The Screengrab : review

Screengrab Review: Watchmen (Paul's Take)

Paul Clark — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Well, it’s finally here, folks. After more than two decades in development, Watchmen is finally hitting screens nationwide this weekend. In a way, it’s sort of miraculous that it actually panned out. Of course, the road hasn’t been easy, with a seemingly endless parade of directors, screenwriters, producers and stars attached to the project at some point. But to me, it’s even more interesting to observe how comic book culture has progressed to this point. Just over a decade ago, it seems like Batman was the only comic getting the blockbuster treatment, and just about everything else was played for campy nostalgia, e.g. The Phantom. Hell, back in 2000 studios were worried whether the X-Men could sell tickets. So the fact that there’s not only a massively budgeted adaptation of Watchmen out there but also one that’s surprisingly faithful to its dense, ambitious source material just shows how far comics- and comic-book movies- have come in the last ten years. If only the movie was better, this saga would have the happy ending that all Watchmen fans crave.

Admittedly, Watchmen is a tough nut to crack. Combining a murder mystery, a deconstruction of superhero mythology, and a meditation on society brought to the brink of apocalypse, it’s a far cry from the classic potboilers of yesteryear. Even in an adaptation as close as this one, some material would inevitably be pared away (so long, “Tales of the Black Freighter”). But while director Zack Snyder has sworn fidelity to the original graphic novel from the beginning, it’s one thing to visually translate Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ creation to the big screen, and another entirely to turn it into something cinematic. And although Snyder pulls off the former, he falls short of the latter. It looks great, but it never quite works as an honest-to-goodness movie.

Part of the problem is that Snyder never manages to reconcile the inherent expectations of comic book blockbusters with the more literary aspects of Watchmen. There’s plenty of violence in the graphic novel, but to me the action has always taken a back seat to the ideas and themes. Watchmen is less about its heroes’ powers than about their differing ideologies and the way they’re brought out, not only by their circumstances, but also by the times in which they live. This idea that even mankind’s saviors are complex and troubled is a potent one.

Unfortunately, Snyder doesn’t explore this idea in much depth. It’s a shame, since there’s a lot of potential here, especially among the more “freakish” members of the group- Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), essentially a masked Travis Bickle; The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), an aging Captain America gone to seed; and “quantum hero” Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), whose sad plight has led him to grow ever more detached from human concerns. But while these characters are pregnant with possibilities, Snyder instead makes the least interesting Watchmen- the second Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) and Night Owl II (Patrick Wilson)- the central players in the drama. It doesn’t help that Akerman’s performance is easily the worst in the movie- she can’t even convincingly gasp for air when she first arrives on Mars- or that Wilson is saddled with a look that makes him look less like Gibbons’ creation than a young Chevy Chase.

But if Snyder doesn’t quite get a grasp on the thematic and subtextual undercurrents of Watchmen, he doesn’t make it work as a straight-up comic book movie either. Oddly enough, some of the blame should be placed on Snyder and his insistence on taking his visual cues straight from the graphic novel. On a shot-by-shot basis, the film is often remarkable to behold, but in putting them together, Snyder and editor William Hoy too often fall back on the shot order used in the graphic novel rather than editing the film in a way that allows scenes to build naturally and in an exciting way. The result is a film that feels like it’s been frozen in amber, beautiful but difficult to embrace.

That said, the movie is far from a disaster. In fact, there’s still plenty to admire about Watchmen, beginning with Snyder’s attention to detail. If nothing else, the visuals of Watchmen are eye candy to fans who’ve longed for years to see this story brought to life. And some of performances are actually quite good, especially those given by Crudup, Morgan, and Haley, who not only feels just right as Rorschach but also even delivers his trademark “hurm” perfectly. Less successful is Matthew Goode as the formidably intelligent Ozymandias- Goode looks and acts the part well enough, but the role really needed some big-star charisma to make it sing, and it’s a little disappointing to think what Tom Cruise, who was allegedly interest in playing the role, might have done with it.

