Why 'Beasts of the Southern Wild' Won’t Win the Oscar

February 1, 2013 3:00 am Leave a Comment

Anyone at all remotely interested in films knows that the Oscars are a bit of a sham, and just to be clear, we’ve known this for a while. By 1942 — when “How Green Was My Valley” beat out “Citizen Kane” and “The Maltese Falcon” for best picture — the trend was set. Each year’s Academy Awards ceremony almost never rewards the year’s truly best film. The winner needs a killer story, an aggressive producer and the eyes of the nation. Veteran filmmakers like Steven Spielberg (with his dastardly cohort Harvey Weinstein) usually carry these factors in spades. So as usually happens, the safest and most predictable film wins. There are no controversies. There are no surprises. But there still remains that vast and almost impenetrable pre-ceremony divide between what will win and what should: baby-faced director Benh Zeitlin’s debut feature “Beasts of the Southern Wild” falls in with the latter.

In this film, 5-year-old Hushpuppy lives with her imperfect and alcoholic father Wink in the Bathtub, an impoverished bayou community set squarely in the sights of both a deadly storm and a pack of recently unfrozen prehistoric creatures called Aurochs. But rather than flee their home, Hushpuppy and Wink brave the destruction and lean on the Bathtub’s other survivors to maintain their collectively penniless way of life. This is a defiance that never dies, even as time runs out on Wink’s failing heart. Eventually, it is Hushpuppy alone who must carry the torch of her ravaged and incomplete community, and it is with this imaginative little girl that the greatest triumphs of life and the living of it are revealed.

From a purely logistical standpoint, this is exactly the kind of film that could make a run at the Oscars. After all, it’s about a broken American minority family that, on some level, finds the meaning of happiness. Voters eat this kind of shit up, but only if it’s spoon-fed to them. Thankfully, Zeitlin refuses to do any such thing, much like his apparent mentor Terrence Malick.

Last year, the modern-day auteur dropped a spiritual and philosophical bombshell on our heads: “The Tree of Life” was nothing short of an atomic wasteland of moral quandaries and probing questions — of the “Is there a meaning to life?” variety. But he wrapped this expansive thematic framework onto a loose (more like plotless) narrative that, for all its pretty images, confounded moviegoers much more than it entertained them. That’s not to say it wasn’t a critically crowning achievement: It snagged numerous independent awards, including at Cannes.

“Beasts” has done much of the same thing. Critics across the spectrum have praised Zeitlin’s debut, hailing it as an astounding insight into a little Southern slice of poor but hardly downtrodden Americana. Indie awards shows (like Cannes and Sundance) have agreed. But don’t book it for one of the Academy’s golden statuettes. That’s a different arena entirely.

And while many people have in fact checked out “Beasts” in some form or fashion, you won’t find its buildup buzz roaring like Aurochs in heat. If anything, the noise has been noticeably absent. No one thinks it has a chance to win, and that’s because it doesn’t. “Beasts” is a lost cause for best picture, just like every Malick movie that’s ever been made or ever will be made.

But I want to believe that this film, which is without a doubt the most visionary little flick to come out in 2012, stands some kind of a reasonable chance. Sure, it’s not “The Godfather” or “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Casablanca.” It’s just little Hushpuppy and her father: individuals that, through some kind of humanistic miracle, resist death and decay in two remarkable blows. They live lives of passion and vitality that in the hands of anyone other than Benh Zeitlin would crumple and then combust. Instead, we get a carefully controlled explosion of sights and wonder that you have to think deserves some kind of higher recognition. If the purpose of the Oscars is to award the year’s best film, the award should go to this film. Too bad it won’t.

Back on Madison Avenue, but only briefly

October 12, 2012 6:28 am Leave a Comment

“Mad Men” is a nice show and all, but I’ve been wanting to learn about 1960s advertising without womanizing, boozing and blackfacing interrupting my experience. This past week at Yale, I was in luck. Posters across campus featuring dapper fellows in black suits and cheeky women in yellow dresses invited me to attend a screening of Tim Kirby’s documentary “Selling the Sixties: How Madison Avenue Dreamed the Decade,” with a Q&A featuring producer and Yale 2012 Poynter Fellow Adam Harrison Levy tacked on for good measure. As I walked to the event, I was hoping to soon be in a room full of people in retro clothing chatting over martinis and smoking their lungs black. My fellow attendees’ decidedly contemporary tennis shoes and jeans brought me back to reality — and 2012. No matter. Though “Selling the Sixties” is too short to fully accomplish its creator’s goals, it does a decent job of capturing and trying to explain the zeitgeist of yesterday.

What first struck me about the film — a real slap in the face — was learning that the BBC commissioned this documentary as a way to prepare the Brits for “Mad Men.” As Levy explained, the rights to show many of the advertisements in this documentary were cleared only in the UK, not in the USA. The footage is American, the interviewees are American, but the narrator — a pivotal point of any documentary — isn’t. Denis Lawson is a shining example of Proper British Dialect; kudos to him for not sounding condescending towards a foreign culture. He keeps a distant tone throughout, his words making him sound like a well-spoken but slightly detached teacher. He does know when to use his voice to acknowledge the anxieties of the period, as when he states that the main question of the abundant 1960s was “how to be happy, not how long will this happiness last,” but it’s still odd to hear a Brit tell me about America. His dialect, though it helps with objectivity, becomes a barrier to a full immersion into the narrative.

