American Splendor

Starring Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, and Harvey Pekar
Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
Year: 2003
IMDB / Wikipedia

Documentaries and biopics can get really old really fast. Most of the people who are worth making such films about are typically a rags-to-riches story with some personal drama and the struggle to cope with success and failure. The story of Harvey Pekar and his efforts to chronicle the life of an average loser (himself) is no different. But something had to be different just like Harvey’s comics were different. Instead of making up stories and adding drama, showing the real life experiences and allowing the reader/viewer to connect on a personal level instead of a visceral level makes it all the more powerful. That is what puts this documentary/biopic above many others, in my opinion.

Yes, Paul Giamatti plays Harvey during the dramatic scenes but Harvey narrates the film at times with voice-overs and with the occasional interview sequence where aspects of his life and the character of himself are elaborated upon in greater detail. We see the people Harvey surrounds himself in dramatic form (Hope Davis as Harvey’s wife, Joyce and Judah Friedlander as Harvey’s friend Toby) but we also get to meet these vividly plain and normal people as they actually are. The filmmakers take painstaking care to remind everyone that Giamatti is simply a stand-in for Harvey and that what is happening on screen actually happened in real life.

The best example of this is, in my opinion, one of the best strokes of genius in this type of filmmaking. When Harvey and Joyce go to New York so Harvey can appear on Late Night with David Letterman they show Giamatti as Harvey in the green room preparing to go on stage but, on the television that Joyce is watching in the green room we are treated to the actual footage of Harvey and Dave which adds an unbelievable layer of credibility to the film. The actor portraying the person walked out and the actual person walked back in. Granted, not all documentary or biopic filmmakers are lucky enough to have their source on-hand and willing to take such a proactive role in a film of their life, and that is what truly makes this films something. It is one thing to imitate Harvey, it is another to be Harvey.

To compare this film to other biopics and documentaries would be a disservice, not only to this film, but to the other films who have little to no shot at duplicating the feel and the authenticity achieved here.

Most Valuable Actor: Paul Giamatti is the only actor alive who could have played Harvey Pekar. Not only does Paul look like Harvey but is able to grasp his mannerisms and truly make it more of a reenactment more than a portrayal. At no time is there a sense of imitation or caricature in what Paul does; more of an effort to become Harvey by one of this generations best actors.

Trailer:

American Psycho

Starring Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto
Directed by Mary Harron
Year: 2000
IMDB / Wikipedia

Every morning I wake up and watch the news and, somewhere in that broadcast I inevitably ask, “What the hell is wrong with Americans?” I don’t mean the world, I don’t mean the country-for-which-it-stands, I’m talking about the people. When did we become a country of self-absorbed, narcissistic, patronizing, centralized egomaniacs? Then it dawns on me just as it does the same time every morning: we have always been this way.

Bret Easton Ellis‘ book, on which this movie is based, really focuses on the go-go-80s and their obsession with the self and how we truly were an Ayn Rand-ian society of self-absorbed assholes. But, when I watched this film again I found myself realizing that this movie could take place at any time. There are cultural references that are directly mentioned to tie the story to a specific time in history, but this could easily be re-imagined as something that happened in the 90s or even today, thus proving it is truly a timeless story. It is because of that, however, I find myself asking myself again: what is wrong with Americans?

Patrick Bateman is a character who is so perfect that perfection is a flaw. He has isolated and sterilized his persona so well to fit in with the rest of the Wall Street yuppie elite that not only is he constantly confused for others in his own firm (which his father owns, so that’s saying something) but he has whittled away his own personality to only two genuine emotions: greed and disgust. He is so blatant about it that no one really looks sideways at him when he says very horrific and brutal things to people; they just think it is part of his personality.

That is why, though Bale’s portrayal of Bateman give him automatic MVA honors, it is the supporting cast that truly make up his character. How other people perceive him is the key to understanding the character. He’s forgettable or a perceived doormat; he’s likable or thought of as a dork; he’s condescending or he’s desirable; it’s all pieces that make up the whole of this person that seems to have no personality and no drive except to kill those he finds to be either beneath him or those he admires so much he ends up despising them.

I would go into the whole “what makes a psychopath” but I don’t know that much about it. I will say this, Ellis was correct in his discontent with the film and his assertion that film is a medium where answers are an essential part of the craft wherein novels can afford to be open-ended to add to the mystique. But the world that director Mary Harron creates is so frighteningly plausible that the internal conflict within Bateman is palpable and his need for punishment and resolution is so sincere that it does give an answer even if the source material doesn’t.

