A Turn for the Worse

TV: Breaking Bad, season 1

"Breaking Bad" is, according to Wikipedia, is a southern colloquialism for taking a turn off the straight and narrow path. Or it might be defined as when someone forced beyond their limits to their breaking point--the point at which they're forced to do things they never thought themselves capable of.

Walter White, played in turns gently and ferociously by Bryan Cranston, is the definition of "breaking bad". He's a mild-mannered chemistry teacher with a loving wife, Skyler, who is unexpectedly pregnant with the couple's second child. Their first son, Walter Jr., has cerebral palsy. Walter and Skyler manage to hold it together as a lower-middle to middle-middle class family. They may not be able to afford a new water heater, but they're not exactly starving either. Things are going ok and they have a lot to be grateful for.

That is, until Walter is diagnosed with terminal, inoperable lung cancer. He will almost certainly be dead within two years, leaving his family with a mountain of debt. This turn for the worse is what pushes Walt to take a turn for the worse in the moral sense.

After Walt's brother-in-law, who works for the Drug Enforcement Administration, describes the massive amount of money meth dealers can make, Walt is inspired. He has the scientific knowledge to cook the world's greatest, purest meth. However, what he has in book smarts he seriously lacks in street smarts--at least at first.

Walt recruits Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul--you might remember him as Amanda Seyfried's husband in Big Love), a rough around the edges drug dealer, to do the street work for him. Turns out that Jesse is smart and, in many ways, a decent guy. He comes from a good family. Like Walt, Jesse wasn't born bad--he's breaking bad.

The first season of Breaking Bad is a short run of seven perfectly tuned, intense, gritty episodes. I was hooked from episode one. The concept of a good man pushed to his limits intrigues me. And unlike many other violent and exploitative shows, Breaking Bad has genuine heart below its grimy surface. When Walt's family tries to stage an intervention to make him undergo chemo (Walt balks at the idea), Walt explains as calmly as he can that in his last few months he doesn't want to be "unable to enjoy a good meal...to make love. To be so nauseous I can't turn my head...you would all remember me that way". As much as we sympathize with Skyler and Walter Jr., who think Walt would be crazy not to try to fight the cancer, we see Walt's point of view as well. He's going to die--why suffer to delay the inevitable for a few months?

Yet, the next day, Walt wakes up in bed alone. He walks downstairs to the kitchen, where Skyler is making breakfast. He hugs her from behind and says "Ok. I'll do it for you." At this point, Walt realizes there is something he loves and cares about more than a good meal and the ability to make love--his wife and son. He has decided not to live his last months for himself, but for them. The love in the White family is palpable, which makes it all the more heartbreaking.

But unlike a Lurlene McDaniel book or Lifetime movie, Breaking Bad removes any sentimentality of terminal illness. In the world of Walter White, illness leads to desperation--and a certain kind of exhilaration. Walt, previously a geeky, quiet, passive man is now on the road to becoming a criminal, a liar, and a killer. This is no 3-hankie made for TV movie where the cancer patient lies in bed and nobly waits for death to come. Breaking Bad is about what it's like to live when there is literally nothing left to lose. And it's a heart-pounding ride.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Night of the Living Hillbillies

Movies: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a one-joke movie, but what a hilarious joke it is! Parodying all those movies where dumb, privileged teenagers (and adults, in the case of Deliverance) get lost in the woods, only to be brutally murdered by inbred yokels, Tucker and Dale takes this trope and turns it on its ear. In this movie, the hillbillies are nice, decent guys and the college students camping in the woods are slaughtered by their own ignorance.


Tucker and Dale is sly and, well, I guess you could call it "meta". The college kids in the movie assume that Tucker and Dale are mentally deficient killers because they've seen enough horror movies about college kids in the woods to know that that's just how it works. If there are rednecks in the woods, popular culture has taught us that they must be mentally deficient killers.

But in this case, Tucker and Dale are just slightly more rural gentleman. When they see comely Allison fall off a rock and conk her head during a bout of skinny-dipping, they row their boat out to save her. Allison's friends see them hauling her into the boat and assume they must be kidnapping her--so they do what any sensible people would do: run away, refuse to call the police (because calling the police never works in the movies, so why bother?), and plot to save her themselves. A series of misunderstandings follow, which lead to the funny and grotesque deaths of the college students.

