Monday, March 30, 2009
Posts that are lists: Films in which the plot gets in the way
I decided to watch As Good As It Gets the other day, and soon ran into a big problem. After 25 minutes or so I was bored, bored of a film that has awards and award-winning actors all over the shop. And yet something else had taken my attention. Probably the 'pwned' video, I'm sad to report.
One part of me feels this is a symptom of an 'all-access' culture, where I can download a book, a newspaper, a song and a film all on the same screen in front of me, not giving any of them due attention; I have the attention span of a five year old at the best of times. Yet something else needs considering, and that is the film itself. As 'Good As It Gets' has in fact done this to me before. And in 2004 while preparing assignments at university I would frequently find myself sat in front of my friend's DVD player, watching the first half an hour of a 'Beautiful Mind' before turning it off. And then there is the 'Polar Express', the best substitute I have in my house to sitting in a train without going anywhere, yet I couldn't give a flying toss about the plot. In fact, the plot gets in the way, and when it starts to make its presence felt, off goes the film. Yes, I believe a sub-genre exists in my head: Films I watch for the wrong reason, films where the plot is a pain in the ass, swanning in where it's not wanted to deprive me of a far more interesting subplot, preamble or whole other film I'm directing in my head. Films where the exposition and character introduction get me sitting comfortably before the director decided to dispense with niceties and drag me off on some adventure I'm not really up for, a bit like turning up at a new friend's house to play computer games only to be informed that today's activity will in fact be playing chase on the nearby train tracks.
Here, therefore (admittedly 'therefore' is a presumptuous choice of word, you haven't asked for it, I'M JUST GIVING IT TO YOU) is a rundown of some of the inhabitants of my new favourite sub-genre: "Films where the plot gets in the way of my enjoyment of the film". They shouldn't consider themselves failures on this count; most films give me nothing good to say about them. Rather, most of the below should count themselves as 'different', occupying a special place in my heart because I bring something different to them than what the director intended. And that's why I watch them, again and again. To be fair, though, some are just shit
1. As Good As It Gets - A fine example of the genre. Jack Nicholson is a miserable little git, while his neighbour is a noisome little fluffball eternally living in fear of him. Well, actually neither of them are that 'little' but in using that word without thinking I am sub-consciously indicating what a small-scale project this seems at first: Nicholson goes to eat out alone now and then and gets on everybody's tits in awkwardly entertaining fashion, maintaining a particularly fractious and colourful relationship with a waitress. Great, that's the way I like it. But they can't sustain this set-up over the length of a film and have to go on a 'journey' and discover each other. Like a cross-country voyage across Iraq this is dangerous territory and for me the film doesn't make it. Frogmarching fun characters who excel at pratting about into an actual story kills a film that I would have enjoyed better if it consisted literally just of three entertaining screwballs wandering around their seemingly rather cultured neighbourhood upsetting each other, preferably sat in the restaurant as much as possible. Not sure why...
I stop watching: With characters established the neighbour precedes to get robbed, the film stops being funny to see him suffer and the story clunks into gear. Off they go on their journey. Without me.
I'd rather watch: 4 episodes of 'One Foot in the Grave' back to back would be a similar experience, only more consistently rib-tickling.
As good as it got: They haven't commenced their journey just yet, so I'm still watching
'One Foot in the Grave': Got much better. And probably had the edge in terms of 'funniest use of a dog' too
2. The Polar Express - Here the problem is that I don't want the journey to stop. I adore travelling across my beautiful continent, along the railways that link its historic cities and criss-cross its valleys, forests, mountains and fields. I have spent many a night half asleep gazing out into the night at the moon and the vaguely illuminated scenery beneath it, sharing a compartment with strangers who have decided to tolerate my company rather than smother and/or rob me in my sleep. I consider these nights to be among my finest adventures, provided the other passengers keep the window open, or at least don't have feet that reek. With this in mind, watching some kids potter about in some train carriages on a night journey is a far cooler viewing experience than any of the tiresome directions the intruding plot nags us to follow it on. Like when they reach 'Christmas Land' (i.e. when I take the DVD out), or the weird blasts of suspense they half-heartedly experiment with several times, briefly trying to making us wonder if the train conductor is like some kind of cross between Norman Bates and Benito Mussolini (he isn't. He just really wants that train to arrive on time). The experience is much cooler for the fact that the kids are all dead-eyed zombie children, giving it a ghostly atmosphere.
