Near, Far, Wherever You Are

For all the strides we've made toward LGBT equality as a society, it's prudent to remember that we've quite a long way to go before achieving anything resembling equitable acceptance of non-heteronormative relationships. Case in point, the strikingly inoffensive I Love You Phillip Morris, which  despite starring one of the most popular comedic actors in film history took nearly two years to find a distributer willing to front it to cinemas in the United States after its Sundance debut in January 2009, and even then only after some desperate measures of self-censorship. In marked contrast with the British ad campaign for the film I witnessed while residing in London (which included public buses plastered back-to-front with the title poster and a robust web placement rate), stateside promotion for the film was virtually nonexistent, a few perfunctory art festival hooks notwithstanding. Consequently, when ILYPM finally did reach those select few theaters , it received little if any attention from the American public, a public that has time and again flocked to dozens of inferior Jim Carrey vehicles but who were unwilling to give this particular gem – the finest acting performance of his career, or so many have deemed it – the time of day.
I'll let my readers draw the appropriate conclusions.

That said, I don't want to give the impression that ILYPM is the best Carrey film – an honor unlikely ever to be stripped from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to my quite-spotted mind anyway – nor am I even willing to argue that it represents his best performance – that I would almost certainly grant to his turn in the near modern classic The Truman Show. Nor, it must also be conceded, is LYPM anywhere near the funniest film of Carrey's career, and to that I will add no specific speculation except that, to my shameful admission, I got more genuine laughs out of the insipid Fun with Dick and Jane than I did hence. But of all Carrey's comedies, romantic or otherwise, ILYPM represents some of the most interesting work Carrey has ever displayed on screen, and it's refreshing after so many years of his increasingly over-the-top antics to reminded that he achieved his fame for good reasons, foremost among them his mastery of malleable expression and his impeccable comedic timing.

Much credit for ILYPM's charm must be given to directorial and screenwriting team Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who display in their debut mainstream feature a more thorough understanding of character comedy than most industry players do after decades. While ILYPM is certainly a rougher effort than their more successful followup Crazy, Stupid, Love (which, incidentally, reveals what happened to the missing comma in I Love You Phillip Morris), it is a quirky, touching take on the genre in its own right, playing up to the strengths of script with a give-and-take approach to narrative that wobbles between quick-cut perfection and downright cheapness with its flippant "just kidding" reveals from an obviously unreliable narrator. When this works, it works very well, and it ties the framing of the film to the narrator Steven Russell's (Carrey) voice insightfully while setting up a number of his best lines for maximum punch. When this fails, it's usually because of inconsistent application, particularly in the final act of the film when the narrative itself runs out of steam and devolves into a bit of a gag-driven farce (not unlike its successor Crazy, Stupid, Love in that regard). In other respects the film's visuals leave something to be desired; the over-saturated color palette just feels like a Sundance standby at this point and serves to distract more than any particular purpose, and the inconsistent attempts to ape Wes Anderson angles feel forced and out of place with the film's whimsical sense of time and space.


"This really happened. It really did," opens the film, well aware of our skepticism at Hollywood narratives "based on true stories," but as far as my light research has been able to confirm, in this case it actually did, more or less. Steven Jay Russell, at the film's outset, recounts the story of his life from his deathbed, and it's as bizarre a tale of star-crossed lovers as ever found root in real events. Having learned of his adoption in a tellingly misplaced moment of familial awkwardness, a young Steven vows to become "the best man, no, the best person I could be," and instantly we jump to twenty-odd years later where he has become a Cleaver-esque nuclear father, a friendly-neighborhood police officer, and an enthusiastic church accompanist. After making contact with his biological mother through illicit use of his police access and finding, to his devastation, that he was and still remains an unwanted middle child, Steven experiences the first of several epiphanies and relocates his family from Virginia Beach to Floria, whereupon he reveals to us in one of the film's most effective moments of "surprise" narration that he is in fact gay and has begun seeing men by night while pretending to be working long hours at a Cisco food distribution center. On the way home from one such encounter he becomes the victim of a car accident and undergoes a second epiphany, deciding to out himself to his wife and the world and, in an insightful revelation of his latent lack of responsibility even as a concept, determines on a whim to leave his family for the carefree life of a South Beach single. A few top-shelf martinis and Burberry bags later he realizes, however, that "being gay is expensive" and launches a career in con-artistry that will shape his persona – and the narrative force – throughout the rest of the film.