But, the most frightening part about the film is, after repeated viewings, you begin to either empathize with Bateman or you at least understand why he committed the depraved acts he did. Plus, there is a lingering question at the end as to either the validity of his experiences or whether or not the world around him is such that they would rather turn an eye from atrocity rather than deal with it. Sadly, the latter is as true now as it was then.

Most Valuable Actor: Christian Bale is Patrick Bateman. Known as a splendid method actor, it is easy to see that he truly lost himself inside the character creating such a rich flavor that it can almost be tasted. Truly, this was a stroke of casting genius.

Trailer:

The American Pie Quadrilogy

American Pie
Year: 1999
Directed by: Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz
IMDB / Wikipedia / Trailer

American Pie 2
Year: 2001
Directed by: J.B. Rogers
IMDB / Wikipedia / Trailer

American Wedding
Year: 2003
Directed by: Jesse Dylan
IMDB / Wikipedia / Trailer

American Reunion
Year: 2012
Directed by: Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg
IMDB / Wikipedia / Trailer

Starring:
Jason Biggs
Chris Klein
Thomas Ian Nicholas
Seann William Scott
Tara Reid
Alyson Hannigan
Mena Suvari
Eddie Kaye Thomas
Shannon Elizabeth
Natasha Lyonne
Jennifer Coolidge
Eugene Levy

There was something about the first movie that made everyone my age stand up and take notice. Well, everyone stood up and took notice, but it struck home for me and my friends who were all about the same age. Like the principle characters in the movie, we were all in the Class of 1999, male, and seeking a willing female participant with whom to have sex. There was nothing regal or noble about our cause just as it was in the first movie. We thought we were God’s gift to women but we kept missing the bigger picture when it came to sex. Sex was only one piece of the puzzle and, to get to the point, some work needs to be put in and you have to give something of yourself up to her.

Some of us never learned that.

But, as as my friends and I aged, and more and more of these American Pie movies made their way into theaters, we felt almost obligated to see them because these characters almost became reflections of ourselves. We wanted to see if our lives were going as Hollywood said they would go. The first movie told us that we would discover ourselves and lose apart of ourselves on the way to emotional maturity. The second film reminded us that people change as we all go out and discover the world outside of our parents’ roofs. The third film told us that, though it may be joked as such, marriage is not the end of anything but the beginning of something new. All of these were lessons that, despite the movies, all taken in stride and in our own pace. As much as I liked the movies I knew that real life didn’t always work out as well.

But there was something that nagged me about the first three films: for as much “growing” and self-discovery that these characters were supposed to be doing they seemed to be trapped as static characters. I know it’s a lot to expect movies like this to show real progression and maturity, and I’m definitely not one to call someone out on making the same mistakes over and over, but it left the movies feeling a bit more hollow. The group of friends were always looking to get drunk, have sex, and just chill with one another. For three movies this was the theme and, though the stories were pretty good (not so much on AP2) the theme was getting old.

I didn’t have high expectations for American Reunion so much so that I skipped seeing it in the theater altogether. But I felt that this film, if any of them, could bring the validation to the series that was to be expected and it did not disappoint. Without giving too much away the fact that so often these characters were living in the past was brought up time and again and how that does not make a fulfilling life. Whether you have been to your high school reunion or not you probably know of at least one person who is still stuck in the past trying to recapture the feeling they had when they were 17 or 18. I knew so many of these types of people that I purposely avoided going to my reunion a couple of years ago. These are the people who still hang out with the same people every weekend, having the same party, drinking the same beer, and having the same conversations they did when they were a decade ago. It’s sad, but this movie addressed it and it was a bold gambit.

One of the perks of these films is watching someone else’s mix-ups and reminding yourself that, no matter what you did in high school, nothing you did was ever that bad or embarrassing. These movies were as much about reaffirming your sanity as it was about sex jokes and crude humor. It was like looking at the past and feeling better about yourself. However, the time for these movies has come and gone and its target audience is (hopefully) at the age where we can cherish the past while looking forward to the future.

As conflicted as my thoughts and feelings are on these films I really do love them. They’re funny, they’re mildly disturbing, and they’re memorable–as memorable as many of my high school exploits (of which there were very few)–and that’s why there will always be a spot on my DVD rack for them. Because we all knew a shy guy with good intentions, the jock with the heart of gold, the normal-seeming guy with the inexplicably hit girlfriend, the quiet intellectual, the prissy choir girl, the band geek, the mousy loner, and the loud-mouth windbag; and whomever you identified with in the films it will stand that you identified with someone and that’s what makes these movies stand apart from every other coming-of-age comedy ever.

Hopefully this will be the last installment as I am not looking forward to American Mid-Life Crisis, American Prostate Exam, American Retirement, and American Funeral.

