JENNIFER’S BODY

Yawn.

I’m not a horror aficionado and even I didn’t find anything new or interesting in Jennifer’s Body.

The hype that this female screenwriter and female director were providing a feminist revisionist take on the genre turns out to be an unfulfilled promise. Despite its unsubtleties, the male-written and -directed Teeth had much more, well, teeth in its gender-avenging role-reversal.

Even the film’s half-baked commentary on community behavior after traumatic events like Columbine and 9/11 is never followed through – even unsatisfactorily.

The best thing about Diablo Cody’s script is that, while not exactly kept to a minimum, there are admittedly fewer Junoisms than in Juno. Although this is an improvement quantitatively, it is qualitatively worse because now  it sticks out like a sore thumb whenever a character says that something is “freaktarded” or tells someone to “get over it and MoveOn.org”. The most amusing character turns out to be Adam Brody as the lead singer of a success-obsessed emo band.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

Tarantino’s latest film is forcing me to reconsider everything I thought I knew about him.

Until now I had considered Tarantino incapable at disguising his authorial voice in the dialogue of supposed characters, but nonetheless a talented visual stylist even if his fluency with film history and visual quotations of his predecessors were unaccompanied by anything substantive to say about them. Seemingly without warning, he has now revealed himself as a thoughtful commentator on cinema as well.

The fact that he accomplishes this in the form of a story that is engaging in its own right and expertly told as a narrative, rather than as a Godardian essay or a blunt Hanekean wrist-slapping, makes it all the more superior. The fact that he goes further than either in his criticism of American cinema makes it all the more provocative.

Inglourious Basterds might be the most philosophically complex mainstream film of 2009. It is the best visceral depiction of mimetic violence and the unanimous condemnation of the scapegoat that unifies culture since, well, The Dark Knight.

While Nolan lets his audience in on the fact that the final scapegoat is innocent, risking a condescending attitude towards Gotham City, Tarantino uses the most famous innocent scapegoat of the twentieth century, European Jews, to question the validity of the most common scapegoat of American cinema, the German soldier. (It was, after all, the SS and not the regular German army that ran the concentration camps and were in charge of filling them.) The fact that our culture’s automatic vilification of German soldiers tempts the audience to rejoice in the torture of them in this very film, even as that vicarious participation is being condemned, makes the point disturbingly relevant.

The directness of the final indictment of the audience — a point of view shot that puts the audience in the position of having a swastika branded on its collective forehead — is slightly disguised by the fact that the same shot had already been used earlier in the film. But the meaning of that final shot is no less convicting, and Aldo Raine rightfully declares the film a “masterpiece.”

[The mechanics of the film’s critique of glorified violence are discussed more specifically below, under the spoiler warning.]

I never thought I would ever like a Tarantino movie comprised mostly of conversations, with very little action, much less that it could be construed as good in any way, but I love being surprised and am happy to admit my astonishment.

The trick of making so many long conversations successful seems to have been accomplished by translating most of the script into foreign languages, so that Tarantino’s strong voice could not become a distraction, and so that the suspense could be based primarily on the actors’ facial reactions rather than on the words themselves. The scene at the restaurant stands out for me as the most frightening, because it conveys Shosanna’s experience so well.

Inglourious Basterds also proves that if Tarantino hires real actors instead of amateurs like Zoe Bell, his indifference to acting can be neutralized. As the Nazi villain (in this film the qualification is necessary), Christoph Waltz brings the prowess of Geoffrey Rush to a character whose occasionally cartoonish flourishes never diminish his menace.

Waltz’s facility with at least four languages in the film is one of the few contrasts between him and his American counterpart, played by Brad Pitt, whose character slightly exaggerates the actor’s own uncomfortability with accents. However, the comparisons between the two characters are manifold, as exhibited by the juxtaposition of their respective introductions in the first two “chapters” of the film.

PLOT SPOILERS:

The possibility for any amusement or vicarious pleasure that might be found in the introduction of the vengeful Jewish-American guerrilla ambush squad in Chapter Two is obviated by Chapter One, which introduces the Jew Hunter and his methods. After correctly despising the Nazi and his tactics, it is horrifying to see Brad Pitt & Co. mirror him at every step: dehumanization of their targets, threatening captives to betray their own, killing unarmed men, etc.

