God and the Cinema Part III: Kevin Smith

It may seem odd that I chose Kevin Smith for the third part of this series, after dealing with Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg in the first two installments, but I actually believe that Smith’s film represent a certain modern take on religion, particularly in the Western world. It is clear that almost no one waits until marriage anymore before having sex, and yet a lot of people are still consider themselves religious. Lots of Catholics use birth control, even inside of a marriage, even though the Church tells them not to. In short, things have changed. What used to be considered “sinful” is now almost accepted practice. When I went in with my future wife to meet the priest who was going to marry us, he didn’t bat an eye when he found out we were already living together. No lecture, no tsk tsk, nothing. Kevin Smith, in a very real way, represents this idea of still having religious beliefs in the modern world, even as we seem to reject some of the basic tenets of the Church and it's teachings.

For this article, I am going to concentrate of two of Smith’s films – Chasing Amy and Dogma, as I believe they are most overt about religion of any of his films. They also have the added advantage of being far and away his best two films.

I’ve always thought that Chasing Amy was essentially Smith’s version of Scorsese’s Who’s That Knocking At My Door? In Scorsese’s film, J.R. (Harvey Keitel), dumps the girl he is in love with (even calls her a “whore”), because she was raped. In his mind, she must have done something to ask for it. She is not a virgin, so she is no longer “pure”, and he cannot possibly marry her. He has two ideas about women – they are either “broads” or “girls”. A broad is a woman you can fuck, but not marry, a girl is a woman you can marry but not fuck (at least, presumably, until you are married).

Something similar happens to Holden (Ben Affleck) in Chasing Amy. Now, the movie is set 30 years later, so the definition of what makes a girl a “whore” has changed, but what hasn’t changed is the reaction of the man. When Holden meets Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), she is a lesbian. Yet, the two of them hookup anyway, and it doesn’t really bother him. She was a lesbian, now she isn’t; it’s not a big deal. But what drives Holden over the edge is when he finds out that Alyssa has had sex with men before. Even still, he’d be okay with that, but the story he hears is that in high school, she was involved in a three way with two other guys. This throws him over the edge. He yells at her, tells her they were using her, and essentially calls her a whore. He tries to explain that it was high school, she was experimenting, and it doesn’t mean anything now. It’s not like she’s still fucking two guys at once on a regular basis. She’s with him now, and the past doesn’t matter. Holden doesn’t see it that way.

Instead, Holden comes up with a “brilliant” idea. In his mind, he cannot get past the fact that she has done something in her past that he hasn’t. So he wants to level the playing field. His idea is that he and his friend Banky (Jason Lee) will have a three way with her. This way, he’ll have done something similar to her so they can get past it and Banky may finally be able to admit that he’s gay. It shouldn’t matter to Alyssa, because she has already done the same thing in the past anyway, so what’s the difference?

What Holden doesn’t understand, because he’s an idiot, is that while Alyssa never felt like a whore for what she did in high school, that is precisely what she would feel like if she did this for him. She determined a long time ago that this was not what she wanted. What she wants is Holden, and if he cannot accept her, then it’s over.

Chasing Amy isn’t an overtly religious movie (I think the only time the world Catholic is spoken is when Jason Lee says “I should have dated more Catholic girls in high school. As it is, I have no ‘And then she removed her jumper stories’”.), but I do think it speaks to something that at least some Catholics still go through. The idea that the girl you’re going to marry has to be “pure” has probably gone out the window for most Catholic men these days, but there is still a line somewhere. Holden draws his line, and it costs him the woman he’s in love with. The same basic thing happens in Scorsese’s films from 30 years before. The line may have moved, but it’s still there. In his own way, Smith is exploring the same issue that the greatest director in history has explored for much of his career.

Dogma is a much more “religious” movie, and it makes no effort to hide that. The film is about the last descendent of Jesus (Linda Fiorentino), who works at an abortion clinic, who is sent on a mission from God to prevent two angels who have been banished from heaven (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) from walking through an archway that would forgive their sins, and let them back into heaven. Since God has promised to honor whatever is Holy on Earth being Holy in Heaven, this would prove that God is Fallible; it would mean the end of the world.

