Reviews: Movies – Be Kind Rewind, Southland Tales, Stranger T

For awhile there I was really despairing as to the state of Hollywood movies. So many of them seem to either be remakes, sequels, or just generally hackneyed crap. I was honestly convinced that the movie industry would crumble before Hollywood produced an original script and took some chances on something different. These three movies have shown me that it is still possible to have fun in Hollywood.

Southland Tales: A

Southland Tales was pretty well ridiculed as the worst movie of 2006, although I hadn’t heard of it at all before watching it a few months ago. For all its flaws, I think it deserves some credit for being one of the most original, bizarre Hollywood movies ever made. Even if you think it didn’t succeed at anything it tried to do, you can’t deny that it at least tried to make that giant leap. The worst that could be said of that movie is that it was overly ambitious.

What I loved about Southland Tales was that, to me, it was the closest anyone has ever come to making a Phillip K. Dick book into a movie. Appropriately enough, considering that we’re talking about Phillip K. Dick, Southland Tales was not actually based on a Phillip K. Dick novel. This didn’t stop the movie from filling my head with visions of Valis or any one of Dick’s more crazy narratives.

No movie has ever better captured the feeling of reading a Dick novel. That hallucinatory, non-linear, totally bonkers plot filled with bizarre, nonsensical characters. That dazed feeling at the end, when you are suddenly unable to decide whether you have witnessed pure genius or just a meaningless acid flashback. Hollywood is always imposing structure on Dick, taking out the craziness and adding generically hot movie stars and a beginning and an end and a sensible middle. Southland Tales, possibly because it is not actually a Dick story, was free of this meddling.

Added to the surreal excellence that is Southland Tales, there is also the amazing cast. Now, not everyone loves Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as much as I do, but what other movie gives you Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star, and an additional supporting cast of awesomeness that includes Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Wallace Shawn, Mandy Moore, Bai Ling, Jon Lovitz, John Larroquette, Christopher Lambert, and Janeane Garofalo? Plus there is a lesbian anarchist collective trying to blow things up with bazookas and a crazy Sarah Palinesque First Lady bunkered down in a secret government location, shooting people left and right. It is also one of the best satires of the remnants of counter-culture in California I have ever seen and a vision of futuristic dystopia. WHAT COULD BE BAD ABOUT THIS MOVIE? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD? I somehow doubt their commitment to Sparkle Motion.

Stranger than Fiction: A+

Stranger than Fiction was way better than I thought it would be. I’ve actually been avoiding it, figuring that a movie with Will Ferrell can only be so good. The very creative script completely fucks with narrative, fiction and non-fiction, telling a story in which a boring IRS agent suddenly starts hearing his life being narrated. The voice belongs to Emma Thompson, an angsty author who happens to be writing a novel about a boring IRS agent. When Will Ferrell hears the voice intone “Little did he know that he was about to die,” he sets off on a quest to save himself from this death-happy author. The crazed plot owes a lot to Charlie Kaufman, which is great, because I think most movies would be way more exciting if they took place inside Charlie Kaufman’s brain.

The movie also features Maggie Gyllenhaal as Will Ferrell’s love interest (this didn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it would) and Dustin Hoffman as an English professor trying to find out exactly what kind of novel Will Ferrell is in. The script for this was quite clever without being pretentious, leading to lines like “Aren’t you relieved to know you’re not a golem?” and other quotable gems. I love golems and any reference to them. Anyway…

What I really loved about this movie was the attention to detail. The set design, location choices, and costume choices were perfect. You got a complete sense of the kind of person Will Ferrell’s best friend, played by Tony Hale, was with a few lines about Space Camp. From Emma Thompson’s cavernous, cold office, to the endless rows of white boxes at the IRS, to Tony Hale’s futuristic, obsessively clean apartment, the set design was just fantastic. The white, clean lines and the bright, bright sun made Chicago look like some freaky, futuristic wonderland. I loved that all the characters were named after mathematicians, scientists or engineers, and the graphics that followed Will Ferrell around, creating geometry out of his precise movements. All the details were just so carefully chosen, right down to the Sue Grafton novel Dustin Hoffman is reading while on lifeguard duty. I could watch this movie a million times and still catch more new things in the background.

Be Kind Rewind: A+++

Finally, there is Be Kind Rewind. I cannot even begin to describe the joy this movie brought me. I am so happy I picked it up, having never even seen it before, from the Blockbuster pre-viewed DVD sale shelf when I was feeling depressed. I knew, despite mediocre reviews, that Michel Gondry would come through for me. Once again, there was a great attention to detail in this movie. I loved the fence camouflage designed by Jack Black’s character, complete with little diamonds painted onto his face. I loved the little details added to indicate that Jack Black was magnetic, from the weird sound effects to the wavy distortions to the cheap slapstick gags. The “remakes” of the erased video store movies were just perfect. And I loved the not-very-subtle criticism of the copyright system that treats art as a product, catering to corporate interests while preventing any new art from being made. I loved it all!

To watch Be Kind Rewind is find oneself filled with a childish love of movie magic, the kind of pure joy that makes you want to just go out and recreate lightsaber fights with sticks. It made me want to be more creative. I finished watching that movie and I was seized with the urge to include animation in my Coney Island movie. I was suddenly flooded with all these ideas. Anything was possible! Why, I could include Javanese shadow puppets! Or Terry Gilliam-esque paper animations! Stop motion effects! Anything at all!!! I can’t remember the last time a movie made me feel that way. Maybe when I was a kid and would draw little comics starring my favorite cartoon characters… that’s the last time I felt so inspired to create something new after watching a movie. I feel like writing Michel Gondry a letter of thanks. I can’t imagine he had anything else in mind.