All posts by Larry Christopher

Documentary, movie reviews

Exit Through the Gift Shop

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No one seems to know for sure if Exit Through the Gift Shop is a real documentary or a prank played by street artist Banksy. Either way, it’s a fascinating portrayal of both the street art movement, pop culture and the strange point where the two meet.

The film starts out with Frenchman Thiery Guetta, the cousin of street artist Space Invader, filming various street artists in Paris, Los Angeles and other locations. Street art was the next phase of graffiti that became popular in the 1990s, and we see leading practitioners of this art, such as Shephard Fairey at work, painting their elaborate creations in prominent locations around cities. While some people label graffiti and street art simply as vandalism, and on one level it is -and I doubt that few street artists themselves would argue with this- much of it is also undeniably creative and original. While it’s sort of redundant to say it’s subversive, it may be one of the few statements that can be made nowadays that this could truly be said about, as there’s no commercial intent behind it. Or so it would seem.

Yet Exit Through the Gift Shop ends up being more about the commercialization of art than street art per se. When Thiery finally meets the mysterious English street artist Banksy, we watch him leave his mark around Los Angeles, London and, most daringly, on the infamous wall in the West Bank, right under the noses of military patrols. When Banksy pressures Thiery to put together an actual documentary, however, the result is a disaster and it’s revealed that Thiery knows nothing about filmmaking, so Banksy takes over the project and the focus turns on Thiery. That’s at least the official story, which hasn’t been confirmed to this day.

The denouement of the film comes when Thiery reinvents himself as Mister Brainwash and has a major opening in L.A. that turns him into a celebrity. At this point, a man who starts out as an amiable eccentric is transformed into a near megalomaniac who proclaims himself the next Andy Warhol. Indeed, many of his paintings are variations on Warhol’s themes, with lots of giant Campbell’s Soup cans, Elvis renditions and distortions of famous paintings. Despite the obviously derivative nature of his work, his opening is a huge success, and he goes on to design one of Madonna’s album covers. The people Thiery filmed earlier, from Fairey to Banksy are now less than enthralled with him, and the implication is that he is a sellout while the art critics and general public are gullible fools.

Taken at face value, the film doesn’t quite add up. Why would the anarchic Banksy put his name behind the film if he truly despised the result? The fact that we see Banksy himself with a very public art opening earlier in the film proves he isn’t as adverse to publicity as he pretends. Still, whatever we might suspect about Banksy’s intentions or honesty, he undoubtedly has real talent. In a review in the English paper The Sunday Times, Wendy Ide mentions that she once interviewed Banksy, and he revealed that It’s A Beautiful Life is his favorite film. Probably not coincidentally, that’s the name Thiery/Mister Brainwash gives to his art exhibit that Banksy allegedly had nothing to do with.

Exit Through the Gift Shop [Blu-ray] is a truly postmodern film about contemporary culture, which means its ultimate veracity, or lack thereof is of secondary importance at most. It causes the viewer to contemplate that ancient question, “What is art?” This makes it more meaningful than 99% of other contemporary films.

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indie comedies, indie films

The Last Big Thing

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The Last Big Thing (1996), newly released on DVD

I first saw The Last Big Thing shortly after it was released, some twelve years ago and thought it was brilliant and hilarious. Amazingly enough, it still holds up today. On the DVD cover this film is described as a “scathing satire of modern-day Los Angeles.” What is so interesting and original about it, however, is that it’s at least as much a satire of alternative culture and cultural criticism as it is of mainstream culture.

The hero/anti-hero is Simon Geist, an intellectual slacker/cultural critic who pretends to edit a magazine called The Next Big thing in order to make fools of all the desperate people who want to be famous in L.A. Of course, Geist is so humorless and sophomoric in his judgements that most of the time we are laughing at him rather than his targets. Writer-director Dan Zukovic, who plays Geist, made no attempt to make him likable or sympathetic.

Certainly, The Last Big Thing satirizes the silliness of pop culture (which, going by this film, hasn’t really changed that much in fifteen years; except for the absence of cell phones, it could have been filmed today), such as rock bands obsessed with 1970s sitcoms, but if there is a message at all, it’s that you can’t look down on the rest of society from a great height, as Simon Geist attempts to do, without becoming ridiculous and, ultimately a hypocrite.

