The Nicolas Cage Roulette Challenge, Part 3

It’s been a while since my last entry in the N.C.R. Challenge for a reason. The first two films that came up, luckily, were the kind of goofy thrillers that Nicolas Cage is best known for: Seeking Justice and Trespass. So I was a little gobsmacked when I hit the wheel and this was what came up:

Oh.  Well then.

It took some time to get to the right place where I could watch the film, but I play by my own rules, so there's no skipping allowed.  Needless to say, it doesn't quite fit the profile for the N.C.R. Challenge.  It doesn't represent the Nicolas Cage of Face/Off and National Treasure, but a more serious Cage in a more serious film.

World Trade Center is not a particularly insightful film. It doesn’t say anything new about the attacks of September 11, 2001, nor does it intend to. It might seem odd that Oliver Stone would direct a staunchly apolitical film about one of the most politically inflammatory events in history, but it’s not out of character for him. He’s made films before that reduce a politically polarizing topic to emotional simplicity. Platoon: war is hell. Born on the Fourth of July: soldiers ought not to be punished for fighting an unjust war. He caught some flak for W, a film which didn’t back away from taking a political side but dared to portray the maligned President as a flawed human being rather than as a cartoon.

Like those films, World Trade Center is earnest from beginning to end. It’s a reverent tribute to those who, without a second thought, put themselves into danger on that Tuesday morning to rescue others. It doesn’t see the reasons for the attack or the destructive decisions that would result from it—it doesn’t even see the planes hit—rather, it only sees the men and women who were on the ground that day. They don’t have time to think about the big questions, and neither does the film.

It’s an easy route to take, but we never get the sense that Stone is merely mining the event for an emotional response. He’s respectful and honest, and his movie is genuine rather than maudlin.

It helps that the performances are measured and intricate, never rising to the histrionic levels that must have been tempting. Cage and Michael Peña, as two Port Authority police officers trapped in the rubble, are excellent anchors for the events of the film, and the scenes between them have a quiet resonance of love, loss and desperation. As the people above ground, Maria Bello, Donna Murphy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Frank Whaley, and Viola Davis are believable faces of heartbreak, hope, and determination.

Stone admittedly does go overboard at times. A scene in which Peña has a vision of Christ is a little ridiculous. And it’s a rare movie in which Michael Shannon is the weak link, but his character of Marine Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes, a key figure in the rescue effort, is portrayed as too much of a superhero.

While World Trade Center is limited in its point of view of the attacks of 9/11, it tells a clear key side of the story that’s easy to tell, but needs to be told. It isn’t in line with the best 9/11 films that have been made: it’s not as bold as Paul Greengrass’s United 93, which was just as reverent but quietly political as well, nor is it as complex as Danny Leiner’s The Great New Wonderful, which portrayed a New York City still trembling in the aftermath. But unlike the worst (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), it also carefully avoids sentiment and mawkishness. It boils the day down to this simplicity: when people were running out, good people ran in.

*** out of ****

Lorde = Lana Del Rey x Andy Kaufman. Just a thought.

For those without the reference point:

Andy Kaufman performs Mighty Mouse - watch more funny videos

ELYSIUM (2013): A literal gap between rich and poor

If Elysium's heavyhanded allegory won't be the ringing bell that sets off the move toward a fairer health care system in America, it's no real fault of the film itself.  Like Neill Blomkamp's debut film, District 9, the connection to the current class system is too obvious and its thesis clear too soon to be truly effective as a political comment.  But also like that previous film, it's alive, exciting, intelligent, funny, bitterly sad, and it creates a vivid, intricately realized setting.

Elysium is actually better than District 9, which had a brilliant premise and dazzling visual effects but failed to follow through with its story.  It's a superior sci-fi action film that deserves mention alongside the best.

In the near future, the gap between rich and poor has continued to widen as technology has advanced.  The rich have abandoned Earth and taken residence on Elysium, a space station orbiting not far away.  What's more, medical technology has advanced to the point where cancer can be cured with the flick of a switch, but only the rich on Elysium have access to it.  Earth, in the meantime, is overcrowded and dilapidated, and its inhabitants are still loading into emergency rooms.

When Max (Matt Damon), a lowly factory worker and ex-con, needs medical treatment badly, he calls in a favor from an underground illegal immigrant runner (Wagner Moura) to get a ticket to Elysium.  The scheme involves a heist of important data stored inside the brain of a CEO (William Fichtner, sublimely snakelike).  But his plans to cure himself may be sidetracked by his reconnection with a childhood friend (Alice Braga) and her young daughter, who has leukemia.

The role of Max doesn't particularly play well to Damon's strengths, since he's a better and subtler leading man than is required for a Mad Max/RoboCop-style martyr hero (he was similarly a little bit too good for the Bourne series).  But he knocks it out of the park anyway, lending a working-class sense of humor and a broken man's gravity to the role.  Moura is also likable as the hustler of illegals to Elysium with questionable motives.

