11/30/15: Tubby Little Cubby All Stuffed With Fluff

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A.A. Milne, animated films, Barbara Luddy, based on short stories, Buddy Baker, cartoons, childhood favorites, children's movies, Christopher Robin, cinema, classic films, Clint Howard, co-directors, Disney movies, Eeyore, favorite films, film reviews, films, friendships, Gopher, Hal Smith, Howard Morris, Hundred Acre Woods, John Fielder, John Lounsbury, Junius Matthews, Kanga, Movies, multiple writers, nostalgia, Owl, Paul Winchell, Piglet, Rabbit, Ralph Wright, Roo, Sebastian Cabot, Sterling Holloway, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Walt Disney, Winnie the Pooh, Wolfgang Reitherman

If nostalgia is a drug, then nostalgia for the beloved things of one’s childhood must be a triple-dipped, skull-peeling hit of the purest intoxicant in history. We tend to view our childhood favorites through the rosiest of spectacles for many reasons but I like to think that the most prominent is also the simplest: we hold the movies, TV shows, music, pop culture and culinary delights of our childhood up as examples of the pure, undiluted joy that comes from youth. Before we learned to be cynical, snarky and dismissive, before we developed “guilty pleasures” and ironically “liked” things, we were simpler, more naive and quite a bit easier to please. It’s a convenient lie that children are universally accepting of whatever crap is put in front of them: in reality, they’re just a lot less afraid to look like idiots.

Once one is removed from childhood nostalgia by some distance, however, re-examining those childhood loves can be a bit tricky. Fart jokes, inane songs and talking animals are pretty much par for the course with kids’ movies but, several decades down the line, those particular cinematic affectations are a bit more of an acquired taste. It’s tempting to look down at our childhood loves from a more “adult” perspective and laugh at our immaturity while still pining for those innocent, pure emotions of our youth. It’s tempting, of course, but it still does them a disservice. Rather than give these old favorites the equivalent of a golf handicap and a lifetime pass, is it actually possible to re-examine them and determine their respective merits?

As a youngster, I had a set group of rotating favorite films, many of which I would watch not only day after day but, at times, multiple times during the same day. Of these many childhood favorites, few resonated with me as much as Walt Disney’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977). If I watched that remarkable little film once during my formative years, I probably watched it at least a hundred, if not a thousand, times. Thirty-some years later, however, would this little gem still mean as much? Is The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh nothing but a sad, wistful reminder of a simpler era or does it still possess the same ability to delight modern children as it did those of us who grew up in earlier eras? Is there really a place for the “tubby cubby” in our modern world?

For the uninitiated, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh details the travails of the titular stuffed bear and his woodland friends as they pass the time in their magical home, the Hundred Acres Wood. Created by British author A.A. Milne in the mid-1920s, Pooh and his friends would go on to capture the imagination of generations of children in the fifty-some years between their creation and the vibrant Disney adaptation that we currently discuss, becoming iconic childhood figures along the lines of Paddington Bear, Babar or Charles Schultz’s legendary Peanuts gang.

Characterized by a sweetly philosophical, gentle tone, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the very antithesis of frantic, overly manic kids’ movies, landing somewhere closer to a more subdued version of the aforementioned Peanuts. The adventures detailed here-in are about as far from the complicated machinations of modern animated films as possible: Pooh needs to find honey; Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s door and needs to get out; Owl’s tree falls down and he needs a new home; Tigger needs to find out what, exactly, he’s good at. No self-referential layers of meta-commentary here, nor allusions to popular culture of the era or anything transitory: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh deals with the most basic of emotions and tropes, such as the need to help others, the importance of sharing, the importance of friends, the bittersweet feeling of leaving your childhood loves behind as you get older. While many animated films claim to be for both parents and their children, that’s usually more perfunctory than anything else. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is one of the few children’s movies that is just as impactful to parents as it is to their progeny…even more, perhaps, similar to the recent Inside Out (2015).

There’s not a lot of chaos here, controlled or otherwise, but the film also doesn’t need it. It’s the difference between listening to an orchestra perform a classical piece or listening to a prog-thrash band ratchet through several time changes in the span of minutes: they both serve their purpose and there’s a time and place for both. A frantic, slapstick pace just doesn’t suit this kind of thoughtful, contemplative material. There’s a reason why Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh became a minor hit upon its release: Milne’s creations may be the single best example of Zen philosophy ever committed to film, animated or otherwise.