While I think that Chasing Amy shows Smith struggling with his own sexual morality – which has at least in part been shaped by the Church – Dogma is more concerned with looking for answers to the bigger questions about God. How do you reconcile a book that is 2,000 years old with the modern world? That is essentially what every character in the movie is trying to do.

Affleck’s angel is angry with God that he gave humans so much more than he ever gave them. They are free to do what they please – they can piss away their lives, and choose not even to believe if they want to. He knows that what he’s doing will destroy humanity, and he’s okay with that. Damon plays an Old Testament angel in a New Testament world. He doesn’t know why God doesn’t bring down his wrath more often, so he takes it upon himself. Yet, he still loves God, and his creation. He just believes that some people need to be punished.

The Church itself is represented by Cardinal Ignatius Glick (played, in a genius stroke of casting by George Carlin). They are trying to “modernize” the Church, to make it less scary. In addition to the arch, that will instantly forgive your sins, they have decided to replace the crucifix, which is “too violent”, with a Buddy Jesus – who is smiling and giving a big Thumb’s Up. The Church is losing relevance, and they need to do something, right?

And Fiorentino is much like Jesus himself. Allow me to compare her to a Scorsese character again; in saying that by working in an abortion clinic, although she is Catholic, is similar to the idea suggested in Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, where as a carpenter, Jesus makes crosses for people to be crucified on. They both know that God would be unhappy with their decision, but they do it anyway. By the end of both films though, the character has accepted their destiny.

All of these characters are struggling with their own relationship with God, and what that means in their lives. I think the basic message in the film that everyone needs to find their own path. Everyone's relationship with God is different. It doesn't so much matter WHAT you believe, but instead, it matters that you DO believe.

In a way, I have been disappointed with every Kevin Smith film he has done subsequent to Dogma. True, I have enjoyed them all (even Jersey Girl – deal with it), and yet, like I sometimes feel about Quentin Tarantino, there has been a regression in his films. With Chasing Amy and Dogma, Smith explored some rather complex moral issues. The fact that he did so in an entertaining and comedic way in no way lessens the fact that he was dealing with his own personal issues in each film.

But truly, has he done that since? I can watch Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks II, Zack and Miri Make a Porno at any time, and enjoy them. Yet to me, this represents Smith regressing into that kid on the playground who gets a kick out of saying “naughty” words. There is nothing really wrong with that, and yet I do think it ultimately lessens the value of his subsequent films. At one time, even Martin Scorsese saw Smith as a worthy successor to himself. I wonder if anyone still feels that way.

The Films of Martin Scorsese Part I: The Early Shorts

What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963) **
Written & Directed by: Martin Scorsese.
Starring: Zeph Michelis (Harry), Sarah Braveman (Analyst), Fred Sica (Friend), Mimi Stark (Wife), Robert Uricola (Singer).

It’s Not Just You Murray! (1964) ** ½
Written & Directed by: Martin Scorsese.
Starring: Ira Rubin (Murray), San De Fazio (Joe), Andrea Martin (Wife), Catherine Scorsese (Mother), Robert Uricola (Singer).

The Big Shave (1967) ****
Written & Directed By: Martin Scorsese.
Starring: Peter Bernuth (Young Man).

As a student at NYU film school, Martin Scorsese directed three short films – What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? In 1963, It’s Not Just You, Murray in 1964 and The Big Shave in 1967. Thanks to the miracle of Youtube, fans of the director, like me, can now go back and watch these shorts in their entirety, and get a sense of what Martin Scorsese was like before he started to direct features. While all three features are at least interesting, and show some surprisingly good editing and shot selection for student films, only one of them, The Big Shave, is ultimately very successful. The first two are interesting only for fans.

What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? tells the story of a young writer, Harry, who moves to New York, and buys a photograph to hang in his apartment. The photograph itself is not very interesting, but Harry finds himself inexplicably drawn to it. It affects everything in his life. He tries to distract himself by doing other things – watching old movies on TV, throwing a party, getting married, but ultimately, he just gives up, and ends up being sucked into the picture. The film, which runs about 9 minutes, is interesting because of its rather distinct look and feel. You can tell, based on the surreal aspects of the film, that Scorsese was hugely interested in Fellini at the time, and this is probably his attempt to do something akin to 8 ½. What I also noticed was how it started something that Scorsese would continue throughout his career – that is looking at women only through the prism of how the main character sees them. The wife isn’t even given a name, let alone any dialogue. She exists solely because the protagonist wants her to. The film is interesting, but ultimately not very successful. It’s a student film after all, but still at only nine minutes, it felt longer than it needed to be.