British narrator aside, the film goes full force into the American Sixties. The content moves in leaps and bounds, touching the ground only for fleeting moments. Even though the narrative is bookended by John F. Kennedy’s brief presidency and largely concerned with only one overarching question, i.e. asking what America’s material consumption really signified, there’s just too much stuff and too many interesting people. George Lois, a former adman and a model for Don Draper, provides funny reflections. Daniel Horowitz, a cultural historian, talks about the pioneering role of Ernst Dichter in exploring consumer behavior and sexualized consumer culture (in one ad, buyers talk about cars’ curves and softness in lingering detail). Joel Meyerowitz, a photographer, discusses Irish, Italian, Jewish and other “ethnic” young men who slammed the industry with bright, quick, sexy ads … and there’s still more! If only the documentary had the time to weave all this together and make a cohesive point.

The structure, though, is serviceable — and sometimes exceptional. The general presentation is, unsurprisingly for a documentary of this style, a mixture of talking heads, still images and archival footage: an interviewee says that the Sears and Roebuck catalogues were like Bibles; we see fingers stroking pages that promised glorious consumption. But then there are the unexpected moments, the truly striking ones, in which some of editor Michael Duly’s work cuts into the mind and into the heart in an instant. Consider the montage of images that accompanies an American-accented reading of Allen Ginsburg’s iconic “Howl” (1955), which equates America’s over-consumption and messy industrialization to the sacrifice-demanding pagan god Moloch. Factory work portrayals transition to a seemingly random shot of woman turning to the right with a slice of cake in her hands. The background sound is a cacophony of ad soundtracks. And the score effectively uses horns to hammer in the idea that a darkness aptly identified by Ginsberg lurks behind the trappings of abundance.

But just when the documentary is about to enter the more turbulent — the more interesting — part of the 60s after Kennedy’s assassination, it stops. Lights come on. Back to 2012.

Here at the Yale of the present, the black hole of midterm preparation sucked in most students, but a couple of us did manage to squeeze the screening into our schedules. But why did we care? We can’t be nostalgic for a decade that we never experienced and that’s so different from our own. Advertising now, Levy said, “is in a more fragmented landscape.” We have more than three channels. We lean on the internet, not newspapers or magazines. But according to Yale School of Art lecturer Jessica Helfand ’82 ART ’89, who includes “Selling in the Sixties” in the curriculum for her class “Studies in Visual Biography,” the 1960s still resonates today because the period parallels our own in very specific ways.

“Beyond the lure of Mad Men, the early 1960s was an era of cautious optimism. Not unlike contemporary culture — the Occupy movements, the Obama campaign for “hope” — it was an exciting time to be young and engaged in a greater good,” Helfand wrote in an email to the News. “And for all the aspirational similarities, we are also two generations transfigured by unprecedented tragedy: the assassination of a young President was, in a sense, the 9/11 of that era.”

If only we had a better Beatles equivalent than One Direction.

“The Master” drinks its own Kool-Aid

September 28, 2012 1:00 am Leave a Comment

“The Master,” a new film by writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, follows shattered World War II veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) as he is drawn into to The Cause, a fictional cult, in 1950s America.

The film’s title refers to Lancaster Dodd, the cult’s leader, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who bears a remarkable resemblance to L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology. Many have noted that Anderson has written a commentary on Hollywood’s favorite controversial religion. But his goals are darker, and more far reaching, than providing fodder for Tom Cruise jokes.

Shot in sumptuous 65mm and edited over a percussive pizzicato score by Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead fame), “The Master” plays like an epic stuck on two characters, Freddie and Dodd. Though some of his conclusions, or lack thereof, may be undeserved, Anderson’s film represents a remarkable attempt to fill an entire universe with the friction between binary opposites — master and initiate, impulse and control, rebellion and authority.

Freddie is an animal. He drinks whatever he’s given, assaults anything that looks remotely like a woman and is fired from whatever job he can find. Of course, it isn’t his fault. Freddie has a tortured backstory, a bland “Game of Thrones”-like cocktail of PTSD, incest and unrequited pedophilia, but the details are seen through Phoenix, who wisely plays everything from ape-like aggression to shamed-puppy guilt with his arms, hunched back and the twisted corners of his mouth.

Lancaster Dodd, who Freddie encounters after sneaking onto a cruise ship run by The Cause, provides the necessary counterpoint to the troubled veteran’s indeterminate violence. Dodd, as he likes to tell people, is a man of the mind. The leader of The Cause barely moves; his body is weighed down under sweat and three-piece suits.

His voice, however, is enthralling. The best scenes in “The Master” are the “processing” sessions between Freddie and Dodd, in which the cult leader does all he can to crack the initiate. Dodd’s questions deal with afterlife mumbo-jumbo, but the weight of his presence is enough to accomplish his goal, as if a charlatan could will himself into performing magic.

The rest of “The Master” is concerned with what that magic is. Do the members of The Cause buy into Dodd’s thrall? His son, played by Jesse Plemons (Landry from “Friday Night Lights”) readily admits that his father is making it up, but stays on for the money. His young wife, played by Amy Adams (a necessary addition to any Oscar-bait), however, is a true believer.

