The Informant! (2009)

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Written by: Scott Z. Burns
Based on the Book by: Kurt Eichenwald

Steven Soderbergh has done basically everything every director could ever set out to do in his career. He brought independent film to the mainstream with his 1989 debut sex, lies, and videotape. He made a movie about Franz Kafka. He made one of the coolest heist films ever (despite the fact that it was a remake) with Ocean’s Eleven. He made a movie about the life of Che Guevera. And he’s turned a porn star into a leading lady with The Girlfriend Experience. So what’s he doing now? A movie about a corporate whistleblower based on a true story? Didn’t he already do that? Oh no that was Erin Brocovich. She wasn’t corporate, she hates corporations.

The Informant! is the story of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), the vice president of ADM, a company that conspires to fix the price of lysine, a food additive, with their competitors. After the FBI responds to a call by one of Whitacre’s bosses about an extortion claim, Whitacre decides to clear his conscience and admit to the scheme feeling that if the plan were to be exposed he would be the fall guy. The film then follows his 2.5 years in service of FBI building a case against ADM. Once FBI finally gets all it needs and raids ADM Whitacre and the film unravel into an unsettling and ambiguous mess (but that’s not necessarily a bad thing).

The film overall is enjoyable, but Soderbergh is overbearing and off-putting. He really wants you to know that Mark Whitacre is unstable by using voiceover to give light to Whitacre’s regular irreverent thoughts about polar bear hunting, Japanese panty vending machines, and Michael Crichton. A ridiculously upbeat score is also used during the movie’s most poignant scenes to contrast the overly serious corporate thrillers of the 90s the film seems to be paying homage to, as well as rejecting. When the film unravels in the third act and Soderbergh lets the film play out on it’s own it’s a welcome break.

But yeah, Matt Damon is awesome in this and I can totally see Mark Whitacre becoming a classic movie character.

7.0/10

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Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Written by: Quentin Tarantino

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino

"Watching Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to going to the movies."

Everything you really need to know about this movie can be seen in Eli Roth's character's twisted, bloodthirsty smirk as his lieutenant (Brad Pitt) instructs his soldiers on their mission of killing Nazis. As the movie progresses, it reveals a similar twisted identity: ruthless characters bent on revenge, biting dialogue, brutal violence, and a character base largely devoid of morality. Clearly, Q.T.'s paying homage to some of his favorite cult movies again. While the movie delivers more classic Tarantino dialogue, we all know he can get carried away and some scenes suffer from their length, though this is not something to be surprised about coming into one of his movies. The big surprise is the fact that the main Basterds themselves do not seem to get most of the screentime, but their scenes provide some of the most badass violence imaginable. To get more of an idea of the asskicking: Eli Roth plays a baseball-loving Jew with a heavy New York accent who beats Nazis to death with a bat, and his fucking nickname is "The Bear Jew." As much as the movie delivers some very memorable development and progression, above all it is about two things: the clever conversations, delivering insight and hilarity, and, more importantly, the catharsis of watching Nazis get fucking beaten to (dare I say it....) a pulp. Brootal.

8.9/10

R.I.P. John Hughes

It is with great sadness that I make this post memorializing the great writer/director John Hughes, who died today at age 59. If you don't know him, he was quite simply the best mainstream filmmaker of the 1980's, and while mainstream culture in the 80's was pretty fucking horrid, Hughes' films were most certainly not. While they all possessed cliched features that seemed inescapable in that time, each of his movies maintained comedy and heartfelt sentiment. If you still don't recognize the name, let's see if you don't recognize some of the films he directed, all bonafide classics that seem to be common viewing among suburban adolescents: Sixteen Candles, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and my two favorites, The Breakfast Club and Uncle Buck. While I did not grow up in the 80's, these films all evoke a great sense of nostalgia in me, a testament to their timelessness. Shit, I used to watch Uncle Buck once a month when I was younger. His work is just accessible to everyone with a lot of underlying significance; he could possibly be called the Judd Apatow of the 80's. It is certain that many more generations of misfit teenagers will grow up with Hughes' work, which seems to have examined teenage social life so well that its features became archetypal. I'll just leave you with a quote from The Breakfast Club that all of us have dreamed of saying to that stuck-up popular bitch in high school:

"Don't you ever talk about my friends. You don't know any of my friends. You don't look at any of my friends. And you certainly wouldn't condescend to speak to any of my friends. So you just stick to the things you know: shopping, nail polish, your father's BMW, and your poor, rich drunk mother in the Caribbean. And as far as being concerned about what's gonna happen when you and I walk down the hallways of school together, you can forget it cuz it's never gonna happen. Just bury your head in the sand and wait for your fucking prom."

So, R.I.P. John Hughes, and thanks for all the classics, and for helping to define so many childhoods.

Michael Haneke

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I went on vacation and Conor is Conor. I decided I wanted to do my first movie post, but I couldn’t think of a single movie to write about so I’m going to talk briefly about Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke.

Haneke has 10 feature films to his credit, however one of these films was a shot-for-shot US remake of his 1997 film, Funny Games and his latest film, The White Ribbon has yet to be released in America (although it did win the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year). Of these 8 remaining films, I’ve seen three: Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, and Caché.

Pegging down Haneke’s style is very tough to categorize. Most viewers often marvel at his ability to create suspense, some are appalled by his use of violence and sexuality. The only unifying theme in Haneke’s films is his depiction of the moral degradation of modern society.

