A sharp veer to the left and straight off the cliff

I have just seen two films recently which, in a strange coincidence, both feature John Goodman and Melissa Leo (who played a couple in Treme) in separate storylines for which they share no scenes.  And both films start in one genre, suggest a certain layer of complexity which is never fulfilled, and then make a sharp 90-degree veer in a different direction, one with more success than the other.

Michael Parks and John Goodman talk theology.

The films are Red State (2011) and Flight (2012).  Both had wonderful marketing campaigns that were criminally misleading.  I have no idea why Red State was marketed as a horror film, which automatically put a lid on its earning potential, while at the same time directed it to the wrong audience, which rightly rejected it.  The fact is, that the first half-hour of the film trades on a premise which might also be used in a horror-film:  teenage boys lured by the promise of sex, but delivered to a very different and frightening fate -- some sort of unspecified harm by a bunch of Westboro Church-type evangelicals led by Michael Parks.  Except that that particular velvet glove not only lacked an iron fist, it lacked any content whatsoever.  The threat turned out to be utterly fake, and the film morphed into a satire of the inadequacy of government bureaucracy in the face of utter suicidal lunacy.

To Kevin Smith's credit, he started off with a cardboard political agenda which he is simply too good a writer to adhere to and -- perhaps unconsciously -- realizing that when he got there there was no there there, took off not so much for another target, but in favor of character over ideology.  He wanted to make fun of extremist evangelists, but he seems to have been distracted by the idea of some poor working stiff in the ATF having to sort out a potential Waco-type mess he wants no part of without it blowing up in his and everybody else's face.  It's this sort of thing that leads me to wonder if Kevin Smith ever writes second drafts, or whether -- given that it takes him years to get the energy to crank out a script -- he is satisfied with just getting something down on the page, then immediately dials up his production manager and starts perusing the craft services menu.  (Yes, I know that he raised the financing and distributed the film himself, so the process was a bit more complicated, but...)

Nonetheless, once you get past the tedious set up of the premise of the movie, with a long, redundant monologue by Michael Parks, the film centers around the always-satisfying John Goodman as a man in the middle, squeezed between doing the right thing and toeing the line with his superiors.  This is first-rate satire, but it lacks the time and scope to have enough weight to anchor the entire film.  Then Smith tosses in an anti-climax in which what sounds like The Rapture turns out to be some hippies teasing the evangelicals.  I say "tossed in" because what could have been an intriguing and funny scene is conveyed by some dialogue in a brief denouement scene.  (Plus Smith admitted it was added after the fact in his video Q&A, Kevin Smith: Burn in Hell.)  The result feels like an anthology of different films from different genres stitched together sequentially.  I don't know how Red State performed commercially, but I can't help but think that there must have been a LOT of disappointed horror fans.

Denzel got some explainin' to do.

When John Goodman appeared on screen in Flight (2012) a lot of the audience, including me, "ooh"-ed with the feeling of "Oh boy, this is going to be good."  We were also to be disappointed.  After a slam-bang initial half-hour of Washington performing an heroic landing of a wounded passenger plane while drunk and high, one looks forward to the story of transcendence and transfiguration promised by (a) the title of the film; (b) the spiritually suggestive trailers and television ads; and (c) Zemicki's work in Cast Away, Forrest Gump and the failed by aspirational Contact.  No such luck.  John Goodman's role as Denzel's connection turns out to be dispiriting rather than energizing, and the rest of the film is a rehash of The Lost Weekend, Days of Wine and Roses, Clean and Sober, 28 Days and every other movie about a drunk trying and failing to clean up.  These stories are always repetitive -- they have to be if they're going to be realistic, but that doesn't make them any more fresh or insightful.  This is a movie without anything to recommend it other than Denzel's presence, albeit he doesn't have anything else to do.  And a movie that can waste Don Cheadle, John Goodman, Melissa Leo and a lot of less-famous but equally ill-used actors rates as a major waste of time for the audience and the filmmakers.

It would seem that would have been fairly easy to make a much better, much more original film.  And how disappointing that Denzel finally breaks away from the tedious potboilers he has given so much of his working life to (Safe House, Unstoppable, Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Inside Man), the result is still deja vu, just in a more exalted genre.