It’s Not Just You, Murray! was more successful than the first film. It exists as an homage to the Warner Brothers gangster films of the 1930s and 1940s, with nods to Fellini and Godard as well. What I enjoyed about the movie is how what we are seeing on the screen contradicts the voiceover narration of Murray himself. He flashes back to his humble beginnings as a bootlegger, and in an hilarious sequence, we see him being busted by the cops, as he tells us “Because of a misunderstanding, about which I was misunderstood, I was unavailable to do anything, or see anywhere, for a while”, as we see him in jail. Murray goes on about what a great friend of his Joe is, but on screen, it becomes clear that Joe isn’t that great of a friend. He’s abandons Murray, screws him over, and is clearly sleeping with Murray’s wife, and may in fact be the father of her child. The film contains a few interesting things I noticed about the movie that would reappear in Scorsese’s features were. One is the look at the low level mobsters, not the guys on the top that Scorsese would do later in Mean Streets and GoodFellas, among others. Another was the presence of the protagonists mother, played for the first time but not the last by Scorsese’s own mother, who of course, tries to stuff her son full of food, even while he’s in jail (remember the scene in GoodFellas, where on the way to dispose of a body, they stop at Joe Pesci’s mother’s house, also played by Catherine Scorsese, and she insists on feeding them). Another is how your friends will stab you in the back, and about the sexual purity of the wife, who like in What’s A Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is seen solely through the eyes of the Murray. I certainly enjoyed It’s Not Just You, Murray! more than the first film, but once again, it felt a little too long (this one is about 15 minutes) for what Scorsese was trying to do.

Unquestionably the best of the trio of films, and the most well known, is The Big Shave from 1967. Perhaps the most political film of Scorsese’s entire career, The Big Shave is a short (under 6 minutes) film about a man who just keeps shaving himself over and over again. He seems oblivious to the fact that each time he shaves, he’s cutting himself more and more, and blood starts to pour down his face, splattering all over the sink and the floor, but he just keeps on going. Eventually, he will cut his own throat. The film is Scorsese’s allegory for America’s involvement in the Vietnam War (the alternate title of the film is Viet ‘67) with the young man being America, oblivious to the damage and bloodshed he is causing himself. It’s a powerful, disturbing film, and in my mind is probably just about the ultimate student film. Many student filmmakers try and shock their audience, with their edgy, violent, political fare, but most are unsuccessful. In a few brief minutes, with a few shocking images, Scorsese does a brilliant job of capturing just what he wants to. It is a brilliant little film.

For the sake of consistency of the series, I assigned star ratings to each of these three films, although I didn’t really want to. I mean, I don’t really think it’s fair to hold Scorsese’s student films up to any professional standard. Ultimately, while I found all three movies fascinating, I don’t think I’ll be returning to What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in Place Like This? or It’s Not Just You Murray! anytime again soon. I have already watched The Big Shave numerous times, and the film’s impact never diminishes. For fans of the director, I would recommend all three. For casual viewers, I think you should check out The Big Shave, as it proves just what you can do in the short form. It’s great. The other two, not so much.

The Films of Martin Scorsese: An Introduction

I was going to write a new piece for my God and the Cinema series on the films of Martin Scorsese, but realized that it was too big a topic for one post. Scorsese’s films have always been obsessed with spirituality and religion – particularly, but not exclusively Catholicism – and looking over what I wanted to write, I realized that it would have to be a multiple posting and I didn’t really want to do that. There are so many films and filmmakers that can go into that series that I didn’t want to put them all on hold for weeks, if not months, as I made my way through Scorsese. So, I decided to create a new series about the films of Martin Scorsese. This may mean that my God and Cinema series may not be able to be a weekly one, but I hope that at least it can be bi-weekly.

My reasoning for starting The Films of Martin Scorsese series has another reason. Scorsese is far and away my favorite filmmaker. Throughout his long career, he has never made a bad film. True, some are better than others, and some are merely average, but there has not been one that I would describe as bad.

