Son of Rambow

Every once in a while, a movie will come along that will remind me why I love movies in the first place. Everyone has that movie that permeated their imagination so thoroughly that it changes you. A movie so in love with the art of moviemaking that it inspires you to go home, pick up a camera, and start making movies in your own backyard. For these guys, it was Raiders of the Lost Ark. For me, that movie was Clerks.

For Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), that movie was First Blood. Will's childhood is one of bible study and prayer meetings; one in which any and all pop culture is strictly forbidden. That is, until he meets a loner named Lee Carter (Will Poulter). During his first visit to Carter's home, Will watches a pirated copy of First Blood (which Lee videotaped himself at the local theater). Carter enlists Will to be the stuntman in his amateur film, which Will soon turns into his chance to portray the son of John Rambo.

It's easy to say that writer/director Garth Jennings' film plays deeply in the power of imagination. And it does. However, what's more interesting is that the film not only depicts Will's enormous wellspring of imagination, but follows through and shows us the fruits of his and Lee's labor. After all, half the fun of making a movie is showing it to others, right? All the stress of working with others, the ingenuity of having to do everything yourself, Son of Rambow is an ode to the plight of amateur filmmakers, young and old.

Underneath the plot of two cineastes making a movie is an even more poignant story of a friendship between two kids who couldn't possibly be more different, and maybe shouldn't be friends in the first place. The pairing itself is a typical Odd Couple team, but the two young stars handle the script like pros. They never come across as annoying or grating, but more like the playfully ambitious duo that they're portraying. For their part, the supporting cast do a fine job, including Jessica Stevenson (Spaced) as Will's overprotective mother.

If the film has any faults at all, it's that it doesn't go for broke as often as I might have liked. I'd have liked another scene or two for each of the film's subplots to develop a little fuller. But then, that would have likely betrayed the simplicity that Son of Rambow seems to champion. The film does begin to lose its way near the end, but then so do Will and his newfound film crew. Once things come to a head during the 'getaway scene', the film gets itself back on track and proves to be all the more touching for it.

Jennings' script brings Will and Lee's friendship full circle, and plays on your emotions in some unexpected ways. The sheer joy of storytelling at play in Son of Rambow is something that more films need to adopt, and quickly. Jennings' film is a lot of things, but tedious is not one of them. Simply put, the ending sold me on the film perhaps even more than the whole of the film did. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but I absolutely appreciate the journey, and look forward to taking it again on DVD. As far as movies about kids being kids go, Son of Rambow is something special.

4 stars (****) out of 5.

Catching Up

I hate that I never got around to posting reviews for either Prince Caspian or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Time just wasn't on my side in the last week or so.  

However, if you'd like to hear my thoughts on Prince Caspian, head on over to my podcast's homepage at TalkShoe.com and listen to our most recent episode.  In a nutshell, the film is really no better or worse than its predecessor.  The only marked improvement is in the effects work, which were at times very impressive.  Depending on what you thought of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that might mean the film is right up your alley.  Personally, I rate the film a 3.5 out of 5.

As for Indiana Jones, I've got my nitpicks about it, but for the most part enjoyed the film very much.  For the full list of complaints, grievances and whatnot, tune in to the next episode of Front Row Center, June 9th at 9 PM.  Then, Trent, Watson and myself will do all sorts of arguing about Indiana Jones, Kung Fu Panda, and probably a number of other things.

25 Years of Jedi

It's been 25 years since Return of the Jedi hit theaters Memorial Day weekend of 1983. This isn't much of a milestone for anyone except the hardcore Star Wars fans, but it's certainly an interesting anniversary. It means the original Star Wars trilogy in full has been around for a quarter of a century. Now, I wasn't yet a twinkle in my parents eyes when Jedi came out, but of all the original Star Wars films, it's had the greatest impact on me as a fan of the series, and as a film viewer in general.

The way my dad tells it, as soon as I was able to start watching anything, he tried to get me to watch Star Wars with him. The first issue was I was a fidgety little creature and refused to sit still long enough to watch the whole thing. The second issue was that the only Star Wars movie we had on VHS was Return of the Jedi. I'd say once I was six or seven years old, I finally got curious and asked to watch it. Now, Star Wars really didn't click for me until I was probably ten or eleven, right around the time the Special Editions reached theaters. By that time, I'd finally seen the first two films, but the damage was already done. I'd watched Jedi first, so I knew Darth Vader was Luke's father, I knew Luke and Leia were siblings, and I knew everything turned out okay. Clearly, none of this dissuaded me from wanting to see A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. And I did, and I loved them just as much as I loved Return of the Jedi.