Adams’s interruptions allow the film to occasionally split its themes across three, rather than two parts. Always concerned with the bottom line, she takes an immediate dislike to Freddie, whom she views as a threat, and strives to turn Dodd against him. She is also pregnant for most of the movie. The resulting id, ego, superego dynamic provides more than enough fodder for section assholes everywhere to interpret the film as a sort of Freudian nightmare.

If only “The Master” was more complicated than that. Anderson’s films are famous for their ferocity. In “There Will Be Blood,” Daniel-Day Lewis takes increasingly vindictive measures to secure a supply of oil and, in “Punch-Drunk Love,” Adam Sandler deals with the adult world through bursts of infantilized violence (unlike every other Adam Sandler movie, it isn’t played for laughs). But “The Master” fails to break out from an exhausting, beautifully coordinated fizzle.

Much of this is due to Anderson’s insistence on avoiding specificity in favor of allegory. Both Freddie’s brutality and Dodd’s power are causeless and all-consuming, definitions of actors in a fable rather than aspects of characters a film. Anderson sets the film in the ’50s, a time filled with nuclear-age stress, but he is more interested in the era’s affects, obtuse references to the war and girls in floral-print dresses, than its details.

“The Master,” like Dodd’s cult, is a test of the power of suggestion. How much can be said by showing little? Inevitably, devotees of Anderson will be able to invent an interpretation for every moment in the film — what exactly is meant by the shot where Joaquin Phoenix arches his back over the rigging of a ship at sea (I say he was tired) — and claim that the character’s true motivations are hidden in corners.

But how much of that is invented? The audience knows that Dodd is a charlatan because he substitutes charisma for evidence, but Anderson either fails or refuses to offer the level of detail that The Cause lacks to his own film. “The Master” lacks the authority it subverts; like any good cult, it answers the mysteries of the universe, but only if you are willing to buy in.

'Robot,' endearing, frankly a bit much

September 7, 2012 1:00 am Leave a Comment

There’s a lot to love about “Robot & Frank.” Maybe a little bit too much to love.

The new indie flick takes place sometime in the near future, in a time when robot butlers abound, to much reverie by the younger generation. Unfortunately, the protagonist is an aged, forgetful, lonely man named Frank (Frank Langella). He’s gifted a robot — programmed to maintain the old man’s health — by his son Hunter (James Marsden), who is tired of the responsibility of looking after Pop.

The premise of the movie makes the plot seem deceptively simple. Robot and Frank get off to a rocky start, but slowly warm up to each other, their relationship lending itself to questions of where humans can find unlikely friendships and what it means to be emotional versus mechanical.

Frank’s daughter Madison (Liv Tyler) takes a stance against the use of robots as slaves, bringing politics into the mix. On top of that, Frank is a divorced ex-convict and has tense relationships with both of his children, calling for some exploration of familial bond and obligation. As Frank and Robot begin planning robberies, justified as mechanisms of mental stimulation, the film touches upon treatment for dementia in the elderly and the often blurry line between delusion and reality for patients suffering memory loss.

To some, such interwoven complexities might seem appealing. After all, the storyline offers something for everyone, whether it be futurism, controversial technologies, the emotional strife of estranged family members or the ethics associated with dementia. For me, the effect was more disappointing. I felt overloaded by overlapping themes. I walked out of the theater confused as to the film’s intent and what I should have taken from it.

There’s undoubtedly plenty of thought-provoking material to indulge in, but it’s almost too much.

“Robot & Frank” suffers from being stretched too thin. It tries too hard to be interesting and complicated, instead coming across as overwhelming for the casual movie-goer.

Still, I can’t call it a bad movie, because it’s far from unentertaining or tedious. I meant it when I said there’s a lot about this film to really love.

It showcases some brilliant first-time film writing by Christopher D. Ford, who has paired the emotional themes of family, identity and aging with an unexpected flair for dry humor in the characters’ dialogue. The robots’ respond to questions like “How are you doing?” with answers like “I’m functioning normally,” and these moments are reason enough to sit through 90 minutes of winding plot.

The movie also boasts a stellar performance by Frank Langella, who plays his role with a subtlety that cannot go unappreciated. He curses with masterful comedic timing, displays the rugged exterior of a man obdurate in preserving dignity and independence and assumes the nuanced expressions of a confused elderly man. He does this all in proper balance to make his character incredibly likeable and sympathetic.

I could go on naming the various merits of this indie flick. For one, it’s an indie flick. It presents a certain enjoyable whimsicality. It has James Marsden. It’s relatively fast-paced, avoiding the overly drawn-out, cheesy ending scenes. It features some adorable old-age flirting between Frank and local librarian Jennifer (Susan Sarandon).

It is with good reason that “Robot & Frank” is a Sundance prizewinner. It truly is a beautifully executed movie with remarkable cast performances — a worthy watch for anyone normally excited by the genre.

Of course I could have done without quite so many clashing themes. Madison is a particularly futile character, and less of her political mumbo-jumbo would have probably improved the film as a whole, if only by eradicating one confusing, unnecessary side story. But I’ll still maintain that on the whole, Robot, Frank and “Robot & Frank” are all pretty lovable.

Choosing life, but without the spark

1:00 am Leave a Comment

Even after the Rep. Todd Akins debacle, I wasn’t too embarrassed to call myself a pro-lifer. A safe pro-lifer; “I don’t believe in abortion except if it’ll harm the mother.” Okay, that may not be accurate. What about rape, illegitimate or not legitimate? How trustworthy were adoptions and foster care? And what about mothers who, if they did have the child, would make Joan Crawford look like June Cleaver?