The film’s explicit critique of such violence in films begins with Brad Pitt’s statement that seeing Eli Roth bash in someone’s brains with a baseball bat is the closest they get to going to the movies.

This critique escalates in the finale, when a screening of a Nazi propaganda film about a German sniper who kills three hundred Americans from a bell tower — a bloodbath that is eaten up by a slavering audience including Hitler — is followed by the three hundred audience members being riddled with the machine gun fire of Eli Roth from a box seat high above them. Their superior position over their helpless victims who are locked indoors reflects not just the German sniper in the film but also the stormtroopers at the end of Chapter One, who also use machine guns to slaughter those trapped below them.

The film’s poetic justice does not spare even those whose desire for revenge would be justified by the standards of conventional movie morality. The implication of the final conflagration — what if the catharsis of film was ethical in its purgative effect? — is a harrowing condemnation of the film Inglorious Bastards might have been if it were a traditional WWII film that followed the exploits of Lt. Aldo Raine as a heroic figure. But this is decidedly not such a film.

Jesse Eisenberg

I already liked Jesse Eisenberg. Now I love him. His appearance on Conan O’Brien last night is one of the funniest interviews I’ve seen in a while.

ADVENTURELAND

Like 500 Days of Summer, Adventureland is about a boy whose relationships are led by romance, and the more jaded girl he falls for.

Jesse Eisenberg basically plays a more likeable version of his character in Squid and the Whale. In this film his character is more apologetic for his nerdiness and doesn’t try using his literary knowledge as a ploy to impress girls, so when it does slip out it is an honest expression of his personality rather than an angle. The montage of his attempts at getting entry-level jobs is one joke played over and over, but I laughed every time.

In fact I laughed throughout the film, but also like 500 Days, I was the only one to do so in a showing that was well attended for a movie this late in its release. The only time other people laughed, I didn’t. But it was a gaggle of girls and I don’t remember what it was they thought was so funny. We were obviously on different wavelengths.

The naturalistic acting was very welcome for this genre. Kristen Stewart almost makes me want to see Twilight, but I’ve heard it has the worst acting of 2008. Could this be the same actress?

Eisenberg is very good because he gives off the Michael Cera vibe but without the knowing, aren’t-I-funny-actually, invisible smirk that lurks behind Cera’s characters. Eisenberg wears the character more honestly.

The handheld camera works well because it also maintains a distance from the subjects it observes, a point of view that is matched by the judicious editing. Vignettes at the theme park often cut away midway through a scene, as if the film is documenting the rhythm of the day rather than waiting for a scripted sequence to play out.

Unfortunately Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig do not match the sensibility of the film, and stand out like cartoon characters who have strayed from the set of a Will Farrell comedy. Perhaps they are supposed to be the unlikely Prosperoes who preside over this parallel miniverse where Eisenberg inadvertently becomes the most sought after man on campus. Does their discontinuity with the otherwise normal world of the film just go to show that they are an unprepossessing Tom Bombadil and his Goldberry?

That notwithstanding, Greg Mottola shows more promise directing his own material than his Superbad debut let on. It looks like his next film, written by the Shaun/Fuzz team of Pegg and Frost, will go in yet a third direction, though it will likely be more in line with Superbad than Adventureland.

On future projects, if Mottola can resist the urge to fall back on mainstream comic relief like Hader and Wiig, which might be excused as a kind of safety reflex on his part, I think we will be seeing a well observed drama from him soon. The fact that Ryan Reynolds switched teams, joining the dramatic side of Adventureland instead of staying in the Hader/Wiig territory with which he is more familiar, is perhaps indicative of the trajectory Mottola wants to chart for himself.

Hopefully Adventureland will find favor with those who thought 500 Days was too creative or whatever. By contrast, Mottola attempts no formal flourishes that could be characterized as “artificial” or “gimmicky.” But despite his reluctance to admit cuteness, it is Mottola who lets his third act follow the most predictable of developments. It pains me to say this, because I love the mood and laid-back pace of Adventureland, but 500 Days is still the braver picture. (Yes, that just happened!)