Ultimately his tricks lead up to his arrest for insurance fraud and a would-be brief prison sentence, wherein he meets the titular Phillip Morris (Ewan MacGregor) and the film finds its true impetus. It's love at first sight as the unbelievably trusting Morris (in prison for, of all things, failing to return a rental car) falls for Steven's smooth advances, and for motives initially unclear Steven not only allows himself to fall equally head over heels for Phillip but dedicates his every effort from thereon out to providing for Phillip in every way possible. This initially means mostly smuggling goods to Phillip's cell across the yard and protecting him from the more menacing aspects of of prison life, but culminates in Steven's escape from prison and his impersonation of a lawyer to secure Phillip's release before the end of his term. Having freed his lover and vowed to give him the best of life's offerings, Steven soon finds himself returning to his con-man ways, and so begins a cycle of re-imprisonment and Houdini-like escapades of escape that would be the stuff of the most ridiculous comic contrivance if it weren't for them being a very real matter of public record, and along the way we see a romance a portrayal of love as idyllically pure as it is harmful for both lovers involved, along with a character study of a man so defined by his obsession that he sacrifices his very identity in pursuit of that ill-defined ideal.

And that's only a broad sketch of the thing. If ILYPM sounds convoluted, it is, at times to its detriment as a coherent narrative but more often to its own unique advantage as the strangest kind of offbeat biopic ever to find a niche in the rom-com genre. Though rarely ever outright funny, the film exudes such charm in even the most detestable moments of its narrator's actions that one can't help but find him endearing, to say nothing of the heartbreakingly honest performance by MacGregor as the sweetest, most pathetic southern ingenue to fall for the wiles of a gentleman caller since Laura Wingfield. Phillip's extended reaction shot to Steven's final and greatest deception manages to strike a double note as simultaneously the most moving and ridiculous moment of the entire film, exemplifying the oddball sentiment of the piece as punctuated by the last reprise of the fanciful score.

In the end, it's hard to know exactly what to make of ILYPM, which fails both as a structured narrative thanks to its madcap third act and as a comedy thanks to its lack of genuinely funny moments – all are amusing and most are delightful, but almost none are likely to induce actual laughter. Still, the whole thing is just so damn likable that it's hard not to give it a recommendation. Carrey and MacGregor are both in top form here, which will be enough of an incentive for some of you, all else disregarded. I've already made more than enough mention of the charm on display in ILYPM's every character, its every absurd moment, and I suppose if I can find no better words to describe the underlying quality of the film, I'd do best to say it's delightful and leave it at that.

Grade: B+

"Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?"

In the past few months I've partaken in several discussions on Ridley Scott's career decline and the possibility of redemption Prometheus represented – quite appropriately, metaphorically speaking – for his directorial reputation. Certainly all the elements seemed to be there: a return to a beloved universe of his own creation, a cast of some of the most brilliant actors working in film today, and a viral campaign to re-infect even the most immune of the old fan base. Tragically, the whole amounts to significantly less than the sum of its parts, and I would rather spend an eternity chained to a cliff whilst eagles daily devour my liver than sit through his bloated wreck of a might-have-been-masterpiece again.

Obviously I hyperbolize, but it's no more than this self-proclaimed titan of a film deserves. The true tragedy is the amount of potential evident in every mishandled moment; beyond the aforementioned elements of promise, there is enough quality footage on display that any half-decent creative team could have made something twice as coherent, three times as watchable, and – most importantly – half as long. Because, sweet Jesus, does Prometheus feel long despite its modest 124 minute running time, the pain of which could have been greatly alleviated by removal of virtually all expository scenes. As it stands, the Prometheus now playing in cinemas should never have left the editing room floor, and frankly I'm not sure whether to blame editor Pietro Scalia, Scott himself, or the two of them in unholy collusion. 