Last Sunday, Choose Life at Yale, a pro-life undergraduate organization, held a screening of “Bella,” a film that follows a young pregnant woman’s blooming friendship with a brooding young man. The freshmen and their lanyards didn’t pour in as I thought they would. Oh well. Perhaps the digital images would solidify my pro-life stance, I thought. Or not.

The CLAY members stayed close together in that seminar room, chatting enthusiastically about the new school year and the new “converts” it would bring. It’s a shame that the safety buttons, kettle popcorn and polite conversation had to bookend “Bella.” The food and talk were more convincing recruitment tools than the film.

The film opens with a brooding Jose (Eduardo Verástegui) surveying a little girl playing on a beach. His heavy beard announces that he is a man with a dark secret. A single accident has halted his soccer career. Now he works as a chef at his brother Manny’s (Manny Perez) restaurant. Nina (Tammy Blanchard), a nervous waitress at the same restaurant, has an unplanned pregnancy and no support network. The film explores a single day in both of their lives as their paths intersect.

In a little over 24 hours, Manny fires Nina after her morning sickness makes her late one too many times, Jose gets himself fired by chasing after her for an unexplained reason, they ride around, they’re accepted into another job but don’t work there, Nina breaks down in an abortion clinic, they visit Jose’s family, Jose confesses his past tragedy, and Nina decides that she should give her unborn child to Jose. Mellow guitars and wispy vocals accompany this drama. Happily ever after, ignore the mess. With such an over-stuffing of events for two main characters who barely know each other, the film should move quickly.

But Jose and Nina are the protagonists.

Jose’s tragic beard and reckless kindness complement Nina’s lonely dilemma and ultimate transformation only to relay the thin message and nothing more. The supporting cast comforts, yells or jokes when required.

The characters talk, but the camera wants to watch people frowning on a train, or cement trucks churning, or skyscrapers rising. Director Alejandro Monteverde isn’t discovering anything new about New York City here. But when he and writers Patrick Million and Leo Severino capture snippets from Hispanic life in the City, the film obtains an additional dimension — only to flatten it. Manny takes advantage of undocumented Hispanic immigrants. Jose, a man from a close-knit Mexican family who still knows the language, doesn’t want Nina, who is far removed from her roots, to get an abortion. So, would a closer cultural connection curtail the high abortion rate among Hispanic women? I don’t know if the film has dived that deeply.

The film did elicit good discussion from CLAY. One freshman relayed her own account of her experience as an adopted child. With a tale involving real parents taking financial advantage of good, adoptive parents, it was clear that “Bella” had simplified a tricky matter. Movies are streamlined and stylized versions of our lives, but they don’t have to turn into fairy tales.

As I watched the film and talked to members of CLAY, I couldn’t help but wonder: where did God go in a discussion that — like some other issues in America (the death penalty, gay and lesbian rights, gender equality, etc.) — has some footing in religion? CLAY is irreligious in order to avoid internal conflict and, as CLAY president Travis Heine ‘14 said, to better “spread pro-life ideologies to convert others.” The organization provides emotional support to pregnant women and maintains a network with a variety of pregnancy centers (such as Sisters of Life) while being sure, as Heine clarified, “to avoid the moral high ground.”

Kelly Schumann ‘15, a member of CLAY, placed “Bella” within the tradition of its genre like this: “Some of these message films are hokey. But this one was nice.” Yes, nice. As if to say, something bland yet inoffensive.

Documentary, the creative vs the polemic

April 13, 2012 1:00 am Leave a Comment

Andrew Grace doesn’t like documentary films very much.

So he told 30-some people Wednesday at a workshop in Kroon Hall — a workshop he was conducting on documentary filmmaking. Making documentaries is what Grace does for a living. He had come to New Haven to promote his new movie “Eating Alabama,” which was screened Tuesday night at the Yale Environmental Film Festival.

So why his disdain for documentary filmmaking?

Grace doesn’t actually dislike the documentary film form itself. Much to the contrary, he’s in love with it: “Documentary,” he said, “is just an endlessly fascinating exploration for me.” What he’s worried about is where, in the age of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, his beloved form is headed.

“People have started to associate documentary filmmaking and advocacy,” he told me just before the workshop began. “When audiences begin to expect that every documentary they watch will be for or against something, it changes that medium from a medium of art to a medium of propaganda, and I think that’s enormously dangerous.”

Grace, who has a background in creative non-fiction writing and an MA in American Studies, considers himself a “personal essayist” in his film work. In projects like “Eating Alabama,” which he described as “my story and the story of my granddaddy and my family… trying to figure out our relationship to the land,” he’s trying to keep alive the notion that art and storytelling have just as much of a place in documentary as social justice and advocacy: “The creative” need not be overshadowed by “the polemic.”

For Grace, creativity is inextricable from personal connection to both form and content. Perhaps the central point he stressed to the aspiring filmmakers at the workshop was the importance of making films on a personal, human scale.

Keeping things personal, Grace explained, allows a filmmaker to find a subject worthy of attention and investment. “Only a story you truly care about and have a unique take on will sustain you through the deep and dark nights of making a film,” he said. He believes that non-fiction filmmaking at its best is highly subjective and interactive; among his documentary heroes are Frederick Wiseman and the Maysles brothers, whose careers subverted the cinéma vérité idea that the filmmaker should be a mere “fly on the wall.” Making apologies to any anthropologists in the room, Grace said that he “reject[s] the objectivity that ethnography presupposes” and values “the input of the subject.” He does his best, he said, to “let people maintain their own dignity.”