I stop watching: When they arrive at the North Pole and actually have to exit the train
I'd rather watch: An 8 hour train journey recorded on video. Or better still, go on a 8 hour train journey. This little gem will do too.
3. A Beautiful Mind - It says a lot about me that I'd sooner watch some guys sit around in a pub (or, at a pinch, a lecture hall) and talk about maths and economics than partake in some psychological thriller, but that's how I feel about A Beautiful Mind, a film of two halves, one of them being quiet and reflective, the other being a frightful, irritating din.
I would have done a great reconstruction job with this, converting it into a pedantic, scholarly 'romp' on how John Nash re-invented the game 'Go' while handing in the odd assignment. A scene of him painstakingly reading each assignment out loud would be mandatory. I also would have ditched some of the embarrassing exposition, such as the scene in which five maths geniuses put their noggins together and collectively struggle to recite Adam Smith's theory of the invisible hand (i.e. the most famous theory of the most famous economist, page 1 of the 'Ladybird book on Economics', I'd wager) to make a plot point.
The intrusion of the plot is a real pain in the ass. After John Nash graduated in a shower of glory and became a professor I wanted to see endless scenes of him teaching mathematics to awe-struck students. That was his job for heaven's sake and this is a sort of biography. In Walk the Line we keep seeing Johnny Cash singing and playing guitar - what's the difference? The fact that the portrayal of his illness was totally inaccurate and riled those that knew him best makes it an even more ill-advised plot focus, while the need for a rising action makes John Nash look like he has spent 90% of his adult life communicating with ghosts and the remainder doing the odd bit of maths.
I stop watching: When it becomes clear that the randomly visiting military commander isn't going to sod off any time soon
I'd rather watch: Derek Jarmann's 'Wittgenstein' explores the theories of its subject and his trials with a touch more insight. And we get aliens instead of ghosts.
A Beautiful Mind needs more of this...
...and much less of these
4. The Simpson's Movie - Did such a clever show ever attract so many thick fans? Just kidding, but some people really will buy any old tat that somehow has The Simpsons worked into it. Yet for a long time the fact that you could buy boxer shorts with Homer Simpson's ugly mug on them but could not watch a feature length film of him doing what he does best wasn't a problem for us.
Given that many Simpsons fans would have paid to go to a cinema and watch several exclusive episodes back to back, making one that then had to ingest a bucket full of steroids to grow length and become a movie was a bit unnecessary, because it then had to justify this length. The beginning is a fine 20 minutes of very funny jokes that at some point has to step up and turn into a film. Instead the movie plot is shunted onto the back end of this cinema-only episode, creaking like a helipad nailed on top of a Tudor cottage. It somehow sustains the weight of intermittent comic genius and a non-committed romantic subplot tap-dancing on its rickety surface before the silly, overblown plot is resolved in a silly, overblown fashion. This is a good piece of work overall, but I won't escape the image of the writers being presented with several yards more of film reel than they were accustomed to and being ordered to fill them up by any means. If you build a massive container before considering how substantial the product it is supposed to hold is determined there is a strong risk that the product will be so dwarfed by its surrounding volume that it will dangerously career about inside and get smashed to pieces unless held in place by extravagant layers of bubblewrap.
I stop watching: Well, I don't, but stop cramping my point anyway. It's too long and that's that.
I'd rather watch: Well, 'The Simpsons', obviously. But none of those even slightly controversial episodes that C4 sees fit to censor and cut up until they make no sense at all. Show them at the right time of day or give it to someone else you hamfisted dipshits.
You're the most popular and potent TV show ever and yet you still won't be convinced you're fine as you are. Extension isn't the answer
6. Good Morning Vietnam - Robin Williams takes up work as a radio presenter for the US army in Vietnam, playing proper music and cracking jokes, both of which put the wind up the management, who obviously thought that summoning a particularly loud radio presenter from the other side of the world was necessary if they were to continue to carry out functional, non-individually-spirited broadcasting. The dynamic between the bull in the china shop that is Williams, his panicking staff and the irate superiors that flit in and out to bollock them works like a charm and is also that rarest of things, a natural forum for Williams' verbal machinegunfire (not sure how to split this word up appropriately). The film trundles along rather well: He gets fired, his substitute is hilariously inept; the ensuing hate mail is entertainingly vitriolic. Great stuff. Plot development is nothing to get scared of here. So why-oh-WHY does the next segment consist of a humourless Williams chasing some Vietnamese kid around the jungle? All that capering was nothing more than the starting course for some depressing war games? This is another of those films where I can't even remember the ending. They all play baseball together, but does Williams go home, get his job back, get napalmed? I was considering whaling on the Dead Poets' Society for occupying this sub-genre too (with added spleen for being so fucking mawkish) but I like Robin Williams and I don't like getting on his back.
