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Dustin Freeley

Preview Review: Tower Heist — From Sapiens to Simians

by Dustin Freeley on August 29, 2011 · 0 comments

 

About six months ago, my block in Astoria was papered with pink NO PARKING signs vowing to tow anything that disrupted the filming of  a movie. Within the massive trailers, reclusive celebrities hid until it was time for their close-ups, and along the sidewalk, non-celebrities grazed on coffee and donuts, spoke into walkie talkies, and removed wandering residents from the sidewalk when someone farther down the street held up a hand. I never managed to catch a glimpse of anyone in the movie, and knew very little about the film aside from its title: Tower Heist.

There were thirty one movies filmed in New York City in 2010 and twenty-currently being filmed – neither of these totals includes the various television series and dramas also filmed. And, because there are so many, I hardly remember the titles I glimpse from the signs; however, it just so happens that the same block was shut down last weekend for touch-ups on the very same movie. Coincidentally, this happened the same week that I slogged through The Change-Up and caught a glimpse of Tower Heist during the coming attractions.

Admittedly, I was initially intrigued given the recentness with which I was reminded of the film, but the preview itself exemplifies the degeneration of a narrative arc from promising to ludicrously contrived. In another context, this preview would demonstrate the transition from sapiens to simians.

Should a film that stars Ben Stiller, Alan Alda, Eddie Murphy, Michael Pena, Tea Leoni, and Gabourey Sidibe be categorized as high art and set the bar above all other films in its genre? Certainly not. and I wouldn’t fault it for falling short. However, the preview starts out promisingly enough by playing on a contemporary scandal reminiscent of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scam. Here, Alan Alda plays Arthur Shaw, a multimillionaire with his “own private island,” but whose congenial demeanor is torn asunder amidst the revelation that he defrauded all of his investors, and those that we are privy to happen to work in the luxury building where Shaw lives. In this co-existence of blue collar workers and Shaw, a discourse on the class-gap is established, primarily between JoshKovacs (Ben Stiller) and Shaw, where Shaw insists that “deepdown, I’m just an old Astoria boy,” much like Kovacs who responds with “That’s right. PS 104. Go lions.” But this is rendered fallacious once Shaw’s crimes are uncovered and he reminds Kovacs that he and his fellow employees are just “working stiffs, clock punchers, easily replaced.” Therefore, despite their childhood’s geographical proximity, they couldn’t be further apart. This topic is not one that is often tackled in comedy – dark or otherwise – so its introduction here suggested that various gaps between class, education, and maybe even race would be tackled.

Furthermore, the film aims at the proper demographic: the middle class workers, maybe those who were defrauded by Madoff, or, more broadly relevant, those who hold similar middle-class jobs, only knowing the wealthy from afar. The aim is taken further when the collective modus operandi of the scorned employees turns to revenge, but not in a Hard Candy sort of way. Here, Shaw won’t physically suffer, but his “twenty-million dollar safety net” will be found and distributed between this modern Robin Hood and his merry men.

But alas, there is one snag in their scheme: they’re “not criminals” and “don’t know how to steal.” But rest assured, Kovacs “knows someone”: Slide (Eddie Murphy). Cue the move from Homo Sapiens to Homo Erectus, our knuckles touching the ground, and our knowledge of the word ripe with confusion.

I have nothing against Eddie Murphy. In a way, I even admire his transition from wise-cracking Axl Foley to lead whip in deplorably written children’s films. Most of them evoke laughter through gross-out humor, are terrible, and treat kids like morons, but they are financially viable: “since 1995, “kids’ fiction” movies have been the highest average grossing of any genre, excepting the usually bigger-budget superhero films” (source). Who can fault him – or Adam Sandler for that matter?