How does The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh hold up to other “Golden Era” Disney classics? Remarkably well, as it turns out. The voice-acting is superb across the board: I’ve never imagined Pooh as being voiced by anyone other than Sterling Holloway and I never shall. Likewise for Paul Winchell’s exuberant Tigger, John Fielder’s quivery-voiced Piglet, Junius Matthews’s blustery Owl and Howard Morris’ whistling Gopher. These are the definitive versions of these characters, as definitive as Lugosi’s Dracula or Karloff’s Monster. The songs are strong and, likewise, indelible: I don’t think I’ve ever got “Pooh’s Theme” out of my head since the first time I heard it and the “Heffalumps and Woozles” setpiece stands as my very favorite animated sequence ever, aside from “A Night on Bald Mountain.” And “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers”? Try and get that little worm out of your brain.

The animation style ably mimics the actual illustrated stories, leading to some truly lovely images, not least of which are the many times when the stories bleed back onto the page (and vice versa). Aesthetically, The Many Adventures of Winnie Pooh is easily one of my favorite Disney films: something about the look and style proves as calming, today, as it did back when I was a child. It’s also a perfect example of “form” and “content” meeting in harmonious unity: despite being comprised of three separate stories, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh has a flowing sense of continuity that’s practically fluid.

Needless to say, I loved the film as much upon my recent viewing as my prior ones. Stripping away all of my resident goodwill for the movie, however, there’s still that all important question: is The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh really a great film or does it just mean a lot to me? With as much impartiality as I can muster, I’m going to come down on the side of a genuinely great film.

For one thing, the film is actually a lot deeper than I gave it credit for when I was growing up. Upon this recent viewing, lots of little details and notions popped out at me that I never really considered before: Pooh is actually a really selfish, self-centered character and kind of a jerk, lovable demeanor or not; Eeyore is clinically depressed, yet completely accepted by his friends; the introduction of Tigger is framed like a horror movie (this was a big revelation, actually); there’s something strangely subversive about Rabbit drawing faces on Pooh’s butt in order to make his derriere fit the accommodations; Eeyore giving Piglet’s house to Owl is a really shitty move but Piglet going along with it is an act akin to sainthood or Communism, whichever you prefer. Like I said before, that’s a lot of subtext for a kids’ movie.

The single most important reason to ascribe greatness to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, however, is also the simplest: 38 years after its release, the film still feels fresh, timeless and like it has something to say. These notions of friendship, sacrifice, unity and melancholy resonate just as much today, if not more: as an adult, I’ve had a chance to live with all of these feelings and emotions for decades and, yet, I relived them all when I sat down to watch the film again. Any film that can consistently make you feel, year in and year out, decade in and decade out, is something special: in every sense of the word, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is special.

As mentioned in the beginning, nostalgia can be a hell of a drug: it can blind us to the inherent deficiencies of things we used to hold dear, reducing any attempt at critical analysis to a simple shrug and “Well, I liked it when I was a kid.” Not all of our past loves will pass the “smell test,” so to speak, especially if we’re being brutally honest with ourselves. When you find a childhood love that does, however, like The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, my advice is to hold on to it for dear life. A life without cherished memories like this, you see, is really no life at all.

 

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1/1/15 (Part Two): Bleed For Your Art

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35mm film, action-comedies, assassins, auteur theory, child actors, father-daughter relationships, Film auteurs, filmmaking, foreign films, Fuck Bombers, Fumi Nikaidô, Gen Hoshino, gory films, guerrilla film crew, guerrilla filmmaking, Hideo Yamamoto, Hiroki Hasegawa, husband-wife relationship, independent film crew, Itsuji Itao, Japanese cinema, Jun Kunimura, Megumi Kagurazaka, nostalgia, set in Japan, Shin'ichi Tsutsumi, Shion Sono, street gangs, stylish films, Tak Sakaguchi, Tetsu Watanabe, Tomochika, vanity project, voice-over narration, Why Don't You Play in Hell?, writer-director-score, Yakuza, Yakuza gang members