Jodie Foster plays the sinister, power-grabbing Elysian Secretary of Defense Delacourt, modeled on the likes of Dick Cheney, in a scenery-gnashing performance that would be terrible if it were meant to be good in the first place.  The role, much like Famke Janssen's wild villainess on "Hemlock Grove," is not meant to be played well; it's meant to be played viciously and snarlingly, which Foster ably does.

The film is spirited away, however, by Sharlto Copley as Kruger, a secret officer of Elysium who's used by Delcaourt to sabotage illegal transport to the space station.  Copley, who kickstarted his career as the hero in District 9, here plays a villain so memorably ruthless and horrible, but at the same time scarily and delightfully believable as a character.  I wouldn't count him out for an Oscar.

Elysium rarely takes a breath as Max's quest follows irrefutable logic to a simultaneously victorious and unfortunate conclusion.  The movie has some holes in the plot: the McGuffin of the information stored in Fichtner's head is a little too simplistic, as is the egalitarian victory at the end which feels too easy.  But it doesn't derail a film that is a monumental and inventive piece of entertainment.

*** 1/2 out of ****

CLOUD ATLAS (2012)

Here is a strange and wonderful film: just as wonderful though not quite as strange as the novel on which it's based, but if I hadn't read it I wouldn't know any better.  Films of such a gigantic scope don't come around much; truly thoughtful movies tend to be low-key, while grandeur is saved for box-office-safe action movies.  It's the synthesis of two great artists of film who have collaborated to make something possibly greater than either one could make on his or her own.  Those artists are the Wachowskis, who hit it big with The Matrix trilogy but haven't quite gotten due credit for their superb noir picture Bound or for their underrated piece of pure cotton candy Speed Racer, and Tom Tykwer, whose Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is one of the best and saddest tragedies in recent history.

Cloud Atlas is made up of six stories, set at times ranging from 1849 to 1973 to far, far in the future after they stop counting.  They are stories of human relationships that cause people to rethink the conventions of the world they live in.  In the book, the stories run chronologically from 1 through 6 and then recede back from 5 through 1 again; the movie understandably modifies this format and weaves the stories in and out of each other.  That Tykwer and the Wachowskis, along with their editors Alexander Berner and Claus Wehlisch, are able to tell six stories concurrently without losing momentum is astounding.

They do so mostly through clever and precise casting of familiar faces in recurring appearances: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Hugo Weaving, Keith David, Susan Sarandon.  Most of the actors play different characters in more than one of the stories, but they're often used as bridges between the stories to hold the movie together.  As the movie goes on, the connection and shared meaning between the stories becomes clearer.  Characters' journeys parallel each other, and each one leads to a different version of the same conclusion.

Hanks is more dynamic than he's been in years, given the opportunity to play the most varied characters of any actor in the film.  He's most commanding in the sixth story, set far in the future, as an aborigine who struggles with guilt after witnessing a horrible occurrence, but he also gets to play two of the movie's weirdest supporting characters: in 1849 as an eccentric doctor, and in 2012 as... well, you'll have to see for yourself.  Berry is also a strong presence, and the story she leads (set in 1973) could pass for a decent spy thriller (but I've just given away a small bit of the movie's game).

Broadbent is a delight, playing a particularly loathsome publisher in the 2012 story who redeems himself in an especially loony and heartwarming way.  Whishaw headlines the most complex and tragic story, of a down-and-out composer who's hired by a cantankerous, old and dying composer to help him finish his final piece.  Weaving does what he does best, playing the villain in each of the six pieces.  Grant, far removed from his usual romcom comfort zone, has a lot of fun in several villainous roles as well.  In addition to its all-star cast the movie has two great performances from lesser-known actors: Doona Bae, who plays several roles but is most memorable in the Philip K. Dick-like fifth story, as a "fabricant" who becomes self-aware; and David Gyasi, who in the film's first story plays a Pacific Island slave who's rescued by a lawyer (Sturgess).

Cloud Atlas is technically brilliantly made.  Each setting is completely realized and feels wildly different from the last.  The makeup is incredibly elaborate, which is usually a great bother; I'm a little bit fed up with movies that cake a bunch of makeup on young actors to make them look old rather than just cast an old actor, but here I didn't seem to mind.  The differing genres of each story are also handled well, from the sweeping and old-fashioned 1849 (directed by the Wachowskis) to the somber chamber piece in 1936 (Tykwer) to the gritty crime thriller of 1973 (Tykwer) to the Hitchcockian melodrama of 2012 (Tykwer) to the squeaky-clean future of 2144 (Wachowskis) to the rough jungle of the distant future (Wachowskis).

