Quick Review: “The Experiment (2010)”

Eh, so back into the mix with normal quick reviews again. Here to redeem himself this week is the same feller who picked V/H/S, last time, so, not a very high bar to hurdle to say the least (you hurdle bars, right?) So he picked 2010 adaptation of an adaptation of a real life psychological experiment called (aptly) The Experiment. It stars Adrian Brody and Forest Whitaker, and isn’t anything worth running out for.

If you’re unfamiliar, there was a very real psychological experiment (back before there were ethical standards for psychological experiments which now prohibit subjects from being in danger of any mental or physical harm) done back in 1971 known widely as the Stanford Prison Experiment. They took 24 volunteers who passed tests to ensure they weren’t raging lunatics, then randomly assigned 12 of them the roles of being guards, and 12 the roles of inmates and told them to play prison for two weeks. After the first day there were riots, and in the following days degrading and humiliating practices were put in place against the “prisoners” (Abu Graib style) and the study ended after 6 days only after the professor’s wife insisted that it stop (the professor, by the way, had made himself “prison warden” during the ordeal”). So, it’s a lot of fun, and shows that as humans, we’re pretty screwed, and that’s all well and good, but this movie–with Adrian and Forest–is it any good? Nah.

Not really. Most of the performances seem uninvolved and disconnected, and outside of a very small handful of hard-to-watch scenes, the movie plays out pretty predictably and uninterestingly. It seems like kind of a betrayal to the very real ramifications of psychological testing when you take these characters and scenarios and blow them waaay out of proportion. You have Adrian as the ultra-righteous Buddhist, and Forest as the ultra-crazy Christian conservative, and, *sigh*, yeah. Yay black and white good vs. evil. All the other characters are plain and one-dimensional, and we’re not left with any sort of notable resolution. Actually, scratch that. The resolution they give us is incorrect. Generally, the best you can say about the actual Stanford experiment is that when given roles, people play the hell out of them and it compromises basic human integrity. The worst you can say, obviously, is that humans are totally boned as a species and we will let any bit of power go to our heads unchecked and we’re all Nazis given the chance. What the movie’s conclusion is, is that we’re still better than caged animals because we have the choice to do something about it.

Actually, what’s interesting is that they mention that the guy on the left here is ACTUALLY a neo-nazi who went to prison before. At one point toward the end, he rises up against the nazi-like guards in some sort of weird unintentional irony, where the director wants you to root for the nazi against the nazi’s. Right?

Seriously, that’s what Adrian Brody says on the bus ride home from the prison (after people have died in his arms and stuff). Why does he say that? I dunno. The conclusion is largely vague and unsatisfactory, in that it doesn’t delve into the actual relative psychology of the experiment itself, it just sorta, ends, with Brody getting the girl. And I think someone got prosecuted or something. It kinda glosses over that.

Final grade: C (better than V/H/S)

Mini Reviews: “The Grey”, “Les Misérables”, “Life of Pi”

Ah, yeah, sorry I couldn’t really get to a full review of last week’s pick, an average little jaunt from the director of Smokin’ Aces starring Taken called The Grey. And so begins the shotgun reviews:

The Grey: It’s fine, really. I found it hard to get that involved in it, partly because it’s based on a lone pack of evil wolves who stalk plane-crash survivors led by a tragedy-stricken non-hero played by Liam Neeson. To the movie’s credit, it goes through a lot of effort to establish that although he’s acting like Liam Neeson, the actual character is just a failure-prone fella. It’s directing is thankfully reserved and not at all garish (like you’d imagine), but the dialogue is all pretty unbelievable made worse by the one-dimensional character acting. Really though it’s fine, and if you happen to catch it, I don’t think you’ll feel all that inconvenienced. Final grade: C+

Les Misérables: Also pretty good. It’s really very epic, and feels it all the way through. It’s also bold to strip the film of all dialogue and force the actors to sing live while acting. I like those two things, but the latter more than the first. The incidental dialogue and music written for it can get to be a bit much and leaves you just waiting for the next musical number (and hoping that Russel Crowe sings better in it than the last one). Also, I mean, this might be a personal taste thing, but it has no sense of stage. It’s a musical that’s filmed like modern Hollywood theatrical fair, and for me it takes a little bit of the soul out of the overall effect. Not bad though. Final grade: B-

Life of Pi: This one I actually really liked. It’s strikingly beautiful, poetic, and lyrical in all the best ways. It’s narrative is not at all uninteresting, and it has a pretty rad moral lesson to boot. Only downside is that I don’t tend to care for movies that are, well, interviews with the narrator (which is what this is). That being said, it does it about as well as you can. I’m happy it won some awards. Final grade: B+

Really, really beautiful.