Calling gonzo Japanese auteur Shion Sono’s latest film, Why Don’t You Play in Hell? (2014), a sweetly sentimental film might seem a little nuts, especially if you’ve seen the movie. After all, isn’t this the same film that features a young girl “surfing” on an ocean of blood, Yakuza gang members as pick-up film crew, a finale that makes Kill Bill’s (2003) restaurant massacre look like a Hallmark special and a guerrilla film crew who call themselves “The Fuck Bombers” and delight in filming people throwing raw eggs at each other? All true, although none of these are really the film’s raison d’être: at its heart, WDYPIH? is about growing older, losing your dreams and the by-gone glory days of filmmaking (aka: the ones that actually used film). It might come wrapped in a stylish, candy-colored and ultra-gory wrapper but Sono’s goofy epic is, at heart, a friendly little shaggy mutt of a film: eager to please but rather unfocused, WDYPIH? is far from a masterpiece but I’m willing to wager that anyone who’s had their heart touched by the movie-making bug will find plenty to like here.

We begin 10 years in the past, as a pair of Yakuza gangs wage bloody warfare against each other: the Kitagawa and Muto clans seem evenly matched, as both gangs battle for control of the streets, but it’s a precarious balancing act and no one ever seems to be on top for long. The tide appears to turn when the Kitagawas send a team of assassins after the head of the Muto clan (Jun Kunimura) but Muto’s wife, Shizue (Tomochika), single-handedly kills the wannabe-killers, all while her young daughter, Mitsuko (Nanoka Hara) looks on in wide-eyed wonder. Shizue is sent to prison for her hand in the massacre (one would think some leniency would be in order, since it was basically Shizue defending herself against a group of attackers, although the point where she chased an injured guy into the street and butchered him might have thrown a monkey-wrench into the “self-defense” defense), Muto takes a mistress to “help him get through the hard times” and the Kitagawas reorganize themselves around Ikegami (Shin’ichi Tsutsumi), the only survivor of the original attempt on Muto’s life.

At this same time, we meet The Fuck Bombers, a young trio of guerrilla filmmakers led by Hirata (Hiroki Hasegawa), their far-beyond-driven director/de facto leader. The group recruits Bruce Lee-enthusiast Sasaki (Tak Sakaguchi) into their ranks, in order to shoot the action epics that they so dearly love. While out filming, the Bombers run straight into Ikegami, who’s fleeing the Muto house in a state of very bloody disrepair: he lets them shoot some footage of him, because he’s “cool” and then makes his escape. As fate would have it, however, this isn’t the last time this little group will cross paths…not by a long shot.

10 years later, Shizue is ready to be released from prison and her husband wants to give her the best present possible: a movie starring their beloved daughter, Mitsuko (Fumi Nikaidô). Unfortunately, the surly Mitsuko hates acting and has run away, throwing the whole production into jeopardy. Muto dispatches his gang to track her down and return her to him: at the same time, Ikegami prepares his gang to take another shot at the Muto empire and the Fuck Bombers are experiencing a bit of crisis. It seems that Sasaki is sick and tired of talking about making movies: Hirata keeps promising that they’ll make the “film of a lifetime” but it’s always “tomorrow,” never today. After ten years of “tomorrows,” Sasaki throws in the towel and quits, in disgust, leaving the FBs without their “action star.”

All of these disparate groups come crashing together when the FBs end up getting recruited (in a very roundabout way) by Muto in order to finish his vanity project. With Mitsuko back on board (no matter how unwillingly) and Hirata and the others eager to begin their “ultimate movie,” the stage is now set for some filmmaking magic. But what to film? As someone cannily notes, the Mutos and Kitagawas are preparing for one more, epic, bloody battle: why not turn the camera inward and capture the carnage as it happens? From this point on, the dividing line between fantasy and reality is shattered: as Hirata and the Fuck Bombers “stage” the battle, real blood sprays, real limbs are hacked and real Yakuza members are serving as the crew. It’s the ultimate “snuff” movie, as Hirata and his crew gleefully film the chaos swirling around them, always one step ahead of the gun (and the blade). Who will survive, what will be left of them but, most importantly: will they get the shot they need?

As should be rather clear from the above description, there’s an awful lot of stuffing crammed into this particular sausage-skin, even for a film that comes out a little over the two-hour mark. Despite all of the disparate elements (there are actually even more subplots and strands running through this than I mentioned, including a love story for Mitsuko and Ikegami’s obsession with returning the Kitagawas to the feudal days of Japan’s distant past), however, the film never feels particularly jumbled, probably because the Fuck Bombers storyline serves as the glue that holds everything else together.