If the movie has a flaw, it is in the shaping of the book's Russian-doll format to a mosaic format, which is more conducive to a film.  Because the stories need to weave in and out of each other seamlessly, the links between them are more obvious and the resolution becomes a little bit too heavyhanded.  Though the conclusion is too pat, the movie that leads to it is wondrous.  It is a miracle that Cloud Atlas made it to the screen at all, but here it is.

**** out of ****

THIS WEEK IN DISGUSTING: The Koch Brothers: Obamacare is coming to physically penetrate you

David and Charles Koch, tied for fourth place on Forbes' Richest People in America list, are naturally no fan of President Obama, nor of his plan to make health care more affordable to more Americans, destroy the insurance industry by giving it millions of new paying customers, and bankrupt businesses by giving them a healthier workforce.

The billionaire Brothers, notable as the founders of Americans for [the] Prosperity [of the Koch Brothers], have also sunk money into an independent group called Meaningless Platitude Generation Opportunity, which has just released the most fantastically awful series of ads aimed at convincing young people to opt out of the required purchase and assistance of the Affordable Care Act, pay the fine, and continue to be uninsured.

How to convince young people to shun a program that helps them get health care, which they might not otherwise be able to afford, and instead to pay more money to continue getting nothing?



Oh!  By telling them they'll get stuff stuck up their butts.

Everyone knows that the one thing young men hate worse than paying money is another guy's fingers in their butts.  So all they need to do is opt out, pay the fine, and their buttholes will remain untouched by everything except the cancer that might have been detected.

Wait, it gets worse:



Nothing like a little rape terror to make your political point, eh.

It's not so much that the implication of the ad is completely false, although it is.  In both the ads, the respective doctors say something along the lines of "I see you're new to Obamacare" or "I see you've signed up for Obamacare," as if it were the organ donor program.  The doctor shouldn't give a hoot whether you use Obamacare or not, any more than your digestive system notices if the food you just ate was bought with food stamps.  What the Kochs are assuming is that their target audience thinks that Obamacare is a public option (which would be nice, but that's an argument for a different day), when it's actually an assistance program meant to help people buy insurance from the already existing private insurers.  If you're insured with Blue Cross, and you used Obamacare to buy into it, all that matters to your doctor is that you're insured with Blue Cross.  Obamacare doesn't enter (physically or otherwise) into the exam room whatsoever.

But never mind: these ads are, like most mainstream right-wing arguments, targeted at the ill-informed and misinformed.

What gets me is that the commercial is so incredibly vulgar and cheap.  Bereft of real ideas, the Kochs have elected to shoot for the absolute lowest common denominator for political scare tactics.  And I don't just mean that creepy perma-smile Uncle Sam mask, which doesn't make me afraid of doctor's offices but does admittedly make me a little queasy around Burger King.

WE'RE COMING FOR YOU.

It's that the Kochs are so out of arguments that they're forced to use fear of physical penetration as their cue.  As a left-winger I'm no ardent fan of Obamacare, though it's a step in the right direction and hopefully a bridge to a more socially conscious, nationally inclusive and efficient form of health care.  It's not the simplest legislation out there; certainly there was some mode of criticism the Kochs could have followed, other than "Opt out, or get raped"?  Even a critical ad that was patently misleading about the law might be worthy of debate.  This campaign is just cowardly hogwash, preying on the instinctive fears of young people.

And at the expense of two necessary and helpful procedures, no less.  The young man is, of course, petrified of the rectal exam, because... well, he's scared at the prospect of being gay, I suppose.  I'm frequently surprised at the prevalence of gay panic in pop culture even nowadays; I was recently as flummoxed by a scene in A Haunted House (likely to be a Cinemasochism entry soon) in which the brutal rape of Marlon Wayans by a ghost is played for laughs, because he doesn't want to appear gay, yuk yuk.

The Koch ads don't play it for just yuks, although I have to assume the makers had a good ol' boy laugh while conceiving it.  They not only assume a ridiculous homophobia on its audience, but also demonize and marginalize the exam itself.  The gynecological exam is also conflated with rape, with the image of the scary Uncle Sam wielding the speculum and the young lady's legs quivering with fear.  Barf.

Never mind that the right wing has yet to heed constant warnings to stay away from rape and to stay out of the OB/GYN business.  This one manages to tackle both!  The image that pops into my mind when Uncle Sam descends on the poor scared girl isn't of President Obama, but of Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia or Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, or any of the Republican governors and legislators who've enacted laws that require doctors to do essentially what Uncle Sam's doing in that second video, to women who've elected to terminate pregnancy.