I stop watching: When that pesky war pops up
I'd rather watch: There are plenty of brilliant, funny films that don't get shunted off the road by the unfriendy impact of a brutal invasion and its repercussions. Try 'Mrs Doubtfire'. Or 'The Battle of Algiers'.
7. The Matrix (and its atrocious sequels) - My friends still insist it was always going to be a trilogy. I still suspect that that's want the Wachowski Brothers wanted them to believe and that only I have been unplugged. By late 2003 there was certainly no need to force-feed them 'the blue pill' to convince them that an expansion of their unexpected success had been a bad idea, since those dive-bombs into Lake Shittycaca were unanimously rejected as so bad that whole series was bankrupt and even the glorious first film suddenly had a case to answer. Simple solution: (unless you are a rabid fanboy and can't separate a part from the whole without tarnishing the oh-so precious 'mythology') only regard the first one as canon. The other two films will just make you cheer for the machines and hope that Zion gets blown to smithereens as soon as possible, especially given that any scene in these two films without Agent Smith is unconditionally terrible.
I stop watching: N/A. Just don't touch the two sequels. You know it makes sense.
I'd rather watch: 'The Matrix Part 1', or, as I call it, 'The Matrix'
8. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - No, no, it's actually funny at first. The tall one says 'fuck' a lot, the fat one says nothing. They lumber around town with their knuckles dragging being inhumanly retarded and leaving the wider American public alone. Then, like a drunk lurching onto a packed metro carriage they decide to make themselves everybody's problem and take their stupidity nationwide with increasingly charmless results. Like one of my guitar solos the film doesn't know how to end, yet everyone in the vicinity insists that by any means possible it simply must. I can't even remember the end of this stinker. It just shuts down after gorging on one film parody too many, probably imploding under its own bulk like the fat man in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
I stop watching: At least an hour in. And I always feel dirty for lasting that long.
I'd rather watch: Any of the films it's trying to parody
9. Fahrenheit 9/11 - A stolen election, the drama of the Supreme Court, an idiot president. It's quite entertaining, and at first the young Bush is mildly funny, although much like being in a phonebox with a performing rottweiler you want this Bush to mind his own business while he's entertaining you and making you laugh at him, because when the shit kicks off there will be nowhere to escape. It doesn't take long - 9/11 changes the tone beyond all recognition and we realise that this is a different, more depressing phase where the situation is going downhill so fast that gravity itself is begging it to slow down so it can keep up. We get death, vulgar ultra-nationalism - (seriously, have you worked out if I'm still talking about the film here because I have forgotten??) - and Bush and his gang of crooks are committing crimes left, right and centre. But mostly right.
In a case of art imitating life, the best bits of Fahrenheit 9/11 are at the start. As it drags on the film loses some focus. The allegations it makes are true in so far as they are verifiable facts, but that isn't always the point because as an advocacy tool it doesn't quite work, and I never could see it converting anyone to the cause. And for a Republican the moment this film came out must have been a bit like being confronted in a dark alley by a super-mecha-killer-death robot the size of a small planet armed with a trillion lasers... that it proceeded to shoot off in every direction, somehow missing him but hitting itself a good few times. Too many irrelevant but easy to understand facts like the 'Bush skipped Vietnam' shocker or his numerous holidays were picked up and brandished by some impressed viewers like a child with its dad's gun, when they should have been dismantling the case for the occupation of Iraq.
The content would have worked better in instalments, in a vehicle like Moore's television show The Awful Truth, which brilliantly took a single key issue and ran with it. The effects of this focus were funnier and more coherent than Fahrenheit 9/11, and best of all, they didn't culminate in the heartbreaking false dawn that the film provided, so sure that we were that four years was all that Bush 2 was going to get.