Grace was quick to note that a personal approach does not preclude commitment to social activism. He currently teaches a year-long class at the University of Alabama called Documenting Justice, and his very first film, which he made when he was a college student himself, told the story of a young man negotiating Alabama’s parole system.

A film may or may not have a sociopolitical agenda; in Grace’s view, that shouldn’t be the point. He acknowledged that contemporary filmmakers can use the trendy “documentary equals advocacy” idea to their advantage: with “Eating Alabama,” he “duped [his] funders a little bit” by hiding his family story behind hot-button issues of local food and sustainability. But throughout the workshop, he insisted that good documentarians care about process over product, means over end.

“Young filmmakers [need] to understand… that the process is important,” he said. “With inexpensive digital production technologies, there is a lot of room for mistakes.” Learning from mistakes and being open to unexpected growth and change, he explained, is how he got where he is today. “One of the first things I learned was to be really courageous… to know that you don’t know everything about [a story] and to proceed into that story with a real sense of determination even if that determination is, ‘I need to figure this out.’”

Along with “Final Cut Pro and a camera,” Grace said, that determination is all you need. “Be selfish. Be ruthless. You’ve got to want this to happen so bad that you’re gonna lie, cheat and steal to make it happen.”

After saying that, he paused, and looked over at me.

“The Yale Daily News just quoted me on that, didn’t they?” Yes. Yes we did.

“Miss Representation”: or, How the media packages and sells Woman

March 2, 2012 12:00 am Leave a Comment

On Feb. 29, one day shy of Women’s History Month, the Yale Women’s Center presented the documentary “Miss Representation” at the Whitney Humanities Center to a nearly full auditorium. Articulating the media’s limited and often negative portrayals of females, the documentary (written, produced and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newson) made a big impression at Sundance and other film festivals.

It’s not too difficult to see why: the movie effectively builds momentum with familiar, but nevertheless troubling, facts and statistics (shown in wispy white and blue animations), which are confirmed and confronted by stories from teenage girls and interviews with strong women like Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Margaret Cho and Gloria Steinem. With such a collection of intelligent women showing America that they can be more than “tits and asses,” it’s hard not to leave the documentary feeling both empowered by the possibilities for change and angry at the way things are now. The film fantastically taps into this understandable feminine rage.

“Miss Representation” even-handedly addresses the gender dynamic and the female role in accepting and furthering the negative images of the media. While the film asserts that men do determine the information distributed, it also faults women for internalizing stereotypes and being unsupportive of other women. Catfights on trashy television are shown side by side with students in a high school admitting that girls usually vote for boys when students run for office. The film also explores, albeit briefly, how the pressure to be masculine and controlling pushes men to see empowered women as threatening.

As important as keeping this issue in the public view is, the film treads too much familiar ground without fresh insight. If advertisements make us strive for unattainable beauty, how do we give them up? Do we just stop buying the products that fuel our desires? What’s more, it’s a shame that the 90-minute film can’t (or won’t) permit itself to tackle other, difficult issues. It doesn’t look deeply into the racial divide within femininity; instead, it lumps the struggles of women together. Newson does include Rice and Cho in the documentary, but they’re tokens that don’t elaborate on the prickly history between (white-dominated) feminism and female minorities. And if the film is going to be so America-centric, then why doesn’t it elaborate on the role of both sex and violence in American culture in viewing women as objects to be obtained, chewed up and tossed out like meat? Maybe Newson should have made room for these issues by removing some of the regurgitated factoids and sexual imagery. The imagery, although serving to comment on the objectification of women, seems to be there for the very shock value it criticizes. The music tries to play with us, too: the violins on the soundtrack, by Eric Holland, strum our hearts too much.

After the screening, members of the Women’s Center Board — Esi Hutchful ’12, Jazzmin Estebane ’13 and Rebecca Suldan ’13 — led a discussion. The discussion, which consisted of an audience of about 12 (including one single, silent man), poked and pried at the film for answers and weak points. The film makes, as one woman put it, “what women want and need [into] a monolith. I watch ESPN. Does that mean that I don’t care about my womanhood?” The audience brought up several equally great points: What about queer issues and homophobia? What about women in science? A Yale alum asked the most pointed question: “What happened to the anger on campus?” The anger that the alum felt 30 years ago on Yale’s campus helped lead to Title IX and another victory in the path towards gender equality. But are we still angry? What do we do? Do we gnash our teeth in silence? Or do we speak out and risk being called, as one woman explained, a “feminazi”? The film had no easy answers, and neither did the discussion.

For more information about the film and its mission, visit www.missrepresentation.org. Check out womenscenter.yale.edu for a look at a part of the feminist community at Yale.

Lions, Tigers and Cowboys, Oh My!

November 11, 2011 4:59 am Leave a Comment

With The Game just around the corner, Yale football fans everywhere face an all too-familiar problem: the currently 7–1 Harvard Crimson (undefeated in the Ivy League) are making the trek down to New Haven to face a 4–4 Yale squad that’s had just one win against their rival in the last decade. But if popular Hollywood (and last year’s Seattle Seahawks) has taught us anything, it’s that anyone anywhere is capable of pulling out a win on any given day.

