Sidney Lumet: 1924-2011

One of my favorite filmmakers of all time. You'll be missed.

Mother Dearest

***** Mother (2009)

If there's any doubt that the quality of filmmaking in Korea has significantly raised the bar over the past decade, perhaps Mother, the superbly crafted thriller from Bong Joon-Ho, will quiet the skeptics. And what a decade it's been for Korean films; it's no coincidence that names like Park Chan-wook, Kim Ki Duk, Im Kwon Taek, Hong Sang Soo and the aforementioned Bong are now attached to high-profile film festival circuits. A cynic may dismiss this wave of attention as a corollary of Hallyu, or the increased popularity of Korean entertainment around the world, but such simple (and obtuse) criticism overlooks the rich and engrossing brand of storytelling that has become a staple of Korean cinema.

Consider the premise of Mother: a mentally handicapped man is charged with the murder of a young girl. His mother, a widow living on scant means, is unflinchingly convinced of her son's innocence and sets out to gather evidence and testimonies that would exonerate her son. If this were a Hollywood film (and I'm certain it will be, as a remake in the near future), the cliches would be endless: an over-the-top "retard" performance (but not "full-retard") by a well-known star hungry for a statuette come March; an aging-yet-still-impossibly-gorgeous actress cast as the Mother (think Diane Lane or Kim Basinger); a supporting detective character who helps the Mother when no one else would hear her story; a romantic side story with the Mother and the detective; a climactic, tearjerking courtroom scene a la A Time to Kill; and an epilogue with a firmly established ending, one with all the storylines and conflicts neatly resolved.

Before you watch the inevitable remake (which I'm strangely excited for), please watch the original. It never cops out, never relents. The story, for all its unpredictable twists and turns, never descends into Shyamalan country; all the surprises are firmly grounded with richly layered characters with real, pivotal stakes. Kim Hye-ja's performance is a revelation - a brief glance of her eyes can communicate years of anguish, guilt and grief.

A definite recommend for anyone who is curious or interested in Korean cinema.

A classic beyond reasonable doubt

***** 12 Angry Men (1957)

There are dozens of reviews, critiques, essays and journal articles published on 12 Angry Men that would render any praises I write superfluous. Here's a quick summary of the consensus: superb writing, brilliant performances and masterful direction by an American master. With that out of the way, I offer my paltry two cents...

I keep thinking about the premise of the film. It's deceptively simple - twelve men enter a room and argue over a crime. Eleven jurors are convinced the defendant committed murder; one juror is doubtful. I emphasize that last word because I originally wrote: "Eleven jurors are convinced a man committed murder; one juror is convinced he didn't." As great a tagline that would've been, it's a very, very misconstrued synopsis of the film.

Doubt is at the crux of the story. The one juror's (Henry Fonda) plea to the other men is not for them to share his convictions; rather, he asks them to be open to uncertainty. "I just want to talk," he states. "It's not easy to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first." Drawing a line between certainty and doubt becomes all the more pressing when a young man's life hangs in the balance.

Whether the defendant is actually guilty or not, however, is besides the point. I made the mistake of assuming that at the end (spoiler alert), the twelve men prove the defendant didn't commit the crime. On the contrary, the jury doesn't really prove anything. Every bit of fact and evidence were still the same from beginning to end and nothing substantial had changed. What did change, however, were the men's perceptions - what they once deemed to be irrefutable evidence of guilt were re-examined in a different light and, in doing so, their motives and biases surfaced. As the margin for doubt grew wider, each juror was forced to confront his rationale for voting guilty/not guilty.

Who are we when we can no longer stand by our convictions? The film compels us to ask this question as we are made to identify with each character's struggle to acquiesce to the realm of uncertainty. Doubt is not an easy thing to stomach but is of supreme importance when we make decisions that render significant consequences. 12 Angry Men brilliantly reveals the nature of uncertainty and shows how very often our prejudices belie our perceived beliefs and convictions.

Why isn't this going away?!

* Eclipse (2010)

Holy crap this was one horrible movie. I...I have no words. I'm so ashamed to even admit that I watched it, but I have to vent. There is something seriously flawed with our society if a movie like Eclipse gets eaten up by the millions. And to think, this was the BEST one in the franchise, critically speaking?! It's like going to a restaurant in a new city, eating the most gawdawful bile in the world, and then finding out that joint serves the best food in the entire area. It's depressing.

Where do I start with the film? The dialogue. The acting. The direction. The story. Yeah, it pretty much had none of those elements. You know you're in trouble when the best line in the movie is, "I'm hotter than you." It was the only time during the film when I laughed out loud because the comedy was (I hope to God) intentional. The rest of the time I cringed, I gagged, I suffered.

Fortunately, I didn't watch the first two films so I'll try to write as few words possible recounting the plot - which won't be too hard since it's already absurdly thin. A scorned vampire Victoria (played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who, despite her talents, seems to have a knack for starring in atrociously bad movies), raises an army of vampires to kill vampires who were formerly her vampire friends. Hmm, I think that about sums it up. Oh, yes...and then there was the other 90 minutes where the lead character Bella is struggling to choose between her brooding vampire lover Edward and her maddeningly-shirtless-every-scene werewolf friend Jacob. This doesn't count as plot because the action goes nowhere.

For some reason, unbeknownst to and way beyond me, the other vampires and werewolves stick their necks out to protect Bella from the evil vampires. And that's what makes this so damn perplexing to watch. There is absolutely nothing (NOTHING!) special about Bella. Her most selfless act in the movie was smearing tiny droplets of her blood on trees and leaves to distract the evil vampires from capturing her. "I want to do everything I can to help in this battle," she says solemnly. Really? You couldn't just...die and save us all the trouble? There's a young vampire (spoiler alert) that gets killed in the climactic battle at the end, and I couldn't help but cheer for her because she won't have to star in another Twilight film again.