The downside of the introduction of Slide is not just Murphy, who treats one of his first dialogs with Kovacs as if he were conjuring Donkey from Dreamwork’s animation heap. Using the same nasal, undulating inflection Murphy rattles in one extenuated breath, “You’re the little seizure boy whose been having seizures all the time, you’d be having seizures on a regular basis, you’re the little seizure boy, your eyes would be rolling back and a kids’d be crying, foam was coming out…it was very scary” that’s a nice boulder. Instead, the downside is the progression of narrative. Here, we’re led to believe that Kovacs, who works in a building in which the average tenant earns “5.6 million dollars” and who has to refer all the way back to their time with “Ms. Satlzburg” at “daycare” to jog Slide’s memory, has kept close enough tabs on this random playmate-turned-criminal to be able to use him at the most convenient disposal. Granted, in the age of Facebook, Peoplefinder, Classmates, Google Plus, and other .coms, it is a touch easier to find those who cut themselves loose from the tether of social networks, but how probable is this? And, on the chance that this is a writer’s scheme to introduce a twist wherein Kovacs — or someone else — is revealed to be in league with Shaw, then, boo.

Perhaps I should just suspend my disbelief – more so that could be warranted – and just go with it. Fine. I’ll do that for a moment, but I can’t overlook the comedic tone of the film that moves from clever to idiotic.

One example derives from Rick Malloy’s (Michael Pena) purchasing of ski hats as opposed to ski masks because “the guy said these would keep us the warmest.” Seriously? There’s always a wealth of comic relief in misunderstanding, but this is a heist film that mirrors decades of heist films, so his obliviousness, much like the connection forged between Kovacs and Slide is precarious at best.

Likewise, moments within the trailer point to Odessa Montero (Gabourey Sidibe), the maid who’s “gone rogue” and has an obvious attraction to Slide, something most notably shown through innuendo as they hunch near a safe: “You gotta find the entry point. gotta use the fingers when you find the entry point. You married?” To which Slide reposts, “No, I ain’t marries whas up?” There is nothing wrong with innuendo, crudeness, or transgression for that matter; however, the lines pave such a predictable course that they lose their humor. It’s forced, and it’s as if the film panders to an audience looking for the grotesque – in the most literal sense of the word: creating an unnatural or bizarre connection during a situation that calls for the opposite. Inherently, there’s nothing wrong with the grotesque or the absurd, but its deviation from the original tone transports this film to the age of Homo habilis.

In the end, a film that looks to be another rendition of Ocean’s Eleven confuses its audience with a cornucopia of clichés and snippets of various genres. Oh, and it’s directed by Brett Ratner: the turd placed atop asbestos whipped cream dolloped on a delicious looking sundae.

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Doc Review: Inside Job — The Dangers of Greed, Symbols, and Ratings

by Dustin Freeley on August 26, 2011 · 0 comments

I can’t help but think that Inside Job won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary on the basis that director Charles Ferguson should have won the Oscar three years prior for his debut No End in Sight, a documentary that takes an in depth look at the Bush Administration’s conduct prior to and during the Iraq occupation. At the same time, the Academy tends to shy away from endorsing politically-driven documentaries or overtly endorsing entertainers who do – for reference, see Michael Moore, whose eerie, eye-opening Bowling for Columbine deservedly snagged an Oscar, but whose acceptance speech blacklisted him from any future nominations.

In content, there is no problem with Inside Job, though it doesn’t offer any new information on the financial crisis that could not be found in various newspaper articles under a quick Google search. Like No End in Sight, this film, is haunting and disturbing in its depiction of evil corporate banks and their CEO’s and sympathetic in its relegation of the middle class (if there truly is such a thing any longer) to duped consumers who are victims of “predatory lenders” who twist their black mustaches betwixt long-nailed fingers and plan ways to take over the world. As a cynic, I can’t earnestly defend bankers, CEO’s, traders, or government officials who wield pejoratives like “socialism” and “communism” to avoid due criticism and scrutiny. However, I can’t fully sympathize with people who honestly believed they could afford a house that costs seven times their cost of living. So, even though Inside Job offers a fine view at the perfidious history of “massive private gains and public losses” through a “thirty-year period of deregulation” that ultimately led to a “global crisis” that “rendered 30 million people unemployed,” there is a lack of culpability placed on the middle class consumers who are searching for the American dream.

