kym’s family cause tragedy, resentment, and tensions to boil over while they try to put together an eclectic celebration of culture, music, and love.

The intimacy created in Rachel Getting Married makes every emotional moment connect on a level most audiences are not used to. A series of powerful moments spliced with the richness of culture and music gives this slice of life picture a tender and genuine quality. Debra Winger is amazingly believable as Kym’s withdrawn yet still loving mother; her performance is subtle, but connects masterfully to the film’s mise-en-scene. Rachel Getting Married bears many of the hallmarks of an independent feature, including gut-wrenching material and experimental methods, but it has clearly been touched by the hands of experts in the field of filmmaking.

Mad Maggie's Final Say- 4 out of 5 stars
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Watchmen

As Bob Dylan’s These Times They Are A-Changin’ filled my ears and violent striking visions flashed across the screen, I knew that Zack Snyder’s Watchmen was not going to be the Spiderman or Fantastic Four type of superhero movie we have all come to expect from Hollywood. The film’s stellar soundtrack and dynamite visuals made nearly every second of Watchmen entertaining, but the lack of character development and inability to fully deliver the dense complexity of the story line left me wanting more despite having been in the theater for nearly two hours and forty minutes. For those familiar with the source material digesting the overwhelming amount of information perhaps won’t seem like that much of a chore, but I found it exhausting to try and process the plot while constantly being distracted by the special effects and rich cinematography. In addition to the soundtrack, which adds an extraordinary element to the picture, Jackie Earle Haley’s performance as Rorschach is absolutely the hidden gem of Watchmen. Haley is able to give Rorschach the same perverseness he gave Ronnie in Little Children, but still managed to give the audience an investment in a character that can only be described as a lunatic.

In an alternate timeline of United States history, where the US won the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon has been elected to his third term, the country stands on the brink of a nuclear disaster and one former vigilante superhero has just been murdered. A fellow former crime fighter begins to warn his other superhero partners, convinced that the murder is the beginning of a conspiracy to eliminate them all. As the only thing standing in the way of nuclear warfare, Dr. Manhattan, disappears from Earth the Watchmen reunite to prevent their own destruction, but discover a far more diabolical scheme.

Watchmen is an incredibly risky movie for Hollywood. Having been marketed as a superhero film, those who have not read the novel will be shocked to be presented with a very mature and sinister picture. The deconstruction of the hero concept in Watchmen is not nearly as restrained as it was in The Dark Knight and the audience is brutally forced to recognize the hypocrisy of the superhero myth. For a story that was deemed unfilmable Zack Snyder did incredibly well creating a unique, dark style for the picture that often pokes fun at itself and the entire superhero genre. Where Snyder fails is character and plot development, which unfortunately are two key elements to any successful picture.

Paranoid Park

Gus Van Sant has two very distinct styles of directing. He uses a more conventional approach for his well known pictures like Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, and most recently Milk. But it is his independent features like Elephant, Last Days, and Paranoid Park that showcase Van Sant’s raw artistic technique. With Paranoid Park Van Sant is able to capture the emotion of his leading character with a fractured story line and a method of cinematography that I can only describe as internalized and instinctive. Every decision that was made in this film making process was meticulously thought out so that every component plays into the overwhelmingly haunting feel of the entire movie. Paranoid Park is one of the best films I have recently seen, and Van Sant is rapidly climbing his way up my list of favorite directors with his dedication to thoughtful and thought provoking cinema.

Alex is a fairly typical apathetic teenage skater kid living in the outskirts of Portland. He has a family that is falling apart and a girlfriend he doesn’t particularly care for. One of Alex’s friends introduces him to Paranoid Park, a skate park that was built illegally by outcast teenagers looking for a place to call their own, and Alex immediately feels a sense of solace. After an evening at Paranoid Park an incident changes Alex’s life in a way that he never saw coming. With a detective snooping around and the questioning of his weird behavior by friends and family has Alex feeling the weight of the world.

Paranoid Park is both a portrait of modern youth and a fresh take on the suspense genre. Van Sant so beautifully creates a dreamlike anxiety with this picture that it almost redeems his horrid remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho, which has easily been the lowest point in Van Sant’s career. Paranoid Park even has a memorable shower scene, that while not as violent as Psycho still encompasses some obvious parallels. Much like many Hitchcock classics Paranoid Park is as much about capturing a state of mind as it is about capturing a story. With Paranoid Park Van Sant embraces his indie roots and delivers a film that is unrefined and evocative of the loneliness of teenage angst and the horridness of buried tragedy.

