Movie Analysis :: Star Trek(2009)

Good movie reviews are never supposed to compare the movie being reviewed to other movies. The idea being to judge the film being reviewed on its own merits and not get bogged down by how good or bad another movie was. The problem with this in the modern film era is the "re" films(re-boots, re-makes, and re-imaginings) "Re" films almost invite comparison and make it virtually impossible to not consider previous versions of the same material.

This is doubly true for the newest addition to the never-ending franchise known as Star Trek. The first difficulty in analyzing this film is defining what it is. It is most definitely a re-boot as it tries to reintroduce characters created over 40 years ago with new actors. It is also a re-imagining, because the filmmakers are giving their own take to the design and storytelling of the original material.

But what is perhaps most interesting in analyzing Star Trek is that it is also a sequel. In an inspired move to get fans of the past 40 years of Star Trek onboard, the filmmakers concocted a convoluted tale that somehow ties this new version of Star Trek into the previous incarnations. Not surprising to Trek fans, they do this with a time travel story in which Leonard Nimoy's Spock is taken back in time to help the younger versions of familiar Star Trek characters defeat the bad guy, Nero.

This conceit alone would be enough to carry the movie, but the filmmakers have a much more ambitious vision. They want to take over the Star Trek universe and mold it in their own image. If this means throwing out the intelligent science fiction and complex social commentary that often inhabited older Trek stories, then so be it. This film was never designed to open a dialogue about complex isssures, but to invite a new crowd to an old franchise. Like my previous discussion on False Nostalgia in Movies, Star Trek 2009 is an attempt to re-package older material for the younger set.

This new Star Trek is meant to work more like an amusement park ride at Universal Studios than as a thoughtful story. It is an amalgam of large action pieces strung together into a 2 hour movie. It's a roller coaster ride, and as such lacks a lot of character or narrative depth. This Star Trek is meant to be fun, and thus it defies any sort of in-depth analysis.

The main theme that you are slapped with is that this is about destiny and whether we have some say over what our destiny is. Spock's father explicitly makes it clear to the young Spock that he can choose his own destiny, which Spock eventually does by joining Starfleet instead of the Vulcan Science academy. This is further accentuated in Spock's need to reconcile his bi-racial nature. Is he human or is he Vulcan? Is he a man with complex emotions or a slave to cold, hard logic? The death of his mother takes him a great distance towards reconciling this conflict, but also serves to remind us that our destiny is sometimes colored by the actions of the universe and how we respond to those actions.

Kirk, on the other hand, has been shaped into a young adult by the lack of a father, who is killed in the opening scene of the film. His history is the most changed from the original TV show and movies. The filmmakers obviously liked the Kirk of the 1980s who was a rebellious fighter, and killing his father was a psychologically brilliant decision. The older Spock alludes that his father was the motivation he had for joining Starfleet in the original timeline, and without that inspiration this new Kirk has merely floated by on his wits and with his fists.

Beyond these surface pop-psychological ideas there is very little in the film to digest academically. When Kirk inconceivably happens upon the older Spock on a remote planet, Spock asks, "How did you find me?" This question hints at a deeper discussion on fate bubbling just underneath the action-packed narrative. Perhaps our presence in the universe is governed by fate, and Kirk and Spock are always destined to find one another. The following of this line of narrative inquiry would lead Star Trek into Battlestar Galactica territory with questions about God and how we are shaped and moved by the universe. Alas, the moment passes quickly to get us to the next one-liner or the next big action piece.

Anyone who has watched the previous incarnation of these characters knows that they are destined to go on to great things. The entire point of this movie seems to be to put all of the pieces in place to tell further adventures in the sequel. It is a shame that the filmmakers did not take the time to explore the ideas of destiny, of fate, of changing one's own history, or familial loss to a greater degree. But, once again,  this is a roller coaster ride. Just like you aren't supposed to have an in-depth discussion on physics when leaving the ride, you are not really being asked to have a deep discussion on Spock or Kirk's psychological make-up when leaving the theater.

Movie Analysis :: A Different Look At Avatar (NSFW Language)

Since I'm not going to always be able to update with my own posts(analyzing movies is something I do for fun, after all. And movies are, like, 90-120 minutes long!), I will try and find other interesting analyses from across the web. When I find an essay, I'll provide a link, the author's name, with a little synopsis. I won't just steal an article and post it as if it's my own. If it's a video, like the review below, I will embed it and provide a link to the creators website.

Here is a funny Youtube take on Avatar from www.redlettermedia.com. It makes some excellent points about the film's social and business goals, as well as being a fun review of the movie. I especially appreciated his comparison of the Na'vi and creatures on Pandora with Disney characters. He also agreed with my take in that the military is shown in a very bad light for little reason other than to make the bad guys simplistic. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find the creator's name)

This is slightly NSFW for language. Enjoy!