Today, my favorite film in the series is Empire Strikes Back, but I still hold a special place in my heart for Jedi. For all intents and purposes, Jedi is sort of the black sheep of the series. The first act is an oddly staged con to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt. To this day, I'm not entirely keen on it. The battle over the Sarlacc Pit makes the sequence worth it, but to get there you have to slog through some pretty grim stuff. Then, of course, there's Luke's final visit with Yoda, which has always captivated me for some reason. I think it's because seeing the old master on his deathbed first makes the spry, goofy Yoda in Empire kind of jarring to watch.

The second half of the film more than makes up for the oddly paced first half. The three-tiered Battle of Endor is the ultimate climax to the series. There's a good reason why they didn't change a single bit of it for the Special Edition. The model work at play here is the best I've ever seen, and with the advent of CGI I doubt I'll see anything top it. The land battle between Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, rebel troops, Ewoks, and stormtroopers, while a tad on the silly side, is still exciting. Then, of course, there's the duel between Luke and Vader, with the Emperor watching from the sidelines. The duel in Empire is the more captivating of the two, but there's a real drive and urgency to this duel that's always sent a chill down my spine.

(Author's note: In the middle of typing this, I suddenly found Return of the Jedi on TV. Clearly, I'm not the only one who knows whose birthday it is.)

Additionally, Ian McDiarmid's Emperor has always kind of haunted me. Sitting on his throne, bored disdain for everyone, including Darth Vader, oozed from his jet black robes. I remember him freaking me out most of anything from the Star Wars movies, and that was almost certainly by design.

I could go on all day about what I love about Return of the Jedi. It's one of the four or five movies that molded me into the film lover I am today. But instead, I'm just going to wish Jedi a happy 25th, and I hope to enjoy it for many decades to come.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a movie to finish.

The List Project

Just for simplicity's sake, I think I'm going to shut down the Extended List Project and incorporate it into this blog. I've been far too infrequent with updating it, and since I have this blog anyway, there's not much reason for having two. So, I'll still be posting oddball lists like I'd been doing at the List Project blog. They'll just be posted here.

Also if anyone is interested, my podcast (Front Row Center), will be broadcasting live tomorrow night at TalkShoe.com for the very first time. The upshot of this switch is that listeners can log on to the website and chat with us live during the show. So if anyone's interested, you can find out show's page here: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/19453

We'd love to have an audience for our first episode with TalkShoe (which is actually our 29th episode)!

Speed Racer

I've made nearly a dozen false starts in trying to write a decent review for Speed Racer, and I simply can't do it. So I'll put it in simple terms: Speed Racer is the single most exhilarating film experience I've had all year. It does things with narrative film language that I can honestly say I've never seen before, and the Wachowskis aren't breaking the rules. They're simply showing us new ways to think about those rules, and the way Speed Racer tells its story never betrays the way we understand it. Intricate flashback sequences only work to advance every facet of the plot instead of bring things to a halt just to tell us things we may not need to know. As the story unfolds, things remain clear and easy to follow, which is essential, because at its heart Speed Racer is absolutely a kids movie.

The move and its basic plot are both very simple, things that kids will easily understand. Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) and his family have racing in their blood, so much so that their oldest son, Rex, left the family behind to make racing a more respectable sport. Boiled down to the basics, the movie is about Speed trying to be the best driver out there. But built on top of it is a story about underhanded business deals, mob connections, and clashing ideas regarding the nature of competition. Some of this might go over kids' heads, but for the rest of us it makes Speed Racer's plot all the more twisted and fascinating.

And that's one of the things that the entire movie does so well. The Wachowskis do a remarkable job of stylizing the reality of this world, while at the same time making it seem strangely believable. The aesthetic is like nothing you've ever seen, yet the characters' motives and reasoning are tied to some very real-world concepts. The fact that businessman Royalton (Roger Allam) tries to intimidate Speed with stories of the business behind the racing world is the kind of thing that I'm sure MBAs pull their hair out over. It's too complicated for some kids to wrap their heads around (or even care much about), but for the older viewers, it makes the meat of the film that much juicier.

