News You Can Bruise for 2013 June 1

(2) Sat Jun 01 2013 10:06 May Film Roundup: Lots of travel in May, so not many movies this month either. But I do have heterodox opinions for you. Read on!

• Fahrenheit 451 (1966): Or, "From Truffaut to True Friend." Because I figured out why the French New Wave keeps not doing it for me. Truffaut et al. keep making films that would be much better as genre films! The lingering, visually striking shots; the stylized dialogue, the existential despair; all hallmarks of science fiction and noir. That's why I thought I would like this stuff. That's why I thought I'd like Shoot the Piano Player. But none of it worked for me, until Fahrenheit 451. From IMDB:

  François Truffaut reportedly said that he found science fiction films uninteresting and arbitrary. Because of this, a friend of his told him the story of Ray Bradbury's novel 'Fahrenheit 451'. Immediately afterward, Truffaut wanted to make a film from the novel and subsequently spent years raising the financing.

  It was a simple communication problem. "Ze science fiction films, zey are not so good." "Well, have you read this one science fiction book?" "Ze holy shit, it will be my life's work!"

  The movie's got issues. Oskar Werner hated Truffaut, and takes it out on us by Nicholas Caging his way through the lead role. Truffaut was so excited about making this movie that he finished the screenplay before becoming fluent in English. But hey, it's a dystopia whose defining feature is a lack of high culture. People are gonna act like robots and talk like poorly-translated subtitles. Fahrenheit 451 captures the school of SF in which sheer desire to tell a story compensates for the lack of literary chops. That means it's nothing like Bradbury, but it ain't bad.

• Promised Land (1975): The best thing about seeing movies at the museum, apart from the eclectic selection and the fact that it's usually free for members, is that you don't have to sit through a bunch of ads and trailers. At most, the curator will give a little speech. But the Promised Land showing brought back some of that traditional cinema non-magic, by not being free to members and by having a whole bunch of speeches beforehand, simulating the trailer experience nicely. I will admit it's not every day you get to hear from the consul-general of the Polish consulate in New York.

  OK, the movie itself. By the director of Ashes and Diamonds, and having many of the same visual trademarks as that movie, notably "light streaming through windows" and "blood-stained white cloth". There's a lot of blood in this one, actually: industrial accidents, third-degree burns, plutocrat cane-beatings, and old-fashioned fistfights and riots. The movie's engaging the whole way through, and there are a couple scenes that are amazingly clever--I loved the scene in the theater and the scene where the Bartleby-like clerk tells off his boss.

  But I was never surprised. It's an adaptation of a nineteenth-century novel, it's a movie about industrialists made in a communist country, and it goes pretty much as I thought it would. No, I was surprised, once. There's one glorious moment when entrepreneur Moryc Welt is so relieved and exhausted from having carried off a con that he breaks the fourth wall. He becomes his actor, Wojciech Pszoniak. Pszoniak looks at the camera and waves excitedly at the audience. A little flash, and then he's back to being Moryc Welt, and the movie is back to being what you thought it was.

  Good movie? Sure. Three hours worth of entertainment. Much better than Ashes and Diamonds. But not the transcendent experience I go into these movies hoping for.

• A Hard Day's Night (1964): Goofy fun. I was going to say "not much of substance", but the essay that accompanied this screening said that its cinematography was very influential. So, there's your substance.

  This movie solidified my opinion that Ringo is the most interesting Beatle. He's the only one in A Hard Day's Night who's willing to create comedy at his own expense. As long as I'm throwing Molotov cocktails: I'm kind of tired of the Beatles' music. I used to like it a lot, I still respect it, but I've been hearing this stuff for twenty years and it's time to take it off heavy rotation. Not A Hard Day's Night's fault, but the scenes where the Beatles are just playing their instruments and people are screaming didn't move me at all. They were just kinda creepy.

• Upstream Color (2013): Went to see this at IFC as a date with Sumana but the showing was CANCELLED, so we just had dinner.
• Star Trek Into Darkness (2013): I wasn't even going to see this. The buzz was so negative, with J.J. Abrams doing that thing he does, where he reveals something really dumb in a way so vague that you mentally fill in the clever thing he could be doing instead. I'd gone so far as to write off the entire franchise, the way we write off the Roman Republic once Julius Caesar comes along, even though there's still a good five hundred years of consuls and quaestors serving something called "the republic of Rome".

  But Sumana saw it, and wanted to talk about it, so I saw it with Beth. And... it exceeded my low expectations! Since you can't make a Star Trek movie these days unless it's a ripoff of The Wrath of Khan, it makes sense to literally remake The Wrath of Khan. In fact, at this point my review of the 2009 movie and my notes on Khan envy suffice to say most of what I want to say about Star Trek Into Darkness. It's pretty much the same movie as Star Trek, the difference being that I'm not going to put up with it any more. Rip off The Wrath of Khan once, shame on you. Rip off The Wrath of Khan twice, shame on me.

  And 2009-era Leonard, we gotta talk about plots not making sense. I've written a novel since then and I now see that there are different levels of making sense. On a technical level, the Genesis device is nonsense, but thematically it's perfect. Genesis has enormous creative potential, but when Khan learns about it, all he sees is a weapon. Khan thinks he should rule humanity, but he doesn't know what humanity is for.

  On the other hand, red matter, or the "red matter" deus ex machina in this movie... who the hell cares? It's a special effect. It has whatever properties are necessary to drive the plot forward. Nobody's gonna say "I sure wish they'd do something that revisits that issue."

  And that's the difference between good Star Trek and crap Star Trek. The closest this movie came to good Trek was Scotty's rejection of the militarization of Starfleet. Yes, Scotty is the film's moral center, and that's the only thing about this movie that is truly great.

  You know what? I'm changing the holy film rankings. Don't try to stop me! I'm doing this for all our sakes. The best Star Trek movie is now The Voyage Home, the one about using social engineering to clear up a big misunderstanding. The second-best Star Trek movie is now The Undiscovered Country, the one about confronting your prejudice and making peace with your enemies. The Wrath of Khan is now only the third-best Star Trek movie. Do you hear me? The third-best! AH HA HA HA H

  PS: Amitabh Bachchan for Khan.

• Arrested Development (2013): Not gonna make a habit of mentioning TV show-like things in these roundups, but c'mon, it's Arrested Development. Season 4 had the feeling of a "darker, grittier" reboot. I enjoyed watching the puzzle unfold, but was it really a comedy? It wasn't that much funnier than, say, Breaking Bad. Well, who's to say what's a "comedy"? It was really well done. Needs some editing though.