Perhaps the first thing that this documentary does very well is illustrate our general ignorance of financial matters within the country, positing that we, as tyro investors, rely too much on symbols and ratings like stars, number scales and variations of AAA (something that is rather relevant given the United States’ recent downgrading to AA+ after the debacle between the Republicans and Democrats over raising the debt ceiling). Essentially, these ratings (as suggested by Fergusson) are what allowed predatory lenders to take advantage of fledgling investors. At the same time, this also suggests that the consumers are immune from having to research their investments wisely to gauge whether or not their finances provide a backup plan. And in this sense, the banking industry and the people are quite a lot alike: neither foresaw a potential crash, and neither had a backup plan. The difference is that the Federal Government, under both Bush Jr. and Obama, were willing to bail out the banks.

Similar to the way in which customers blindly trusted others who “have  a duty to serve our clients prices on transactions they ask us to show prices for,” bankers and the like trusted the companies they worked for without questioning their methods, despite a warning from Raghuram Rajan, a former IMF Chief Economist, that incentive structures generating huge cash bonuses but impose no penalties for later losses encourage bankers to take huge risks that might destroy their own firms.

What Inside Job also does rather well is examine the incestuous, concubinal relationship between Wall Street and government, looking at Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama through a bipartisan lens. None are indicted because of their party lines in that money seems unfazed by donkeys and elephants, something that is greatly apparent when the viewer understands that some of the main players like Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Allen Greenspan, Mary Shapiro, and Larry Summers have had their hands in the historical architecture of deregulation as well as their presence on Wall Street and with the government.

In the end, Fergusson’s exploration of the Wall Street, government, and the economy is worth checking out, if only to remind one’s self of the dangers of ignorance and falling for the bait of the American Dream. I don’t mean to suggest that the “Dream” is impossible, but rather that it should arrive organically as opposed to spontaneously in the form of a belief that says “I’m an American, so I can afford whatever I want.” It seems curious that such a belief is effused, but perhaps watching CEO’s and CFO’s of JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch receive multi-million dollar bonuses after having aided the crash of financial institutions offers little in the way of demonstrating repercussions.

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Best Prison Films — Or, Why We Root for the Bad Guy

by Dustin Freeley on August 24, 2011 · 0 comments

The prison film might be the genre most antithetical to how we view heroes and villains. As opposed to films set in courtrooms where the victim usually wins and the bad guy goes to jail to contemplate his or her crimes, the protagonists in prison films are often the guilty party, the ones who couldn’t get away or hire the high-priced attorney, or the ones who couldn’t beat the system. At the same time, the villain is the system, the man, the enforcer or rules, or the sadistic guards keeping order – establishments that we view as safeguards against tyranny in real life. The intrigue surrounding prison films is that their narratives often conflict with our constructed view of sensibilities and security. In effect, the prison film symbolizes our feeling of entrapment outside of the jail. Those that we vilify within the prison film are relatable to potentially duplicitous politicians, bosses, or friends.

Here are what I consider the top five prison films of all time. To qualify for this list, the majority of the action within a film needed to take place within a prison of some sort, thus Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange doesn’t appear on this list despite my affinity for it, primarily because Alex’s time in the prison is less than his time outside of it. The same goes for The Deer Hunter, a movie that is best known for its final scene, but one that really focuses on adjusting to life outside of the war.

5. The Great Escape (1963)

Narrowly edging out The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1963’s The Great Escape tells the story of Allied POW’s in a Nazi prison camp during WWII. Released on July 4th and containing a veritable murderers’ row of acclaimed actors, The Great Escape was the equivalent today’s RED. The plot is straightforward and creates a simple narrative that follows the entire prison camp in their attempt to escape. At the same time, the characters within the film are almost superheroesque in that they all have their special skills and traits: the forger, the scrounger, the mole, the cooler king, the big X, the surveyor, and the like. Most interestingly about The Great Escape is the presence of a prison within a prison. At the beginning of the film, dozens of soldiers are marched in and allowed to walk around the grounds. The perimeter is secured by high fences replete with rows of barbed wire and towers with machine-gun-happy Nazis residing in each eagle’s nest. The quarters for each pair of prisoners are little cabins with a woodstove, closet, and bunk beds, which imagines less a prison and more a summer camp – with bullets. On the outskirts of their confines resides “the cooler,” an isolation cell for anyone caught trying to escape, or anyone who has escaped and been brought back. The sentences for said cooler range from one week to one month, and it is with this “cooler” that the prison film narrative is doubly established.