I have watched many of his films so many times, I practically have them memorized, but I realized that it has been years since I sat down and watch some of his films – sometimes even films that are among his best. After reading Roger Ebert’s book on Scorsese, I hungered to go back and watch them all over again. So that’s what I am going to do.

According the IMDB, Scorsese has 41 directing credits. I have tracked down nearly all of the films listed there – with the following exceptions - Vesuvius VI (1959), Scorsese’s first short, which I’m not sure exists anymore as most sites don’t even include it, Streets Scenes (1970) a documentary about the Vietnam War protests, Made in Milan (1990) a short documentary about Armani and Lady by the Sea: The Statute of Liberty (2004), none of which I can find in any form. If by some miracle I do find these films, I will do posts on them as well.

The other 37 credits, as well as two American Express commercials he directed which were not listed, I have found. The plan is to go through each film, starting at the beginning, and giving a post about each one. The first part which actually go into Scorsese’s first three short films – What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, It’s Not Just You Murray! and The Big Shave. Apart from that, and the two American Express commercials, each film, even if it’s a short, will get its own post. So that means even lesser known documentaries, Italiamerican and American Boy, his music video for Michael Jackson’s Bad, his episode of Amazing Stories, Mirror Mirror, his segment for The Concert of America, The Neighborhood, and his Hitchcock homage The Key to Reserva even his production footage from The Last Temptation of Christ, will each get their own posting. They may not be as long or as in depth, but I didn’t really see a more logical way to group his other shorts. It will be a 36 part series with (hopefully) two colums per week, depending on how much time I have to watch the films themselves that I hope to wrap up by October 2, which is when Scorsese’s new film, Shutter Island, opens.

I am looking forward to this series. Not only does it give me an excuse to go back and watch some of my very favorite films of all time, but it also may allow me to see all of his films in a new light. I remember being disappointed in films like Boxcar Bertha, New York New York, The Color of Money, Cape Fear and Kundun – not because they were not good, but because they were not great, but perhaps freed from those expectations, I can watch these films, which I have never seen more than once, and see them for what they are, not what I wanted them to be. My memory on other films – Who’s That Knocking at My Door, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, The Age of Innocence and Bringing Out the Dead for example, has grown hazy in the years since I watched them, so this will be a good refresher. It also gave me an excuse to track down some of his lesser known videos, shorts, documentaries, TV episodes, many of which I have never seen at all before. I hope some of you enjoy the new series. I know I will.

DVD Reviews: Watchmen Tales of the Black Freighter & Under the Hood

Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter ***
Directed By: Mike Smith & Daniel DelPurgatorio.
Written By: Alex Tse & Zack Snyder based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Gibbons.
With the Voices of: Gerald Butler (The Mariner), Jared Harris (Ridley).

Watchmen: Under the Hood ** ½
Directed By: Eric Matthies.
Written By: Hans Robinoff based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Gibbons.
Starring: Stephen McHattie (Hollis Mason/Nite Owl), Carla Gugino (Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre), Ted Friend (Larry Culpeper), Jay Brazeau (Bernard/News Vendor), Rob LaBelle (Wally Weaver), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Edward Blake/The Comedian).

Alan Moore’s Watchmen is one of the densest graphic novels in history, and one that filmmakers ranging from Martin Scorsese to Terry Gilliam struggled to make into a movie before giving up. Director Zack Snyder finally figured out how to make the film, and earlier this month we got the result. While the reviews have been mixed, and the box office far from spectacular, I love the movie. But as when adapting any long, dense book for the screen, things had to be cut –two of those things were the books within the book Watchmen – the comic book Tales of the Black Freighter that he constantly see a young man reading on the streets, and the original Nite Owl, Hollis Mason’s, autobiography, Under the Hood. So in love with the these books was Snyder, that he convinced Warner Brothers to fund two separate short films, in two radically different styles, based on these books for release on DVD a few weeks after the movie came out. Having loved the graphic novel, and the movie, I rented the DVD to see what they did with the two stories.

