Is It Really That Bad?

Writers and critics tend to make, sometimes shameless, use of hyperbole. That's what calling the summer of 2010 the worst summer at the movies ever is. Strangely, I've read, if not exactly that statement, something close to it more often than not. Even many reviews of Inception seem to need to first provide some context by letting readers know that this movie has come out in an awful summer. But what are people basing this on? We need some context for the context. What are you defining as a "bad summer?" Is there another bad summer which we are using for a comparative starting point, or is there a clear definition of what a good summer at the movies needs to look like?

If anything, this summer is no worse than last summer. Actually it may be a little better, and it's not even over yet. Sure, not many of the titles will go down in history, but how many of them actually ever do? The summer is about kicking back, having fun, letting the critical safety net slip a little and just enjoying yourself. Sure, Hollywood is phoning it in this summer but who cares that few of these movies will stand the test of time? The point is, as Pauline Kael once wrote in one of the most important pieces of American film criticism every put on paper, to not consume great art, but to enjoy ourselves.

And enjoy myself I have been. Sure the box office is down on a lot of films and maybe next year Hollywood will have learned their lesson and give us less films edited in blenders on full speed and more big budget entertainments made by competent artists who know how to walk the line between commercial and quality. But on that note, we work with what we have not what we want, and what we have, when you look at the titles, isn't half bad.

Sure there were some big stinkers. Sex and the City 2 is about as bad a movie as I can think of, The A-Team was just about the worst made action movie of the year and Twilight:Eclipse was bad, but who thought it wouldn't be? And even with the latter titles, there were some out there who sincerely enjoyed A-Team and argued that Eclipse was the best of the three movies thus far, whatever that means. Also Marmaduke and Killers crashed and burned and although Shrek 4 raked in the dough, Shrek hasn't been good since the first film. And oh ya, The Last Airbender. 'Nuff said.

And then, there were a lot of good ones. The Losers opened the summer to embarrassing numbers but was still a highly enjoyable action movie with a nice performance from Jason Patrick. Both Get Him to the Greek and The Karate Kid were sequels/remakes with no expectations that delivered on the goods. Iron Man 2 didn't quite work for me but it did for a lot of others and even though I think Toy Story 3 is more minor than many have given it credit for, Pixar still managed to deliver again.

Although some of the more cynical and jaded skipped Knight and Day because it's star once jumped on a couch, it was a genuinely well made, funny action flick and now Salt (review this week) is supposed to be even better, getting a four star review from Roger Ebert. Even kid flicks Despicable Me and Ramona and Beezus with Selena Gomez are getting surprisingly good reviews. Not to mention the smaller charmers that snuck through the cracks like the wonderful basketball romance Just Wright, Cyrus with Jonah Hill and The Kids Are Alright with Julianne Moore. And, of course, Inception, which was praised by critics, loved by audiences and certainly the kind of large scale entertainment that every summer needs.

And look, we still have a whole month to go. August, which used to be the month where studios dumped their leftovers has some very promising titles. Will Farrell will maybe redeem his last two or three bad movies against Mark Whalberg in The Other Guys, guilty pleasure series Step-Up will be hitting 3D, Middle Men about the start of Internet porn looks like a teen sex comedy meets Goodfellas, Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables will hopefully bring back the 80s action movie hero aesthetic and give action movies exactly what they've been missing all these years, and Scott Pilgrim doesn't quite have me sold because Edgar Wright still hasn't proven himself to be a great director but many are foaming at the mouth waiting for this.

There's also Eat Pray Love, a human drama with Julia Roberts, a new Nanna McPhee movie, a new Drew Barrymore romantic comedy with the always charming Justin Long, Takers, an interesting looking heist movie and could The Last Exorcism be the new Paranormal Activity? I'm looking forward to finding out.

My Favourite Review- My Sister's Keeper (4.5 out of 5)

I'm going back home and won't be back for a while. I'd say I'm taking a vacation but since I'm jobless it doesn't really count. Anyway, like all critics, some of my reviews are better than others and some hold a special place while some simply go through the motions. It all depends on the movie really. You can't write a great review about a rountine movie you are going to forget in a week anyway because the movie needs to be the springboard from which you gather the content of your review. Anyway, thinking back over it, one of my favourite reviews was the one I wrote for My Sister's Keeper. Hopefully it will do until I get back to writing sometime next week.

My Sister’s Keeper observes a family that is going through the throes of the most impossible of situations and faced with the most impossible of decisions and approaches it from all angles, never taking sides, never judging; just patiently watching from the sidelines, observing how even the strongest of humans can crack and crumble under the pain and pressure of life’s natural course. If the film had any opinion on how we should feel about it, this would be a soggy Hallmark pleasantry. Under the tender hands of Nick Cassavetes it is at once enchanting and heartbreaking in equal measures.

The film, based on a popular book by Jodi Picoult (unread by me), tells the story of the Fitzgerald family. When eldest daughter Kate is diagnosed with an acute form of leukemia at a young age, mother Sara (Cameron Diaz) and father Brain (Jason Patric) opt to have Anna, a test-tube baby, genetically modified so that she will be a perfect match to Kate to lend her all of the parts she needs to become better without the risk of taking from an unrelated donor.
However, now grown, with Kate in remission and in desperate need of a kidney, the eleven-year-old Anna decides that she doesn’t want to go through with the operation, wanting to live a full life, devoid of the risks of living with one kidney and tired of the constant pain and potential complications of surgery, decides to sue her parents for medical emancipation. It’s her body and she will decide how it is to be used.