Funny Games (1997)

Certainly Haneke’s most “prolific” film, at least in the US, probably because of the buzz his remake created, Funny Games follows a family on vacation who become subject to the sadistic and murderous fantasies of two preppy teenagers. The film is a refreshing take on the “horror” genre which has become a cesspool of “self-awareness” by employing conventional plotlines, chase scenes, gross-outs intended to scare the audience. Haneke takes all these conventions to the next level by breaking the fourth wall. The killers address the audience, wink charmingly after successfully tricking the family into trusting them, and even change the events of the film using a remote control (probably the film’s most iconic scene, I won’t go any further into the matter as it’s somewhat of a spoiler). However, while the intentions of the film are admirable, it sort of lacks in execution. The characters aren’t very well-developed and Haneke’s (supposed) intended message, that we as a society have become desensitized to violence, never comes to fruition.

The Piano Teacher (2001)

Certainly Haneke’s most “well-recieved” film, at least overseas, the Piano Teacher won the Grand Prix at Cannes, and its lead actress Isabelle Hupert received huge praise for her portrayal of an emotionally and sexually repressed piano instructor. Through the first and second act, Hupert portrays her character as a cold, emotionally-detached, controlling professor who demeans her students for each of their mistakes. However, Haneke allows us a slight glimpse into the character when he shows her enter a adult-themed stores jerk-off hut. (I don’t know what they’re actually called). The woman sits down and watches the movie playing analyzing it as if it were another piece played by one of her pupils, staring at the two actors fucking with a mixture of contempt, jealousy, and loneliness. She looks to the trash can next to her and sees a recently used tissue and holds it up to her face and gently presses it against her lips. Haneke gets the most out of Hupert’s performance by often allowing the camera to linger long after the scene should have ended. We see the pain in Hupert’s face, in her movements, and in the emptiness of the environment surrounding her. That’s really all I want to write about this movie, even though there’s so much more to it. Just watch this for Hupert’s performance, the confusing, morally ambiguous climax, and the crushing resolution.

Caché (2005)

Certainly Haneke’s most “good” film, at least in my opinion, Caché makes the most out of nothing. I’ve always been a fan of minimalism in all its forms, and Caché is perhaps one of the most minimalist films I’ve ever seen and just executed so perfectly. The plot of the film is simple. A family starts receiving video tapes showing their house is under surveillance. The father investigates the situation and finds the surveyor is a ghost from his past. I don’t really know what else to say; just watch the movie to see how Haneke creates incredible suspense where there isn’t any.

The Hurt Locker (2009)

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow

Written By: Mark Boal

"There's enough bang in there to blow us all to Jesus. If I'm gonna die, I want to die comfortable."

I'll be brief with this post: The Hurt Locker is the best movie I've seen this year, and I doubt it will be topped. It maintains suspense and heart pounding action, until an emotional climax that rips your heart out. It is also a fresh look at life at war, focusing on war as a "drug" (addiction to adrenaline). All in all, it feels like a remarkably genuine portrayal of war experiences (which makes sense, since the writer is an Iraq war veteran and also wrote 2007's In the Valley of Elah), and that makes it all the more affecting. The visual work in the movie is also noteworthy: the shaky cam is an effective complement to the harrowing battle scenes, there is an overall grainy texture to the film reminiscent of recent similar films, such as Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, and the opening scene has one of the most memorable shots I've ever seen. Keep an eye out for Jeremy Renner; he gives a moving and honest performance that is certainly Oscar-worthy. Go and see it for yourself, and experience one of the best war films I've seen.

9.3/10

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Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Directed by: Sidney Lumet

Written by: Frank Pierson

"It's your job, right? You know, the guy who kills me, I hope he does it 'cause he hates my guts. Not 'cause it's his job."

From 12 Angry Men's examination of the heated deliberation of 12 anonymous jurors, to the intense interpersonal conflicts of a family in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, to the portrayal of a real-life bank robbery by a first-time criminal and his partner (both clearly experiencing mental and emotional meltdowns) in the film that is the topic of this post, Sidney Lumet's films all seem to share a distinct feature: a pervasive, overwhelming sense of tension. No matter the setting or time period (this must be the case seeing as his body of work spans more than 50 years), Lumet is a master of conveying emotionally charged conflicts with poignancy and, often, discomfort. His films also tackle contextual social issues, such as racism against criminals in the 1950's in 12 Angry Men, and homophobia and anti-war sentiment in the 1970's in Dog Day Afternoon. In this film, Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino) and his friend Sal (John Cazale) rob a bank on a sweltering August day in Brooklyn, 1972. It soon turns into a hostage situation, followed by a media frenzy. As conflict builds between Sonny and the police, details of his past are revealed, giving insight into the reasons for his distress. The whole situation unravels with a remarkable sense of tension, as the heat is visually emphasized and the sounds of the city are able to prevail without a soundtrack. The movie is brilliantly shot, with a signature 70's look akin to The Godfather. Pacino's performance rivals DeNiro's in Taxi Driver for one of the best mental breakdowns on the big screen, and his famous improvised "ATTICA!" lines are an inspiring example of a supposed villain quickly turning into a sympathetic, heroic character. Though the events of movie are said to be much different from the real bank robbery, the basic details seem to be similar enough, and the film gives tons of contextual insight into 1970's New York society. Oh yeah, and nearly the entire film takes place in one building, similar to Lumet's first film 12 Angry Men. Hell, just watch it if you like a filmmaker who seems to get everything right in all of his work.

8.8/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072890/
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