Certainly, as an American viewer, we can say that those within the camp are wrongfully imprisoned because history has proven that the Axis powers were the villains. However, within the camp, the prisoners’ skills more closely resemble qualities we would consider criminal in a free society. Hilts, the Cooler King (Steve McQueen) is a veritable burglar able to break in and out of any domicile. Hendley, the Scrounger (James Garner) is a thief, and Blythe (Donald Pleasance) is a counterfeiter and identity thief, while MacDonald (Gordon Jackson) is a spy. The “cooler” comes into play as the punitive tool for Kommandent von Luger, a man who is less “sadistic warden” and more the man charged with keeping order in his prison, but it’s the effect that the cooler has on its resident – namely, Ives (Angus Lennie) that transforms its use as order-enforcer into vilified tool of the oppressor. All in all, The Great Escape is a fun ride filled with motorcycle chases and tips and tricks on how to fool the SS.

4. Papillon (1973)

Set initially in a penal colony in French Guiana, Papillion tells the true story of Henri Charriere (Steve McQueen) and his various attempts to escape with fellow criminal Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman). There is some debate on whether or not Charriere was wrongly accused of murder or if he actually committed the crime, but Papillion exemplifies the sadism that we apply endemically to prisons in film, beginning with the opening scene that shows prisoners gathered around a guillotine and forced to witness the execution of an unruly inmate. The guillotine itself was a product of both necessary expedience and a symbol to sedate the masses. As a public display of power, the guillotine made prisoners further subservient because their execution would be no mystery. Humanity does not reside in a wooden frame or metal blade, so any and all pleas for mercy fall on deaf ears.

At the same time, Charriere and Dega’s parasitic friendship stems from selfishness rather than camaraderie. Desperate to escape from his confines, Charriere offers protection to the affluent Dega, who happens to be very popular among the inmates because he was incarcerated for running what equates to a Ponzi scheme, something that affected a number of the criminals within the prison. In turn, Dega funds Charriere’s escape andsecures his own.

The solitary confinement scene may run a little long and become a bit visceral prior to Charriere’s release, but the schemes and plots that he derives to find freedom – particularly his attempt to escape from Devil’s Island at the very end of the film – are powerfully shot and endearing … even if he’s a murderer.

3. Escape From Alcatraz (1979)

Telling the true story of Frank Morris, the only man who has allegedly successfully escaped from Alcatraz, Escape from Alcatraz offers a slightly different take on the prison film in that there is less focus on sadistic guards and more focus on the process by which Morris and his two accomplices enter the water. In real life, their bodies were never found, so it’s possible that they were eaten by a shark at some point, but it’s also possible that they’re living comfortably with Elvis and Tupac, somewhere in Boca Raton.

Regardless of their eventual fates, Morris and his cronies give us a perfect example of lifetime criminals that we root for on the silver screen. First arrested at the age of 13, Morris was a legitimate career inmate who was finally moved to Alcatraz in an attempt to contain him. What changes this real life reprobate into celluloid protagonist is his cleverness and intelligence, things that ironically didn’t prevent him from being arrested a plethora of times, but I digress. However, despite Morris’ real life antics and his subterfuge within the prison walls, it’s difficult not to root for his success at the end of the film. Perhaps this also stems from the notoriety surrounding the conditions of Alcatraz. For whatever reasons, Escape from Alcatraz turns our interpretation of hero and villain on its head.

2. Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Sentenced to two years in a Southern chain gang for “destruction of municipal property,” or more accurately cutting the heads off of parking meters, Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman) refuses to be confined by social law and order. Here, Jackson is not a hardened criminal; rather, everything in life seems to be his way of “passing time,” whether it’s in the army or behind barbed wire. Cool Hand Luke doesn’t depict the sadistic warden, though Strother Martin is often mislabeled as one. In fact, the bosses within the camp give Jackson enough rope to hang himself, reiterating the punishment for those who try to escape repeatedly. The warnings are there – as are the symbolic leg chains – but none of this prevents Jackson, who has “rabbit in his blood.”