Enraged is Sara, a headstrong woman and determined mother who loves her daughter but is blinded by the desire to do all in her power to ensure the recovery of her other one. She believes that Anna is too young to have control over her body and cannot possibly grasp the enormity and significance of saving Kate’s life, but nor can she understand the enormity and significance of the sacrifice Anna must make in order to protect her sister, potentially cutting her life short in order to extend another’s. But what if the operation is a failure, the body rejecting the new organ, Anna’s lifespan is cut short without reward for her sacrifice?

But what if it would have worked and they don’t try? Can Sara be blamed for her determination to exhaust every option in order to see that Kate lives the life everyone deserves: to grow and mature, to love and be heartbroken, to laugh and cry into the days of old age and to fade away in time instead of being forced into early eviction? It’s not that Sara see’s Anna as spare parts, but she is more than just another daughter. She is the one last desperate hope that stands between life and standing graveside burying her sister.

More understanding is Brain who, as played by Patric in a remarkable performance considering how rarely he is allowed to play vulnerable men, knows that his children must make their own decisions and respects that. Brain is a man who accepts what fate has dealt and wants simply to make the most out of what they have. Of course he wants to save his daughter, but not at the expense of his other one, knowing that to force Anna into something she doesn’t want will result in her growing up with resentment. Whether or not dad agrees with his daughter is irrelevant, he supports her right to that decision. Isn’t that what dads are for?

In the midst of all this is Kate who, in the turmoil, no one ever really stops to ask how she feels about the matter and the film’s best scene goes to her as she reflects on the events of her life and apologizes to everyone in her family in voice-over for the hassle her sickness has caused them. She, unlike her mother, is content with death because she understands it is in the hand that the universe has dealt her and even if more procedures were undertaken, science offers no firm guarantees as she finds out within the romance she develops with Taylor in the film’s most tender subplot, a fellow cancer patient who says he isn’t afraid of death because without it he would have never met her, and again the contradictions require some thought: death is a pretty steep price to pay for love , is it not?

What Cassavetes understands here is that My Sister’s Keeper is not a story about cancer, but rather a collection of episodes: a psychological study in behavior that sees how its characters behave when placed under the immense pressures and stresses of a situation that’s outcome is completely out of their control. The film stands and observes, understanding every character and trying to show the cause of their behavior, never casting scorn or approving of the actions of any lone member of the Fitzgerald family and raising innumerable questions of the frail nature of life in the process.

So is My Sister’s Keeper an allegory about the debate between pro-life and pro-choice? Maybe: if that’s how one decides to read it there is certainly enough room allotted for such interpretations. I however think it must simpler and more profound than that. It’s a film that brings into clear and precise focus that we are all living in rented vessels, getting by on borrowed time. That life is a nonstop collection of contradictions, of opposing paths that, depending on how one chooses can lead to either joy or regret. There are no absolutes in life and no guarantees, only possibilities proceeded by question marks. Everyone has the power to choose how to live their life, but what that life throws in your path is completely out of human control and all we can hope for, as Michael Cunningham once wrote in one of the most beautiful paragraphs ever committed to page, is an hour here and an hour there of goodness as consolation, under the adverse knowledge that they will be followed by others much harder and more painful.*

If the film has one flaw (and it has at least two), it’s the business of the courtroom. Having Anna sue her parents is the device of a plot that is not content enough to get itself from point A to B without something pushing it along. Think of how powerful the final revelation would have been had it not been achieved through such means and how much more affecting the story would have been had it unfolded on its own terms. My Sister’s Keeper tells a story that is powerful, uplifting, heartbreaking and completely absorbing on its own account. How unfortunate it is that its author felt that it needed such a device in order to get its point across.

*In order to appease any potential interest, here is the complete quote from Michael Cunningham’s The Hours: "We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep- it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more."

Why Jason Patric Should Be in Every Movie

By now Jason Patric has become just about one of my favourite actors. He started out in the 80s as a heartthrob of sorts and made his name in stuff like The Lost Boys. But in 1990 he proved just what an excellent actor he is in a film that got little recognition at the time called After Dark, My Sweet. In it he starred beside Bruce Dern (another inductee in this list) as a worn out drifter who gave up a career in boxing and looks like it was maybe a good idea because he seems to have taken maybe one too many shots to the head.

Here Patric creates a perfect film noir hero. a guy who we don't quite know what to make of: is he good, is he bad, does he have alerter motives or is he really just a burned out bum? Here, as with every subsequent great performance, Patric creates characters out of his presence, not his ability as an actor. He plays things internally, letting notes stew just below the surface. He's the kind of cool, collected man who could burst out at any moment as if he seems to be folding in on himself in order to contain his hidden rage.



It's no surprise then that Patric would go on to star in one of the coldest, most uncomfortable scenes in all of American film in Neil Labute's Your Friends and Neighbours. Watch as Patric looks on, telling his story, completely oblivious to the fact that what is conveying is truly horrifying. This is a man without a pulse and Patric creates him, once again, through presence and not showmanship. He's just there, cold, heartless, empty (note- this scene is at the heart of the film so if you don't want to spoil it, and you shouldn't since it's a masterpiece, don't watch this)



Patric played it tough and gritty and the police drama Narc but it was in another underrated gem, My Sister's Keeper that he changed his tune. Once again, he relied on his presence, but this time he was the emotional heart of a film and every scene he was in was a keeper. Rarely have Hollywood films presented dads as so honestly what they are: caring, understanding, rationale and suppurating from the background. Watch what Patric's presence does to the trailer alone:



Patric belongs to the film's best scene (which appears at the 1:53 mark). Look at how he takes the scene, not by making himself the center of it, but by reacting to it; knowing what it needs and giving it nothing more than that though the look of the eyes, the slant of the mouth, etc. These are roles that many actors would take and go over-the-top with, but not Patric who is an actor who understands the concept of restraint. He finds the truth in a scene and leaves it at that.