If you're willing to defer instant gratification for a few weeks, you
can watch Amazon Video On Demand (VOD) movies for $1.99, or even as
little as $.99, rather than the usual mark-up of $3.99. Be aware, screen
resolution isn't the best, only 480p (about what you get with enhanced
DVD), nowhere near the diamond-like quality of 1080p offered by most
flat screen displays. Still, you may not notice, especially if you watch
movies on your PC or iPad.
So I waited with great anticipation for four of the most
highly-touted films of the year. The buzz was convincing. Somehow the PR
teams get out in front of these movies and manage to convince us all
that we are in for a boon of unsurpassed cinematic art.
"Friends With Benefits"
"The Help"
"Midnight In Paris"
"Rise of the Planet of the Apes"
Reality check. The movies are okay, but with the exception of
"Friends With Benefits," essentially pointless. The problem with most of
them is a lack of craftsmanship: the narrative parts don't fit
together, the pacing is amateurish, and direction is thematically
diffuse. The only one of the quartet that shines in these departments is
"Friends With Benefits." The repartee is sizzling. Before you can
absorb one clever zinger, there's another on the way, and another
piggybacking on top of that. I found myself rewinding just to catch
references I'd missed first time around (friends tell me I am
cognitively challenged). Kudos to the scriptwriters and the director for
getting out of the way of the actors.
So in order of merit, first of course is "Friends." Well worth two
bucks, or even four if you're unwilling to wait for Amazon's fire-sale
prices.
Next is "The Help." I certainly liked parts of "The Help," but I
think we should beware of dramatizations of historical events, i.e. the
triumph of facile melodrama over historical truth. You read books like
"The Help" and "The Killer Angels" and think you are reading history,
only to discover the writer has introduced major distortions for
dramatic effect. I lived in the mid-south in the 50s and never witnessed
this vicious mistreatment of the colored help. No doubt such behavior
existed, but I think the movie might have been off by a decade or two. I
also felt the narrative was manipulative in the way it set up straw men
(or straw women) to gin up a kind of cathartic hatred for white
prejudice that doesn't exist any more. To be perfectly honest, I am
weary of the race issue and identity politics in general.
If you're expectations were as high as mine, you will experience
buyer's remorse with, "Midnight In Paris" and "Rise of the Planet of the
Apes." The latter is a messy CGI extravaganza. I could go into some
detail here, but an analysis of the movie's manifest faults would be an
exercise in soul-destroying boredom. I don't know how professional movie
critics do it. Suffice it to say you will turn off your media system or
PC home theater with a sense of emptiness, and the feeling that you
have just be cheated of 90 minutes of your life.
But the real disappointment was "Midnight in Paris." I get annoyed
when critics gush over Woody Allen movies. They are Manhattan smart but
intellectually shallow, and this movie is no exception. Imagine
returning to the 1920s in Paris and meeting up with all the literati and
cognoscenti. Great fun, right? Yes! But is it a movie?
What next? Dinner with Thomas Jefferson?
William Fankboner
Wm. B. Fankboner's Website
Wm Fankboner Articles (Kingscalendar)
Copyright 2011 William Fankboner
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