The Lookout

There’s a little movie I saw awhile back that impressed the heck out of me called The Lookout. I’d been in the mood to watch it again for a few months now and I’d wanted to buy it instead of Netflix it, and yet for some reason I couldn’t find a single store that carried it. This is a travesty. I ended up having to track it down at a specialty DVD store, the kind where if they don’t sell it then it doesn’t exist. Thank God they had it, but I think it’s a travesty that stores like Target & Best Buy don’t seem to carry it.

I digress. What impressed me the most about The Lookout is the fact that even though it’s a heist movie that’s centered around a man with a brain injury, the film is never cheap, clichéd and comes off 100% authentic. That is a beautiful thing.

The main character is Chris Pratt, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I found an interview while I was looking for the film where Gordon-Levitt stated that part of what he loved so much about The Lookout and playing Chris is that in the end Chris doesn’t suddenly get better because you know, somewhere along the line some exec had the brilliant idea that as part of a nice happy ending Chris sound be healthy again, and that Gordon-Levitt loved that the film doesn’t do that because that would have been disrespectful to anyone suffering from a brain injury. I have to say that I agree.

Part of what makes the film feel so authentic is that Chris struggles. One day it may be hard for him to pick up a beer bottle without shaking, or he may forget where the can opener is kept, or he has sudden mood swings – and that doesn’t go away, even when he has to become the hero of the piece. The entire film Chris has to struggle with his injury, his past and how it all affects his present and future. There is never a moment where everything just gels and Chris carries on a quasi-normal existence.

As fantastic as Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in the role of Chris, it would be a crime not to mention that he is perfectly matched by Jeff Daniels in the role of Lewis – his blind roommate who helps him cope with life. To say Lewis is the comic-relief in this film would be to cheapen his performance or character, but Lewis is the one that provides many grins and laughs for the audience through the film. Lewis is in the place with his disability that Chris can’t be in yet, and Lewis’s ability to carry on with the lightness of life next to the darkness is a perfect complement to the still fresh way Chris is dealing with his disability. Daniels plays the character as if being a blind hippy is a natural act for him and it makes me wish he got more roles like this.

The single reason I think I’ve fought so hard to find this film is not my obsession with the acting work of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but Scott Frank. Frank has written some of my most loved films of the past decade and his directorial debut is a perfect match to his body of work. It’s tense, funny, original, and complex yet for the first time I’ve gotten to see the world as Frank sees it instead of through the filter of another director.

Chris Pratt: I started skating again. I'm not as good as I used to be, but I'm okay. What happened that night along Route 24 is a part of me now. I just hope that one day Kelly will be ready to see me again and I can finally tell her what I've only been able to say in my dreams. Until then, all I can do is wake up, take a shower, with soap, and try to forgive myself. If I can do that, then maybe others will forgive me too. I don't know if that will happen, but I guess I'll just have to work backwards from there.

Women In Trouble

Women In Trouble is an interesting little film by Sebastian Gutierrez. It’s the interwoven tale of several groups of women having a bad day in the Los Angeles area; porn star Elektra Luxx finds out she’s pregnant and ends up stuck in an elevator during a heat wave with Doris who is struggling with her sister Addy & niece Charlotte; Charlotte is seeing her mother’s shrink and Addy is seeing the shrink’s husband; two prostitutes run into the distraught shrink and help her get drunk to drown her sorrows; meanwhile in the air two flight attendants deal with Nick Chapel – Elektra’s boyfriend & a high profile rock star.

The obvious comparison here is to Perdo Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, but I don’t think this was Gutierrez’s full intention –his film may be more homage than American remake. While the cast of distraught female characters is there, and a bit of a quirky artistic flare, I do think that Gutierrez was trying to make a artistic statement about a day in the lives of these women in a difficult environment.

I’ve read a few reviews that based Women In Trouble for being a horrible depiction of women – hookers, porn stars, victims & dumb blondes. While I do agree that these women are all an extreme I didn’t find this offensive and I am a woman. To serve this film justice the characters in this film needed to be pretty extreme – otherwise it would have to be a serious drama like Far From Heaven or Revolutionary Road instead of being quirkily upbeat. Besides, if you’ve spent any time at all in LA – you’ve seen plenty of women like all of these women – even the naive shrink and too world-wise child.

All in all I enjoyed the quirky pace of this film. I’ll probably check out the sequel Elektra Luxx when it makes it’s way to me. Gutierrez painted a unique enough world that I would not mind visiting it again and finding out what happened to Elektra after the credits rolled.