This movie proves that to assume makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"--and sometimes that ass winds up in a wood chipper.

Going back to my first point, as funny as Tucker and Dale is, it's ultimately one-note. By the time we get to the final act, in which the true villain--Chad, the preppy psycho and alpha male leader of the group--ties poor Allison to one of those moving buzz saw things, we've already gotten the joke, and the movie has little to offer except the inevitable conclusion in which evil is vanquished and the hero (in this case, the bearish sweetheart Dale) gets the girl.

More entertaining than Attack the Block but less substantial than Shaun of the Dead, Tucker and Dale vs, Evil is the latest in the growing genre of horror movie spoofs and proves to be a fun (and not *too* bloody) night at the movies.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Iran (So Far Away)

Movies: Circumstance

Considering I just saw it a week ago, I guess it's too soon to say that Circumstance changed my life. But as I was watching this amazing and heartbreaking film, I felt such a sense of luck and gratitude...and that feeling has stayed with me.

Circumstance takes place in modern day Iran; a country that has knowledge and access to "western" culture, but whose own culture is extremely religious, conservative, and punitive. Two teen girls, Atafeh and Shireen, navigate and negotiate the culture they were born into through small acts of typical teen rebellion. They pass each other notes at school, sass back to their parents, and doff their hijabs in favor of sparkly tank tops and tight dresses when they secretly attend parties. The only difference between Atafeh and Shireen's lives and the life of a teenager in the United States is that if Atafeh and Shireen get caught, the consequences would be severe--we're talking prison, "virginity checks", and worse.

In addition to partying and rock music, Atafeh and Shireen experiment with sexuality--both with boys and with each other. It becomes clear that they love each other as more than friends, though they don't have the words to express this love. Are Shireen and Atafeh lesbians, or are they simply indulging in a schoolgirl crush? It hardly matters. What matters is that throughout the film, the two young women lean on each other for the support that their families, teachers, and boyfriends cannot provide. They are the definition of soul mates, and, sadly, their culture and families conspire to keep them apart.

Spoiler!

After the two girls get in trouble with the law, Shireen is married to Atafeh's zealous and controlling brother, Mehran. Although Shireen tells Atafeh that she married Mehran so that the two girls could always be together, under one roof, it's obvious that the marriage is the wedge that will drive the girls apart.

End spoiler.

Although the film ends on a hopeful note (at least for one of the girls), Circumstance is...not so much depressing as it is eye-opening. The amount of institutionalized sexism and hatred toward women that Atafeh and Shireen face is staggering. Even Atafeh's father, who is relatively liberal and not religious, treats his daughter not as if she were a young woman about to enter adulthood on her own terms, but as if she were an ungrateful child in need of constant supervision and protection. Circumstance's message is all the more effective in because it reveals the insidiousness of benevolent sexism (i.e. women are in need of special protection)--as well as overt misogyny. It's agony to see Atafeh and Shireen driven apart because they need each other so badly--for strength, for encouragement, for love, and for all the emotional and psychological support they damn well aren't getting from anyone else in their lives.

Circumstance is one of the most deeply emotional (without being cloying) films I've seen in a while. Anyone who believes that feminism's work has been accomplished should see this movie, as well as those who know that we still have a long way to go on the road toward equality and respect.

5 out of 5 stars

Black and White Thinking

Movies: The Help and Drive

The two movies couldn't be more different, yet Drive and The Help both say powerful things about race and gender in the movies. And they don't say very nice things.

Drive, an intense and violent thriller about a stunt car driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, has been receiving rave reviews among film critics. Ryan Gosling's performance as a taciturn lone wolf who descends to Travis Bickle levels of obsession and violence in order to protect a woman he loves (and barely knows) is without a doubt astonishing and terrifying. It's hard to believe this is the same kid who wooed Rachel McAdams in The Notebook.

The Help, for those who have been living under a rock for the past year or so, is a sentimental film based on the bestselling novel by Kathryn Stockett about black maids and their white employers in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi. Although the acting is excellent, the film is predictable and, to use a phrase that I overuse, "on the nose". It tells you exactly what you need to feel about each one of its characters (especially the white characters, who fall into two stark categories: noble, liberated hero and dastardly villain).