The Rise of Televison

For most of its history, television has been considered the step-child of movies. They are very close mediums in that they both are built on the concept of motion pictures. But for years that was where the similarity ended. Television, for much of its history, has ben the repository of entertainment fluff, like variety shows, sitcoms, and soap operas. Cinema has always been considered a step above TV in the realm of moving pictures, and cinema has been an art form that is today considered every bit as important as opera or the fine arts.

Does cinema still hold sway over television 10 years into the 21st century? is television still a lesser version of the movies that we all spend billions at the box office to see?

While television in the 21st century is still full of time-filling nonsense, in recent years there have been many programs that have broken out and achieved greater prominence as art. The Sopranos on HBO may be the first successful television show that deserves a cinema-like appreciation. While the show's draw were the gangsters who commited heinous acts of violence, they were balanced  with a focus the psychological exploration of what it meant to be a modern American family. It delved into subtleties that have rarely been seen in television, and are only matched by the likes of films such as Citizen Kane.

Once The Sopranos reached the peaks of television success, executives salivated at finding the next Sopranos. This meant they were willing to take risks, willing to push the envelope even further than The Sopranos did. Soon, shows such as The Shield, The Wire, and Mad Men delved even deeper into the psyche of modern America and posed serious questions on marriage, violence, and politics rarely seen on the proverbial "boob tube".

The first wave of these shows was primarily on cable. The rise of DVD allowed easier access to programs from HBO and Showtime. It was easy to enjoy shows like HBO's Rome or Carnivale even if we didn't have a subscription to cable. DVRs have further made it possible to catch these shows after they are broadcast, heightening cable's popularity like never before.

The old guard broadcast networks have recently followed suit with programs like Lost, 30 Rock, and The Office. The traditional networks reliance on advertising, however, have not allowed them to get quite as psychologiclally "dark" or as in depth as cable. Networks still produce 20-24 episode seasons, causing writers of network television to have to stretch out complicated story arcs instead of being as focused as they are in a 13 episode cable program. Networks also rely more on ratings than cable, since network ad rates are the all-important factor in broadcast network television.

Films, on the other hand, seem to be trending downward in complexity. With few exceptions, films in the modern day trend toward the easy storyline, the big explosions, or the dirty joke. Television was always considered the place for cheap laughs and sub-par drama. While television still has its share of absurd programing like Big Brother, Two and a Half Men, and the many simplified procedural dramas like CSI, the multiplexes seem to fill more and more with pap like Transformers and 2012. Like TV sitcoms of the past, cinema has even cornered a market in the ridiculous humor category with low-brow hits like The Hangover.

The point isn't that television is better than films. What is really happening is that television has, at times, managed to rise to the quality of cinema and even surpassed it. While it seems to be easier and easier to find complex artistic programing on television, it becomes more and more difficult to find it at the cineplex. Movies from 2009 like Precious, Moon, and The Hurt Locker were more difficult to find than ever at your local mall, and were often times only found in big city art house cinemas or in limited engagements in regional theaters. Today these movies seen more and more often on DVD in the home. People are expecting more from their TV and less from their cinema, and this is quickly changing how we all view the moving picture.

Be Kind Rewind

Be Kind Rewind is a little movie from 2008 written and directed by French filmmaker Michel Gondry that got a good bit of buzz, but didn't do so well at the box office. It's a strange movie, especially because it is set in a VHS rental store. Yes, VHS in 2008. It's a strange conceit, even from the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But it is an attempt to portray our characters and their neighborhood as an almost charming throwback to the late 20th century. In other words, these are not people who are in the know, nor can they financially afford to be.

The story is about a couple of goofs named Jerry (Jack Black) and Mike (Mos Def) who attempt to save the crumbling Be Kind Rewind video store from the hands of the evil city council of Passaic, New Jersey. When Jerry accidentally erases the tapes in the store, the two decide to begin re-filming all of the movies themselves and renting these new versions of popular movies to the customers, and hopefully save the store in the process.

From the beginning there is an odd B story about Fats Waller being born in Passaic, even born and raised in the building that now houses the video store. The movie opens with poor quality black and white film clips about Fats Waller. They aren't documentary films of Fats Waller, but re-creations. And bad ones at that.

The Fats Waller story rears its head every once and a while throughout the film giving the audience tiny snippets of information. Sometimes it is the store owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) who tells the story. But it seems that, more often than not, it is Mike, who holds up Fats as a sort of a hero. And this hero worship is the driving force for Mike to do just about anything.

But it isn't just Mike who gets caught up in the Passaic Fats Waller story. His friend Jerry is also enthralled. At one point they are even painting a fairly impressive mural under the bridge on the main thoroughfare past the video store. It's a giant ad for Be Kind Rewind, but Fats plays a prominent role in the mural. Even though others in Passaic don't even know who Fats Waller is, Mike is not deterred in his quest to make Fats the most prominent historic figure in Passaic history.

