With all due respect to my esteemed colleague Elisabeth Rappe, geeks are not the only ones who learned important lessons from watching movies this summer. Herewith is my personal, arthouse summer school summary.
Werner Herzog cast a disapproving eye on the ugliness he discovered at Antarctica's McMurdo Station ("they even have a yoga studio and an ATM!") and was skeptical about the sanity of some of the real-life characters he met, which is partly why Encounters at the End of the World was so entrancing. What I learned: Evidence for gay penguins is skimpy, but they have been known to have threesomes.
The Wackness (pictured) didn't became the breakout hit that some had hoped for, but it did showcase the talents of rising star Olivia Thirlby and director Jonathan Levine. What I learned: Never kiss Ben Kingsley in a telephone booth.
Nanette Burstein's filmmaking techniques were much more off-putting than her ultimately winning subjects in American Teen, another would-be smash that didn't live up to box office expectations. What I learned: Never break up with your girlfriend via text message, especially when a documentary filmmaker is interviewing her.
Unexpectedly, Tell No One became the breakout limited-release mystery thrill ride of the summer, and Man on Wire proved that impassioned high wire walkers can make dreams come true and enthrall audiences to boot. What I learned: It's good to be French.
Now it's your turn, all you indie-loving, doc-devoted, world cinema aficionados: what did you learn from the movies this summer?
1. American Teen and Wackness should both be put in the same film junk heap. Both are poorly design vehicle films that attempt to create nostalgia or hearken back to youth; coming of age films. However, compared to what's been made in the past, these attempts are so bad, one has to wonder what factory these mangy filmmakers are being made in. The Wackness sold itself on pure nostalgia, Director Levine claiming his "summer of '94" was so important he has to write the unrealistic puke-fest of his supposed experiences, what a piece of garbage. He ended up killing any other directors chance of telling the story of '94 by effectively taking a crap on it. Josh Peck, who's range goes from apathetic burnout with a fake brooklyn accent (mind you the character lives in the upper east side, which was confusing, and Peck himself is from Nickelodeon fame) to even more of a burnout loser by the end, deserves no commendation. I don't understand these reviews claiming what an accomplishment this film was, is anyone alive and awake? This film was garbage and every single element from plot, inciting incident, character exposition, background, was garbage. As a weed film, it was worse. No one rides an ice cream cart around selling pounds, unless it's a comedy, which Wackness couldn't decide on. The only relevant part of the movie was Mary Kate tripping (what a breakout role for her - sheesh).
American Teen meanwhile managed to not only lack any sense of originality, but it prides itself on its own homogeneity. A bunch of uninteresting zit-rags rambling on about their post-millenial angst. Do post-millenials have any teen angst? Remember Outsiders? Remember KIDS? Remember Breakfast Club? Damn it, Remember Degrassi Junior High?
Giving filmmakers with no vision funds to create these peices of poop is a crime and the financial backers should be arrested, the negatives and all prints destroyed, leaving only poor torrents around, where you actually see people leaving the theater.
Posted at 7:24PM on Aug 24th 2008 by Ghonius