To all my teenage female readers (comparable, I'm sure, to the Twilight fanbase) - please stop following this trash! I urge you to consider all the other great tormented love stories that are out there. Pride and Prejudice. Wuthering Heights. Dawson's Creek. Anything but Twilight, which I'm starting to suspect was written by manatees floating in a tank.

The 80s: the decade of Reagan and AIDS

*** Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

As far as guilty pleasures go, I'm not sure how far this one would rank. Not because I didn't enjoy it (which I did) but because at no point did I feel guilty for watching it. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to make a movie about a hot tub time machine, release it under the name Hot Tub Time Machine, and have a character utter the phrase, "It must be some kind of...hot tub time machine," while staring deadpan at the camera. Chutzpah that merits admiration, not shame.

If the plot wasn't conspicuous enough in its wonderfully worded title, perhaps this brief synopsis will bring one up to speed: four friends gather together for a weekend getaway on a ski resort, get plastered, and hop into a hot tub that magically transports them back to the 80s. A setup like the one mentioned needs no apology. Even the mysterious origin of the hot tub time machine is cheerfully overlooked - an inconsequential detail that no one in the film cares to explain. And really, do we need an explanation of how it works? It's a f****** hot tub time machine!

Despite its seemingly vacuous appeal, however, the film is not without brains and is surprisingly sharp in its own inane off-the-wall way. A running dilemma throughout the movie is whether or not each character chooses to recreate the events that happened in 1986, thereby curbing the ripples of the "the butterfly effect" (Rob Corddry's eyes bulging when he exclaims, "that was a f****** awesome movie!" is just one of the many reasons why this is his breakout vehicle). The problem with re-living the past, however, is that nobody wants to go back to the dreary humdrum existence they lived before their vault on a hot tub DeLorean. There's a bit of Groundhog Day at play here that's subtly wedged in between the vomit takes and sex gags. Infusing meaning into existence with the power of choice? Kierkegaard would've been proud.

All philosophical digressions aside, the film is zealously raunchy, at times witty and never short on tongue-in-cheek. Do watch if in the mood to veg out on a Saturday night and giggle/laugh out loud/be shocked in disgust, depending on your sense of humor and level of sophistication. I'm proud to say that I still enjoy a good projectile spewing, especially when it obliterates small rodent creatures.

Stark shortcomings

** Iron Man 2 (2010)

I hate it when "not enough action" gets thrown into a discussion about movies. Hate it. It's probably the worst line of criticism and something a ten-year-old might say after watching The Godfather. And yet...

I really don't want to say it. Remember that sketch from Chappelle's Show that made Dave Chappelle quit the show? The one about resisting the urge to fall into your own stereotypes, even though you can't help it? That's how I'd feel if I said Iron Man 2 didn't have enough action. I'd feel like I'm falling prey to the studio execs' assessment of the general population's taste. Just another dumb American who wants his thrills for a 120 minutes, thereby adding his Hamilton to the 120 million dollar box-office weekend.

But I do want my thrills, as long as they come with the promise of quality (good story, writing - the fundamentals). And it's not to say that Iron Man 2 didn't come with quality, it's just that...well, I just didn't care. I didn't care whether Tony Stark was going through a personal crisis, or that he was being stalked by a psychotic Russian physicist (Mickey Rourke, the scariest looking physicist if I ever met one), or that he was being ousted by another weapons mogul (Sam Rockwell), or that he was still in ambiguous terms with his assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Why didn't I care? I almost did, in the scene where Tony comes across an old reel that showed his late father, but moments like those were too few and far in between. The rest of the film had a little too much Rat Pack smarminess that didn't sit well like it did in the first Iron Man.

And all this affects the action. A great story will make the audience care about the action (i.e. Spider-Man 2, the gold standard for comic book movies) because they're emotionally invested. Iron Man 2 doesn't have a great story like it's predecessor and even though it's fun to watch, the action feels flat and there just isn't enough. Damn it all, I said it. If anyone needs me, I'll be at the test screening for Transformers 3...

More than just bowling...or is it?

**** The Big Lebowski (1998)

It's probably best not to read too much into The Big Lebowski. The biggest pleasure in this film (or at least for me, anyway) was watching the manic energy/chemistry/wackiness between the Dude (Jeff Bridges) and Walter (John Goodman) that left me wondering how they got through each take without cracking up every time. Never mind the craft (pitch perfect in terms of delivery and timing) and let me be honest for a minute - by the end of the movie, I was laughing my ass off. Alone. In the middle of the night.

I wish I had more thoughtful things to write about the movie but because it's such an acid trip of a film (and partly because my brain is so fried from watching it) I feel it's best, at least for now, to prevent myself from dissecting it so as to not egregiously offend anyone who belongs to the church of Lebowski. Is it a satirical statement about the not-so-perceptive warmonger/pacifist debates in post-Gulf War society? A subtle send-up of noir and Westerns in Ken Kesey-esque fashion? Maybe. Probably. I don't know and, to some degree, I don't care to know. I know The Big Lebowski was written by smart people (the Coens brothers, for Hay-Zeus' sake), acted in by smart people and, in it's own inane way, it's a very smart film. But I'm not going to be pretentious and say that I enjoyed it for all the smart reasons. I enjoyed the goofy parts dammit, especially the part with a Folger's can taking the place of a cremation urn (hence the laughing alone in the middle of the night).

I'm not even going to bother writing a synopsis of the labyrinthine plot and just say that it involves mistaken identity, kidnapping, nihilists, postmodern pseudo-artists, seedy pornographers and bowling. Lots and lots of bowling. If you don't like The Big Lebowski, it's because it's either too above or beneath you, but it definitely can't be anywhere in between.