Despite the fact that it all fits, however, WDYPIH? never feels as cohesive as it could be: the various threads tend to connect on a visual/stylistic level but don’t cohere as well on a thematic level. Even worse, however, WDYPIH? never quite feels like it completely cuts loose: despite the rather phenomenal level of bloodshed, especially in the climax, the film is actually so good-natured and goofy as to be relatively low-stakes. This is an especially strange complaint when one considers how many people die in this: if the numbers are in the double digits, they might as well be in the triple digits. By the conclusion, however, it seems that everyone is alive and well, ready to begin the next adventure as if everyone had been reset, ala Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. While this might have been some sort of commentary on the illusory aspect of film, it might also have stemmed from the desire to not “harsh our mellow,” so to speak. To be honest, I’m not really sure what the intention was: Sono sets up a pitch-black, nihilistic finale only to wrap it all up with a sunny, almost cartoonish bit and I was mildly confused, to say the least. Perhaps I missed something on the first go through but this particular quirk left me more than a little cold.

On a purely nuts-and-bolts level, WDYPIH? looks fantastic but the over-reliance on chintzy CGI effects, especially blood, really drags it all down a peg or two. When the effects work, such as in the blood surfing setpiece, it works fabulously. When the effects are poorly integrated and too obvious, ala much of the gore-drenched finale, it tended to pull me right out of the film. I can certainly understand the need to use CGI for many of the more outrageous effects (flying limbs, sword through the head, etc) but there are far too many points where an obviously CGI puddle of blood sticks out like a sore thumb. As someone who’s always been hot-and-cold on CGI effects, one of my all-time pet peeves is poorly done CGI blood: even ketchup would be more convincing, for Pete’s sake!

Ultimately, Why Don’t You Play in Hell? was a film that I really wanted to love but I could never quite clear the hurdles to get to that point. The film is never boring and when it’s good, it can be mind-rattlingly good: the blurring of real fighting and filmed choreography, in the climax, is pretty damn genius and there are plenty of genuinely funny cracks about independent filmmaking peppered throughout the script. Some of the fight sequences are also fairly jaw-dropping: the scene where Mitsuko spins around and decapitates an entire room full of assailants is exactly as cool as it sounds. Fumi Nikaidô is actually kind of great as the grown-up Mitsuko (the bit with her and the “broken glass kiss” is pretty amazing) and Tak Sakaguchi was a real hoot as Sasaki (he even kind of looked like Bruce Lee, at times, which was a neat trick) but too many of the other characters come and go without making much impact.

There’s definitely a lot to absorb here and I’ll admit to being a real sucker for the film’s discussion about the glory days of 35mm film: they’re preaching to the choir but I still appreciate the sentiment. At the end of the day, however, Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, despite a fairly unique angle and some outrageous ideas, never really seems like it comes into its own: neither as shocking as it probably means to be nor as emotionally resonate, Sono’s film kind of sits in a neutral zone, cooling its heels while much better (and much worse) films wage war around it. The middle-ground is always the safest place to be, but it’s not always the most interesting. While Shion Sono’s Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is a good enough film, I can’t help but wonder if it would have been more fun as a spectacular failure.

8/16/14: …And Good Riddance

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Adrian Grenier, bad films, bad soldiers, Ben McKenzie, Caroline Dhavernas, co-writers, college friends, cyber-terrorism, Denis Hennelly, end of the world, Gaby Hoffmann, Goodbye World, Kerry Bishe, Laura Kachergus, Linc Hand, Mark Webber, McKenna Grace, nostalgia, post-Apocalyptic, power grid, Remy Nozik, Scott Mescudi, terrible films, The Big Chill, The Walking Dead, writer-director

If you think about it, small-scale, low-budget post-apocalyptic films should be one of the easiest types of movies to pull off. After all, the various elements are practically codified, at this point: get a small batch of varied survivors together, preferably in a small, claustrophobic space and give them something to worry about outside the “safety” of their enclosure (nuclear fallout, zombies, biological terrorism, other humans, mutant animals, yadda yadda). Let the various survivors form groups and factions, then have them fight with each other for survival and/or supremacy. Throw in a few “surprise” romances, some “shocking” betrayals and a few morsels about how humanity tends to devolve into animalistic chaos at the first sign of societal upheaval et voila: you have yourself a decent little post-apocalyptic thriller/chiller/downer.