Religulous

If you are an agnostic, an atheist, or even a believer who just rejects organized religion you’ll appreciate the content of Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous. Everyone else will find themselves deeply offended within the first ten minutes. However you feel about Maher’s thesis that religion is ridiculous, it is fairly obvious that his filmmaking skills leave something to be desired. Maher adopts the Michael Moore style of documentary filmmaking by not only injecting himself into every scene, but also failing to create a film that does nothing more than preach to the choir. Although Moore has a better cinematic eye and a better flair for humor in a documentary than Maher does. Religulous is a perfect film to inspire a lengthy, thought provoking discussions and some lively debate, but it is far from a decent representation of what the genre is all about.

As the title, Religulous, might suggest Bill Maher’s documentary is a satirical film that mocks the very concept of religion. Maher travels around the world to interview all sorts of believers from Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and even a man from the Cannabis Church in Amsterdam. His quest is simple, to find out why people believe what they believe, and to get them to admit that perhaps they actually just don’t know.

Religulous takes no prisoners and, much to my surprise, even defends the validity of Scientology in the context of other world religions. Much like Bill Maher’s presenter speech at this year’s Oscars, his film is self-promoting and indulgent. While some of his points and content are incredibly fascinating, I doubt his film will somehow cause the end of all organized religion. The only thing Religulous has probably caused is an increase in Maher’s hate mail and some nasty discussions on many a message board.

Flight of the Red Balloon

A have very vivid memories of watching the French short The Red Balloon as a small child. I still remember the tattered blue VHS box with the picture of a little boy and a very large red balloon. I’m sure I must of watched that movie at least two dozen times when I was young. This was probably some sort of foreshadowing of my cinema obsession; not many seven year olds have 1950s French films in their movie collection. Flight of the Red Balloon is an homage to my beloved short that I found amazingly beautiful, but has little mass appeal. It is a film about art made for those who love art, after all Hsiao-hsien Hou was commissioned by the Musee d’Orsay to make this it. Every shot could be a portrait, every theme a poem, and every scene another film in and of itself. For most the quiet nature of this film, along with the lack of a story line would bore them to tears. If you are open to the beauty, and dream-like qualities of everyday life Flight of the Red Balloon should not be missed.

Suzanne is a busy single mother, with a career as a puppet theater voice actress and a legal battle with her tenants who have not paid rent in over a year. To help with her household responsibilities Suzanne hires a young Taiwanese film student, Song, to watch her seven year old son, Simon. Song and Simon begin to make a remake of The Red Balloon, but it seems that it is the balloon that is filming them, rather then them filming the balloon.

Flight of the Red Balloon is not a film that is easy to write a review for. It is the kind of piece that I would love to write a twenty page critical analysis of just to try and capture all of the nuances and themes. It is a film that will be celebrated by artists and film scholars, but wholly forgotten by everyone else.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Since the end of the television series Arrested Development Michael Cera seems to only be able to land roles that are variations on his character George-Michael. In Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist we are introduced to Emo George-Michael, complete with skinny jeans and a bass guitar. I’m afraid that quite quickly Cera is becoming the Anthony Michael Hall in this generation of teenage sex comedies. Much like Weird Science and Sixteen Candles, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is not a particularly good film, but there is something about it that resonates with the zit-ridden, voice cracking teenage youth. Even I have to admit I found a certain pleasure in watching this movie despite that I now have some distance from my teenage years. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is kind of a High Fidelity for those under the age of twenty-two, with a soundtrack that is as much of a character as anyone in the film.

Despite being stuck in a deep depression after his girlfriend, Tris, breaks-up with him, Nick ventures out to New York City not only to play with his Queercore band, but also to search for his favorite band, Where’s Fluffy?, who is having a secret show somewhere in the city. At The Jerk Offs gig Nick meets Norah who asks him to be her boyfriend, but for only five minutes. With the help of Nick’s flaming band mates and Caroline, Norah’s inebriated best friend, the two set out on an evening of adventure in Nick’s little yellow Yugo. Nick and Norah have to figure out how to leave the past in order to find their future.

Like most teenage romantic comedies only about a third of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is even somewhat believable. For me the most “out there” element was not the gay Christmas production Nick and Norah stumble in on or the piece of gum that travels throughout the city almost as much as the rest of the cast, but instead the part I struggled with was the entire character of Tris. Her blond bitchiness and sexual manipulation was so horribly over done that it was a total cliché. I found it hard to even picture Nick dating her in the first place, forget the fact that he is still head over heels for her. It probably didn’t help that Alexis Dziena has subpar acting skills, even by teenage comedy standards. In spite of its forced elements, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a fun adventure that makes for an okay night of mindless entertainment.