THE RESISTANCE by Muse

Unfortunately, Muse’s new album is not really as good as their last one, Black Holes and Revelations. The Resistance might represent the fullest expression of what the band wants to be, insofar as they sound more like Queen than ever before, but the result is consequently less original and creative than their best work.

Updated:

There is a service Matt Bellamy provides to pop culture, which is taking earnest conspiracy theories that too many people take seriously, and transposing them into surreal fantasias about an alternate universe in which gnostic revelation of the suppressed truth provides salvation for the justifiably paranoid.

The Resistance is the most thoroughly realized achievement of this peculiar ability, and its effect on listeners should be comparable to watching Ron Howard’s adaptation of The DaVinci Code: it will probably make them realize that conspiracy theories make for entertaining narratives but they are not serious depictions the real world.

500 DAYS OF SUMMER

If Heath Ledger was the new Matt Damon (to quote Josie and the Pussycats), then Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the new Heath Ledger.

I’m not just saying that because he’s in the new Chris Nolan film, Inception, but because he is the spitting image of the Late One. Admittedly, Gordon-Levitt’s interpretation of Cobra Commander is not as memorable as Ledger’s Joker, but Mysterious Skin is better than Brokeback Mountain (which was more interesting the first time with Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton). I just hope this doesn’t mean JGL will be joining Damon in Brothers Grimm: Twice Upon a Time.

But I digress.

500 Days of Summer is that rare entry in the genre of unrequited love stories. Most rom-coms premised on a one-way crush, such as Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, perpetuate the usually false hope that in the end, no matter how late in the game, unrequited love will eventually be recognised, appreciated, and returned by the beloved. 500 Days bravely depicts the more likely outcome.

One of the film’s most successful achievements is the way it captures the subjectivity of human experience. Tom’s tragic flaw is his habit of misinterpretation, signalled early on in the film when the narrator informs us that Tom’s romantic view of love is the result of listening to depressive Britpop and “a total misreading of the movie The Graduate.” Later in the film we see Tom and Summer watching The Graduate and Tom can’t understand why the film’s ending makes Summer cry so much. It affects her deeply because she reads the film correctly but Tom misreads his own relationship with her as badly as he misreads the film.

Deschanel deserves credit for taking this role so quickly after graduating to the most commercially pre-packaged of Manic Pixie Dream Girl roles in Yes Man and, in a more demure incarnation I presume, in Gigantic. In contrast, this film wisely relies on the actress’s natural charms to convince us of her beguiling effect on men without recourse to the contrived eccentricities (or, in the parlance of our times, “quirkiness”) of lazier screenplays. As the narrator observes, Summer is of average physical dimensions, and the screenplay does not invest her with any special characteristics of personality or fashion to telegraph her extraordinary nature. Yet Tom’s recognition of her uncommon attractiveness is not a unique insight on his part, for she has the same effect on nearly all men.

Her performance and the screenplay have been criticized for simply asserting Summer’s innate attractiveness to men without ever demonstrating it. But this is the essence of the character, brilliantly realized in the casting of Deschanel, who inspires a rabid male fanbase helplessly devoted to her charms even though they have never met her. The parallel between the fan/celebrity relationship and that between the romantiholic and his idol is perhaps alluded to in the parody of Persona, which is at the center of Tom’s imaginary montage of Bergman films into which he inserts himself as the protagonist. (Seeing him losing a seaside game of chess to Eros particularly amused me.)

The sequence integrates the extreme subjectivity of Tom’s perspective with his acceptance of his role as a consumer of pop culture. He is not only “the hero of the story” as one of the Regina Spektor songs states, but also the director and crucially—through selective recollection of his memories—the editor of his story. The unfortunate result for Tom is that his experience of his own life is often a misinterpretation of its very events.