Tales of the Black Freighter, appropriately enough, was made as a grisly cartoon. It tells the story of a captain of a ship who gets attacked by the cursed Black Freighter, who slaughters his entire crew and leaves him for dead in the ocean, before heading to his hometown of Davidstown. The Mariner (voiced by Gerald Butler), is determined to beat them back to Davidstown, but because he has no raft, he is forced to tied together the rotting, bloated, stinking corpses of his crew, to make his journey home. He is attacked by seagulls and then sharks, hallucinates that the head of his friend Ridley is talking to him, but does indeed make it back to Davidstown. Convinced that the Black Freighter is already there, The Mariner goes on an ill advised killing spree. Once he realizes what he has done, he has no choice but to join the crew of the Black Freighter, who was never intending on attacking the town anyway.

The parallel of the story of The Mariner and that of Ozymanidas in Watchmen is clear. The Mariner tries to do good, and ends up committing great evil, and essentially becomes everything he tried to stop on the first place. I think Tales of the Black Freighter goes too far in trying to draw those parallels – underlines it all a little much, taking away any subtlety there was there. And divorced from the main thrust of the plot of Watchmen, we see just how shallow the story by itself really is. Still, I must say that the film is amazingly well animated, and actually quite entertaining. It is incredibly, almost stomach churningly violent and disgusting, but animation is the right choice here – in live action it wouldn’t be as effective. And does anyone else think that they modeled the animation of the Mariner on Alan Moore, who of course has famously trashed the adaptation of his book from day one?

The other movie, Under the Hood, takes the form of a television news magazine report from 1975, when Hollis Mason’s autobiography, Under the Hood, was released. In the segment, we see Mason (Stephen McHattie), being interviewed, and giving us an in depth look at the history of super heroing – the generation before the “watchmen” we see in the movie. He also gets an interview with Sally Jupiter (Carla Gugino), who contradicts Mason at some points, but basically agrees with him. The movie is fascinating for fans of the graphic novel, and it’s always a pleasure to see McHattie (who was great in the recent Pontypool which I reviewed last week) and Gugino (why she never became a bigger star, I’ll never know). But it’s also somewhat shallow. The director, Eric Matthies, seems to be going for more style than substance – he has way too much fun recreating 1980s like TV commercials, and like Tales of the Black Freighter, the movie underlines too heavily – takes away the subtlety that was there in the storyline before. This isn’t even to mention the fact that the brilliant opening titles sequence of Watchmen tells essentially the same story as Under the Hood does, much more effectively, and in about 30 minutes left. Under the Hood is essentially, a must for diehard fans, but of little interest to anyone else.

In short, while I enjoyed Tales of the Black Freighter quite a bit, and Under the Hood a little bit less, I must admit that I am glad that they were released separately, and not part of the original film. The make for fascinating, well done DVD bonus features, but I’m not sure they are necessary as part of the film itself. Apparently for the DVD addition of Watchmen, Snyder will edit back in Tales of the Black Freighter into the narrative of the film. I’ll be interested in seeing if that adds to the movie, or distracts from it. By themselves, both films are worth watching if you want to kind of fill in the world created by the movie. As individual films onto themselves, they are merely okay.

Judd Apatow and the Romantic Comedy for Guys

Judd Apatow’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the credits of the new movie, I Love You, Man, but it might as well have. Even though he didn’t have anything to do with making the movie, it does star two of his frequent collaborators – Paul Rudd and Jason Segel – and the comic sensibility of the film is very much the same as the films Apatow has directed and produced in the last few years.

The films he has been involved with – in particular The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express and Forgetting Sarah Marshall – all share something in common with I Love You, Man, in that they are all in their own ways, romantic comedies directed at the male audience, instead of typical female audience. With the exception of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the most important relationships in all the films are not between the “boy” and the “girl” in the movie, but rather are all about male camaraderie. And they fulfill the function for men, what most romantic comedies do for women – wish fulfillment. The typical romantic comedy goes something like this: A career centric woman with no time for men, meets a rich, handsome rebel type – who is really quite sensitive underneath his rough exterior, and at the start hates them, then falls madly in love with them, then encounters some sort of temporarily road block, only to get back together in the final scene because of a grand romantic gesture, and as the end credits role, we either see the two lovers kissing happily, or at the altar getting married. This is essentially the plot of EVERY romantic comedy every made, and women still lap it up. Why? Because it provides mindless escapism and fulfills their hopes and dreams. What woman doesn’t want to be swept off their feet by a George Clooney, Matthew McConaghey or John Cusack type? Women are smart enough to know that these romantic comedies are as much fantasy as The Lord of the Rings, but when you’re single, or in a relationship with someone who looks more like Seth Rogen then Patrick Dempsey, it’s nice to fantasize about romance once in a while, isn’t it ladies?