When done competently, these type of films can be dependable, if unspectacular, exercises, similar to competently made found-footage films: nothing amazing but decent enough to watch and, at the very least, marginally entertaining. When done exceptionally well, however, post-apocalyptic “survival” films can be quite special little affairs: recent efforts like It’s a Disaster (2012), This is the End (2013) and Rapture-Palooza (2013) have tackled the apocalypse from a humorous angle, while dead-serious efforts like Time of the Wolf (2003), The Road (2009), The Divide (2012) and The Colony (2013) tend to dwell on the more miserable side of surviving the end times. Let’s not forget zombies (Dawn of the Dead (1978), Night of the Comet (1984)), environmental issues (12 Monkeys (1995), Take Shelter (2011), Hell (2011)) and relationship travails (Melancholia (2011), Seeking a Friend For the End of the World (2012)), all of which make for great apocalyptic fodder. As I’ve pointed out, you can make a good (or great) post-apocalyptic survival flick out of just about anything: the sky, literally, is the limit.

With all of that being said, however, writer-director Denis Hennelly’s Goodbye World (2013) is that other kind of post-apocalyptic survival film: the shitty kind. Without putting too fine a point on it, Hennelly’s film is almost complete and total garbage, a perfect trifecta of bad acting, obnoxious characters, a terrible script, tonal inconsistencies out the wazoo and a laughable resolution that’s so trite that it’s actually kind of insulting. If anything, Goodbye World comes across as a brain-dead, post-apocalyptic The Big Chill (1983), a bizarro-world version of The Walking Dead that replaces the zombies with annoying former college roommates and power-tripping wannabe-military tough guys. This, friends and neighbors, is the living definition of a film that I saw so that you don’t have to…you can thank me later.

In short order, we’re introduced to our rather large and unwieldy cast of clichés: James (Adrian Grenier), Lily (Kerry Bishe) and daughter, Hannah (McKenna Grace) are the “eco-friendly” family that lives off the grid; Benji (Mark Webber) and girlfriend, Ariel (Remy Nozik) are the “revolutionaries” who want to bring down the system; Lev (Scott Mescudi) is the (apparently) mildly autistic computer genius whose botched suicide attempt kicks off the destruction of the world’s power grid; Nick (Ben McKenzie) is James and Lily’s former business partner (and Lily’s former lover) who’s brought his new girlfriend, Becky (Caroline Dhavernas) and Laura (Gabby Hoffmann) is the form college friend who hates Becky with a passion.

These idiots all descend on James and Lily’s farm after an apparent cyber-attack has destroyed the world’s power grid: lights, phones, gas pumps and ATMs no longer work, which would be bad enough, but the loss of modern accouterments has an even more dire effect: it forces these ninnies to reexamine their old relationships, friendships and arguments, all while trapped together on an out-of-the-way farm. Since this is a modern post-apocalyptic survival film, we know that we can’t trust any kind of authority, especially from the armed forces. When a couple of sinister supposed National Guardsmen show up and want to bunker down at the group’s homestead, James and his gang show them the door, post-haste. If you can guess that we haven’t seen the last of the military guys…well, maybe you should have written the script, then, smarty-pants.

Look, here’s the thing: I can couch this in as many (or as few) niceties as possible but the bottom-line is pretty black-and-white: Goodbye World is an awful film. If one could somehow look past the thoroughly unlikable characters (in particular, Lily is one of the shittiest, most obnoxious, horrible characters I’ve managed to get stuck with in some 30 years of watching movies…and she only gets WORSE when combined with her old flame, Nick) and more miss-than-hit acting, you’re still stuck with a real donkey of a script. This is the kind of film that pulls one of those hoary old “talent show” scenes out of a moldy top hat and pretends that it’s some kind of narrative revelation: rarely have I wanted to claw my eyes out more than when Gabby Hoffmann waxes philosophic about playing George Washington in historical re-enactments.