The Bergman montage and a musical dance number with the spontaneous choreographed participation of passers-by are two examples in the film of how Tom, as a consumer (and to an extent, creator) of pop culture, interprets his life in the terms of film and music. This also provides the basis for the funniest visual joke of 2009, when he looks at himself in the reflection of a car window. I won’t spoil what exactly he sees because it took me completely by surprise, thanks to the admirable lack of reference to the source anywhere else in the film.

The film’s best supporting role is Chloe Moretz as the little sister who offers sage advice; again, making fun of the trope more than perpetuating it. When Tom questions her lack of experience on a particular point, she responds perfectly with a gender-based comeback. Contrary to some critics who see only cliche, their relationship is not about how wise children are but about how immature Tom is, that his romantic conundrums are obvious even to a junior high girl.

Neither she nor any character in the film spouts Juno-esque dialingo; practically all accusations of the film’s hipness and quirkiness have been greatly exaggerated. The Times reviewer inexplicably asks, “Who would want to go out with a guy who dresses like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall?” suggesting he might have seen a different movie than everyone else. The leads struck me as conspicuously unquirky, and references to such groups as the Smiths seemed genuine to me rather than artificially shoehorned into conversation (like Juno), and helped situate the characters in a particular generation (mine).

My friend Jeri “felt as if it carried a laundry list of ‘cool’ that needed to be checked off as the movie progressed. After all, this movie is about two hip twenty-somethings, so we’d better make sure they like to go to Ikea,” etc. Although I am sympathetic to this criticism of most movies, and went into 500 Days expecting to dislike this element of it, I was surprised to find the Ikea sequence a thematically integral setpiece rather than part of a cynical hip checklist.

The leads do not “love to go to Ikea” because it is cool or hip. Throughout the Ikea montage, Tom and Summer are mocking the image of a perfect domestic ideal perpetuated by all of the furniture arrangements. Their play-acting might harbor an element of wish-fulfillment earnestness for Tom, but Summer’s performance is entirely ironic. These scenes, set appropriately in a furniture store, highlight the differences of their expectations for the future, which Summer makes explicit at the end of the sequence. In this film, Ikea is not a lazy shorthand for hipness but an ominous harbinger of the disjunction between expectation and reality depicted more explicitly later in the film.

If anything, it is the incongruity of a suburban corporate institution like Ikea with the rest of Tom and Summer’s urban, architectural tastes that highlights its thematic significance. Wouldn’t it have been more predictable of their characters to wander around a hole-in-the-wall furniture store no one’s heard of? The fact that these scenes take place at Ikea rather than a traditional store is not so much a testament to the ubiquity of Ikea, as to Ikea’s mastery at selling a prefabbed fantasy to customers whose reality will never match up to the hermetically sealed room arrangement on display in the store.

The fact that 500 Days maintains a light touch throughout its run time should not be allowed to distort its true nature. Not only is 500 Days not a romantic comedy, it is not primarily a comedy at all. It is frequently humorous, but its situations, conversations, and emotions are achingly realistic. One of the film’s most impacting sequences is its representation of the discontinuity between expectation and reality, an experience so common to everyday existence, yet so rarely depicted as viscerally as in this film.

Some audiences seem disappointed 500 Days is not funnier. While I was charmed by its sense of humor on first viewing, on the second I realised that this is a serious film that represents emotions honestly, even while it manages to find humor in the of pathology of romantiholics like Tom.

POSSIBLE SPOILER:

Some have said that the ending is inappropriately optimistic, effectively ignoring everything previous, but I think everything beforehand ominously tempers the optimism of the ending with the specter of recapituation. It could be considered as equivocal as the final shot of The Graduate, but many critics are reading Marc Webb’s first film as superficially as Tom reads Mike Nichols’ second.

G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA

I’m not sure why G.I. Joe has received so much bad press. It’s better than either Transformer movie in my opinion, and it actually had a plot, so I’m not sure why everyone seems to love the Transformers movies but not this one.

It’s the best action movie for kids that I can remember since Iron Man, and it refreshingly lacks the sexual innuendo of Transformers (and Iron Man for that matter). The fact that it is basically Team America played straight — including the destruction of Paris and a face-disguising operation scene — only makes it better.