Comebacks, upsets, victories, glory — these are the tropes upon which America’s greatest sports films are based and in a way, they underscore the very elements of life that we should hopefully espouse. We want to succeed; we want to overcome; we want to win (unless you play for the Dallas Cowboys defensive secondary). (#1 — Let’s see how many digs I can throw at the Cowboys in one column.) With the right amount of skill, will and determination, we can turn those desires into realities.

That’s the thing about sports movies: if you’ve seen one, you’ve just about seen them all. This doesn’t mean we enjoy underdog stories any less; I’m merely saying that there’s a general predictability hovering over the whole concept. After all, a film chronicling Michael Jordan’s one-man massacre of the NBA during the 1995-’96 season probably wouldn’t produce any feel-good film fodder. And it’s the same thing with the 0–16 Detroit Lions campaign, the 20–134 Cleveland Spiders, or the 9–73 Philadelphia 76ers. Or every Dallas Cowboys season from 1996-present. (#2)

Unproven teams proving their doubters wrong and winning a big game is the ultimate inspirational heartwarmer. Just see: “Hoosiers,” “Major League,” “Miracle” (c’mon, it’s in the damn name!), even “Rudy” (kinda). They all share this thread while each distinctly representing one of the four major American sports: basketball, baseball, hockey and football, respectively. (I’m not including the embarrassment that is MLS.)

But after awhile, you have to inject some new elements to keep sports films compelling.

Racial prejudice usually does the trick.

“Brian’s Song” is a good, and early, film that looks at the color barrier in post-civil rights American sports. “Glory Road” is a more popular and recent take on the issue in the world of college basketball. But “Remember the Titans” is most people’s favorite, if only for Ryan Gosling’s awkward post-”Mickey Mouse Club”/pre-”Notebook” performance and Denzel Washington’s general gravitas.

Another good recipe: follow a couple teams nobody really cares that much about, like in “Chariots of Fire” (track), “Breaking Away” (cycling) or every episode of Michael Irvin’s “4th and Long” (#3). And of course, kids’ movies are always great. “The Sandlot,” “The Bad News Bears” (not the remake) and every other Disney Channel Original Movie are all worth their weight in gold (like “Brink,” which was indirectly responsible for 71 percent of my rollerblading-related accidents as a child).

But (Yale football fans really won’t like this one) the best sports movies seem to be the ones that don’t necessarily end in a tangible victory. “The Replacements” is a tremendously underrated Keanu Reeves movie in which everyone gets fired (which should’ve been the case with Dallas’ head coach last season — oh, wait: #4). “The Longest Yard” (both of them) is set entirely in prison (where a couple of Cowboys cornerbacks have recently wound up: #5). And “Raging Bull” is a terribly depressing film about an extremely talented man’s repeated pitfalls. (Tony Romo in the 2006 playoffs, Tony Romo in the 2007 playoffs and Tony Romo in the 2009 playoffs: #6 — three Dallas digs in the same paragraph? Of course it’s possible.)

The important thing to keep in mind is that sports movies are never supposed to bore us. We watch them usually because we love sports or at least the potential for human drama inherent in them. And when the elements come together in just the right way, we are usually left breathless by sports films more stunning than Tony Romo’s wife (#5 — I’m taking a point away from myself because Romo’s beauty pageant wife is actually gorgeous, unlike Coach Garret’s playcalling: #6). And if you need proof, check out “Rocky.”

So I suppose what I’m trying to get at is that, whether you win or lose, if the drama, the tension and the story are there, you’ve got something amazing on your hands. That’s what makes sports movies great and that’s why we all keep turning out for them, time after time after time. They teach us, above everything else, that there’s always hope.

Unless you’re a Cowboys fan. (#7)

The Best of American Horror

October 30, 2011 6:51 pm Leave a Comment

The beauty of Halloween is its ability to give us time to reflect on one of humankind’s most pernicious emotions: fear. But it’s more than just a sensation — fear is a mood, an ambience, a building block for all things suspenseful, provocative and breathtaking. Fear also motivates the most compelling stories, and it has been a favorite child of filmmakers since the birth of cinema. So with Halloween just around the corner, let’s take a closer look at fear in film by counting down what I see as the best thirteen American horror films ever produced.

Before we get started it’s important to recognize that there’s a fine line between what’s considered classic and what deserves a spot on this list; these films aim to scare contemporary audiences. There are a whole host of movies that have tremendously influenced the below thirteen. (“Nosferatu,” “The Bride of Frankenstein,” I’m looking straight at you.) But you can’t in good faith tell me, for example, that Bela Lugosi is more frightening than that chick from “The Ring.” And that movie didn’t even make the cut!

So with that let’s dive right into the scariest that American cinema has to offer, starting with…

13) “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)

This Roman Polanski horror classic is equal parts scary and strange, a well paced and enticing nighttime flick that should scare many women to singlehood and celibacy. Or maybe I just have a thing for Satan-spawn films (because it’s surely not Mia Farrow’s dreadful haircut that’s turning me on).

12) “28 Days Later” (2002)

I’m standing by director Danny Boyle’s claim that this is not in fact a real zombie film. (Who’re you kidding, Danny?) So what is this instead? It’s a thinly veiled sociopolitical exploration of humanity. With a lot of fucking zombies.