Most Valuable Actor: Seann William Scott as Steve Stifler (a.k.a. The Stifmeister). Without him these movies would have been fine and pretty funny, but with him they became outrageous riot fests that had me trying to catch my breath time and again. I’m not going to say that any actor could have pulled off the cocky jock persona, but Scott took it to another level with his subtle physical humor and his way to deliver the absolutely filthy dialogue. His character was a bit contrived in American Wedding but he was able to pull it off with his ability to become his character.

The Hunger Games

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Woody Harrelson
Directed by Gary Ross
Year: 2012
IMDB / Wikipedia

Every now and then, I will find it necessary to break protocol to tend to my extremely large Netflix queue. This is one of those times. 

There’s the old standard that Literature teachers the world-over use in their classes: the book is always better than the movie. Being someone old enough to have made a good amount of mistakes it is hard for me to speak in such absolutes; I find it trite and, most of the time, easy to debunk. However, sometimes you do find the exception that proves the rule but, for the most part, the statements are usually weak and conflict becomes inevitable because it is a completely subjective view of the piece.

When the film was announced I sought out a synopsis of Suzanne Collins‘ novel and was immediately intrigued. I enjoy stories about a future too horrible to be true but, for the sake of the plot, are. I find they make the best character studies and the best ones are usually so disturbing because they are so plausible. Before the film was released I sought out and read the book and absolutely loved it. The characters were warm and well-defined, the plot was as disturbing as it was intriguing, and the tension was palpable and kept me turning the page. I also found myself thinking that the events lent themselves to be filmed rather easily and that this could be the rare exception that proves the rule: the movie that is as good as the book.

Sadly, I don’t know exactly what I just watched. It looked like The Hunger Games, the story was similar, the characters had the same names, and some of the events were the same, but that was on my screen wasn’t the story I fell in love with. Who were those people? They weren’t the well-rounded, flawed characters I admired and followed into the arena, the story was a whisper of what it had been in the book, and the resolution felt like an inevitability instead of something the characters earned.

One of the major obstacles of adapting a book into a film is the voice of the narrator, which in the book was Katniss (Lawrence), and her perspective on volunteering as a tribute of her district in the Panem‘s Hunger Games that pits 24 young people from the twelve district in the nation to fight to the death. The winner is an instant celebrity, the district is treated better, and it is all for entertainment. Think of it like The Running Man only with children. Katniss’ voice lends so much to the world, not only in her perception of it, but how the people and events are drawn. Without that voice and passion everything becomes two-dimensional and worthless. The bonds and the perceptions are broken and the tension is given to the events and not the psychological damage they cause. And all of this could have been remedied with a simple voice-over narration added into a film that was already well over 2-hours in length.

But the most insulting part was the manufactured conflict that replaced the well-structured events in the book. The filmmakers seemed to pick and choose what they wanted to include and it seemed that the trivial stuff made it while, the details that made the world so realistic and that much more frightening was left by the wayside. There was too much focus on the violence and not enough on the human factor. I imagine this was done to make the events more matter-of-fact but, coupled with the crappy cinematography, it was left in a jumbled mess that left you wondering what was happening and not why it was happening.

Lastly, and this is sad to say, the casting was a joke. Katniss is supposed to be a strong-fierce woman who, at the end, is supposed to become a convincing actress as she plays up her relationship with Peeta. Instead of obtaining an actress that could do this, they found Jennifer Lawrence who grumbles her way through the movie like it is the sequel to Winter’s Bone and is immensely unlikable. The reason for her attitude is explained in the books and becomes part of why she is a sympathetic character, but the movie withholds it and makes her seem like a brooding bitch. Peeta is supposed to be a warrior in the guise of a nice person but Josh Hutcherson turns him into a shallow boy-band wannabe without any real honor or believable emotion. Some might say that the characters are truly too complex for any young actor to undertake, but after hearing about how much the fillmmakers agonized over the casting, to see this product makes me wonder if they truly agonized enough.

Despite my education and credentials, I am not a fast reader. Saying that, it took me slightly longer to read the book than it did to watch the film. So, if you have a few hours some afternoon skip over this vastly disappointing movie and curl up with the book, which is available for purchase pretty much anywhere.

Most Valuable Actor: Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy, the District 12’s mentor and sole surviving Hunger Games champion, was the best part of this film despite the fact half of his role and impact on the story was left elsewhere. He was the only person on screen that did not physically appear to be struggling to keep in character and his portrayal was as close to the source as it could have been. Now, I want everyone to look at what Woody is doing and try to do it as well as him so Catching Fire isn’t a similar clusterfuck.

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