But getting back to those expository scenes, they are some of the most intellectually insulting I've ever been subjected to in scifi, and god is that saying something. Not only do they fail in forty five minutes to convey any more useful information than even the most maladroit member of the viewing public could have gleaned in four minutes from any of the already overlong film trailers, but they stumble about that redundant task in the most ham-fistedly reprobate manner possible. Somewhere between 1979 and 2012, Scott apparently converted from a position of cautiously skeptical humanism in the face of a dark and overwhelming cosmos to, of all things, a blatant evangelism for vague Mulderian religiosity and, believe it or not, Intelligent Design. Yes, you heard right, folks: the man who brought us the most abject realism in scifi horror history with a creature terrifying precisely for its unmatched evolutionary sexual adaptability has now released a two-hour polemic on the Search for the Great Questions of Life That Everyone Must Secretly Want to Ask Our Creator(s). Not that the ID crowd is likely to be pleased to see the Answer portrayed as something as insipid as "humanity originated as a result of failed bioweapon experimentation by a race of giant blue...humans (but bald!)" and now look, I've gone and spoiled something revealed in the first two minutes of the film yet that we are supposed to regard as mysterious for the ensuing 122 minutes of "revelatory" exploration. 

The screenplay is as every bit as stupid as its it seems to think its audience is, and god bless the cast for trying so damn hard to make the most out of every. awful. line. they are expected to choke out with a straight face and good conscience. Fassbender as the Symbolically Named android David steals the show with his O'Toole-inspired performance, and Noomi Rapace does an admirable job trying to fulfill the ersatz-Ripley expectations saddled upon her by the miserable script, but neither they nor anyone else are up to the task of saving a ship as lost as Prometheus' direction. Charlize Theron is uncharacteristically awkward in her ordinarily apt role as the resident ice queen, no doubt struggling to find the slightest element of believability in her character's forced Elektra complexes. And I won't even bother to guess what Scott was thinking when he put Guy Pierce in the least-convincing old man suit this side of a theatre freshman makeup class.

But I digress. Unlike Avatar, a big dumb summer blockbuster that also took itself far too seriously yet still managed to entertain, Prometheus cannot fall back on gorgeous CGI spectacle or breathtaking world-building to carry the day. The planet – or moon? – in question is grey, cratered, and, like the too-shiny CG creatures eventually on display, nowhere near as tactile or convincing as its iteration in Alien. Gone is the iconic used-future aesthetic of the Nostromo, replaced by a generic Trekkian interior (think DS9) complete with requisite holodeck and cocktail bar, made frightening only for a few brief seconds of invasion in the final moments of the film's meandering. As for the alien temple/ship whose cavernous corridors never even come into play, there is little to be said of its over-lit passages save that they hold not even a candle's flame to the perturbing otherness of their predecessor. It hardly helps that the camera crew seems to have nothing more interesting to do than to sit back and stare through static, IMAX-friendly frames with all the visual ingenuity of a C-SPAN recording.   

Surely, one might ask, Prometheus could still in some way be worthy of its horror legacy if it were at least horrifying, even a little? No such luck, my friends. Prometheus is about as scary as a Scientology lecture and only half as well plotted. Where Alien was all slowly-mounting tension climaxed with psychosexual revulsion and sheer nightmare survival instinct, Prometheus is an exercise in the worst kind of Syfy Channel tedium, lacking even in the cheap "gotchas!" that give those campy creature flicks some reason to exist. Even the inevitable appearance of the xenomorph itself is a total letdown, forced as it is by some misguided attempt at continuity-bridging that, with a stinging slap to the face of every fan, still somehow manages to break continuity in the most egregious way imaginable. As with all else in this wreck I blame Scott's ever-mounting incompetence with age. Harsh, perhaps, but if his growing slew of less-than-palatable mass-market garbage over the past decade is not enough to make everyone wonder whether he isn't completely out of creative ideas, then I don't know what is. How many more Hannibals will it take before we stop letting him near beloved thriller franchises? Prometheus, sad to say, deserves not even that sequel's sad legacy.

Grade: D+ for fans, C for general audiences.