Not only is there nothing original to be found here but the filmmakers manage to mess up even the most basic post-apocalyptic survival film beats: it’s like trying to make an omelet with Cheese Whiz, straw and roofing shingles. It’s pretty much a given that the film displays a distressingly low-level of tension (think a slightly “edgier” Afterschool Special) but it also manages to do away with anything that might offer the slightest bit of pleasure or entertainment factor for the audience. I’ve watched plenty of films where I thought, “Hmm…this is pretty awful, except for ________.” Goodbye World is the rare film where I was at a complete loss to fill in the blank: what actually worked here? As a point of comparison, Kevin Costner’s The Postman (1997) has seemed to occupy the pole position as far as universally derided post-apocalyptic movies go for almost two decades now: in this instance, The Postman comes off like The Godfather (1972) compared to Hennelly’s “opus.”

By the time the film works its way to a “resolution” that manages to not only pair up most of the characters but give them weepy “emotional” scenes to boot, I was way beyond through with this bit of foolishness. My favorite low point? The ridiculously hokey “Daily Bubble” routine between James, Lily and Hannah that’s somehow inflated to become a societal metaphor by the film’s final scene. Here’s the thing, though: if we get to the end of the world and we need to rely on this cast of characters for salvation…well…just take my word for it and stick a fork in the Earth. When given the choice between perishing or starting a new world with these idiots, I’ll take the dirt-nap any day of the week.

1/7/14: Feuding Families, Freaky Economics and Say Ahh!

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'80s action films, Canon, Charles Bronson, dark comedies, documentaries, films, Freakonomics, Helena Bonham Carter, Laura Dern, Messenger of Death, nostalgia, Novocaine, quirky, Scott Caan, Steve Martin

Our campaign of catching up continues as we take a look at Tuesday’s viewings. There were a few old ones in there (albeit one that I couldn’t really recall) as well as a documentary that I’ve been meaning to watch for some time. Now, on to the show!

Growing up, there were few things in my life as absolute as my father’s complete and total respect for rugged individuals who did their own thing. Dad didn’t respect authority figures, politicians, cops, etc but he swore by a few people: Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. I can’t recall how many times the two of us would sit down to re-watch the same Eastwood western again or catch the umpteenth viewing of Bullitt. I don’t think that mom was always happy about that (for some reason, my father never viewed gun violence in films as anything to worry about. He resolutely hated horror films, however.) but these are definitely some of the defining moments in who I currently am.

Back in the day, I’m pretty sure that I saw every film by all of these men at least twice, if not a hundred times. Some films (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly; Bullitt; Breakheart Pass) are such a part of my DNA that I could probably recite all of the dialogue. Other films, however, have sort of slipped into that foggy no-man’s-land of misremembered memories. After all, just these three actors, alone, made a lot of films, not even counting others like Lee van Cleef and John Wayne that were always in the mix. Whenever I encounter any of these older films that I can’t quite recall, I like to give them a spin and reacquaint myself with my youth. The most recent one? Bronson’s Messenger of Death.

For my money, Bronson was always at his best when he played the world-weary cop, out to do the dirty work that no one else wanted to muddy their hands on. He played a pretty wide variety of parts (at least for someone who was, primarily, an action star), however, stepping into the shoes of everyone from journalists to government agents and photographers (his ’50s TV show Man with a Camera is well worth hunting down). I would never call Bronson the most versatile actor out there (from the right angle, he’s more granite than Mount Rushmore) but he always brought a particular brand of toughness and vulnerability to his roles that was pretty much unmatched.

As Bronson flicks go, Messenger of Death is good, but not great. Part of his late ’80s work with Canon, the film is distinguished not so much by its story (which manages to combine armed, feuding Mormon fundamentalist families with Chinatown) but more for its relative restraint. Messenger of Death came just five years after what many consider to be Bronson’s most violent era (Death Wish 2, The Evil That Men Do, 10 to Midnight), yet this is (perhaps) one of his least violent films. For much of the movie, Bronson plays the role of investigator, spending more time looking for clues than shooting or fighting. Since Bronson would retire from films a scant six years after this film was released, I think a good case can be made that this was right about the time when he decided to wind things down.

When compared to the rest of Bronson’s work, this is definitely middle of the road stuff. The actual reveal of the villain has a bit of a Scooby Doo feel to it and the film’s depiction of Mormon fundamentalists is…well, let’s say it’s very 1980’s and leave it at that. For my money, however, any Bronson flick is better than a lot of other film combined, so this was sill a pleasant diversion. I have a feeling, however, that this will be one of those films I revisit in a few years because I can’t recall if I’ve actually seen it or not.