When I saw Watchmen the other night, I was accompanied by someone who’d never read the graphic novel but enjoys darker comic book movies like The Dark Knight. And while I couldn’t help but judge the movie in comparison to the original material (and frankly, doesn’t Snyder more or less invite this?), my friend was able to enjoy the film on the screen, unburdened as he was by expectations. I think this contrast is illustrative. If you’re in the market for something more than the usual heroes-and-villains comic book thriller, Watchmen might just hit the spot. But if you’ve seen this story play out in its ideal medium, any other version will be inherently disappointing. My only hope is that maybe some of those who enjoy the movie will be inspired to pick up the graphic novel, so they too can experience this material the way it was meant to be experienced.

Screengrab Review: "Medicine for Melancholy"

Nick Schager — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

There are limits to how many poeticisms a film can reasonably support, and after a fairly entrancing two-thirds, Medicine for Melancholy finally uncovers them. Barry Jenkins’ debut feature has a black-and-white palette and a romantic narrative fixated on skin color, as the day-long escapades of Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo (Tracey Heggins) touch upon, if not overtly address, their status as part of the seven percent of San Francisco’s African-American population. However, before the two can discuss their minority conditions (and differing outlooks on it), they must first meet-cute, which takes place on the hung-over morning after a hookup at an acquaintance’s party. In his opening sequence, Jenkins proves an assured, astute chronicler of believable details and atmosphere – the awkward shared glances between Micah and Jo (when, that is, they manage to look each other in the eyes); their respective brushing of teeth with their fingers; the slow, dazed gathering of clothes and accessories on the way out the door. It’s a mood-setter par excellence, and the film remains perceptively attuned to its characters’ situations once they depart, with Micah vainly attempting to strike up conversation (by trying to learn his aloof one-night-stand’s name) and then – after they abruptly separate – tracking her down to return the wallet she left in their cab.

Reunited, Jo reluctantly agrees to let Micah tag along on an errand that she’s doing on behalf of her boyfriend, who’s away on vacation. And, more importantly to the racially hyper-conscious Micah, white. This scenario offends Micah, who subsequently takes Jo to the Museum of the African Diaspora in an effort to increase her awareness of her heritage, an increasingly contentious topic given that Jo doesn’t feel guilty about her inter-racial relationship nor does she define herself first and foremost as African-American. Jenkins attempts to have this undercurrent – as well as the related issue of housing rights and gentrification, explicitly addressed via an egregiously shoehorned-in scene in which random community activists discuss the looming revocation of city rent control – spring naturally from his characters. Yet his dialogue often lets him down, the couple’s bulletpoint-laden debates seeming first and foremost like self-conscious attempts to infuse the Before Sunrise-style romantic drama with socio-economic heft. Better are those moments when the writer/director simply focuses on his two characters’ gradually developing affection, such as an impromptu guitar performance of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s theme song by Micah that exudes a silly, unpretentious spontaneity typical of the film’s finest off-the-cuff incidents.

The same holds true for Jenkins’ direction, which at times boasts an endearing Cassavetes looseness – such as during Micah and Jo’s visit to a rollicking, effusive indie-rock show where, to Micah’s frustration, they’re the only black attendees – but increasingly strains too hard for lyrical expressiveness. It’s a shame that Jenkins can’t leave himself out of Medicine for Melancholy a tad more, as Micah and Jo’s rapport regularly strikes a genuine balance between smitten and prickly, and his story smoothly captures how intense attraction to another can inspire a desire – often rooted in irrational fantasy – to alter oneself in order to facilitate compatibility. The preponderance of earnest indie ballads on the soundtrack, frequently melded to loving panoramas of San Francisco’s diverse (and strangely unpopulated) metropolitan districts spied out of moving car windows, eventually trespass into affectation, causing the proceedings’ winning naturalism to soon dissipate under the weight of excessive embellishments. Concluding on a fittingly less-than-happy note, the promising but uneven film knows what it wants to say, if not, ultimately, exactly how to say it.