I stop watching: I lived through it, and I had my eyes and ears open the whole time
I'd rather watch: Four years of Ralph Nader would have been nice, though what's on now is also better. Also see: The Awful Truth
10. Secret Window - Teenage girls would happily watch two hours of Johnny Depp installing a bathroom cabinet, so they could certainly live with him lounging about in a shack in the middle of a scenic forest while trying to write a book now and then. The added ingredient of him occasionally getting pestered by an irate rival with an acid tongue claiming plagiarism made it my cup of tea too. And there would be the occasional atmospheric interlude to remind us that we are supposed to be spooked by all this. All the elements are in place for a moody piece that goes nowhere outside my comfort zone. But no. The writers jam a plot into it and craft (i.e. bash together) a half-cocked psychological thriller that gets increasingly sloppy until it dawns on the viewer that at some point that this thing needs an ending and the only remaining possibility is...no, please, no, only an idiot would fall back on a twist as stupid and self-contradictory as that. You can't poss...oh, you just did. You just did.
Secret Window therefore joins the varied ranks of 'Vacancy', 'Roadkill' and other assorted dumb scary movies that want to scare you so invest heavily in preliminary atmospheric dread, but get lost in their own fog when some form of story is required to propel the forboding atmosphere forward.
I stop watching: Our small-scale project has grown ideas above its station by the point that two dead guys turn up in a truck with little logical pretext, and is as a good a time as any to bail out. If I watch it to the end then I'm high.
I'd rather watch: The lounging about in a pig sty of a house and getting nothing done is much more hardcore, and sustained far more beautifully, in 'The Young Ones', whose writers never felt any compulsion to have their show make perfect sense. It's funnier too, obviously. Fans of ghost stories will find sitting outside on a foggy night making ghost noises a worthy substitute.
11. Requiem for a Dream - Well, obviously. To move things along quickly why not just hack the little fucker's arm off and leave the other protagonists in peace.
I stop watching: Real addicts never know when to stop.
I'd rather watch: Well this film I guess. Only backwards, so it has a happy ending.
Oh crumbs, I ended up with eleven. I'll have to practice this list business a bit...
I decided to watch As Good As It Gets the other day, and soon ran into a big problem. After 25 minutes or so I was bored, bored of a film that has awards and award-winning actors all over the shop. And yet something else had taken my attention. Probably the 'pwned' video, I'm sad to report.
One part of me feels this is a symptom of an 'all-access' culture, where I can download a book, a newspaper, a song and a film all on the same screen in front of me, not giving any of them due attention; I have the attention span of a five year old at the best of times. Yet something else needs considering, and that is the film itself. As 'Good As It Gets' has in fact done this to me before. And in 2004 while preparing assignments at university I would frequently find myself sat in front of my friend's DVD player, watching the first half an hour of a 'Beautiful Mind' before turning it off. And then there is the 'Polar Express', the best substitute I have in my house to sitting in a train without going anywhere, yet I couldn't give a flying toss about the plot. In fact, the plot gets in the way, and when it starts to make its presence felt, off goes the film. Yes, I believe a sub-genre exists in my head: Films I watch for the wrong reason, films where the plot is a pain in the ass, swanning in where it's not wanted to deprive me of a far more interesting subplot, preamble or whole other film I'm directing in my head. Films where the exposition and character introduction get me sitting comfortably before the director decided to dispense with niceties and drag me off on some adventure I'm not really up for, a bit like turning up at a new friend's house to play computer games only to be informed that today's activity will in fact be playing chase on the nearby train tracks.