Aside from the great performance by Zukovic, Susan Heimbeinder as Geist’s girlfriend, with her bizarre mannerisms and brilliant sense of physical comedy, adds to the absurdity of it all. Geist, like every college radical, underground magazine publisher, is obsessed with creating a movement that can’t be “co-opted.” Meanwhile, his idea of a grand statement is imitating Munch’s The Scream while staring into a chrome garbage can. As someone in the film, I don’t recall who, points out, there is a Warhol-esque theme to the whole thing. The Last Big Thing succeeds at being both a criticism and a meta-criticism of modern culture.

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Documentary

Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story review

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Note: A slightly edited version of this review has recently been published on Devtome.

You can’t deny that Michael Moore has mastered the art of creating documentaries that are persuasive, entertaining and informative. Well, the first two at least; the informative part is a little murky in some ways. He hits you with a series of interesting and usually infuriating or depressing facts, adds personal anecdotes and then draws some very broad conclusions. Capitalism: A Love Story is an extreme example of this style.

This documentary goes from one outrage to another: heartless banks, the Bank of America plays a large role as villain, repossess the homes of struggling families; a loyal workers are fired with three days notice, a corrupt, privately owned juvenile home bribes a judge to incarcerate innocent teens; commercial pilots are paid less than fast food workers, giant corporations are bailed out while the poor are neglected…it goes on and on. By the time you’ve watched all this, you are ready to join the revolution. But what revolution, exactly?

Michael Moore is a propagandist par excellence. He knows exactly how to pull at the heartstrings and evoke the maximum amount of rage and class resentment in his viewers. The problem is, the target in this case, “capitalism” is ultimately an abstraction. The particular cases Moore focuses on are real, and they are examples of injustice, corruption and ignorance. However, to blame an ideology for such things is a kind of simplistic and naive conclusion that doesn’t really solve anything.

For philosophical ammunition, Moore curiously turns to an institution that is at least as tainted as capitalism –the Catholic church. He quotes priests and a bishop, who assure us that capitalism is evil and that Jesus would not have endorsed it. Now when right wing Christians try to invoke the widely satirized, “What would Jesus do?” we can smirk at the silliness of it; apparently liberals are allowed to do it, though.

Moore could just as easily have done a 2 hour expose of the Church’s many evils (which happen to be in the headlines right now). Moore could have done a polemic, perhaps following in the footsteps of fanatical atheists like Richard Dawson, against religion. This, however, would be out of line with his populist image. He is betting that the masses in America are more likely to turn against capitalism than God. Nor would such an anti-Church message have been any more accurate. However, at least the Church is a discrete institution; capitalism is really just a word; the exploitation and robbing of average people by the rich and powerful is not dependent on the current economic system.

How, exactly, is Capitalism: A Love Story a distortion? Because, like all propaganda, it simplifies and gets you to make a mental leap from particular cases to broad generalizations. Exploitation and injustice are as old as civilization, while capitalism is a mere few centuries old. In what may be the best part of the film -the very beginning- Moore shows scenes from the Roman Empire, using the familiar but still effective analogy between that empire’s decline and our own. The problem is, the Romans weren’t capitalists.

Libertarians and fiscal conservatives will, no doubt, argue that Moore is wrong because the actions he condemns are not really capitalism at all in the pure sense. After all, bailing out a failing company is not an example of the free market. This is true, but all this does is show how murky words and semantics can be. The truth is, banks who operate like loan sharks, corrupt politicians and special interest groups are not really ideological creatures at all; their kind has always been around, and they are able to wear any sort of political mask that the times demand.

In another of the film’s sneaky ideological gimmicks, Moore associates the Obama election with a populist revolt against the status quo. There is, no doubt, truth to this. He does not, however, show exactly how Obama has done anything differently. Obama, it turns out, has been just as complicit when it comes to corporate bailouts as Bush.

Like all of Moore’s documentaries, Capitalism: A Love Story is worth seeing even if you don’t accept all of its conclusions and implications. The outrages it portrays are real enough. The problem with associating them with such a broad target is that it makes it all too easy for someone to come along with the right banner, such as “socialism” and play out the same agenda.