What the Apatow movies do is switch the focus from the ladies to the men, and instead of indulging women’s fantasies, they indulge men’s. I have always felt that in most romantic comedies, the men are WAY too idealized to be truly believable. They all have such chiseled good looks, are tremendously wealthy, have glamorous jobs, loads of free time, are somehow both a rebel and sensitive, and of course, are amazing in bed. I mean, how is a real guy ever going to compare to the guys in most romantic comedies? The short answer, they’re not.

The Apatow movies basically take this dynamic and flip it. Instead of Matthew McConaghey, we get Seth Rogen. Instead of George Clooney, we get Jason Segel. Most guys look more like the second guys in those comparisons then the first, don’t they? And the women they somehow still manage to get are all gorgeous, smart, sexy and fun. Elizabeth Banks, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Katherine Heigel, Martha MacIssac, Emma Stone. Each one of them are better looking than their male counterparts in the movie. Not only that, they are also infinitely kind and patient with the overgrown man child at the center of the movie. Why would Katherine Heigel’s character in Knocked Up, want Seth Rogen? She is a gorgeous, sexy successful TV personality; he’s an overweight, unemployed guy trying to get a porn site operational. How does Jason Segel end up having both Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell fighting over him by the end of Forgetting Sarah Marshall?

To the credit of the movies – and the reason why they work as well as they do- they do look seriously at the man children at the core of their stories, and eventually conclude that what they really need to do to get these women is grow the hell up. Steve Carell’s friends in The 40 Year Old Virgin are much like he is – in that their development was arrested sometime in high school. While Carell has never grown out of that stage that most guys go through of being nervous talking to girls and never saying the right thing, they have never gotten over the idea that what you should try to do is bang every hot chick that you can. Paul Rudd’s character clings pathetically to a past relationship that he has overinflated in his own mind into the great love of his life. This isn’t what adults do, it’s what teenagers do. In Knocked Up, Seth Rogen realizes that in order to become a responsible adult, he actually needs to get off his ass and do something. Kristen Bell has a great scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall that changes the way we see her character, when she lectures Jason Segel on just what being with him was like. It is a fairly harsh scene, but one he needs to hear if he’s ever going to grow up and have a real relationship. In a way, the two most mature characters in the Apatow movies are the teenagers in Superbad (Michael Cera and Jonah Hill), not because they really are actually more mature then their older counterparts, but in that they learn they have to grow up a good decade earlier than the characters in the other movies do. At least they have an excuse for acting like teenagers – they are teenagers.

The basic flaw in each of these films – what keeps them from being truly great instead of just near great – is that the women are never as complex as the men are. Few films understand men as well as these ones do, but the women in the movies are too highly idealized. They are gorgeous, sexy, funny, smart, patient and willing to forgive the men in the movie for pretty much every mistake they make. I mean, really, why would Katherine Heigel want Seth Rogen in Knocked Up? What is it about Jason Segel that Mila Kunis finds so irresistible in Forgetting Sarah Marshall? In short, the movies provide the same sort of unrealistic ideal for women as most romantic comedies do of men.


I do hope that sooner or later, one of these movies will get the male-female dynamic as right as all of these films get the male-male dynamic. Because a romantic comedy that saw both men and women as clearly as these movies see their male characters would be a revelation. I would even settle for a movie by a female writer-director that looked at the other side more clearly then these films, or for that matter the more generic romantic comedies. I imagine Forgetting Sarah Marshall told from her point of view, and wonder what that film would be like. For now, though, I’ll settle for more films as good as these ones. Yes, I know they are flawed, and that they are essentially male wish fulfillment. But then again, I am a male, and I don’t mind seeing my wishes fulfilled sometimes.

Movie Review: I Love You, Man

I Love You, Man *** ½
Directed By: John Hamburg.

Written By: John Hamburg & Larry Levin.

