Buying into the Hype: Why It Doesn't Matter if Inception is Any Good

The point of advertising is to try convince the consumer that they want something that they don't necessarily need. Movie advertising is kind of the same way: it's to convince people that a movie is maybe better than it actually is. And truth be told, on some occasions, the movies linked to the ads are about as good as we hope they are.

But look at District 9. Last summer I was travelling through Pennsylvania where we stopped at a McDonald's for lunch (really wish they had those southern style chicken sandwiches in Canada) and, on the side of my drink cup, was an alien with an X through it and a logo that said No Alien Zone or something like that. I had no idea what District 9 was about at the time (only knew of it by name) but in that moment I translated that clever bit of advertising into expectation of a great movie. After all, a movie advertised this cleverly must be just as clever no? Well District 9 was clever, but not enough to be more than simple summer entertainment. However, by that point it didn't matter if the movie was good or not, the hype machine has spun its wheels and the ads had done their job and people, despite the film's many misgivings, was deemed to be great.

I hate basing my expectations for movies off of ads and trailers and whatever as I've made perfectly clear before. Although I expect Inception to be a great film, I will still go into it this Tuesday with a blank critical slate. I want it to be great, but I'm prepared for it not to be as well. A lot of bloggers are saying it is in fact great. Some of these people I respect and some I don't. One critic who I do respect, David Edelstein, said it wasn't. He didn't like The Dark Knight either. That's fair. Even though I thought the Dark Knight was the best film of the year two years ago, in a sense, I had more respect for Edelstein for turning in a negative review, losing the film its 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, because it showed that he had at least stopped and thought through the movie. He's not a contrarian critic like say Armond White. If David Edelstein says a movie is bad he must have (his own) good reason.

I haven't read the Inception review in question yet because I don't read any in full before I have my own on paper, but here's the point: Edelstein was hung out to dry by both peers and viewers alike for his review of the Dark Knight. He's caught flack again for his Inception review (despite it now only sitting at 83% on RT), but why? Just because everyone says Inception is a great movie, Edelstein is a lousy critic for looking inside himself and not finding reasons to like it? The problem is, as I maybe alluded to before, Inception (along with Tarantino and Scorsese films and many others) are advertised as great films, and people buy into that. I'm not trying to pass judgement on Inception for I have yet to see it or anyone who wrote a good positive review of it, but once people build anticipation, once the hype starts rolling, people stop thinking about the reasons why movies are great and instead just accept that, well, it looks great, everyone says Christopher Nolan is a great director, it must be great.

Too often we as movie fans let this laziness sink over us because it's easier than dealing with a movie and all it's parts. We fail to form true opinions and argue them fully and, to another extent, we fail to understand film itself. What if, and you never know, Edelstein is the only right opinion across the board? I'm sure the people who rushed to the battle lines never took that into consideration first?

I'll explain with an example. I took a first year film class which had both Memento and Antionioni's Blow-Up on the syllabus. People left the Blow-Up screening in anger. No one knew what to do with it and thus passed it off as garbage. I didn't like it either, but I wasn't satisfied with my dislike of it; that was too easy, and once I began to deal with it, deconstruct it and build it back up in my mind, it revealed itself as a great film and I understood why it was such. Everyone, of course, loved Memento but, you know what, it's not a great film. It's a good one where a young director is experimenting and finding his voice, but it's not a lot more. Once you break it down you're left with nothing really but a hip, stylish, post-modern film noir that people like because it is "different."

Nolan has, of course, with Batman Begins, proved that he was a great director, solidified it with The Prestige and made sure the title was sticking for good with The Dark Knight. I expect he will continue on in that tradition with Inception but, you never know. The first step is being courageous enough to admit that.

I guess what I'm saying is, what happened to the days before trailers, when people went to films because they wanted to know if they were good or not and they broke film down in order to talk intelligently about it? Did that die with Pulp Fiction when people started liking it just to let everyone know how hip they are? I'd love to read a good review that called Goodfellas one of the worst movies ever made and justified such a bold stance because it would mean, if nothing else, that at least someone took the time to think about a film intelligently and share what they found. That's more admirable, I think, than another person saying that Goodfellas or anything else is good because, ya know, Scorsese is God, it's different, it's hip, it's got good dialogue, etc. You can get those conversations anywhere on the street, shouldn't we, as critical voices, be using our medium for something of more substance, or is that too much of an inconvenience?

What do you think?