Screengrab Review: "Serbis"

Nick Schager — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Nastiness is Serbis’ stock and trade, its action set in a decaying Filipino porn theater (named “Family”) where overflowing toilets flood bathroom floors, the peeling walls resemble flaking skin, and the rear end of one resident boasts a silver dollar-sized boil that – upon being harshly treated with an empty beer bottle – oozes a thin stream of puss down the gentleman’s ass cheek. Plus, the theater, earning its revenue from double bills of tattered X-rated gems with titles like “Seedling,” primarily stays afloat by functioning as a venue for gay cruising and the subsequent sex which takes place, explicitly, in the theater’s murky aisles. The film is not, to be sure, a tourist-board commercial for the Filipino city of Angeles. Nonetheless, there is method behind director Brillante Mendoza’s filthy madness, his goals at once sensory and thematic in nature. Guided by curiosity about his uniquely decrepit environment and its barely subsisting protagonists, the theater-operating Pineda clan, while at the same time subtly casting its portrait as indicative of the third-world condition, it’s a scraggly, messy, often aimless, and yet consistently amusing and engaging work of black comedy-cum-social-realism.

Translated as “Service,” the film’s title refers specifically to the male prostitutes plying their wares at the movie house. It also, however, refers to the toil of the Pineda family, led by Nayda (Jacklyn Jose), who manages the theater while trying to keep an eye on her children and her husband, the latter because she’s secretly carrying on an incestuous affair (or, at least, dreaming of doing so) with one of her younger relatives. Such dirty clandestine affairs are the norm in Serbis, from the hetero, homo and tranny Johns offering up carnal pleasures in the dark, to establishment owner Nana Flor (Gina Pareño), who’s suing her cheating husband for having fathered a second family, to Alan (Coco Martin), who’s accidentally knocked up girlfriend Meryl (Mercedes Cabral). Sex is the only thing these characters have control over, and if they wield it clumsily and irresponsibly, their salacious behavior remains an act of agency in a life defined by circuitousness, which Mendoza conveys via a raft of handheld tracking shots that follow Nayda and company up, down, through and around the dilapidated theater’s staircases, hallways and cramped quarters.

Mendoza’s cinematography has a herky-jerkiness that’s in tune with his rickety narrative, or at least what passes for one, as Serbis barely bothers with storytelling save for the drama surrounding Nana Flor’s court case. The mucky aesthetic and formless plot, though sometimes resulting in deadening torpor, aid the director’s underlying aim to fully situate viewers in a particular space, an endeavor that, admittedly, requires some acclimation. The more time one spends in the gross Family Theater, the more one gets an intimate feel for the joint’s sweaty and sticky, humid and soiled, desperate and funky, bizarre and scandalous, pungent and alive atmosphere. It’s not clear Mendoza has much to say about his subjects aside from the fact that their disreputable, skanky circumstances exemplify their social standing. Yet the thinness of his argument ultimately proves secondary to his success at evoking a palpable sense of time and place, one in which anxiety and longing, seen in the stern countenance of mother-boss Nayda and the sorrowful eyes of Nana Flor, freely commingle with the grime of open-market prostitution and the absurd humor of seeing said carnal enterprises rudely interrupted by the random theater appearance of a runaway goat.

Screengrab Review: "Just Another Love Story"

Sarah Clyne Sundberg — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:28:00 GMT

Do you ever wonder if certain Scandinavian movies get on the U.S. arthouse circuit simply by virtue of being Scandinavian? The Danish title of this thriller translates literally to "Love in the Movies". Danish writer and director Ole Bornedal kicks off his movie by three clips advertised as "love scenes." In quick succession: One, a dying man, Jonas (Anders W. Berthelsen) lies in the rain as a howling woman kneels over him; Two, the same couple attempt nookie in their matrimonial bed, but fail; Three, a near-naked sexy young couple in a third-world hotel room. The woman, Julia (Rebecka Hemse) is about to shoot her boyfriend through the chest. No lack of passion there.

Next thing we know Julia is back in Denmark, in a car speeding along a highway. She is on the run from traumatic events that transpired in Southeast Asia. Jonas and his wife meanwhile are in their car, with their two kids safely strapped into their seats in the back. Then, Wham! Jonas and family narrowly escape death as Julia's speeding car misses them by an inch and explodes into another car just in front of them. Julia lives, but ends up blind and in a coma. Meet-cute.