The fact is, we are living in, or on the verge of a post-ideological, post-industrial and probably post-political era. There will probably never be a purely capitalist or socialist economy again (if there ever was, which is unlikely). Moore evokes FDR’s New Deal as a paradigm of benevolent government, but looking to a past era, with completely different economic conditions, is not really a solution. Another thing worshippers of the New Deal fail to consider is that many of the cultural and environmental woes of today, such as suburban sprawl, the proliferation of automobiles and the rise of the permanent war economy and military industrial complex follow directly from that era.

Capitalism: A Love story may move you and remind you how greedy people can be, but it ultimately fails to suggest a viable solution.

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Oscars

Oscar Nominations for Best Picture: Does It Matter?

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Warning: the following contains cynical anti-Oscar sentiments.

This year, 10 films have been nominated for Best Picture. They are:

“Avatar” James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers
“The Blind Side” Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson, Producers
“District 9” Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham, Producers
“An Education” Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey, Producers
“The Hurt Locker” Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro, Producers
“Inglourious Basterds” Lawrence Bender, Producer
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness, Producers
“A Serious Man” Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Producers
“Up” Jonas Rivera, Producer
“Up in the Air” Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman, Producers

This list, double the usual number of nominees, illustrates more than ever how silly the whole notion of having a “Best Picture” (and, to a lesser extent, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, etc.) has become.

How can you compare war movies, animation, sci fi and contemporary dramas? Several of the nominees, in particular Up, The Blind Side, Avatar and Inglourious Basterds are fairly stereotypical of the type of film the Academy prefers — heavy-handed social drama and epic adventure or war movies (in the case of Avatar, a kind of mixture of the two!) These are overwhelmingly the kind of films that predictably win Best Picture.

The world, fortunately, has grown too decentralized and complex to narrow things down this way. Let the Oscars persist as an anachronistic spectacle, but let’s not mistake this ritual for having much to do with movies in the contemporary world.

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indie comedies

The Invention of Lying film review

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This is a movie I started watching with very modest expectations, given the gimmicky sounding premise (an alternative world where lying is unknown). The film surprised me with funny and original satire, and the promise of a possibly insightful look at the very concepts of truth and lies.

Mark (Ricky Gervais) is an average, perhaps a little below average guy who has reached his 40s without achieving much success in either career or relationships. He is a screenwriter on the verge of being fired. The entire notion of screenwriting, of course, has to be rethought in a world without lies! Lacking the ability to create fiction, they must churn out incredibly boring documentaries.

Soon after being fired, and called a loser by more than one always-honest co-worker, Mark is also informed by a girl he has a crush on (Jennifer Garner) that he is too fat and ugly to be a match for her. Mark’s life looks grim, but then, just as he’s about to be evicted from his apartment, he makes a radical discovery -he is able to fabricate things. Since no one is familiar with lies, he is able to talk money out of a bank teller and a woman who is a perfect stranger into a hotel room (telling her that the world will end if they don’t have sex).

Some of the best and funniest early scenes are simple, tossed out lines, the kind you might find on The Simpsons. Since even advertisements must be truthful in this world, we get some hilariously honest descriptions of popular products like Coke and Pepsi. It’s surprising that these products were mentioned by name in a less than flattering way, in a kind of anti-product placement for a change. A nursing home has a sign outside that reads, “A Sad Place Where Old People Come to Die.” Truth, we are reminded, is not always pretty.

Unfortunately, The Invention of Lying is not able to maintain the same strong writing it starts with. The decline comes soon after the film becomes a satire about religion. Mark’s mother is dying, and, to comfort her, he tells her that death does not mean eternal emptiness but a mansion in the sky where all your loved ones are waiting. Next, the whole world wants to know about this afterlife. Mark, then, invents a Man In The Sky, and we learn how the concept of God was invented, at least from an atheist’s point of view.

No doubt many people would be offended by this poke at religion. For me, the problem is that it starts the film on a downward spiral after a strong beginning.
The religious issue is simply too broad, so instead of examining the truly interesting and original ideas that surround truth and lies in an everyday context, we get a rather banal (if still amusing at times) explanation for why people believe in God.
Then, towards the conclusion, even the pseudo-religious theme fades away and the film devolves into a standard Hollywood romantic comedy ending.