Here, therefore (admittedly 'therefore' is a presumptuous choice of word, you haven't asked for it, I'M JUST GIVING IT TO YOU) is a rundown of some of the inhabitants of my new favourite sub-genre: "Films where the plot gets in the way of my enjoyment of the film". They shouldn't consider themselves failures on this count; most films give me nothing good to say about them. Rather, most of the below should count themselves as 'different', occupying a special place in my heart because I bring something different to them than what the director intended. And that's why I watch them, again and again. To be fair, though, some are just shit
1. As Good As It Gets - A fine example of the genre. Jack Nicholson is a miserable little git, while his neighbour is a noisome little fluffball eternally living in fear of him. Well, actually neither of them are that 'little' but in using that word without thinking I am sub-consciously indicating what a small-scale project this seems at first: Nicholson goes to eat out alone now and then and gets on everybody's tits in awkwardly entertaining fashion, maintaining a particularly fractious and colourful relationship with a waitress. Great, that's the way I like it. But they can't sustain this set-up over the length of a film and have to go on a 'journey' and discover each other. Like a cross-country voyage across Iraq this is dangerous territory and for me the film doesn't make it. Frogmarching fun characters who excel at pratting about into an actual story kills a film that I would have enjoyed better if it consisted literally just of three entertaining screwballs wandering around their seemingly rather cultured neighbourhood upsetting each other, preferably sat in the restaurant as much as possible. Not sure why...
I stop watching: With characters established the neighbour precedes to get robbed, the film stops being funny to see him suffer and the story clunks into gear. Off they go on their journey. Without me.
I'd rather watch: 4 episodes of 'One Foot in the Grave' back to back would be a similar experience, only more consistently rib-tickling.
As good as it got: They haven't commenced their journey just yet, so I'm still watching
'One Foot in the Grave': Got much better. And probably had the edge in terms of 'funniest use of a dog' too
2. The Polar Express - Here the problem is that I don't want the journey to stop. I adore travelling across my beautiful continent, along the railways that link its historic cities and criss-cross its valleys, forests, mountains and fields. I have spent many a night half asleep gazing out into the night at the moon and the vaguely illuminated scenery beneath it, sharing a compartment with strangers who have decided to tolerate my company rather than smother and/or rob me in my sleep. I consider these nights to be among my finest adventures, provided the other passengers keep the window open, or at least don't have feet that reek. With this in mind, watching some kids potter about in some train carriages on a night journey is a far cooler viewing experience than any of the tiresome directions the intruding plot nags us to follow it on. Like when they reach 'Christmas Land' (i.e. when I take the DVD out), or the weird blasts of suspense they half-heartedly experiment with several times, briefly trying to making us wonder if the train conductor is like some kind of cross between Norman Bates and Benito Mussolini (he isn't. He just really wants that train to arrive on time). The experience is much cooler for the fact that the kids are all dead-eyed zombie children, giving it a ghostly atmosphere.
I stop watching: When they arrive at the North Pole and actually have to exit the train
I'd rather watch: An 8 hour train journey recorded on video. Or better still, go on a 8 hour train journey. This little gem will do too.
3. A Beautiful Mind - It says a lot about me that I'd sooner watch some guys sit around in a pub (or, at a pinch, a lecture hall) and talk about maths and economics than partake in some psychological thriller, but that's how I feel about A Beautiful Mind, a film of two halves, one of them being quiet and reflective, the other being a frightful, irritating din.
I would have done a great reconstruction job with this, converting it into a pedantic, scholarly 'romp' on how John Nash re-invented the game 'Go' while handing in the odd assignment. A scene of him painstakingly reading each assignment out loud would be mandatory. I also would have ditched some of the embarrassing exposition, such as the scene in which five maths geniuses put their noggins together and collectively struggle to recite Adam Smith's theory of the invisible hand (i.e. the most famous theory of the most famous economist, page 1 of the 'Ladybird book on Economics', I'd wager) to make a plot point.
The intrusion of the plot is a real pain in the ass. After John Nash graduated in a shower of glory and became a professor I wanted to see endless scenes of him teaching mathematics to awe-struck students. That was his job for heaven's sake and this is a sort of biography. In Walk the Line we keep seeing Johnny Cash singing and playing guitar - what's the difference? The fact that the portrayal of his illness was totally inaccurate and riled those that knew him best makes it an even more ill-advised plot focus, while the need for a rising action makes John Nash look like he has spent 90% of his adult life communicating with ghosts and the remainder doing the odd bit of maths.
I stop watching: When it becomes clear that the randomly visiting military commander isn't going to sod off any time soon
I'd rather watch: Derek Jarmann's 'Wittgenstein' explores the theories of its subject and his trials with a touch more insight. And we get aliens instead of ghosts.
A Beautiful Mind needs more of this...
...and much less of these
4. The Simpson's Movie - Did such a clever show ever attract so many thick fans? Just kidding, but some people really will buy any old tat that somehow has The Simpsons worked into it. Yet for a long time the fact that you could buy boxer shorts with Homer Simpson's ugly mug on them but could not watch a feature length film of him doing what he does best wasn't a problem for us.