Jonas can't get Julia out of his mind. He visits her in the hospital where her family believes he is the boyfriend Julia met in Southeast Asia. Jonas goes along with them on this and starts spending all his free time at her bedside. He becomes obsessed with her. A young woman in a coma is infinitely more thrilling than the wife, kids and mortgage back home, after all.

So it goes. The femme fatale attracts the middle-aged family man. Fragmented memories of the love-of-her-life abusive former boyfriend hover. This can't end well. Peril comes to Europe, from the East. Could this be the director's clever way of highlighting clichés in film? Perhaps, but likely not. Not a bad way to spend two hours, but Tarantino it ain't.

Screengrab DVD Review: Pierrot le fou

Peter Smith — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:55:00 GMT

Were the world a simpler and gentler place, Pierrot le fou would consist of 110 minutes of Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Anna Karina) relaxing on the seaside. Instead, it's the most exhilarating elegy for a failed marriage and betrayal you're ever likely to see. Jean-Luc Godard's tenth film marked a turning point for the director, who divorced Karina around the time he made it. Afterwards, he abandoned its romanticism and upped the political references and Brechtian tactics that lie on the sideline here. It might be a good entry point for Godard neophytes, made at a moment where he could still celebrate American directors like Frank Tashlin, Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller (who makes a cameo) and rage against American foreign policy, maintaining an uneasy balance of experimentation and accessibility.

A married father and aspiring novelist, Ferdinand abandons his family to go on the road with Marianne, the babysitter. After stealing $50,000, the couple is forced to flee a gang of criminals connected with Marianne's brother, who's involved in gun-running. But Godard's disinterest in the film noir-derived narrative (based on Lionel White's novel Obsession) is palpable. He's more excited about the images he's creating — especially when aided by cinematographer Raoul Coutard. Throughout, the colors are dazzling, especially in a sequence where fireworks are reflected in the windshield as Ferdinand and Marianne drive. Frequent outbursts of violence — including an early instance of waterboarding — serve as a reminder of the fragility of love and life, but the film also takes time out for numerous images of art, several musical numbers and a trip to the bowling alley. Like many French New Wave films, Pierrot le fou ends unhappily, but its blissful exploration of emotional highs and lows still thrills. — Steve Erickson

DVD EXTRAS: The second disc includes vintage interviews with Godard, Belmondo and Karina, as well as a recent talk with the latter. It also features two documentaries: A "Pierrot" Primer, which features commentary from frequent Criterion guest and Godard collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin, and Godard, L'Amour, which concentrates on Godard's relationship with Karina both as a wife and actress.

Review: Diary of the Dead

Peter Smith — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:07:00 GMT

Diary of the Dead is the latest in George Romero's now forty-year-old "[Noun] of the Dead" franchise. It's back-to-basics in tone and production, after 2005's massive Land of the Dead. It would be easy to accuse Romero of trend-hopping, based on the film's "found footage" presentation and release in proximity to Cloverfield and Brian De Palma's Redacted. But the film parts from the recent surge of Blair Witch-ian diegesis by opening with narration: a character explaining that she's edited and produced the film you're about to watch with the intent not just to record but to frighten. Instead of coming off as pretentiously meta, this contextualizing helps you suspend your disbelief. Romero makes the most of that suspension, and the result is a strange movie that succeeds far more often than it fails.

Foregoing the established continuity of the previous Dead films, Diary begins on day one of the zombie apocalypse. A group of film students are shooting a horror movie in the woods when they hear on the radio that the dead are rising from the grave. It's a simple set-up, colored by Romero's trademark winking humor, but it works thanks to the reactions of the cast. There's no panic, just a dumbstruck acceptance. Protagonist Jason continues to film as the group begins their journey to his girlfriend's home. Where Cloverfield and Blair Witch used a camera-wielding character to emphasize how technology acts as a buffer between humanity and disaster, Jason's compulsion to keep documenting the end of the world is actually the core conflict in Diary of the Dead. The camera, the character it's tied to, and its angry, incredulous subjects emphasize conflicting human impulses during disaster: do I document or do I help. As one puts it, "I want to help them, but I can't, cause I'm fucking plugged in," and to Romero, that about says it all. — John Constantine