I remember when the actual Freakonomics book came out and became a huge phenomena. I was working in a bookstore at the time (may it rest in hell forever) and I figured this was just another fad-thing like Rich Dad, Poor Dad. As such, I didn’t give it a second thought and went about the rest of my life.

Fast forward almost a decade and I found myself curious anew after the film based on the book became available on Netflix. A film based on an economics book? Surely this would be the sleeping aid I’ve been seeking! As it turns out, I found myself enthralled from the first scene to the last.

The easiest way to describe the film version of Freakonomics is to say that it’s like a really fascinating series of TEDTalks. Not the boring ones that folks actually pretend to be interested in, mind you, but the actual interesting stuff like the correct way to tie your shoes. Several different documentary directors (including Super Size Me’s Morgan Spurlock) each take a shot at one chapter from the book, recreating them in everything from live action to animation. While the results aren’t always even, there’s more than enough interesting material to go around.

Ostensibly, the film (and book, I’m assuming) deal with the hidden side of economics: all of the little things that come together to actually form our entire financial system. The film tackles these things on small, personal level, however, so this isn’t the Intro to Econ class that everyone skipped in college. Exploring everything from the economics of choosing a baby name to the best time to sell your house, Freakonomics makes these issues not only interesting but rather fun. The book’s authors, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, serve as moderators/hosts and the two have an easy-going, fun rapport that makes it much easier to pay attention. If you’re in the mood for a little learning along with your entertainment, give this a shot. I ended up being so interested that I might finally read that book: I like to be fashionably late.

I remember seeing Novocaine in the theaters when it first came out. I’ve always been a big Steve Martin fan, even if he’s had an incredibly uneven, frustrating career as of late. Falling into the “Eddie Murphy trap,” Martin seemed doomed to spin his wheels in family-friendly fare forever, a sad state of affairs for the genius who gave us The Jerk. In 1999, however, Martin bounced back a bit with Bowfinger (ironically, co-starring Eddie Murphy). This was a decidedly darker, more adult film, even if it was still a goofy screwball comedy. Two years later, Martin followed that up with Novocaine, even darker still.

Martin plays nebbishy dentist Frank Sangster. He has a thriving practice, dental hygienist fiancée (Laura Dern, so quirky that she seems nuts) and a strong moral compass. Enter a sultry new patient, played by Helena Bonham Carter, however,  and things go to hell faster than you can say “Ahh.” Throw in her batshit crazy, obnoxious brother (played by Scott Caan, channeling only the most over-the-top beats from his dad’s Sonny Corleone) and the dentist’s equally worthless brother and you’ve got a truly toxic stew. The whole thing leads to sex, drug thefts, multiple murders and a teddy bear with an impressive set of choppers. Will Frank be able to stay one step ahead of trouble? Can he trust anyone, including his brother? Is it true that nice guys always finish last?

All in all, Novocaine is a pretty enjoyable film. The score is great (Oingo Boingo’s Steve Bartek did the score, while Danny Elfman performed the theme. As such, that’s just about as close to an Oingo Boingo reunion as I’ll likely get.), Martin is excellent as the fish-out-of-water and Laura Dern provides some nice moments as his neurotic fiancée. More problematic were Helena Bonham Carter and Scott Caan. The two chewed so much scenery that there was precious little for the rest of the cast to graze on. In particular, Caan’s performance is so vein-poppingly over-the-top that I took an instant dislike to him. Carter doesn’t fare much better but at least she gets to play off of Martin. Poor Scott just gets to shout obscenities and rage like a steroid-pumped bro-dog. I was also less than fond of the frequent X-ray image transitions. A few times, here and there, were fine. After the millionth or so, however, the gimmick had long outworn its welcome. We get it: this is a film about a dentist and dentists use X-rays. Move on.

If you like Steve Martin or are looking for a good, quirky, comedy/crime/romance, you could probably do worse than Novocaine. It’s a decent enough film which builds to a truly gonzo ending before leaving us with the more traditional Hollywood wine and roses. Looking back from the Little Shop of Horrors, I think Martin would approve.