The Help has been enormously popular among mainstream audiences and has received fair to good critical reviews. However, various media outlets, both progressive and conservative, have taken their turn crapping all over The Help. Why? For more conservative thinkers and anti-PC police, The Help represents Hollywood Liberalism and reverse racism at its worst. To this group of haters, The Help paints all blacks as saints and all whites (save the main "women's libber" character, Skeeter Phelan) as terrible, horrible, no good, very bad racists. Ironically, the more progressive and PC factions are not much kinder, seeing The Help as condescending toward black people and implying that black people--both historically and today--need help from white people to overcome societal injustice and should be damn grateful for that help.

What struck me as interesting after seeing the two films was that although I enjoyed Drive more than The Help and my instinct is to say that Drive is the superior film, I can't help but notice that while The Help has a cast full of women, both black and white, and makes a good faith attempt to examine the lives of black, white, poor, and rich women during a turbulent time in history, Drive treats women like they barely exist at all. You've heard of the Madonna/whore complex? The erroneous and subconscious belief that women are either saintly mothers or filthy sluts? Drive is a laughably textbook example of this kind of thinking.

In Drive, there are two women with speaking roles: Irene (Carey Mulligan), a young mother whose husband is in jail and who catches the eye of Ryan Gosling's character. Gosling (his character is nameless) sees Irene as someone who needs protection. He ends up getting involved way too deeply in a number of crimes that lead him to basically kill his way out of trouble. The other female character is in two scenes and comes to a very untimely and unhappy ending. Oh, and there's a scene where Gosling beats the shit out of a bad guy in the dressing room of a strip club, while wide-eyed, bare-breasted strippers silently look on. Fortunately, this scene is very intense--otherwise, I would have not been able to contain my laughter at the ridiculous misogyny of the whole situation. I mean, featuring strippers in your movie is one thing--strippers can be smart and cool and sexy (see: Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler), but a room of voluptuous, nude women just freakin' sitting there as the men folk fight, curse, and all but whip out their penises for a measuring contest just makes me laugh at the sad obtuseness of it all. Maybe director Nicolas Winding Refn was actually trying to say something about the violent world of men and how women have no place in it (actually I'm sure he was on some level), but other directors have managed to pull this off far more successfully. Martin Scorsese's The Departed was all about the violent world of violent men and had very few female roles. However, Vera Farmiga's character Madolyn, was an educated woman with a successful career who could take care of herself. Note to Refn: if you're going to have only one or two female roles in your movie, at least make them dignified. kthx!


And let's not forget race/ethnicity! Yes, The Help may treat black characters with some benevolent condescension, and that's not OK, but at least there are some meaty roles for black characters in the film. And at least these characters are fully drawn. In Drive there are no black characters. The closest Drive gets to having any "ethnic" flavor are the two greedy villains who will kill for money and power--and who are Jewish. Nice. Oh, and Irene's ne'er-do-well jailbird husband who is Latino.

So while I enjoyed Drive, a film that kept me on the edge of my seat, and merely thought The Help was a pleasant movie, there's no denying that on a practical level The Help is a better movie for women and minorities. The cast is filled with women--white, black, old, young, conventionally beautiful and not so conventionally beautiful. These women have conversations with each other, and men are rarely the focus of those conversations (the film passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors). Sure, some of the characters are two-dimensional (like Hilly Holbrook, the sociopathic mean girl), but overall the characters are far deeper than the characters that populate Drive.

Neither movie is perfect, but what I found fascinating was the media (including my beloved liberal media outlets, like http://bitchmagazine.org/ and http://www.salon.com/ ) was so willing to jump on a movie filled with women and minorities for not being feminist and racially sensitive enough, while ignoring or even offering slavering praise to Drive, a film that offers women and minorities less than nothing.

My enjoyment:
Drive: 4 out of 5 stars
The Help: 3 out of 5 stars

Treatment of women and minorities:
Drive: 1 out of 5 stars
The Help: 4 out of 5 stars

Aliens, Innit?