Starring: Paul Rudd (Peter Klaven), Jason Segel (Sydney Fife), Rashida Jones (Zooey), Sarah Burns (Hailey), Jaime Pressly (Denise), J.K. Simmons (Oswald Klaven), Andy Samberg (Robbie Klaven), Jane Curtin (Joyce Klaven), Jon Favreau (Barry), Thomas Lennon (Doug), Rob Huebel (Tevin Downey), Mather Zickel (Gil), Lou Ferrigno (Himself).

There are some movies that when you watch them, you feel that they are made just for you. I Love You, Man is a movie like that for me. The main character Peter (Paul Rudd) is a guy who never quite seems to fit in with the group. He is awkward in his attempts to make friends, and to just share the same space as other people. His body language makes him always seem a little too tense. You can tell he’s always on the verge of saying something, but holds back. When he gets the words out, you can tell it took a considerable effort on his part. He tries hard – too hard – to fit in, and his attempts at sounding cool or funny always seem to go horribly wrong. What this has ended up meaning is that Peter doesn’t really have any friends. He is a kind, sensitive guy, and has always gotten along well with women – even women he is not dating – but with men, there is something just kind of off about him. In short, Peter is me.

None of this has ever really seemed like a problem for Peter. He is relatively happy. He has a gorgeous woman in his life, Zooey (Rashida Jones), who he is in love with and is going to marry soon. His best friend is his mother, and for the most part he is relatively happy. But one day he arrives home early to find his wife and her girlfriends sitting around talking. Oblivious to the fact that he is there, they talk about him, and everyone says he’s a great guy – but isn’t it weird that he has no guy friends? I mean, what is wrong with him?

So Peter sets himself a goal of trying to find at least one guy friend. The film shows us a series of his attempted “man dates”, that go horribly wrong. Then, almost by accident, he meets Sydney Fife (Jason Segal). Sydney is at the open house that Peter is throwing to try and sell Lou Ferrigno’s house. He’s not there to actually buy a house, but there because these classy open houses always have nice food, and it’s a good way to meet divorcees. Sydney is everything that Peter is not – comfortable in his own skin. The two become friends, and Sydney teaches Peter how to loosen up, relax and just have fun.

These two characters are so well observed, and so well acted by Rudd and Segal, that it elevates the movie beyond just another comedy. Yes, there are a few gross out gags (including one unnecessary scene involving projectile vomit – it’s a real thing), but most of the comedy springs for these two characters. They never seem to be delivering punch lines – although almost every other line of dialogue is funny – but rather they are acting like these characters should act. The dynamic of their relationship is perfect. Every Peter needs a Sydney – that friend who is willing to do whatever stupid thing pops into his head, so that you do not have to. And every Sydney needs a Peter – someone to keep him more grounded and real. These two belong together.

If I have made this sound like a romantic comedy between two guys, that’s because that is essentially what this movie is. Poor Rashida Jones, a very talented comedic actress herself, is stuck playing the straight man for most of the movie. Her character isn’t as well developed as either Peter’s or Sydney’s, but she is so lovable that she sells it anyway. The rest of the supporting cast – J.K. Simmons, Jane Curtain, Andy Samburg, Sarah Burns and Lou Ferrigno himself – are all just about pitch perfect in their small roles. I particularly loved Jamie Pressly and Jon Favreau as one of those married couples who seem to downright hate each other, but you can tell, underneath the surface, they are somehow perfect together.

I Love You, Man is one of the best comedies of the year. It is funnier than pretty much everything Hollywood puts out, and that’s because the movie takes the time the set up the characters and their relationships, and build real people out of them. While to a certain extent, these people are guinea pigs jumping through the typical hoops of the screenwriters notebook, we don’t care, because they feel real.

Movie Review: Knowing

Knowing ** ½
Directed By: Alex Proyas.
Written By: Ryne Douglas Pearson and Juliet Snowden & Stiles White and Stuart Hazeldine.
Starring: Nicolas Cage (John Koestler), Chandler Canterbury (Caleb Koestler), Rose Byrne (Diana Wayland), D.G. Maloney (The Stranger), Lara Robinson (Lucinda Embry / Abby Wayland), Nadia Townsend (Grace Koestler), Alan Hopgood (Rev. Koestler), Adrienne Pickering (Allison).