11) “Evil Dead II” (1987)

This is actually more comedy than horror, but it scared 12-year-old me enough to warrant a spot on this list. Sam Raimi (of “Spider-Man” fame) shines in this sequel as he reworks the events of the first film, adds some chainsaws, and spruces up what’s already pretty gaudy action to produce a delightful horror film that’s perfect for a night in with your buddies.

10) “Saw” (2004)

Before the series got ridiculous (somewhere around “Saw IV” or “Saw VI” or “Saw XXVIII,” I can’t remember), we just had “Saw,” a chilling bloodbath of a film with enough moral questions to fill two Bibles and the Bhagavad Gita. Sure, at its core it’s a film about finding new ways to kill people, but it’s an extremely engaging film about finding new ways to kill people too.

9) “Friday the 13th” (1980)

After watching Alfred Hitchcock’s and John Carpenter’s films blow up all over the world, Sean S. Cunningham decided to try his hand at the slasher genre — and his youthful eagerness shows. The result is the introduction of the Voorhees family in a picture that, while frightening enough in its own right, can’t quite get over its place as the cute little sister to the real horror classics. It’s definitely still worth a viewing, though.

8) “Alien” (1979)

Who knew Ridley Scott had it in him? The future Oscar-nominee plays his audience like a whistle in this futuristic sci-fi slasher film. And who can forget Sigourney Weaver’s general bad-assery? It almost makes you forget that the alien-baby-stomach-scene is responsible for at least one heart attack a year.

7) “The Thing” (1982)

This film follows an Antarctic research team’s descent into paranoid madness as a mysterious shape-shifting alien creature assails them. Couple this intriguing B-movie plot with groundbreaking special effects and makeup and you’ve got all the necessary ingredients for another John Carpenter horror classic. You’ll never look at your dog the same way again.

6) “The Shining” (1980)

Jack Nicholson gives a frightening performance for the ages as the worst father in the world in this Stanly Kubrick thriller that makes up for its lack of standard slasher horror with sheer visceral terror. The ultimate message of this film: don’t trust beautiful naked women in bathtubs—they’re always too good to be true!

5) “Psycho” (1960)

The decision to put what is probably Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous film this far up the list is questionable. Is it a watershed movie? Yes. But so is “Dracula.” The point here is that “Psycho” is just scary enough to let its reputation carry it to a top five ranking. And besides, without Norman Bates, you don’t have Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger, or two of the top three films on this list.

4) “Paranormal Activity” (2007)

I already know I’m going to catch a lot of backlash for putting this movie at number four. But my defense is simple: “Paranormal Activity” is fucking terrifying. Made on a meager budget that barely cracks five digits, this film was marketed perfectly, and it lived up to the hype. Just try watching this movie and then sleeping with your feet outside the covers — it’s next to impossible. Regardless, I can at least sleep well at night knowing that this movie is, without a doubt, the best horror film America’s produced in awhile.

3) “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974)

The low popular opinion this picture has today is a good example of what can happen when a great film is franchised. But before the sequels and prequels and remakes, there was just Leatherface and his petrifying, incestuous, cannibalistic family. One of the goriest films ever made at the time, Tobe Hooper helped set the standard for the modern slasher movie and revolutionized the way we see chainsaws (and the masked maniacs who wield them).

2) “The Exorcist” (1976)

This is probably the most objectively successful film on the entire list: it won Oscars, raked in a hefty paycheck at the box office, and turned the nature of horror cinema towards an extreme (and utterly blasphemous) direction. But the stories of violent viewer reactions are probably just as terrifying as the actual film itself: people passed out and vomited in theaters across the country, and one man even reportedly broke his jaw biting the seat in front of him. “The Exorcist” is without a doubt one of the greatest horror films ever made, but even it can’t shove aside the sublime film at the very top of this list.

1) “Halloween” (1978)

Enter: Michael Myers. The story of soulless evil, John Carpenter’s magnum opus has had many rivals (and emulators) but it’s never quite been topped. The acting is unbelievable (check out Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut), the cinematography is subdued and realistic, and the score ensnares you from the opening of the film to its iconic ending. Laurie Strode’s screams have haunted audiences for more than thirty years, and they’ll continue doing so as long as people are watching movies.

So that’s that. Think I missed a classic? Think I overrated something on the list? Let me know — I’d love to hear what you think. But at least check out these 13 if you haven’t already.

Hopefully they should raise a yelp or two at least.

"Paranormal" 3: Paranormally Underwhelming

October 28, 2011 6:53 pm Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you but when I think of movies that deserve trilogies, I tend to think of epic heroes that inspire Halloween costumes. I think of awesome license plates, like LOTRFAN and STRWARS and GBUSTER1. I usually don’t think of “Paranormal Activity.” But that might be because I never saw the first one and wasn’t aware that the second one happened. Nonetheless, I found myself settling into a nice matinee of the third in the series at the Criterion, ready to delve into the Halloween spirit with a movie that would surely scare the costume ideas right out of my brain.

For those of you who aren’t aware (I wasn’t), the premise of the “Paranormal Activity” films is to show a bunch of scary things happening to normal people. It’s done in a style that Wikipedia calls “found footage” — meaning it evokes the style of a real home video. “Like Christmas ’93? That was the best!” you ask.