Whither tentacle monsters

Can I just ask, "Why tentacles?" Of all the scary appendages that things from outer space might have -- lobster claws, corkscrews or perhaps vicious, poison-tipped umbrellas. But no, somehow a consensus has formed around tentacles as the giant alien's limb of choice and I guess we're stuck with it.

Two relatively low-profile films released in 2010 illustrate disparate approaches to making tentacle monster movies. (This is limited to mainstream films; there is a whole shadowy world of tentacle monsters, originating in Japan that I have no intention of getting into.) One follows a classical Hollywood horror-movie template. Second- and third-tier actors placed in a limited number of settings with a simple melodramatic frame shaped like a funnel, so that a small group of characters becomes an even smaller group, usually with only the romantic couple remaining.

Skyline (2010) was directed by a special-effects supervisor and it looks it. In fact, only the CGI portions demonstrate any real passion from any of the participants. In the actors' defense, it can't be easy to spend 18 or 20 days on a confined stage (representing the terrace apartment which is the only location of the film) swathed in green fabric, pretending to be terrorized by what the director tells you is going to be there. I can't imagine how one could sustain interest in such a task unless the paycheck was hefty, and this paycheck couldn't have been. Here's a typical excerpt:




This is best Skyline has to offer. There are no characters, no situations, no paradox, metaphor or allegory to contemplate. Just a lot of animation and (SLAM!) cues from the soundtrack. The characters' only choices are whether to run toward or away from the danger. Roger Corman must have been beaming with recognition.

Another approach is the ultra-low budget Monsters (2010). [Couldn't anyone have been talked out of releasing a low-budget film with such a generic title? It sounds like a Wayans Brothers project that couldn't even muster the energy to come up with a silly name.] Again, writer-director Gareth Edwards is a special-effects specialist. Evidently (and this is a mixture of published statements and surmise), principal photography with the actors cost about $15,000, as they wandered around one side or the other of the Mexican border pretending to elude some scary tentacle monsters which had been sort of hanging around for months (shades of District 9, of which the makers of Monsters say they were unaware at the time of shooting). Then the film spent a year or so in post-production, to the tune of about $500,000 during which Mr. Edwards made the monsters on his home computer. I could have some of that wrong, but that's the general outline.

Problem is, the thin and semi-improvised story involving the two principals is alternately unengaging and borrowed goods, a sort-of It Happened One Night with space aliens. Despite their skill and professionalism, their lack of charm or charisma sends the movie toward Cassavetes-sweaty-actor-laboriously-improvising-Land, which is a strangle place for a monster movie to dwell. Mr. Edwards would have been well advised to engage an actual writer and/or genuinely skilled improvisers to create an absorbing foreground for the big tentacle creatures.



Monsters does have a much-remarked-upon subtext about immigration which the creators claim was unintended (and I believe them). The monsters only make fleeting appearances in the film, and that's not just a problem because there aren't enough scare or shock sequences. (There aren't any after the beginning of the film. Thereafter, the monsters become languid to the point of being downright sluggish.) It's that the filler has no intrinsic interest.

Cloverfield had ample thrills and chills well distributed through its approximately 75 minutes. District 9 had many interesting story threads and themes about the use of security, terrorism, racism, genetic experimentation and what-have-you. It could have retained interest even if it had half the CGI material that it does. (And District 9's CGI was extraordinarily convincing.) But Monsters doesn't appear to have an idea other than to mark time until another pedestrian animation sequence.

Incidentally, the question came up in connection with Avatar and it's becoming more and more pertinent as the Transformers aesthetic permeates down to lowbudget filmmaking like these films represent. Namely -- what is the difference -aesthetically- between a digital effects driven film and an out-and-out animated film. When the effects are not a supporting element but the raison d'etre for the entire undertaking, with the actors and the script in (feeble) support, aren't we just watching Saturday morning cartoons with some cheesy actors pasted in to stretch the budget?

My rhetoric here is probably harsher than the way I feel about these films. Monsters was at least trying something novel. Skyline was simply a potboiler, and you will probably see its clones on the Syfy Channel before long, if they're not already there. But the good news is that if you have Netflix streaming, you can check my opinion against your own, as both these films are available there at the moment.

And next time you order calamari -- watch out!