It's been almost a week since I saw the movie, and I'm still coming down from the visual sugar rush. The colors are vibrant, the editing style is frenetic, Michael Giacchino's

score swirls and pops with memorable themes, and yet it's all surprisingly easy to follow. I am astonished at how fluid the visual overload of the film was. Super-extreme close-ups, camera tricks that could only be achieved with CG, and stylistic pastiche of computer-generated and hand-drawn backgrounds, and gloriously imaginative set designs all make Speed Racer the kind of film with which scholars like David Bordwell would have a field day.

From the exhilarating races that make up the crux of the film to the goofy antics of Spritle and Chim-Chim, the film never struck a sour note with me, nor was the length much of an issue. There were slow patches, but those were quickly remedied with action sequences that never looked like the ones that preceded it. For my money, there's simply nothing like Speed Racer, and that's a great, great thing.

Now, a quick perusal of Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic will show you that most critics are panning the film for being too much eye-candy for not enough payoff. My guess is that none of these critics are prepared to admit that Speed Racer represents a new way of watching and making movis. The visual overload is all part of the experience, and the hyper-kinetic storytelling is very much a 'love it or hate it' style. I've never been a big fan of the cartoon series, mostly because I never really saw it much as a kid. I know enough to know what to expect out of the film, and as such Speed Racer exceeded expectation. I can't wait to see Speed Racer again, and in a nutshell, that's all that needs to be said.

****1/2 (4.5 stars out of five)

New Direction

Alright, here it is. A new lease on life for PCJL. From here on out, you'll be getting movie reviews, essays, and all kinds of weird stuff that I'll be writing about. Included in that are updates and links to my podcast (Front Row Center), as well as updates for my other blog, the Extended List Project.

First up is a review of Speed Racer.

Stay tuned!

Avant-Garde Night

On your own blogs, respond to Avant-Garde Night at Lumina. What were favorites and least favorites? What worked well and what worked not so well? How did the Live Cinema Explosion go?

Overall, I thought Avant-Garde Night turned out really well. The turnout was bigger than I had expected. On The Marriage Broker Joke was a really unexpected way to start off the show. I don't think many people knew what to make of it. It was entertaining, though. I certainly enjoyed it. On the other hand, I don't think There's a Pervert in our Pool went over as well as it maybe could have. I felt like it came and went too quickly, and just left people confused.

Light is Waiting, though, was probably my favorite of the night. As it started, I wasn't entirely sure what was so avant garde about it. After a minute or so, I was prepared to just watch an episode of Full House. It would've been a fun joke to play on the audience. But then the TV dropped. I was blown away. The combination of sight and sound was sort of frightening, but I thought it really worked.

Light is Waiting, Uso Justo, and I am a Boyband all seemed to go over the best with the audience. I think they were all more accessible in terms of the avant-garde. An introduction was probably needed for people to really grasp the concept of What the Water Said. Personally, I'd forgotten about it until that night, so I was probably as confused as some of the rest of the audience. Also, I wasn't too thrilled about Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine. Not entirely sure why, but I just couldn't get into it visually. It felt too erratic, and at times I wondered if something was wrong with the projector. Not to say that I didn't know the film would look the way it did, but at times I just had to wonder. Of all the films screened that night, this was by far the hardest for me to watch.

Now, the Live Cinema Explosion, I thought that turned out really well. I had no idea what would end up on the screen, nor did I know what it all would sound like. At the start, I was afraid it would turn into an unlistenable cacophony of noise. As the show went on, though, it kept an interesting rhythm and the images never got too repetitive. For those who stayed to watch it, I think the Live Cinema Explosion was a very unique experience.

She Puppet

Discuss William Wees's analysis of Peggy Ahwesh's She Puppet in relation to the following:

What are the general claims about the film as a rejection of modernist aesthetics? (anti-art, feminism, etc.) How does he support these general claims with evidence from the film itself? To what degree does the anaylsis correspond with your own?

In his article "Peggy's Playhouse", William Wees states that "by resisting what the material 'wanted [her] to do,' Ahwesh made something of her own that is about [Tomb Raider]." In other words, Ahwesh's film is about deconstructing the dichotomy of "run-run, bang-bang," and commenting on the low resolution of the graphics, which barely resemble the living, breathing woman they're supposed to represent. Additionally, Ahwesh makes a statement about the objectification of women through the use of first-person poetry narrations.