Quick Review: “The Last Laugh”

The Last Laugh, the 1924 groundbreaking F.W. Murnau feature was my pick this week, and I’m pretty glad I went with it. I saw a couple Murnau films last year and I wasn’t disappointed. So I figure, The Last Laugh is on enough “must see” lists to warrant a watch.

So, first, why is it groundbreaking? Well apparently it’s the first film ever to use a dolly to move a camera while filming. Like, it was invented for this movie. And boy, let me tell you, it’s weird to realize that most of the silent films you’ve seen (naturally 1924 and earlier in my case) haven’t had this advantage, and it’s something you realize right away when suddenly it’s like you’re watching a movie made a decade after it actually came out.

So, the directing is really great, obviously. It does a lot of ballsy things for the time it was made, like filming through special filters to simulate drunkenness, flashlight tricks, and maybe the ballsiest of them all: omitting all dialogue. That’s right, there’s only 2 title cards for the whole thing: one in the form of a letter the main character receives, and one setting up the final scene (more on that in a bit). The great thing about it, too, is that Murnau totally pulls it off. The narrative and characters’ actions speak for themselves, and the omission of title cards goes largely unnoticed.

The guy on the left is NOT Sigmund Freud, but it helps if you pretend that it is.

The acting, too, is pretty brilliant. The evil characters are really evil, the sympathetic characters are really sympathetic, and as the story progresses, the film and its characters take on a rather dreamlike, exaggerated (almost noir) attitude, making the final act pretty surreal.

Like the other Murnau flicks you’ll have to expect the deliberate pacing, and at even just an hour and a half, it definitely feels pretty long. The pacing does pick up gradually through the film, but the initial set up is pretty substantial.

My major gripe with the film, however, is the ending. Without spoiling it, there is a very noticeable final scene which seems, well, out of place entirely. So I looked it up and apparently it’s so out of place because the film studio forced Murnau to include it. He was rather against it, but, you know, what’re ya gonna do. It’s so out of place, in fact, that it dropped the movie pretty much a whole letter grade for me. Objectively, the movie is probably an A- or A even in spite of this. Sigh.

Final grade: B+

Quick Review: “Bernie”

The same guy who picked Jeff, Who Lives at Home decided he’d attempt to redeem himself by choosing for this week’s feature the latest Richard Linklater volley, Bernie. You may recall Linklater from Dazed & Confused, Waking Life, and Before Sunrise. Or, alternately, you may remember him for Bad News Bears (the remake) and Sister Act School of Rock. Kind of hit and miss, to say the least, but even his misses aren’t terrible, you just wouldn’t, you know, recommend them to people and/or watch them.

So Bernie is his latest effort, starring Jack Black (from said School of Rock) and Matthew McConaughey (from said Dazed & Confused) in a mock-u-drama™ that mixes equal parts dark comedy, psuedo-documentary, and drama. Based closely on the very real story of Bernie Tiede, Jack Black plays the sweet, asexual funeral director’s assistant caught in a murder scandal in a small town in the late 90’s.

Shockingly, neither Black nor McConaughey are really bad in this film. Linklater keeps them more or less in check, as despite it being a comedy, one gets the sense that they’re actually trying to be respectful to the real Tiede and his victim. So yeah, the acting’s fine. And the directing’s pretty solid as well.

I guess my main problem with it was just that the method of presentation left the premise itself vague and ineffectual. Being a sort of comedy (though based on a very real murder), it was hard to find anyone identifiable as a solid protaganist. Towards the end of the film you start to see that okay, they’re not really leaving it up to us, and Linklater definitely has his one view that eventually comes across, but perhaps all but too late. Most of the movie sort of drifts from scene to scene, and I was left wondering if it would ever end up at a destination I’d really care about. Turns out, no, not really. Though that’s not to say the journey’s altogether bad. There are a couple of really good segments, and overall it’s a fine way to spend an hour and a half, and while it might be the best Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey performances I’ve seen maybe ever, the movie itself is just slightly more interesting than run-of-the-mill.

I know what you’re thinking, but really he’s not THAT bad.

Final grade: C+ (better than Jeff, Who Lives at Home)