In short: Bullet Train (2022)

Half a dozen characters of the violent criminal persuasion converge on the same bullet train in Japan. Their diverse missions turn out to have rather more connective tissue than they are first led to believe, so it’s a good time to team up and betray or murder one another in various, changing constellations, while the laws of physics turn increasingly optional.

One could snark about how few Japanese people seem to populate the criminal underworld of the Japan of David Leitch’s adaptation of a Japanese novel by Kotaro Isaka that features rather less white people. But then, I find it difficult to argue with a film that casts Brad Pitt as the Big Lebowski of killers, and has quite as much fun pitting him and the other comical grotesqueries populating the film against each other as this one has.

Like most of Leitch’s other films, this wants to be action cinema as POP! (a curiously British feeling idea of POP! for a guy from Wisconsin to boot); unlike most of Leitch’s other films, it actually achieves this goal with a kind of gleeful enthusiasm that I can hardly read as anything but a pure joy at creating cinema that’s absolutely free from all pressures to be serious and thereby can feel curiously freeing and subversive. Bullet Train clearly knows all the rules of character building and plot structure, when and how a film is supposed to use flashbacks, how much an action scene is allowed to break the laws of physics and logic. Having realized them, it then goes about very consciously breaking all of them in clever (sometimes clever-dumb) ways that’ll either leave an audience cheering, giggling madly, or throwing tomatoes at the screen. I found myself on the side of the gigglers here, more than a bit astonished about how seeming randomness can feel free and freeing when applied with as much thought as it is here.

In short: Babylon (2022)

One of the very first shots in Damien Chazelle’s is of an elephant endlessly projectile crapping into (and over, and around, and probably under) the camera, so you really can’t blame the movie for not being honest about itself, and not just about its preoccupation with bodily fluids.

Supposedly, this follows the travails of three characters – played by Diego Calva, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt – through the decadent early years of Hollywood and portrays the way anarchy turned into just another business In theory it also says some stuff about the perniciousness of institutional racism. In practice, this is either filmic diarrhoea or a director incessantly masturbating into your eyes.

I am generally perfectly fine with showy direction, and have rather a lot of favourite directors who follow the rule of style as substance, but there’s a difference between focussing on style and showing off so much, a film’s sheer excess becomes so huge, it actually starts to feel lifeless through it, something Chazelle achieves here in a series of never-ending, over-edited, over-scored, over-planned, and over-staged sequences. There’s really not a single second of this damn thing that leaves room for any idea or performance to breathe. It’s all just shouting, blaring, stupid edits, and the least interesting idea of decadence and excess spat into endless, never-ending, really never, never ending scenes of a length you usually only find in backyard horror movies. Makers of those of course have the excuse of not having directed a pretty great Academy Award winning musical, among other things. This thing just makes Michael Bay look restrained.

Given its three hour (though it rather feels like three days) length, it’s pretty astonishing how little Babylon actually has to say about its characters or early Hollywood. All of its self-referentiality never rises about the quality of mediocre in-jokes, so much so that I now find some of my criticism towards Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood rather crude, for Tarantino’s film has life and interest in its characters as human beings, and fulfils ambitions beyond shouting in your face for three hours.

Babylon has Brad Pitt sleepwalking, Calva making googly eyes at Robbie, and Robbie doing Harley Quinn with a different haircut while around them, an intensely loud amount of nothing screeches. At least, someone has finally found the perfect dictionary example for “overdirected”.

In short: Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood (2019)

Despite my general enthusiasm for the works of Quentin Tarantino, I went into this expecting to hate it, for I have developed a bit of a distaste for films in which Hollywood people glorify Hollywood, usually leading to a level of intellectual and philosophical dishonesty even worse than what you’ll encounter in your typical Hollywood biopic, if you can imagine that.

However, that distaste was blown away rather quickly by the way Tarantino focuses on the has-beens and the never-quite-weres of that supposedly magical place, the dreams that never quite came true and the egos not only too big for their talents (because you can still go far without much talent but with a humongous ego in Hollywood, as certain careers alas prove all too well) but also too weird for a normal life. Not surprisingly, it’s the weirdoes Tarantino’s heart beats for here, though not the truly nasty ones; those get bloodily murdered.

Quentin’s kind of weirdoes are wonderfully embodied by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt here. DiCaprio manages to turn his aging cowboy actor Rick Dalton at once pathetic, loveable, annoying, and very very funny; he also demonstrates a fine understanding of a very specific kind of brilliant acting only found in low budget movies, programmers and other despised corners of the land of movies, places I tend to call home. Whereas Pitt embodies an over-aged kind of cool that only barely hides a deep goofiness and a certain emotional helplessness (a contemporary term of description would probably be “manchild”, but to me, that’s always been the kind of phrase only a judgemental asshole should use) in such a lovely way, I’m even willing to forgive him his Prozac turn in Ad Astra.