Knowing is an interested, yet deeply flawed film. It starts out as a typical science fiction thriller, then gradually becomes deeper and more philosophical. I was surprised by how far the movie follows its basic premise, and reaches what maybe the only obvious conclusion for the story. But so much of what happens in the movie requires too great of a leap of faith for me to really get into the movie. It asks too much of the viewer for what it eventually delivers.

The movie stars Nicolas Cage as John Koestler, a recent widower, raising his young son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) by himself. He is an astrophysicist at MIT, who teaches his students the difference between determinism and randomness. His own pet theory – “Shit Happens”. But then Caleb gets a sheet of paper from his school’s time capsule that was buried in the ground 50 years before. Every other kid got a picture, but all Caleb got was a sequence of numbers. Being a puzzle geek, John drunkenly sits down one night (he gets drunk nearly every night) and tries to find a pattern in the numbers. Shockingly he does. It seems like the number represent certain dates, longitude and latitudes and the number of people who are killed. What’s shocking is that apparently they all match up perfectly to specific incidents – 9/11 and the Tsunami being the most recent examples- and even more shocking is that there are two dates left. John decides it is up to him to stop the remaining events.

From this rather basic sci-fi premise, director Alex Proyas and his writers spin a rather elaborate story that ends up being quite spiritual journey. We can guess this is the direction the film will take from the opening scenes, where it is revealed that Koestler is an atheist. There are no atheists in the movies, unless the movie is about their spiritual awakening. Who, for instance, is the weird stranger that always seems to be lurking around their house, and following them around. Koestler never really gets a good look at him, but Caleb not only does that, but he also hears them speak. And who was the little girl, who wrote the numbers in the first place? And, now that she’s dead, could possibly her daughter, Diana (Rose Bryne) or granddaughter (Lara Robinson) help Koestler solve the mystery? How could she be so scarily accurate?

I have to admit, I was fairly absorbed by the story, more so as it moved along. In fact, the film has a rather brilliant second act, fully of interesting spiritual conundrums, as well as great special effects. The plane crash sequence in this movie is one of the most intense, and horrifying, moments we are likely to see this year. After the fairly rote and mundane opening act, I got really into the movie, and couldn’t wait to see how it all played out. I am sorry to say that the final act of the movie did not deliver on that promise. We get a series of chase sequences, and car crashes, and a lot of shots of Nicolas Cage running after his son. We then get to the end of the movie, which is in its own way fascinating, but somehow pulls off the trick of simultaneously telling us too much and telling us too little. A little less information, and you could have been free to draw your own interpretation of the movie – no matter what your religious beliefs may be (even, if like Koestler, you are an atheist). But, the film doesn’t really live that option open, as it gives away too much. Yet at the same time, the movie doesn’t quite go as far as it needs to fully explain its mysteries. Instead, we are stuck in this strange middle ground where we think we know what it all means, but are not really sure. While ambiguity can be an admirable quality in a movie – especially one marketed as a blockbuster – here it plays more like the filmmakers had a hole in their plot and didn’t know how to fill it.

The director of the movie is Alex Proyas. Few directors who emerged out of the 1990s can boast a debut film and a follow-up as strong as Proyas’ The Crow and Dark City (which is one of the best modern day science fiction movies that truly does deserve comparisons to Blade Runner and Metropolis). Since then, his output has been erratic at best, and nothing to compare to his previous work. Knowing is no exception. While the film is certainly well made, it is too erratic, and ill thought out, to be a truly rewarding movie going experience. Nicolas Cage is fine in the lead role – he doesn’t go nearly as over the top as normal (which, can be either a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it) and the rest of the cast is fine, but they aren’t playing real characters – just instruments to be used by the plot for its own amusement. Knowing poses some interesting questions, and certainly it is a film I find myself thinking about a couple of days later, so perhaps I am being too hard on it. But the experience of actually watching the film is not nearly as involving as talking about it – and that isn’t a good sign. It is too earnest (seriously, only M. Night Shyamalan movies are usual both this ridiculous and self serious) to be truly a good movie. There are good things in here – and it’s nice to see Proyas at least being this ambitious again. But ambition and achievement are two very different things, and this time Proyas’ reach exceeded his grasp.