Greatest Movies That Made Going to the Movies Suck #4 Pulp Fiction

Sebastian Appears Courtsey of Detailed Criticisms

So, Pulp Fiction. It is a title that is synonymous with wit, absurdity, violence, vulgarity, and all around brilliance. A film this original, smart, and consistently entertaining only comes around every so often, and when it does, it ignites a firestorm of praise and mayhem! Quentin Tarantino's meisterverk did just that. Before Pulp Fiction, no one had really seen anything of the sort. Characters had never talked that way; events like that had never occurred. Plots were a strictly linear affair, and changing it up and going back and forth in the timeline of the film was unheard of. The vulgarity was never so vulgar, the violence was never so violent, and the comedy was never so comic, as it was in Pulp Fiction. It proved to be uber popular, winning the Palme d'Or at that year's Cannes festival, raking in tons of cash, and winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. It took the world by storm, which, depending on how you look at it, was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, Tarantino had ushered in a new era of movie making, one that celebrated the conventions and reveled in prolonged, elaborate stories. On the other hand, it quickly became apparent, as various writers and directors attempted to emulate this style, that filmmakers like Tarantino were a rare breed. To this day, he is still the master of his craft. No one has come close to touching him.

From the very first shot of Pulp Fiction, where Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer talk about the various methods of robbery over coffee, you know you are for something special. Immediately, you are whisked on a bizarre and fascinating journey involving a pair of bible spewing hitmen, their boss, his trophy wife, the down and out boxer he paid off, his girlfriend, a drug dealer, and a suitcase with an ominous golden light coming from it. What made Pulp Fiction standout in my mind, even more then Tarantino's less known debut, Reservoir Dogs, is how it takes its sweet time to get to the point.

The first big segment sees Samuel L. Jackson's Jules Winfield and John Travolta's Vincent Vega heading off to a job at the behest of their boss, Marcellus Wallace. On their way, they talk about, in no particular order, the city of Amsterdam's policies on the distribution, possession, and use of marijuana, the differences at McDonalds between America and Europe, television, Samoan people, and what it means emotionally to give a woman a foot massage. There are multiple scenes like this, of characters talking about bullshit on their way to big events. It's great! On top of that, the big events are some of the weirdest and most absurd ever seen on film, ranging from an encounter with a pair of rapists and their gimp, to a brush with God, to a frantic and surreal rush to dispose of a dead body. Again, it's great. Also the soundtrack is awesome, and the performances are top notch!

So, what's the problem? Well, Pulp Fiction was a big deal when it came out. Everyone wanted to see it, and the studios noticed this, and they, in all their wisdom, decided to try and mimic whatever it is that Tarantino accomplished. The result was a slew of lackluster, soulless knockoffs that quickly fell into obscurity. The problem was that all the writers and directors thought that all they needed to do was watch Pulp Fiction over and over again, take the words off the screen, mix them around on the page, and they'd be done. What they failed to do was capture the magic that Tarantino was creating. As Roger Ebert so eloquently put it, "they knew the words, but not the music." Films like Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, Smokin' Aces and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels are all examples of mimicking Tarantino's style without first determining what is special about it. They all had quick, witty dialogue, shocking scenes of ultra violence, and curse words up the wazoo. But, they were missing that certain something, and that something is humanity. In pretty much every Tarantino movie, his characters go through redemption, cope with loss, ruin their lives, make terrible decisions, fueled by greed, sadness, or anger, and pay the penalty. This is all layered on to the witty dialogue, ultra violence, and curse words up the wazoo, giving a realism not found in any other filmmakers work. This human aspect is lost in all other films that sought to mimic him. It's all style, but no substance.

Every movie about criminals these days owes something to Pulp Fiction. Whether it's the inclusion of two snarky hitmen (In Bruges), multiple, interconnecting story lines (Crash, Snatch), or just an overuse of vulgarity and pop culture references (uhhh... all of them), at some point, the makers were influenced by Pulp Fiction. It's completely understandable. A small, independent movie turns into a pop culture phenomenon, and suddenly, everyone is attempting to cash in on the craze, whether they know it or not. Tarantino awoke a vicious monster the day he premiered his tale of violence and redemption, and, so far, he is the only one who knows how to tame it.