Given that many Simpsons fans would have paid to go to a cinema and watch several exclusive episodes back to back, making one that then had to ingest a bucket full of steroids to grow length and become a movie was a bit unnecessary, because it then had to justify this length. The beginning is a fine 20 minutes of very funny jokes that at some point has to step up and turn into a film. Instead the movie plot is shunted onto the back end of this cinema-only episode, creaking like a helipad nailed on top of a Tudor cottage. It somehow sustains the weight of intermittent comic genius and a non-committed romantic subplot tap-dancing on its rickety surface before the silly, overblown plot is resolved in a silly, overblown fashion. This is a good piece of work overall, but I won't escape the image of the writers being presented with several yards more of film reel than they were accustomed to and being ordered to fill them up by any means. If you build a massive container before considering how substantial the product it is supposed to hold is determined there is a strong risk that the product will be so dwarfed by its surrounding volume that it will dangerously career about inside and get smashed to pieces unless held in place by extravagant layers of bubblewrap.
I stop watching: Well, I don't, but stop cramping my point anyway. It's too long and that's that.
I'd rather watch: Well, 'The Simpsons', obviously. But none of those even slightly controversial episodes that C4 sees fit to censor and cut up until they make no sense at all. Show them at the right time of day or give it to someone else you hamfisted dipshits.
You're the most popular and potent TV show ever and yet you still won't be convinced you're fine as you are. Extension isn't the answer
6. Good Morning Vietnam - Robin Williams takes up work as a radio presenter for the US army in Vietnam, playing proper music and cracking jokes, both of which put the wind up the management, who obviously thought that summoning a particularly loud radio presenter from the other side of the world was necessary if they were to continue to carry out functional, non-individually-spirited broadcasting. The dynamic between the bull in the china shop that is Williams, his panicking staff and the irate superiors that flit in and out to bollock them works like a charm and is also that rarest of things, a natural forum for Williams' verbal machinegunfire (not sure how to split this word up appropriately). The film trundles along rather well: He gets fired, his substitute is hilariously inept; the ensuing hate mail is entertainingly vitriolic. Great stuff. Plot development is nothing to get scared of here. So why-oh-WHY does the next segment consist of a humourless Williams chasing some Vietnamese kid around the jungle? All that capering was nothing more than the starting course for some depressing war games? This is another of those films where I can't even remember the ending. They all play baseball together, but does Williams go home, get his job back, get napalmed? I was considering whaling on the Dead Poets' Society for occupying this sub-genre too (with added spleen for being so fucking mawkish) but I like Robin Williams and I don't like getting on his back.
I stop watching: When that pesky war pops up
I'd rather watch: There are plenty of brilliant, funny films that don't get shunted off the road by the unfriendy impact of a brutal invasion and its repercussions. Try 'Mrs Doubtfire'. Or 'The Battle of Algiers'.
7. The Matrix (and its atrocious sequels) - My friends still insist it was always going to be a trilogy. I still suspect that that's want the Wachowski Brothers wanted them to believe and that only I have been unplugged. By late 2003 there was certainly no need to force-feed them 'the blue pill' to convince them that an expansion of their unexpected success had been a bad idea, since those dive-bombs into Lake Shittycaca were unanimously rejected as so bad that whole series was bankrupt and even the glorious first film suddenly had a case to answer. Simple solution: (unless you are a rabid fanboy and can't separate a part from the whole without tarnishing the oh-so precious 'mythology') only regard the first one as canon. The other two films will just make you cheer for the machines and hope that Zion gets blown to smithereens as soon as possible, especially given that any scene in these two films without Agent Smith is unconditionally terrible.
I stop watching: N/A. Just don't touch the two sequels. You know it makes sense.
I'd rather watch: 'The Matrix Part 1', or, as I call it, 'The Matrix'
8. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - No, no, it's actually funny at first. The tall one says 'fuck' a lot, the fat one says nothing. They lumber around town with their knuckles dragging being inhumanly retarded and leaving the wider American public alone. Then, like a drunk lurching onto a packed metro carriage they decide to make themselves everybody's problem and take their stupidity nationwide with increasingly charmless results. Like one of my guitar solos the film doesn't know how to end, yet everyone in the vicinity insists that by any means possible it simply must. I can't even remember the end of this stinker. It just shuts down after gorging on one film parody too many, probably imploding under its own bulk like the fat man in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
I stop watching: At least an hour in. And I always feel dirty for lasting that long.