Valar Morghulis

There's something about the Game of Thrones pop cultural phenomenon that awakens in me an inner demon, a loathsome creature with lensless horn-rimmed glasses and ill-matched vintage sweaters which pauses from its task of cataloging musical esoterica to rise up from my bile at scream to the heavens,
"I LOVED THESE BOOKS BEFORE THEY WERE MAINSTREAM, YOU POSERS!"
That demon be damned to the depths from which it crawled, and cleansed of its wicked influence I shall rise to the task of explicating George R.R. Martin's works for the world.
Valar morghulis; valar dohaeris.

For our beloved rock-dwellers, A Game of Thrones is a now hugely popular HBO television series based on the Song of Ice and Fire saga – the first of which, of course, is A Game of Thrones – by aforementioned author Martin. The books and show alike – for, as we will find, there is virtually no distinction but in medium – are a low (i.e. non-romantic) fantasy set in a crapsack medieval world strongly reminiscent of the British War of the Roses and devoid of most of the standard (read: Tolkienian) trappings of the genre. The world of Westeros is a place where the weak perish, the fittest thrive, and dreams go to die. So, you know, rather not unlike real life for for the vast majority of humanity throughout  our history. Principal to this nihilistic thrust is Martin's stern dedication to authorial objectivity, the end result being that he writes with no guiding set of ideals or thesis save perhaps that of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan: total, abject realism. Not even cynicism, in truth, for there are indeed heroes in Martin's world, men and women of virtue and honor who fight for their beliefs...and die painful deaths for their inflexible idealism. But more on that later.

Martin's greatest gift as an author, and now screenwriter, has always been his extended world- and character-building; though he has certainly contributed fine entries to the fantasy and scifi genres in the form of short stories and novellas, few have ever disputed the status of A Song of Ice and Fire as his magnum opus – assuming he ever gets around to finishing it. The TV adaptation is strong evidence for the stature of the characters: despite there being already dozens of principals by the end of the second season/book, all are so distinctly well-drawn – and now well-acted – that one encounters little difficulty keeping them all sorted out mentally even in the midst of what is possibly the most complicated political intrigue to appear on screen since...well, I'll be damned if I can think of anything else even close to as complex. Though no one character or set of characters can claim preferential authorial treatment as they struggle through this web, there are certainly standouts that will probably go down in the annals of the great literary creations of history.

For most fans no one better identifies this than Tyrion Lannister, now brought even more largely to life by the incomparable Peter Dinklage, Americenglish accent notwithstanding. A heartfelt finger to all stereotypical dwarven roles of fantasy and fiction yore throughout the ages, Tyrion stands tall as a masterful player of the Game and one of the most deeply noble – yet resourceful – souls in the series, a sharp mind and sharper tongue his primary defenses against a world full to 'flowing with hatred and prejudice. Tyrion is no saint, for he has seen saints like Eddard Stark (Sean Bean) fall faster and further than any sinner, but his own suffering has, despite hardening his will, softened his heart to the plight of those around him. Noble Ned Stark may be the hero the world deserves, but Tyrion Lannister is the one it needs.

Of course, Tyrion is but one man, a "half-man" at that, and the remainder of the dramatis personæ, whose casting could not have been more immaculate in a nerd's wildest dreams, are as colorful as their collective morality is grey. Any given episode of GoT packs more intrigue and sexual drama into its one-hour slot than half a season's worth of Rome, and Cersei Lannister could give Atia of the Julii a run for her incestuously-acquisitioned money any day of the week. Sean Bean is the embodiment of stoicism as Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark, a hard yet just and loving vision of a Boromir that might have been had he possessed Ned's indomitable fortitude to resist the lure of the Ring. Catelyn Tully (Michelle Fairley) is every bit his match, a driven woman who upon losing her children sets her eyes against all tears and marches south to war for her family, aspersions cast upon her gender and motherhood be damned in the face of her dedication. Cersei (Lena Heady), similarly, refuses to be constrained by the social limitations on her womanhood, seizing power for her and her beloved children with a ruthlessness to rival Machiavelli's prince. Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and his half-brother Robb Stark (Richard Madden) are two sides of their same father's coin, one struggling to find his identity in Ned's legacy of honor against an eldritch foe more primal than any petty human mores, the other striving to be be worthy of the crown his father died to defend without fully understanding its implications for himself and for the kingdom as a whole. Joffrey Lannister (Jack Gleeson) is as vile a villain as any spoiled psychopath ever to be thrust by privilege into power, and his twice-grandfather Tywin (Charles Dance) dominates his every scene with the calm, dangerous dignity of a lion on the hunt, assured in his power over his pride and prey alike...