Can You Spot A Great Film?: A Justification of Shutter Island

There are two director's working today who, above all others, have managed to rise above just being great filmmakers and into the realms of pop culture phenomenons. One is Quintin Tarantino and the other is Martin Scrosese. The problem with great filmmakers reaching this status though is that hordes of viewers flock to their movies for no better reason than because everything attached to their name must be brilliant by default. This isn't based on any critical logic, any in-depth thought or any knowledge about the trajectory of the filmmaker's career; it's just generally accepted pop culture wisdom that has been passed down through the generations. I know hundreds of people who think Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas are masterpieces, and they are, but I can count on one hand roughly how many people have been able to provide a decent explanation as to why this is the case.

Therefore kids, and adults too, will go to these movies and declare them masterpieces because well, isn't that what Tarantino and Scorsese do: make masterpieces, as if they have exceeded mere morality and are instead a brand name known for quality every time. And, in fact, they are known for quality. I've only seen one Scrosese movie I didn't like (The Colour of Money) and two Tarantino movies I didn't like (Reservoir Dogs and Death Proof), but I could sit down and conduct a conversation or debate, justifying my loves and disappointments for every film each director has helmed. After seeing Inglourious Basterds in August I went to the McDonald's across the street from the theater to get a McFlurry when some kid I knew vaguely from high school, who had apparently also seen the movie, explained to his friends with vigour all the ins and outs of Tarantino's oeuvre without ever once saying anything useful about the aesthetic texture of his films, the brilliance of their construction, the subtlety of using dialogue to create the kind of drama that no physical representation could, and so on. Every time I hear conversations going on like this I think feel like interrupting and saying, "Hey kid, Tarantino is more than just hip dialogue and references to other films." And then I think of French critic Pierre Rissient who said that 'It is not enough to like a film. Oe must like it for the right reasons."

I'm not trying to be some sort of film snob here, but what Rissient says is true: it's not enough to like films because the vast majority of their viewers have deemed them good. You have to have a justifiable reason, otherwise, your opinion is a moot point that is being set up to be knocked down. That's why bad films like The Usual Suspects, The Boondock Saints and Fight Club have gotten so popular: a lot of people started to say they were good simply because they were different until the point where it would be considered taboo to cast a bad word against them (see my reconsideration of Donnie Darko to see what I am talking about).

But now I have gotten off topic because those kids are talking about movies they liked. I'm talking about good movies: movies where you can see a masterful director making the best out of what they have been given. I'm talking about appreciating good lighting and editing and camera angles; all that stuff that lead to a films overall style. Too often people confuse movies they like with movies that are good. Anyone can express if they likeed something to some sort of extent, but few people have the knowledge to judge whether a film is actually good or not.

That finally brings me to Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island which is the kind of film that really tests Scorsese's (or any great filmmaker's) audience and separates the film "viewers" from the film "watchers." I say this because as I was watching Shutter Island, someone in the back of the theater was laughing as each new revelation of the story was revealed, clearly so disgusted with the path the story had taken that he just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Then, after the screening, I heard some teenage girl declare it the "gayest" movie she had ever seen. Really, I thought, these are the people who go to see Scrosese's movies?

But you see, Shutter Island is a good movie. It's actually a masterpiece if you don't take the story into consideration. It's a masterpiece in film style, perfectly evoking a long forgotten time and genre of filmmaking. Scorsese flawlessly evokes the look and feel of the 50s film noir and uses that as a grounds to create the suspense of horror of the story. How does it do it? Well how about the brilliant overhead lighting, casting long shadows up walls and across floors, the shot that begins as a close up of Leonardo DiCaprio's face until pulling up to reveal the vastness of a cliff side lurking just behind him, one wrong move leading to death. Then there's my favourite shot in the movie. It takes place in Ward C and is an overhead shot on a low angle that shows a maze of steel stairs and corridors hitning that the story starting to come apart by perfectly representing the main character's state of mind: cold, dark, confused, and going in an endless tangle of directions all at once. The examples could go on for days.

That's great filmmaking. If the story isn't up to Scrosese's standards, well at least he still brought his A-game to the table. That's the problem with Scrosese as a pop culture icon: everyone can see the brilliance of the tracking shot in Goodfellas because tracking shots are big and obvious and draw attention to themselves, but when Scrosese goes subtle, pays homage to a past film genre, creates for his film the style it deserves and not the one that announces itself as film style, the movie is passed off or thrown away, as if it never occurred to these people to ask why Scrosese is considered, after all, one of America's best living filmmakers in the first place, because, believe it or not, there is a justifiable reason. It's the job (and the fun) of movie lovers to figure it out.