No, not really. For “Paranormal Activity 3,” this means that one of the main characters, Dennis, is conveniently a wedding videographer who films every waking and sleeping moment of his life. This may seem like quite a feat, going over 12 hours of sleeping video during each day. Well, don’t you worry, because they expose that plot hole and then do nothing to reasonably excuse it in the film! Anyway, Dennis lives with his girlfriend, Julie, and her two daughters, Katie and Kristi, who are totally cute and innocent and stuff, ya know? Dennis quickly notices that there’s something weird about Kristi and her imaginary friend, Toby. Concerned, he does some research on spirits in library books (the story takes place in 1988) and videotapes every single thing that happens. This means that at least 75 percent of the film is footage of empty rooms where nothing is happening. Presumably, this was done to build suspense but since I’m no Henry Joost (the famous director of “Paranormal Activity 3,” duh!), I’ll tell you what the movie would be like if they had cut to the chase and condensed it to the 20-minute YouTube thriller it was destined to be: little girl Kristi is caught on tape talking to imaginary friend Toby in the middle of the night and this Toby fellow causes small disturbances like thumping noises and falling teddy bears.

“Stepdad” Dennis thinks this is pretty weird and tries to talk to Kristi about it, who is intimidated by Toby and tells Dennis that what she talks to Toby about is a secret. Logical mom Julie writes it off as a phase but things get weirder as lamps fall down and the babysitter freaks out. After a lot of those scenes where you are pretty sure something scary is going to happen but not certain and then a terrifying ghost does something like pull little Katie across a freaking room, the family finally decides to get out of that weird house. They go to the home of Lois, Julie’s mother, who, although she is one of only five characters in the movie, is noticeably out of the picture for most of the film. After all that, (oh, sorry, is it too late for a spoiler alert?) it turns out Lois is part of a creepy witch covenant and horrible things happen according to the ghost’s plan!

Overall, my biggest regret about the movie is that they didn’t play it up as the historical fiction it was. Apart from the girls’ bedroom mildly resembling the one on Full House and the babysitter rocking a side ponytail, there was nothing that screamed ‘80s. Would I recommend it to be a part of your family Halloweekend activities? Not unless you are concerned about your grandma being a creepy witch and want to know exactly what NOT to do.

Sex with friends…too real?

October 7, 2011 4:14 am Leave a Comment

Art is supposed to imitate life. If it didn’t, all artwork would be as meaningless as useless post-post-postmodernism. This old idiom is so true it applies to the current razzle-dazzle movie industry. Sure, every film school ever would scorn the crap that Hollywood puts out and call it the absolute antithesis of art, but the film industry caters to the wants and need of the masses. As world-renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell says, the myth is the story of a culture’s collective conscious, and, like it or not, the things we vote for with our dollars tell the story of who we are as a people. The latest “myth” that Hollywood has attempted — and failed — to profit on is the romance between fuck buddies.

“No Strings Attached,” starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, was the first on the assault on romance. Half the film tried to establish a relationship between the two through a series of brief encounters years apart, as if talking to a person every 10 years constitutes any sort of friendship, and suddenly they start doing the nasty. They grow closer over time, but Natalie Portman’s character is damaged and afraid of commitment. She cuts Ashton’s character out of her life for a very long time. He slowly starts to get over her, she changes her mind, stalks him a bit, sees him on a date with another girl and gives up. This all sounds like something that might happen. Then the plot takes a major jump and Ashton Kutcher makes a last ditch effort for his “beloved,” she gets over her lifetime of commitment issues, and they live happily ever after. Of course, both players have to be afraid of a substantial relationship to make the “No Strings Attached” theme work, but the happily-ever-after that the audience really wants doesn’t make sense in the context of this turbulent and confused relationship.

The next and even more illogical film Hollywood pumped out about this new phenomenon is aptly called “Friends with Benefits.” This time Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake star. Both characters have trust issues when it comes to the opposite sex. They are bros and feel comfortable enough to talk about sex and even share advice when trying to date other people. This seems like the ideal fuck buddies situation! How satisfied the audience must be seeing for themselves that this myth seems to be a feasible way of satisfying the need for companionship and sex without having sex complicate the initial bromance! Beautiful! Of course, it blew up in everyone’s face and Justin Timberlake said and did some unforgivable things to Mila. And then whoa! Justin magically organizes a flash mob in Grand Central Station to Semisonic’s “Closing Time.” Voila! Instant happy couple. Really? Really? Are people meant to believe that the best friend and lover that turned on you and used your deepest darkest secrets and insecurities to torture you because they have feelings for you and are trying to push you away because they fear commitment is someone you can forgive after a freaking flash mob? Hell no. No. Not even. The myth once again does not capture the desires and trials of the human condition.

The one film of this genre that really captures the emotional destruction and a satisfying happy ending is “Friends (With Benefits).” The conceit that drives the plot is a group of friends having a session with a therapist about their sex problems. The film explores what happens when a group of friends try experimenting together. In one case, two best friends have actually been in love with each other for years and decide to sleep together, saying that it is for physical needs while both secretly wanting to be with their bestie. Aw. There’s drama, and romance that doesn’t defy the physics of the heart. The other friends explore promiscuity, homosexuality, infidelity and the dangers of acting without thought of the consequences. These folks are messed up, but they are believable and shed an accurate light on the emotional consequences of mucking up friendships with sex. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s life and the truth. More importantly, it is the myth that captures this generation’s sexual exploration.

Tag Archive: Film