Ahwesh challenges the "run-run, bang-bang" concept by frequently showing Lara Croft simply running past adversaries, almost acting as though they aren't even there, such as the vultures that swoop down to attack her for no discernable reason. At the same time, Ahwesh shows Lara standing in empty rooms, firing away at the walls with every weapon in her arsenal. As Wees puts it, "guns fired point blank miss their targets; tigers prowl but do not pounce; vicious dogs and ravenous, vulturelike birds attack, but without visible effect;..." Lara's interaction with the world around her may simply be design flaws in the game itself, but Ahwesh utilizes them to give her film an odd, trancelike dream.

In using poetry to illustrate the film's concepts, Ahwesh makes use of first person poetry in order to infer Lara Croft's point of view. Use of quotes, such as Sun Ra's "I'm not a human. I never called anybody mother...I don't know about being born. I just happened," give Lara an ethereal air, almost as if she had actually come into being out of nothing (which, in a way, she had).

For the most part, I agree with Wees' reading of the film. I think some of the texts used in the narration were too esoteric in making their points, but then again I would say this adds to the dreamlike state of the film. The repetitive death scenes may have felt more pointed had they been interspersed throughout the film rather than shown all at once. The emphasis on repetition in differing locations would still, I believe, work just as well as Wees suggests.

The Avant-Garde vs. Punk Filmmaking

What are some similarities and differences between the American avant-garde of the early 1970s and the Punk or No Wave filmmaking in the late 1970s? Address the following areas:


Aesthetic similarities and differences (which filmmakers do the cite as influences, which filmmakers do they reject?), Technological similarities and differences, Economic similarities and differences, Social similarities and differences.

As James Nares clearly states, "There was a conscious separation between ourselves and the Michael Snows and Jonas Mekases." Nares and the No Wave filmmakers, he says, were more ingrained in the punk music scene, and music in general. Where it seemed like the avant-garde at the time was art for art's sake, structuralist filmmaking, the No Wave filmmakers were out to get a rise out of people and make films that were meant to be seen as spectacles unto themselves.

The No-Wavers favored Super film not only because it was easy to use, but also because it was cheap to use. Coupled with relative inexperience and loose scripting, many of the No Wave films had a 'home movies meets 'forced naturalism'' feel to them. This is not unlike Jonas Mekas' diary films, despite the former being somewhat scripted. Each of these were shot seemingly haphazardly by design on cheap film stock. Due to budgetary restraints, each had to use what they had at the time.

Yet, while the No Wave filmmakers shared certain similarities with Jonas Mekas and others, they largely rejected Mekas' style of filmmaking in favor of the French New Wave and filmmakers like Andy Warhol. Amos Poe's "Unmade Beds" is a remake of Jean-luc Godard's film "Breathless", and Poe made the film with the intent of trying to replicate the French New Wave in New York.

The Academicization of the Avant-Garde

What have been the major critiques of the "academicization" of the American avant-garde film? Give your own response to these critiques in relation to the films and readings from our class. (A good example to use might be Rainer's Lives of Performers and Noel Carroll's essay on it that we discussed in class.)

It seems to me that one of the major critiques or criticisms of the 'academicization' of avant-garde film is the simple act of pigeonholing it as any one thing. Noel Carroll cites the quote that precedes Yvonne Rainer's "Lives of Performers": "Cliché is, in a sense, the purest art of intelligibility; it tempts us with the possibility of enclosing life within beautifully inalterable formulas, of obscuring the arbitrary nature of imagination with an appearance of necessity." As Carroll points out, the narration given in the film is seemingly intentionally vague and generalized, almost as though it could be about any of the characters, or even other people entirely. Through intentionally using this device, Rainer acknowledges the concept of narrative, and offers the audience just enough of it to know that there is a story in place.

But by applying this cliche to the film, it becomes more definable, easier to categorize. Feeding back into the main question, one criticism of 'academicization' is the fact that once a film or movement is placed into a category, then it's cliché is established and its value as a unique piece of film is damaged.

At the heart of "Lives of Performers", and certainly as well as other films, is the desire to somehow deal in emotions. Carroll believes that Rainer made the switch from choreography to filmmaking because it "allowed her the opportunity to reflect on the emotions dispassionately." In other words, film allowed Rainer to analyze emotion without having her films get caught up in the expression of emotions in the traditional sense. Putting this sort of thing into an academic context detracts from the art of the piece in favor of a colder, more scientific reading. So while Rainer worked to examine and analyze emotion on film, this still technically allowed her to utilize them on screen. Academicization appears to only concentrate on the 'what' and the 'how', while letting the 'why' of the piece fall under the definition of cliché.