The section of Passaic that Be Kind Rewind serves is itself is an odd mix of characters that seem to be divided into 2 simple categories: African Americans, and eccentric Caucasians. Every causcasian, from the guy wanting to "swede"(what a request to re-make a movie is called) Rush Hour 2, to Mia Farrow's Miss. Falewicz keeping a somewhat prudish eye on the store, to Jack Black's Jerry and his pre-occupation with conspiracies, are all strange characters that are almost overly eccentric. Jerry is especially strange, and is the source of most of the movies odd-fitting humor. The only other prominent caucasians in the movie are the bad guys who want to tear down the store for a new development, and the other bad guys who represent the film studios who threaten to sue the store for intellectual copyright infringement.

The African Americans, however, are a much wider mix of different characters. They don't seem to be either good or bad, but average people who are trying to get by like anyone else. Its a strange choice, especially since it all feels so planned. The message seems to be that white people can't be trusted, which would be a fine message except it clashes so badly with the moral of the film.

There is no hint of outward race problems in the movie, however. It would have made much more sense for a character to decry the negative racial relations in the town rather than just depict the white people as crazy or bad. It would have added depth to the film, and would have especially made the ending that much more poignant.

The moral of the film is that movies can bring people together. After the evil film studio lawyers confiscate and destroy all of Jerry and Mike's oeuvre, they decide to make one last film in an attempt to raise money to try and save the store. Mike's hopes are dashed by the knowledge that all that Mr. Fletcher has told him about Fats Waller is untrue, but they decide to make a movie about Fats' life as it started in Passaic, history be damned.

This choice is an interesting one, in that they decide to be explicitly dishonest about the actual biography of Fats Waller's life. They decide to go throughout the community and get everyone involved in telling Fats' life story in Passaic. Letting people make up stories about Fats suggests that the filmmakers believe that the act of filmmaking itself is a process worth doing. It doesn't matter that the movie is patently false, or that the film is of atrocious quality. All that matters is that the community comes together to make a film together and, in the process, learn what it is to be a community.

This emphasis on the process of filmmaking is further accentuated since, throughout the film, the equipment is out of date. The camera they use to record with is a VHS camcorder. They record audio on cassette tape.  They decide to show the film at the end on a small, 13 inch black and white TV. It's almost quaint to watch the two would-be filmmakers struggle with make-shift effects and camera effects that were out of date 15 years ago. But it it all adds to the theme of community filmmaking. It is against all of these obstacles that the community completes the film and comes together.

In the end, the entire neighborhood shows up to watch the film that Mike and Jerry have made on the life of Fats Waller. There is even a quick scene where one of the city representatives stops by to remind Mr. Fletcher that he was supposed to be out of his building hours ago. Against all Hollywood cliche, Mr. Fletcher accedes to the town's demands, admitting they weren't able to raise the money to save the building. This same man later congratulates Mr. Fletcher on the Fats film, shaking his hand surrounded by other community members. But the audience is left a little in the lurch, because there no realization that the city was wrong. There is no realization by the city representative that they need to save this important landmark store in the community. Instead, Mr. Fletcher and Mike are moving to the projects, and their film premiere is a good-bye party.

The ending suggests that you can't always beat "the man", but the goal is to try. Jerry and Mike make a movie that leaves the community rolling in the streets with laughter and enjoying an evening of camaraderie. For one week the neighborhood comes together to support the store through film, and that seems to be the important lessen. Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn't set up a story in which the community needed to come together, or that Jerry and Mike needed it to. Without some greater rift in the neighborhood, the ending rings a little hollow, and leaves one wondering what the film was really about, and what character needs were truly met in the end.

Film Review and Analysis

Welcome.

This blog is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. A few years ago I took a couple of classes in film analysis and really and truly loved it. Film is art, and as such deserves the same kind of treatment as painting, music, and dance. People should be looking at film as a way to describe the world around us. Its techniques, acting, and subjects, all can play a big role in teaching us a greater lesson about ourselves, our culture, and our history.

I also hope to do film review as well. It won't always be easy to go to the theater and do a full analysis. I won't always have a notebook with me, and taking notes is imperative to a good analysis. So I hope to also provide some reviews of film in the theaters.

The one thing I hope to avoid is being too academic about film. The one issue I have in most analyses I read is that they don't convey a sense of fun. I once had a music teacher tell me that music is meant to be enjoyed, and it is not supposed to be fun. He obviously never played jazz. Some films are meant to be fun, and that should be related in an analysis.

I also will try and analyze an eclectic mix of films. I won't just be doing Italian Neo-Realism or French New Wave. I'll also do modern popular cinema, including the biggest blockbusters and what they have to say. In my opinion, these movies are MORE important to analyze due their their overwhelming popularity. What are they teaching us, and what are they saying about us as a people?