In one of Newman’s best performances, he portrays Jackson as a likable fellow with slate blue eyes and a charming smile, aesthetics that work even on his fellow prisoners that make him their de facto leader and idol through whom they live vicariously. At the same time, he is ultimately vilified by his peers for being human in a Christ-allegory where he’s left in a heap on the floor, a sharp contrast to the doctored photo where he is adorned by two women that cost him “a week’s pay.” Instead of appreciating the illusion and gesture, Jackson’s fellow prisoners castigate him for failing to miraculously preternatural.

In the end, Cool Hand Luke studies the human condition in a situation where someone or something needs to present itself as an ideal. It also shows the mostly inevitable, unfortunate fall of our idols.

1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

It would be difficult to place Cool Hand Luke at number 2, if it weren’t for The Shawshank Redemption. Based on the Stephen King novella, this film offers very few twists and turns and never tries to absolve the prisoners of their crimes. Even through Red’s the “only guilty man in Shawshank” while everyone else’s “lawyer fucked” them, their perfunctory denial makes them human. Each prisoner knows the other is guilty, but no one can say it because it effectively disenfranchises them, giving them little to fight for. By right, the innocent fight for their freedom and castigate the system, so why not don the mask of the wrongly accused? The only legitimately not-guilty man is Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), but he avoids referring to himself as innocent because his selfishness and indifference toward his wife led her into the arms of another man, serendipitously bringing her to her death in a botched robbery.

The true narrative in The Shawshank Redemption is not whether Dufresne will be exonerated, but that human decency exists in the hearts of most man, criminals and the unprosecuted alike while those who show no humanity are the truly vilified. This is certainly a common trope in most prison films – and three of the four films on this list – but there are moments in Shawshank that capture the equalizing moments of existence: beers on a roof, classical music, stacks of canonical books in a library, and loneliness.

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Movie Review: I Love You, Phillip Morris — Hyper-Intelligence + Boredom = Criminality?

by Dustin Freeley on August 23, 2011 · 0 comments

I Love You, Phillip Morris, exemplifies Jim Carrey’s decade-long transition from comedic goofball to charming leading man. In a way, Carrey has been emulating Tom Hanks, who was best known as a comedic actor before melding comedy sincerity in 1988’s Big. From then on, most comedic roles undertaken by Hanks could better be described as dramedies: Sleepless in Seattle, Joe Versus the Volcano, Turner and Hooch, You’ve Got Mail. Unfortunately, Carrey doesn’t seem to have had the same luck with scripts or solicitations. The past decade or so hasn’t been a series of flops – in fact his transition started off promisingly with The Truman Show and the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon. Both were moderately critically successful, and Carrey won snagged three consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor in a Comedy. Say what you will about the significance of Golden Globes – or Oscars for that matter – but the consistency with which they’re won does create a bit of clout around a performer. Then, it seems that Carrey hit his dramatic apex in 2004 with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a film that gets much less public recognition than it should. But then, for the most part, his roles have been relegated to cookie-cutter scripts that rely on slapstick comedy to pull them through a la Fun With Dick and Jane.

So, it was refreshing to find I Love You Phillip Morris, a 2009 film based on the life of Steven Russell that had a very small release and ultimately became a financial failure (only grossing a little over 2million on a  budget of 13million), but one that utilized the charm that Carrey showed in the late nineties and early aughts.

To be fair, the financial failure of this film is not necessarily reflective of its quality but rather of its subject matter: the love connection between two gay men who find each other in prison. The real life Steven Russell is currently serving an “unprecedented life sentence” in the” maximum security Michael Unit, south of Dallas,” but not for murder, rape, or any other capital crime; rather, he’s held in 23-hour-a-day lockdown because he embarrassed the entire Texas prison system by impersonating judges, lawyers and doctors. By planting bogus documents in the system. And by literally walking out the doors of prisons — four different times. Sometimes he even called back afterward, with advice on prison administration” (source).