I'd rather watch: Any of the films it's trying to parody
9. Fahrenheit 9/11 - A stolen election, the drama of the Supreme Court, an idiot president. It's quite entertaining, and at first the young Bush is mildly funny, although much like being in a phonebox with a performing rottweiler you want this Bush to mind his own business while he's entertaining you and making you laugh at him, because when the shit kicks off there will be nowhere to escape. It doesn't take long - 9/11 changes the tone beyond all recognition and we realise that this is a different, more depressing phase where the situation is going downhill so fast that gravity itself is begging it to slow down so it can keep up. We get death, vulgar ultra-nationalism - (seriously, have you worked out if I'm still talking about the film here because I have forgotten??) - and Bush and his gang of crooks are committing crimes left, right and centre. But mostly right.
In a case of art imitating life, the best bits of Fahrenheit 9/11 are at the start. As it drags on the film loses some focus. The allegations it makes are true in so far as they are verifiable facts, but that isn't always the point because as an advocacy tool it doesn't quite work, and I never could see it converting anyone to the cause. And for a Republican the moment this film came out must have been a bit like being confronted in a dark alley by a super-mecha-killer-death robot the size of a small planet armed with a trillion lasers... that it proceeded to shoot off in every direction, somehow missing him but hitting itself a good few times. Too many irrelevant but easy to understand facts like the 'Bush skipped Vietnam' shocker or his numerous holidays were picked up and brandished by some impressed viewers like a child with its dad's gun, when they should have been dismantling the case for the occupation of Iraq.
The content would have worked better in instalments, in a vehicle like Moore's television show The Awful Truth, which brilliantly took a single key issue and ran with it. The effects of this focus were funnier and more coherent than Fahrenheit 9/11, and best of all, they didn't culminate in the heartbreaking false dawn that the film provided, so sure that we were that four years was all that Bush 2 was going to get.
I stop watching: I lived through it, and I had my eyes and ears open the whole time
I'd rather watch: Four years of Ralph Nader would have been nice, though what's on now is also better. Also see: The Awful Truth
10. Secret Window - Teenage girls would happily watch two hours of Johnny Depp installing a bathroom cabinet, so they could certainly live with him lounging about in a shack in the middle of a scenic forest while trying to write a book now and then. The added ingredient of him occasionally getting pestered by an irate rival with an acid tongue claiming plagiarism made it my cup of tea too. And there would be the occasional atmospheric interlude to remind us that we are supposed to be spooked by all this. All the elements are in place for a moody piece that goes nowhere outside my comfort zone. But no. The writers jam a plot into it and craft (i.e. bash together) a half-cocked psychological thriller that gets increasingly sloppy until it dawns on the viewer that at some point that this thing needs an ending and the only remaining possibility is...no, please, no, only an idiot would fall back on a twist as stupid and self-contradictory as that. You can't poss...oh, you just did. You just did.
Secret Window therefore joins the varied ranks of 'Vacancy', 'Roadkill' and other assorted dumb scary movies that want to scare you so invest heavily in preliminary atmospheric dread, but get lost in their own fog when some form of story is required to propel the forboding atmosphere forward.
I stop watching: Our small-scale project has grown ideas above its station by the point that two dead guys turn up in a truck with little logical pretext, and is as a good a time as any to bail out. If I watch it to the end then I'm high.
I'd rather watch: The lounging about in a pig sty of a house and getting nothing done is much more hardcore, and sustained far more beautifully, in 'The Young Ones', whose writers never felt any compulsion to have their show make perfect sense. It's funnier too, obviously. Fans of ghost stories will find sitting outside on a foggy night making ghost noises a worthy substitute.
11. Requiem for a Dream - Well, obviously. To move things along quickly why not just hack the little fucker's arm off and leave the other protagonists in peace.
I stop watching: Real addicts never know when to stop.
I'd rather watch: Well this film I guess. Only backwards, so it has a happy ending.
Oh crumbs, I ended up with eleven. I'll have to practice this list business a bit...
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