...and there must I stop, for even a cursory survey of the remaining players of the Game, kings and pawns and all between, would take far more time than I have available for present discourse. Suffice it to say that if there has ever been a richer pantheon in a TV drama, I remain wholly unaware of its existence. Of the plot, I can say even less without inevitably spoiling myriad surprises of which I would not presume to deprive any poor soul still stranger to the series. Sibilance.

Not much, therefore, remains to be said on the subject of characters: they are legion, and they are humanity. Structurally, despite its perpetual balancing act of literally hundreds of plots and subplots, GoT achieves virtual perfection. Though it has received notable criticism for its reliance on long exposition to convey important plot and character elements (frequently labeled "sexposition" for its tendency to occur during intercourse), the device is both necessary and effective as a means to tell a story so complex and of so many agents that viewers could not possibly be expected to keep track of them otherwise. Its frequent portrayal of women as objects of sexual gratification, however, is a trickier issue despite the accurate sexism and misogyny of the source period. Certainly there are feminist elements to be found in many of its characters and situations, but there's also an undeniable sense of HBO playing up the titillation angle wherever and whenever they think they can get away with it, despite some occasional and blatantly concessional male nudity for "balance." In spite of the show's fantastic quality in all other departments, GoT is doing less than nothing to alter its studio's traditional reputation as a "boob tube" content provider.

Any other possible complaints tend to be minor and episodic in nature. Not even a series with as high a murder-per-minute ratio as GoT can escape the odd transitional episode drag, not to mention a few tricky plot holes they've managed to dig for themselves in departure from Martin's more carefully crafted original narrative. Thus far they've done an admirable job justifying and filling those accordingly, but it could certainly be a problem down the road as altered butterfly currents beat up hurricanes in the time stream (though nowhere near so badly as the butchery of that metaphor).

And on that note, I misled when I earlier lauded Martin's objectivity, for in actuality he has none: his craft is defined, rather, by a mastery of authorial subjectivity, in that he inhabits his various characters so fully that his voice is drowned out by their own. Great writers of prose have speculated on the phenomenon of losing control of their work to their characters, and Martin holds the artistic distinction of never having tried to secure control in the first place. He has built the stage to dramatic perfection and set the players upon it, but like the best directors he has allowed them to move freely through the tale in exploration of their impulses, living and choosing their fates even as they entwine one another inexorably in those choices. All his world's a stage, a tale, a game, and all the players are but pieces with'n it.

What else can I say but hic sunt dracones? Go watch the show. As the most visceral political drama since Battlestar Galactica and the the finest fantasy adaptation yet to grace the small screen, Game of Thrones is literary and television history in the making.

Grade: A+

"Skazoosh" - You Can't Unsee It.

Kung Fu Panda 2 trades its predecessor's stronger villain (and let's face it, what foppish peacock was ever going to be as badass as breaks-out-of-the-world's-deepest-darkest-prison-with-nothing-more-than-a-feather-and-the-sheer-essence-of-awesome Tai Lung?) for a tighter script and faster pace. In many ways - mostly good ones- it's more of the same: more laughs, more gorgeous renderings of Fantasy China, and more kickass kung fu choreography. In some cases - thank God - it's less; a notable decrease in the number of bowel-related gags, for instance (I only counted two this time around).
In other words, it's that rare sequel worth seeing - and from DreamWorks Let's-See-How-Deeply-Through-the-Dirt-We-Can-Rake-Our-Best-Loved-Franchises Animation, no less!


Arbitrary Numerical Rating: 7/10