The ads are a logical and political mess, but it's that desperation that makes them really awful.  They're so base, condescending and just downright dirty.  I don't mean dirty in the sense that they're unfair or untrue, although they are.  But they're also just icky.  Slimy.  Gross.  Creepy.  The Kochs' and Generation Opportunity's proposal that young people ought to stay uninsured is ridiculous, but the notion that this concept would appeal to anyone--that anyone would take it seriously enough to be scared by it, or worse, that anyone would find it clever or funny--is insulting.

TWITTUR'D!

https://twitter.com/TorturouslyOkay

Torturously Okay is now on Twitter.  To be honest, we've never been much the tweeting type, but we're interested in participating the entertainment twitterverse along with personalities much more established than us.  So there might not be much original material other than links to blog stuff and entries aimed at other shows/comedians/games/etc. we like (Doug Loves Movies, Team Coco, Jimmy Fallon, etc.).  But anyway, here we are.

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THIS WEEK IN CINEMASOCHISM: The Devil Inside (2012)

This Week in Cinemasochism takes a look at movies that have been notoriously rejected by the mass populace, and tells you if you might perchance be missing a classic.  Or not.


The Devil Inside is a quick cheapie built for a swift box office draw: the kind of horror movie that's being made more and more often since Paranormal Activity spun a few thousand dollars into 100 million.  According to IMDb, Devil cost about a million to make and brought in $33 million on its opening weekend: modest for a major-studio movie, but more than enough.  The reception among critics and fans, however, was not as successful; it may have gone down as the most hated movie of 2012.  It scored a 6% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is not easy (The Oogieloves is listed at 27%), and appears to be generous at that.  Let me quote from the critics who "liked" it: "Exorcism horror gets the cliched shaky-camera treatment," "The less said about that ending, the better." The bad reviews aren't just unfavorable; they're downright nasty.  Peter Travers: "The Devil Inside manages not only to scrape the barrel's bottom but to drill a hole in said bottom and funnel deeper into the scum."

Ouch.  I, uh, I kinda liked it.

I really don't see what all the vitriol is about.  The Devil Inside is a competently made, well-acted, quickly paced and enjoyable thriller.  It's unambitious, but, well, so what?  Sometimes a demonic-possession movie doesn't need to be ambitious.  It's certainly more entertaining than The Conjuring, a dull would-be shocker that's been heaped with praise.  Will it fill you with dread?  No.  But if you're the kind who enjoys demonic screaming and flailing, levitating objects, crosses that burn your skin, possessed women shouting something that rhymes with "Your mother sews socks that smell," and pea soup that flows like water--all things which we hold near and dear to our hearts--then the film will not disappoint.

It begins with that old portentous signal "Based on true events," which is the second-most meaningless caption in the film.  It's followed by the most meaningless, which says that the Vatican did not in any way endorse this film.

Yes, I wrote in my review of The Conjuring that the old, old based-on-true-events trick is the kiss of death for a horror movie.  But that's only if the movie takes itself seriously, which The Devil Inside doesn't.  Though it plays itself straight, it's content to be nothing more than a romp with the devil through a series of body-bending exorcisms.

An ominous, anonymous call is placed to 911: "Three people are dead." Police arrive to find... well, I'll leave you to discover it.  Flash forward twenty or so odd years and Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) is traveling to Rome with a couple of rogue exorcists (Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth) and the camera crew from The Blair Witch Project at her behest.  Isabella Rossi (no relation to Ingrid Bergman) hopes to exorcise the demon that she believes has possessed her mother (Suzan Crowley).

The movie delivers far more guffaws than frights.  Was that intentional?  It doesn't matter; it does.  The first scene between Isabella and her mother is a delight, in which the mother spouts ominous warnings in several different languages and accents, and boasts a body covered in markings of upside-down crosses.  Since the crosses point in many directions, I don't know how the characters know they're upside-down.  The exorcism scenes are actually quite well done, with some excellent stunt work from contortionist Pixie Le Knot at key moments.  The performances are earnest and surprisingly good, particularly from Crowley as the possessed mum.

Director William Brent Bell works handily within the well-worn "found footage" template, and never cheats on the point of view.  The quieter scenes fail to achieve the kind of brutally honest emotion that other documentary-style horror films have, such as The Poughkeepsie Tapes and Blair Witch.  As a result some confessional (in the reality-TV sense, not the Catholic sense) scenes are extraneous, and the movie feels a little padded at barely 75 minutes followed by the slowest scrolling end credits you'll ever see.  But the film is punctuated by some truly entertaining, gory and kinetic scenes.  The ending has been much maligned, and the film doesn't so much end as it does stop, but Bell throws in a few delicious set pieces near the end.  I'm thinking in particular of one memorable baptism scene in which... well, I'll just say I didn't see it coming.

** 1/2 out of ****

Is it really that bad?: Yes.  Which is to say not at all.

Pain level: For horror fans, non-existent.  For others, moderate.