This is of course not a film interested in tight plotting or other new-fangled nonsense of this kind, but rather about its two main characters ambling through their lives, having encounters and small adventures, and from time to time crossing ways with the Manson “Family” so Quentin can at least get a little of the old ultra violence in, and critics who like this sort of thing can nod sagely and talk about “the dark side of the Hollywood dream”.

Me, I would have been perfectly happy without the whole Manson business, and without the obligatory explosion of violence. That would also have helped to rid the film of its other problem: the scenes when it pops in with Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate, who is rich, and beautiful, and so very very boring, doing nothing of interest whatsoever except breaking up our fun time with Leo and Brad while Tarantino’s camera leers so male-gazey on every single bit of her body, even I felt a little uncomfortable. I was also wishing for a female character with a personality in her stead.


Despite being structurally rather important for the movie as a whole (some might argue also for the point of it as a whole, but eh, points…), these pretty large flaws never feel too terrible while actually watching Once Upon a Time, never hindering me from being really damn charmed by most of the proceedings on screen.

Three Films Make A Post: One hell of a rodeo.

Lasso (2017): If you can’t beat the competition in the backwoods slasher space with your movie’s quality, there’s always the time honoured use of the gimmick. So, as the title promises/threatens, Evan Cecil’s Lasso is indeed a backwoods slasher movie with rodeo and cowboy themed kills. Some of them are even pretty fun in an at once pleasantly nasty and ridiculous way. But alas, that’s all the film has to offer, for the characters are as bland and generic as you’d expect – having one arm isn’t a character trait, you know –, the plotting is by the numbers at best and stretches out nothing to great lengths at its worst, while actual suspense is absent.

Still, this one could have been much, much worse.

Spy Game (2001): For a Tony Scott movie, this spy affair with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt (two guys who managed to get impressive careers out of pretty faces, an understanding of how to best utilize their limited ranges as actors, and clever choice of roles) is downright sedate. It’s clear that Scott at times tries to emulate the style of classic 70s spy films with early 2000s technology, but he’s still not a terribly great choice for a spy film that isn’t going bigger than James Bond all of the time. Scott’s too showy a director to provide the subtlety a good espionage movie needs, even the sort that’s a third of an action movie, and simply not thoughtful (as a Scott detractor, I’m tempted to say not intelligent, but I didn’t know the guy, so…) enough to get into the questions of personal ethics, political expediency and morals the best of these movies explore. Though he is clearly trying, and not vomiting stupid camera tricks into my eyes for most of the film’s running time, so that’s a plus.

(Tyler Rake) Extraction (2020): I’m actually rather happy that Netflix is putting money into higher budget action movie fare like this, but Sam Hargrave’s Extraction doesn’t really scratch the action itch like Netflix’s Indonesian and Filipino examples of the last few years do for me. It is clearly trying to go as all out as these films, but there’s a strangely bland quality to the action, rather as if you were watching drafts for a nasty, bloody action movie than the actual thing.


The by-the-numbers script by Joe Russo (who has done much, much better in the in theory much more restrictive superhero genre) certainly doesn’t help, nor does Chris Hemsworth’s not exactly exciting lead performance. And at this point, Hemsworth is good when he has the right script to work from, but can’t make a film look better than it actually is.

In short: Ad Astra (2019)

A relatively near future where everyone is heavily tranquilized (or all actors are drugged, who knows for sure?). Energy surges apparently coming from Neptune blast through our solar system. Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) and his daddy issues very slowly make their way towards the planet to perhaps do something about the situation as well as said issues.

I’m not one to blame a science fiction movie for not being a colourful adventure full of talking trees and raccoons with PTSD (though, actually…), but if you want to make a less adventuresome science fiction movie, please don’t end up like James Gray’s po-faced epic here, telling a tiny, clichéd story over two hours that feel more like years.

The film’s main problem is that it is desperately trying to be a movie about human psychology but clearly has no clue how to go about it. So we get stuff like the ridiculous scene in which Pitt’s character is attacked by a monkey (in space, nobody can hear you fling poo), quickly followed by another one of his endless “psych evaluations” in which he talks about his unexpressed anger. It’s as if the monkey is some kind of…metaphor!? Whoa. This is symptomatic for a film that clearly can’t imagine an audience that has Pitt’s character arc from the white middle-aged dude who is repressing his feelings to the white middle-aged dude who isn’t anymore because he wrestled his father (in space!) figured out after the first ten minutes or so, and so dooms us to twiddle our thumbs watching Pitt not express feelings until the film gets up to speed too. And if you still don’t get it, let’s add a mumbled, pointless, and monotone monologue by Pitt that tells us exclusively things we either already understand or that the film should show us instead of mumble at us, as per the cinematic rule of “show, don’t mumble!”.