But the best part was a flashback of the first time Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow met as children, absolutely beating the crap out of each! I’ve never seen a movie use kids for such a ruthless kung fu style fight before — definitely the epitome of childhood wish-fulfillment as sublimated by playing with action figures!

I’m not saying it’s worth a full-priced theater ticket, but it’s a nice action movie in the classical style of being able to see everything that’s happening instead of it being blurry courtesy of Bourne Again cameramen (cp. Star Trek).

None of the acting stood out as bad, and I was surprised to find Sienna Miller’s American accent inexplicably sexy. Even Marlon Wayans wasn’t very annoying as the institutional comic relief, unlike his robot counterparts in Michael Bay’s parade of vocal stereotypes. None of the actors took it too seriously or not seriously enough; Chris Ecclestone got to chew scenery without turning into John Turturro. If anyone, it was Dennis Quaid seemed the most awkward.

There was an impressive use of multiple characters (such as Zartan) without losing track of them. The revelation of Destro and Cobra Commander were saved for the end (not that their ultimate identities are hidden during the film) so I would enjoy a sequel if the studio has the stomach for another critical beating. A first-place opening weekend and $265 million split evenly between the domestic and foreign box office tells me they wouldn’t mind.

Ones that Stuck: A Movie Meme

I was tagged in this meme by a couple of friends but instead of letting it get lost in the electronic crevices of Facebook, I thought I would post it here for more convenient access.  The instructions are:

Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen movies you’ve seen that will always stick with you. (First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.)

Citing classics can be pretty boring and often doesn’t reveal much about one’s personality, so I’m going to try sticking to films from this decade that made an immediate impression on me and whihc I haven’t been able to get out of my head. In no particular order other than my stream of consciousness:

1. When I think of movies that stuck, the first movie I think of is Stuck, essentially a two-person drama between Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea that would be an implausibly gratuitous horror scenario were it not a true story.

2. The next is Birth which has held me under its spell from the first notes of Andre Desplat’s score over what in any other film would be the title sequence, but which in this film names no actors or crew apart from the film’s title. It’s not the kind of film I would typically expect to enjoy and it belongs at the top of this list, I think, precisely because it is difficult for me to articulate its particular staying power, or sticking power. The warm combination of golden browns and moss greens is certainly one of the reasons, which makes it a tragedy that it is not available on Blu-ray.

3. Mulholland Dr. is another film that cast a spell on me without me being able to understand fully why. After further watchings I think it is because of the climactic scene in Club Silencio which is the best demonstration of the willing suspension of disbelief as created by the optical illusion of cinema.

4. Tell No One, on the other hand, is very easy for me to explain why it has stuck with me: Matthieu Chedid’s improvisational guitar score which seems so perfect it could not be improved upon, coupled with Guillaume Canet’s choice of soundtrack cues which feel as if they were written for the film (Otis Reading’s For Your Precious Love, Jeff Buckley’s Lilac Wine, U2’s With or Without You, to name three).

5. If Mulholland Dr. explores the emotional power of cinema, Haneke’s Cache creates suspense through making the audience self-aware that every moviegoer is a hidden voyeur, if not legally, then psychologically. I’m hesitant to see this film a second time because my first experience is such a powerful memory — it truly stuck.

6. De Palma’s Obsession reinterprets Hitchcock’s magnum opus on obsession, Vertigo, via Dante’s autobiographical account of obsession, La Vita Nuova. Has a premise which sounds so good on paper ever delivered on its promise so effectively?

7. I [Heart] Huckabees is every bit the existential comedy it is advertised to be, but its genius is the light touch it consistently maintains despite a very wordy if hilarious script.

8. Scorsese’s After Hours is the dark side of existential comedy, following an office-drone Ulysses in his thwarted attempts to get home from the Kafkaeqsue nightmare of Soho. It is 24 years old but neglected enough to deserve mention.