Movies: Attack the Block

Just as Shaun of the Dead was a fresh, funny, and very British take on the zombie genre, Attack the Block is a fresh, funny, and very British take on the alien invasion genre. Set in a working class neighborhood in South London, Attack the Block sets itself up as different from other alien movies right away. The heroes of this film are not the white, middle-aged American men we're accustomed to seeing in movies like Signs, War of the Worlds, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. The heroes of Attack the Block are young, black (with a token white kid), poor hoodlums who terrorize and mug a nurse on her way home from work in the first scene.

I liked how director Joe Cornish took the conventions of the alien invasion genre and turned them on their head. Not only does he play with moral ambiguity--i.e. the "bad guys" turn out to be good and the criminals become the protectors; he also makes a point that the most vulnerable and, presumably, weakest members of society--minorities, inner-city youth, kids from bad families--are stronger, smarter, and braver than we might think.

In addition to the unique spin, Attack the Block has plenty of laughs ("What's Ron's weed room?" "It's a room, filled with weed, that belongs to Ron...") and a few scenes of horror that seem all the more horrific given that they take place in a comedy. To use Shaun of the Dead once again as a comparison, the scene where a character gets his intestines ripped out by zombies is especially shocking because it comes right after a scene where they beat up a zombie to the jukebox strains of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now". In these two movies, the humor serves to both alleviate and exacerbate the violence and dread.

The main problem I had with Attack the Block was simply that I had trouble understanding the dialogue. The thick, English accents and slang made it damn near impossible to understand what the hell people were saying half (or more like 60 percent) of the time. And sadly, this diminished my appreciation and enjoyment of the movie.

Also, although Attack the Block is funny and scary, it was never THAT funny and scary to me. I giggled, I chuckled, I covered my eyes. But in the end, the movie was more forgettable than I expected it to be. I don't think it has the rewatchability factor that Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, or other similar comedies have.

So in conclusion, I like what Joe Cornish did with this movie, and I would recommend it to fans of alien movies and genre-defying flicks, but personally I wasn't crazy in love with it.

3 out of 5 stars

Black and Green and Red All Over

Movies: Black Dynamite, Greenberg, and Deep Red

Black Dynamite

Black Dynamite is a spot-on spoof of blaxploitation films of the 1970's and one of the more hilarious movies I've seen recently. Michael Jai White plays Black Dynamite, a former CIA agent, Vietnam vet, and all-around BAMF, who is on a mission to avenge his brother's death at the hands of drug dealers. Along the way, he uncovers a top secret operation called "Code Kansas" that goes all the way to the White House, leading to a final confrontation between Black Dynamite and Tricky Dick himself.


Black Dynamite was born out of White's affection for over-the-top blaxploitation movies and even though the film mocks this particular genre, it does so with love in its heart. Black Dynamite was shot in Super 16 Color Reversal Kodak film (thank you Wikipedia!) to give it that color-saturated look of cheaply shot 1970's exploitation movies. The script is cheesy and slangy ("We're gonna fricassee their honky asses!"). And the plot twists are downright absurd in the best possible way (the scene where Black Dynamite and a gang of pimps deduce what "Code Kansas" stands for is just...words cannot describe how funny it is).

I was in hysterics for most of Black Dynamite and as soon as it was over, I wanted to watch it again immediately. You can't say that for a lot of movies. Michael Jai White and director Scott Sanders really put their brains and hearts into this film--and it shows.

5 out of 5 stars

Greenberg

From indie screenwriter and director Noah Baumbach comes Greenberg, a comedy about a misanthropic manchild, Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller), who comes to live at his rich brother's house after having a nervous breakdown. What could have verged very quickly into cutesy, "aren't emotions just cah-raaazy!?" territory is saved by Stiller's performance and a pared down script free of too much affected quirkyness. However, Greenberg left me with a feeling of "it's all been done before". As in Baumbach's other films (Margot at the Wedding and The Squid and the Whale), the audience is expected to sympathize with irritating, immature, and downright selfish characters. Over the course of the film, Greenberg begins an affair with his brother's assistant/nanny, the much-younger Florence (played by Greta Gerwig, who does a fine job). He emotionally manipulates her and their relationship resembles something freshmen in college would go through: drama, pointless fights, and really horrible sex. It's hard to see why either one would want to be with the other and why we the audience should care. While Florence is the more sympathetic, "nice" character, I almost liked her less because she willingly put up with Greenberg's hot-and-cold (mostly cold) behavior.