All of which is a particular problem since that’s all there is to the film: its world building is perfunctory and vague, the acting is bland and impersonal (with Pitt, usually a guy who works well within the parameters of his limited abilities, clearly out of his depth), and it consciously rejects all visionary elements and concepts of science fiction (what I’d call the good and important stuff), aiming for a philosophy of tending one’s own garden instead, perhaps mumbling of awe and wonder but certainly never showing them.

Some Thoughts About World War Z (2013)

Not surprisingly, the attempt to adapt Max Brooks's novel "World War Z" to the script structure all contemporary Hollywood movies have to follow, lest their audience would have to think a second or two a day, is pretty much a failure. In fact, the novel is a book that fits the "one pretty white guy with a father complex saves the world with the same dramatic beats all other mainstream films that came out this year had" particularly badly, seeing as its great strength is its width of different perspectives.

That point is also the big difference between the novel and pretty much all other approaches to the zombie apocalypse, which usually concentrate on a few people huddling up in very limited locations. Turns out that Brad Pitt jetting around the world being rather heroic (though at least lacking the father complex) is no good replacement for that approach, nor is the film's reliance on the same tired old set pieces zombie media of all type have delivered since Saint Romero delivered the gospel, realized by director Marc Forster with competence and in that semi-realist style that never quite gets gritty or real enough to deliver any actual emotional punches. Pitt is after all not actually acting but starring, and every other character (including his family) is only ever there to be visited for a bit or to motivate our protagonist to continue being heroic. Frankly, it's just a painfully boring approach, and a perfect example of what's wrong with scriptwriting in Hollywood right now - and I say that as a guy who does like blockbuster cinema well enough to call Pacific Rim his film of the year.

However, even if I choose to ignore the film being just another zombie movie but with a higher budget and less guts (in every sense of the word), it's just not a very good one. It's not only that the zombies are as lame and generic as the script (by J. Michael Straczynski whose writing career is a series of wasted chances, and Drew Goddard and Damon Lindelof who both really can do much, much better yet only do better about half of the time): what World War Z is lacking seems to be conviction, a willingness not to just go to unpleasant places but to stay there, to present the end of the world with actual gravity, or to at least provoke emotions that go beyond lazy shorthand that assumes an audience so programmed to react to certain types of scenes in a certain way and therefore never seems to get around to thinking form and function of its elements through.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,zombies,marc forster,brad pitt

In short: Killing Them Softly (2012)

Squirrel (Vincent Curatola), a small-time criminal, has a plan for his even smaller-time acquaintance Frankie (Scoot McNairy), and Frankie's junkie friend Russell (Ben Mendelsohn): the two are supposed to raid an illegal gambling room belonging to the local mob. Usually, this sort of thing has lethal repercussions, but Squirrel has it all figured out. This particular game is held by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta). Markie had already hired people to raid one of his own games in the past, so, Squirrel thinks, he'll be the guy the mob will make responsible, leaving his friends and especially his planning hand untouched and unknown.

Not surprisingly, Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), the fixer the mob calls in to mete out appropriate punishments, does not fall for that particular trick: Markie surely couldn't be that stupid. Not that it matters much. A business has to uphold appearances, so Markie has to die even though Jackie knows he's innocent. Frankie and Russell, on the other hand, could actually get away scot free if not for Russell's loose tongue. Clearly, things won't end too well for anybody except Jackie.

Andrew Dominik's adaptation of a George V. Higgins novel, on the other hand, is the good stuff, at least if you like your hardboiled crime movies laconic, grim, with an underlying sneer towards the American Dream yet also a sense of compassion. Not that this compassion saves even a single one of the characters here: Late capitalist America is not the kind of place where compassion plays an active role in anything anymore, no matter what the politicians on TV might say about ideals (and as we all know, ideals that aren't followed by actions are worse than no ideals at all).

It's really rather fascinating to see how alive the old tropes of this sort of thing can still feel in the hands of a director and writer who knows how to make them sing without having to use grand gestures or letting his cast do all-caps ACTING. It's not that kind of gangster movie, but one that concerns itself with the losers, the lost, and the people at the bottom of the criminal food chain, so all grandstanding would be completely out of place.

Instead, direction and performances go for nuance, a sad somewhat bitter humour, and dialogue that is intensely stylized to take on the appearance of naturalism. One could accuse Killing Them Softly of silently wallowing in the sordid. The lack of glamour, however, is rather the point of the whole affair, with characters whose lives don't so much fall apart - there hasn't been much whole about anyone's life here for a long time - but just end the same way they have always been.

Killing Them Softly is a fantastic piece of work, with a director and an ensemble cast (there are also James Gandolfini as depressed killer and Sam Shepard as mob councillor to mention) that completely disappears inside the material.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,crime,andrew dominik,brad pitt,scoot mcnairy,ben mendelsohn,james gandolfini,sam shepard