I might be less harsh about The Invention of Lying if it hadn’t sucked me in early with the promise of something bordering on the profound. Why do I say this? Well, the very notion of connecting lying with fiction, while not completely original, gets to the very core of things like art and ethics. For example, it leads to questions like, does lying actually serve a necessary purpose for relationships and society?
It’s the kind of thing seldom dealt with in movies, and the fact that The Invention of Lying started off by handling such a heavy theme in a light and satirical manner was truly impressive.

Once the Man In the Sky issue started, however, the sharp edge began to dull. The ending is pure cliche, with Mark interrupting a wedding ceremony. I wonder how often, outside of movies, anyone has actually answered the question rhetorically asked at weddings, “If anyone has reason to object…”

So, The Invention of Lying is something of a mix, starting off as an original satire and turning into a typical genre flick. If you don’t expect a profound discourse on aesthetics, as I foolishly did, and aren’t overly sensitive about religion being ridiculed, you might enjoy it.

[ReviewAZON asin=”B00275EHBY” display=”inlinepost”]

indie films

The Brothers Bloom: Conmen as Existentialist Heroes?

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The Brothers Bloom is a new twist, or series of twists on a familiar movie theme: con artists whose schemes are so elaborate that we are never sure until the very end (if then) who is conning whom and what the real story is. Because this kind of story has been done so many times, as in the films of David Mamet, I expected to be less than impressed with it. Yet I found it surprisingly entertaining and original.

Director Rian Johnson, who also directed Brick (the film noir set in a contemporary high school) creates a surreal world in The Brothers Bloom, one that has many elements of atmospheric thrillers from bygone days while apparently taking place in the present. The brothers, the younger and naive Bloom (that’s his first name, played by Adrien Brody) and the more sophisticated and conniving Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) are shown growing up as orphans kicked from one foster home to another in a comical montage sequence. As children, they appear to be refugees from a Dickens novel, dressed in old fashioned dark suits and hats.

Even as adults, they inhabit a strangely noirish world of atmospheric trains and steamer ships while the world around them seems ordinary and contemporary. Bloom wants to escape the “scripted” life of the con man, though Stephen convinces him to take on the proverbial one last job. The mark is the beautiful rich recluse Penelope (Rachel Weisz), who lives in an absurdly anachronistic mansion in, of all places, New Jersey. Predictably, Bloom and Penelope fall in love, but whether this will prevail over the brothers’ lifelong habit of deception we don’t discover till the end. Maximilian Schell, a long time veteran of traditional mysteries, adds to the ambiance as a sinister Russian mobster with an eye patch.

So what makes The Brothers Bloom stand out among the countless other entries in this genre? Mainly in its audacity at blatantly calling attention to its own machinations. This itself has become a popular postmodern gimmick in many contemporary films, and is something that risks annoying or completing alienating the audience. After all, the conventional notion of a story is that we, the reader or viewer, is supposed to get absorbed by the narrative, forgetting that it’s something made up. The Brothers Bloom does not go so far as to identify itself as a movie; rather, it suggests that life itself, especially the lives of grifters, is inevitably scripted.

By making Stephen, who openly calls himself a scriptwriter, unapologetic about his nature makes the whole twistiness of the plot more palatable than the typical movie of this kind. At least that’s the effect it had on this reviewer. I am, in general,
over-saturated on twists and clever endings, where the actual outcome seems arbitrary and whole intent is simply to fool the audience, not a very difficult endeavor when you are the author or director.

The Brothers Bloom turns the very concept of twists into an existentialist issue, and thereby puts a new and fresh spin on it. While its questionable if the brothers in this movie can legitimately be considered existentialist heroes, they do provoke some interesting thoughts about the nature of things like life, love and truth, and that’s more than you get from most movies.

[ReviewAZON asin=”B002J1RZHE” display=”inlinepost”]

movie reviews

Leonard Maltin’s 2009 Movie Guide

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Leonard Maltin's 2009 Movie Guide (Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide (Signet))

Review

“The go-to choice for both film geeks and casual couch potatoes.” —The New York Times Book Review “The best of the bunch.”—San Francisco Chronicle “The single most important reference book in every home.” —Esquire
–This text refers to an alternate

Paperback
edition.

The New York Times bestselling film guide— revised and updatedThe most authoritative book of its kind, now with more entries than ever before, updated and revised for 2009…
Buy Leonard Maltin’s 2009 Movie Guide at Amazon