Greenberg has some really funny moments, such as when the 40-something Greenberg attends a party with a bunch of 20-somethings and asks if it's ok to do coke when you're on Zoloft. But in the end, it's a forgettable movie about two random people who carelessly bump into each other while stumbling through life.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Deep Red

Italian director and master of horror Dario Argento considered Deep Red to be his best film. I've only seen one other Argento film, Suspiria, and I did indeed enjoy Deep Red more. Deep Red combines the gore and creepy-ass atmosphere of Suspiria with the taut murder mystery of Blow-Up. In fact, David Hemmings, the star of Blow-Up, also plays the lead in Deep Red.


Marcus Daly (Hemmings) witnesses a murder one night and when he goes to investigate, he notices something that he can't put his finger on is amiss in the murder scene. He becomes obsessed with figuring out what he saw that night and with solving the murder. Over the course of his investigation, more grisly killings occur and it seems like the killer is one always one step ahead...

I like Argento because his films contain enough gore to get a reaction out of the audience while still relying on atmosphere and plot to heighten the tension. If you're a fan of horror films, especially horror of the late 60's and 70's, Argento's Deep Red is definitely worth checking out.

4 out of 5 stars

Wisdom of a Fool

Movies: Our Idiot Brother

Our Idiot Brother, starring lovable Paul Rudd as the titular lovable idiot, is such a breath of fresh air after a summer of mean comedies. By no means perfect, the film and its laid-back attitude seem miles away from misanthropic, trying-too-hard yuks in movies like Horrible Bosses and The Change-Up (full disclouse: I did not see The Change-Up, but I feel no qualms about judging it anyway).


Paul Rudd plays Ned, who is labeled by the film as an idiot because he is overly trusting and not cynical enough towards humankind, as evidenced in the first scene where he sells pot to a uniformed cop. 8 months later, Ned is let out of prison early for good behavior, only to find that his hippie girlfriend is shacking up with a new man on the communal farm that used to be Ned's home. She kicks Ned out of the commune and, to add insult to injury, claims possession of Ned's beloved Golden Retriever, Willie Nelson.

Now that Ned is homeless and penniless, he takes turns living with members of his family--first his passive-aggressive, might-be-an-alcoholic mom; then his depressed sister Liz (Emily Mortimer) who is married to a grade-A asshole (Steve Coogan) and their young son; next his bitchy, bossy, career-driven sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks); and finally his bohemian, lesbian, might-actually-be-bisexual sister Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) and her frickin' awesome girlfriend Cindy (Rashida Jones). Got all that?

Wherever Ned goes, it seems that chaos follows. However, it becomes clear that Ned does not create this chaos, but merely inconveniently brings it to light--such as when he catches Liz's husband in a (very) compromising position with another woman, and explains what he saw to another sister who then brings it up to Liz. Liz is so angry at the situation, that she immediately blames Ned. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the real idiots are Ned's sisters who lie, deceive themselves, and fail to take other people into consideration--and thus end up hurting themselves and others. Ned's only failure is that he is too good for this world.

I read a review of this movie that labeled Paul Rudd as cinema's first Manic Pixie Dream Boy, in that he is a magically quirky character whose job it is to encourage other people to be better, or to bring meaning to others' lives. I think there might be something to this. Although Ned certainly has interesting qualities, he serves less as a well-rounded character with a distinct arc than as an agent of change for the other characters. It would have been nice to see some of Ned's truly bad qualities. Although his foolishness and gullibility are apparent, Ned is fundamentally a good person. We never see any darkness or resentment--even when Ned blows up in anger at his family. Our Idiot Brother was a very fun, entertaining film, but I think it would have been better if Ned was allowed to be a bit more human and bit less of a magical hippie earth sprite.

Overall, Our Idiot Brother lives up to its intended purpose. It's a funny, light-hearted, end of summer comedy that has a better attitude (and funnier script) than many other similar comedies. Like Ned, it may not be the deepest movie, but it has a good heart.

4 out of 5 stars.