9. It is bonafide classic, but as the negative image of Casablanca, After Hours, and Dark City, I feel like I’ll never be able to escape the gravitaional pull of Chinatown. Whereas those films are about characters trapped in existentially dark towns that don’t make sense, and their dream to escape to a sunlit fantasy that may or may not be accessible to them, Chinatown follows a reverse trajectory. The Marlowesque protagonist, who futilely attempts to remain in the sense-making sunlight of Los Angeles, is inevitably dragged, kicking and screaming, into the moral blackhole of Chinatown, where order distintegrates into chaos and this film noir finally becomes pitch black.

10. Discussion of revisionist noir based on the Marlowe template inevitably leads to The Big Lebowski, but that film has become so ripe thanks to Lebowskifests and other horse-beating activities that my obligitory Coens entry must go instead to No Country for Old Men. Once a decade (sometimes twice) the Academy gets one right, and this recognition should not reflect negatively on the Coens’ masterpiece. I distcintly remember how this film stuck in my craw after the first viewing while I was struggling to puzzle it out. I was sure there was more than meets the eye in this film ostensibly about a serial killer, and my first attempt at teasing out an Iraq War allegory just didn’t fit. To be a responsible exegete I figured I should return to the text, and the second showing provided the revelation I was hoping for: Anton Chigurh is a personification of Death, metamorphosed from the Grim Reaper of The Seventh Seal into an appropriately American metaphor from the 20th century, the Serial Killer.

11. Along with Tell No One, Sunshine is one of the best sonic experiences I have ever had in a theater. Accompanied by retina-searing images of the sun, whose role as the physical sustainer of life on Earth elevates it to a spiritual symbol. The Fountain may be a more clever film, but Danny Boyle depicts a journey to a star as an active rather than passive experience.

12. Children of Men is the best Nativity film because of its choice to follow the Joseph character rather than Mary, and its astonishing capacity, through the defamiliarization of human birth, to depict a newborn baby as a supernatural advent. The influence of its cinematography on action films, such as Terminator Salvation, is also a testament to its visual innovation, which is always in service to rather than a distraction from the story.

13. Not only does OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies include everything the film remake of Get Smart should have had, but it is much more than that film could have been. OSS 117 is not just a political satire on the patronizing imperial attitude of James Bond, but also a editorial satire on the Bond films qua films, while Jean Dujardin’s character is a physical satire on the narcissistic Esquire cool of late 50s/early 60s men’s fashion in general, and Sean Connery in particular.

14. In a year when critics swooned over Pan’s Labyrinth, the better depiction of a child’s method of coping with horror in her real life was Gilliam’s Tideland. Instead of constructing an external fantasy world, as Del Toro does, Gilliam utilizes his protagonist’s innocent point of view to neutralize the horrors that surround her. Images that belong to horror films become impotent as objects of fear and are made Jeliza-Rose’s playthings through the purity of her imagination.

15. A horror film of the more traditional variety is Into the Mirror, the Korean original which inspired the American version Mirrors. Unlike most evils, the one in this film cannot be combated physically, a crucial suspense factor that Aja throws out the window in his remake. While Aja’s version relies on jump-scares to frighten the audience, Sung-ho Kim uses the opposite technique to scare you early on with an uncut medium shot that lulls you into a false sense of security and then surprises you with the slowest of movements. The effect is that, for the rest of the film, every scene in which there is a visible mirror becomes a suspenseful sequence full of dread for the audience, if not the characters. Talk about sticking with you!

17 AGAIN

For some reason this three-month-old review was never posted here, so here it is:

Since none of my readers will have seen 17 Again, nor likely any movie in which the trailer for this movie might have been shown, I will break my personal review guidelines and actually allude to the premise and plot.

Beforehand I assumed Matt Perry/Zac Efron would go back in time twenty years to relive his Senior Year (rehashing Peggy Sue Got Married), but it was thankfully more interesting than that. His body gets younger but he does not go back in time!

The obvious synopsis of this premise is that this is Tom Hanks’s Big in reverse, but the actual mission of Matt Perry/Zac Efron is that of Back to the Future in reverse.