Director & Writer: Sebastian Gutierrez
Elektra Luxx: Carla Gugino
Holly Rocket: Adrianne Palicki
Doris: Connie Britton
Addy: Caitlin Keats
Charlotte: Isabella Gutierrez
Travis McPherson: Simon Baker
Maxine McPherson: Sarah Clarke
Bambi: Emmanuelle Chriqui
Cora: Marley Shelton
Nick Chapel: Josh Brolin
Bert Rodriguez: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Watchmen

Watchmen: Comedian
Originally uploaded by AsceticMonk

Since its publication there has been the universal theory that Watchmen is one of the single most brilliant pieces of literature ever written, and possibly right next to Atlas Shrugged as one of the most unfilmable pieces of literature.

I am one of the ones that agrees - Watchmen is unfilmable – but Zach Snyder may have gotten as close to filming Watchmen as anyone can every hope to get. There are simply things in Watchmen that cannot fit into a movie: Hollace Mason’s autobiography, the news stories of missing artists & scientists, the relationship of Sally with her husband/manager, the newsstand, the black freighter, the lesbian cab driver; if everything that were in the graphic novel were in Watchmen the movie would have to be at least six hours long, or 2-3 separate movies.

Watchmen at its core is the story of a group of retired superheroes; it is told from the perspective of a world that is our reality (only slightly tweaked to change history), a world that actually relied on heroes until they began to see them as a threat. The question behind the story is how do these characters deal with being more than the average citizen when they are no longer allowed to use those skills. For some it eats away at who they are, some have no sense of identity, one feels like he is no longer a member of humanity and only one of them remains active despite being a wanted man. This is a story that explore the morality and humanity of the superhero myth.

When reading the graphic novel my favorite character was Comedian, which is actually quite disturbing as he is possibly one of the most amoral characters in history, but he is the character that galvanizes the plot of the story, and he is by far the most symbolic of all the characters. In the filmic version Comedian is played with brilliance by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I have loved watching this man at his craft since I discovered him on the CW’s Supernatural and I hope he has a long career on the big screen.

All in all Watchmen is a damn fine interpretation of Alan Moore’s graphic novel, but it does have a few things I have issues with. However, that is for a different review as I saw Watchmen twice in less than 24 hours.

Director: Zack Snyder
Writers: David Hayter & Alex Tse
Laurie Jupiter/ Silk Spectre: Malin Akerman
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan: Billy Crudup
Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias: Matthew Goode
Walter Kovacs/Rorschach: Jackie Earle Hayley
Edward Blake/Comedian: Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl: Patrick Wilson
Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre: Carla Gugino
Hollis Mason/Nite Owl: Stephen McHattie
Richard Nixon: Robert Wisden

Adrian Veidt: It doesn't take a genius to see the world has problems.
Edward Blake: No, but it takes a room full of morons to think they're small enough for them to handle.

The Singing Detective

Dan Dark is a novelist trapped in a clinic treating his severe case of psoriasis which leave shim unable to move almost any part of his body without severe pain. The disease has made Dan true to his name; he is mad at the world, thinks his wife is cheating on him and trying to take him for his money, and suffers from intense paranoia. In an effort to escape the prison of his body Dan’s imagination has taken over and he see’s the fantasy of what he thinks is going on in his life with his wife and doctors, and in his imagination he is the fictional persona from his book, the singing detective.

One of my favorite things about The Singing Detective is the visual style of the film. There are three separate worlds in the movie and Keith Gordon creates a distinct style for each yet somehow manages to stitch them all into one cohesive whole. The colors and lighting in The Singing Detective are a thing of beauty.

I must also complement Robert Downey Jr. Keith Gordon came to my class in college and spoke about working with Downey in this movie; The Singing Detective was Downey’s first starring role in a film since his jail sentence and producer Mel Gibson and Gordon had to fight to get Downey cast as the lead. However, their insistence paid off and Downey gives a memorable and moving performance as the paranoid Dan Dark.

The Singing Detective is a multi-layered movie, and is very different. Keith Gordon made a quirky film about a man trying to figure himself out and it is quite the experience to watch.

Director: Keith Gordon
Writer: Dennis Potter
Dan Dark: Robert Downey Jr.
Nicola: Robin Wright Penn
Dr. Gibbon: Mel Gibson
Mark Binney: Jeremy Northam
Nurse Mills: Katie Holmes
First Hood: Adrien Brody
Second Hood: Jon Polito
Betty Dark: Carla Gugino

Dan Dark: Are you pretending to be an oddball or are you actually nuts?