As Russell maintains, and as the film suggests, his many escapes were out of love for his little girl, a product of his first marriage to Debbie (Leslie Mann) and his love for Phillip (Ewan McGregor). Ostensibly, I Love You, Phillip Morris is a love story about two men. At the same time, the fictional Steven Russell is more than just a love sick genius whose hyperintelligence allays boredom by indulging in criminality. He’s a man essentially stripped of identity. At a young age, Russell, who sits in a small chair facing his parents is told “you’re adopted!” by an older sibling who relishes in announcing this tersely with arms crossed. The animosity in the older sibling’s voice coupled with the silence of his parents makes Russell an outsider in his own family. His refuge becomes lying on a hillside with children, staring up at the sky, pointing out shapes in the clouds. As others find animals and the like, Steven points out “a wiener,” to wit the other children object. However, the following shot is a cloud clearly shaped like the phallus. Thus, Steven is accurate with his assessment of the shape, but learns early on that the cock is taboo, effectively silencing his desires and forcing him to conform to the others.

This point isn’t heavy-handedly laid on the audience. In fact, the continuation of this theme is rather subtle and woven into the fabric of a love story. However, it’s interesting to note that – until Russell becomes super determined just to see Phillip again – he has little agency in his own life, starting from his biological mother’s decision to abandon him “and [keep her] other two children,” despite Russell’s confused declaration on her porch that “I was the middle child” as she closes the doors and goes back to the dinner table.

In the same vein, Russell’s marriage to Debbie seems less of his doing and more of what’s expected. As the piano player in the church choir, Russell is separated from the congregation, but during one performance, Debbie makes eye contact, and in the next scene, they are a couple. Likewise, the sole sex scene between him and Debbie – if it could be called that – is comically uncomfortable as she lays there clothed, horizontally jostled as Russell jackhammers away before breaking into conversation. In other words, intercourse with Debbie is less his desire than hers.

Eventually, their marriage dissolves and Russell moves to Miami to fit into an evidently burgeoning homosexual community, but prior to this, he has to find an exit from his marriage, and this comes in the form of being t-boned by a car as he is returning from a sexual tryst with another man. Therefore, even his decision to come out of the closet is determined by someone else, much is his turn as a lawyer, something impelled by Phillip’s assertion that “Steven’s a litigator.” Lost as a litigator, Russell adopts the image of Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, suggesting not only his cinema-laden interpretation of reality but also his chameleonic abilities.

Despite the intriguing storyline and decent performances by McGregor, Mann, and Carey, I Love  You, Phillip Morris falls short at times because it feels as if it is attempting to emulate Catch Me if You Can, not so much in story but in Russell’s voice-over narration that explains his hijinks. This is a problem from the of the film where there is a dramatic push that prophecies Russell’s death as he lies on a gurney, narrating “love’s the reason I’m laying here dying.” But, because he’s the voiceover throughout the film, the audience instantaneously knows this is a ruse, which makes the last fifteen minutes of the film less heartfelt and endearing and more sluggish in that we’re waiting for his explanation – one that’s fairly transparent.

Another issue with this film is that it takes advantage of “I love you,” a phrase that it repeatedly uttered between Philip and Steven, but one that is not necessarily explained. Why are they drawn to each other? Perhaps Steven’s emotions can be rationalized because he seems to exist in a vacuum, unable to truly connect with anyone, or because Phillip can “only see the good” in people – something that allows Steven to indulge in criminality without judgment — but what of Phillip’s? The attraction between the two is illustrated through notes being passed from cell to cell via orderlies and the like, but the climax to “I love you” is rather sudden and feels forced.

Admittedly, not everything needs to be spelled out completely, but “love” seems to be more of a trigger word for the audience, telling us there are deep emotions here, but in truth, the film’s depiction is rather shallow. The word that should be most recognized is “I,” particularly when it comes from Russell’s mouth. It’s his way of finding and establishing an identity, and Carrey pulls this off nicely, vacillating from charming to endearing, and at times, despicable. Neither he nor directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra try to absolve Russell of his crimes, though it’s an achievement to polish away some of deviousness.

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