Instead of saving his dad from getting beat up by the school bully and keep his mom from dating same bully, Efron’s mission is to save his son from getting beat up by the school bully and keep his daughter from dating same bully!  It even has the intergenerational crush and aggressive come-on scene, however the filmmakers have taken into account that a daughter coming on to her father (however young) is slightly more creepy and have accordingly omitted an actual kiss. (Theoretically, I suppose, 17 Again’s variation makes more sense since it is said that girls marry guys who remind them of their father).

Therefore most of the romantic capital can be spent by Zac Efron’s attempts to fan the smouldering embers of love in Judd Apatow’s Wife back into a roaring flame. Since the characters are married (and both literate) their fliratations can be enjoyed guilt-free (and without any danger of the movie suddenly turning into a Nuremberg trial).

The comic capital, on the other hand, is spent prodigally by Thomas Lennon in his pursuit of the school principal Melora Hardin (apparently of the US Office fame). Along with his smaller role as a spurned man-date in I Love You Man, Lennon is surely 2009’s break-out performer (read: scene-stealer). The common interest that Melora Hardin discovers she shares with Thomas Lennon was unexpected enough, but so perfectly revealed, that it made me howl.

But the revelation in this film is the script’s and Efron’s portrayal of someone in high school who has totally transcended peer pressure. It is like watching an alien or a messiah to see someone in a high school setting whose actions are completely uninfluenced by what teenagers will think of him. The potential cringe-fest in Sex Ed class turned into one of the film’s comic highlights: during condom distribution, Efron offers an earnest plea for not making love until you’re married and want to have a baby, which the girls find so romantic and moving that they throw away the condoms in disgust!

But therein lies the schizophrenic nature of the movie: the proceedings often feel like a kids movie, such as an impromptu swordfight with toy lightsabers that really glow, but the humor often seems a little bit too old for the perceived demographic, like an oblique reference to MILFs without the last word which was funny to me but nonetheless sat awkwardly in what other times felt like a “Disney movie.”

But in any case it recaptures a lot of the charm of Back to the Future’s inherently situational comedy.

RED ROCK WEST (1993)

I just caught Red Rock West on TV and was very pleasantly surprised. The presence of Nicolas Cage and Dennis Hopper sometimes gives one flashbacks to their earlier David Lynch films, but there is  more in common with his daughter’s recent film, Surveillance. While not quite as daring as Jennifer Lynch in his storytelling, John Dahl’s talent is his ability to deftly blend influences from seemingly incongruous sources into a new recipe that is perfectly balanced in its ingredients.

It begins like an update of A Fistful of Dollars and ends a lot like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but despite the anonymous Southwestern locale and William Olvis’s guitar score, the final concoction less Western than Noir.

Suspense is effectively sustained by Cage’s continued inability, despite his best efforts, to escape the small town of Red Rock. Like Griffin Dunne trying to get out of Soho in After Hours, Cage’s every attempt to get out of Dodge—at least four opportunities—is somehow thwarted. Unlike Scorsese’s dark comedy, however, there is little to laugh at in this nightmarish predicament. Imagine entering Chinatown at the beginning of the movie (or dream), instead of the end, and not being able to find your way out of it for the duration. Cage is not just a victim, however. In every instance it is his nagging sense of duty that drives him back to Red Rock.

It is a rare subdued performance from Cage, whose lack of eccentricities here serves him well as the everyman protagonist you identify with at every step of the way. His character and circumstances are so well defined that his every decision, even those of dubious judgement, cannot be faulted. At every crossroads you find yourself thinking, ‘I might have done the same in that situation.’

It never occurred to me until now, but the protagonists of film noir are endlessly fun to watch (and listen to) but almost impossible to invest in emotionally because they are too cool, too unphased by every incident, too stoic even while getting beat up. Those providing voice-over narration further distance themselves from both their experiences and the audience by appearing to be in control even when they’re not. In other words, their attitude and formal conventions are anathema to suspense.

Red Rock West is the first time I’ve ever seen a Noir plot infused with genuine suspense, thanks to Hitchcockian identification with a wrong-man-at-the-wrong-time protagonist. The result is 90 minutes of tension. That the whole shebang is held together by just four actors—Cage, Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle, and the late J.T. Walsh—with only a few nameless extras is all the more impressive.