Fuck you, too, Family Stone!

At Reverseblog, we've become basically softies. Meaning that we've been terribly wonderful at repeatedly praising our holiday favorites, insistently pushing the good films that we feel have risen above the morass of the Christmastime sewage swamp of overscheduled Oscar bait, and yes, sometimes attacking out of frustration those who don't quite agree. Generally, we have only posted on the blog sneak previews and considerations, with some exception, of stuff we really really want you to go and see (Match Point, Munich, Prime, and of course our oft-touted The New World) and tended to completely ignore those films that left us cold. Well, now that everyone's been left out in the cold here in New York City for a few days now thanks to some whiners who want better pensions and earlier retirement ages (newsflash, my dad had to retire at 62, with no pension whatsoever, and on a less personal note, your 50+ thousand salaries are considerably higher than the millions who ride your subway every day to make that meager living to pay for their children's clothes and food. And on Christmas, too? Not that you read film blogs, but fuck you, anyway).

So in honor of the transit strike, here's a sampling of some godawful pieces of shit currently playing at your local movie theater that you'd be wise not to travel countless city blocks in the freezing winter chill to see.

Mrs. Henderson Presents: Stephen Frears sure has come a looooooong way from My Beautiful Laundrette. Gloppy, shrill, smug—translated as warm, hilarious, and quaint for all those still taken in by these twee British, oh so naughty (pinky to corner of mouth) conveyer-belt comedies—Frears’s Mrs. Henderson Presents is one of those 100% worthless winky-winky period pieces that get released at Oscar time in the U.S. only because everyone knows that we’ll suck up any drivel, as long as it comes with upper-crust British accents and features “daring” old ladies and/or tasteful nudity (both is a plus). In this case, the “legendary” true story of a widow in WWII-time England who opened a nudie vaudeville is trumpeted up to ludicrously patriotic proportions: their girls are showing their naughty parts-- and saving England in the meantime! Judi Dench (enough already) hams and Bob Hoskins haws through an endless series of incredibly unclever repartee (featuring some of the year’s worst screenwriting, the film seems to always know how to drain a comic predicament of all humor). Tedious, completely unwatchable junk, but with the protective layer of period importance to separate it from less-sanctified American low comedies like Just Friends.

The Family Stone: Promising indie gay auteur makes good…comes to Hollywood…sells out in approximately 20 minutes. There’s the kernel of something very worthwhile here, as Thomas Bezucha (pronounced Bazooka) so casually thrusts you into the cacophonous void of a wealthy, self-satisfied, liberal, completely insular family as they wait to tear apart gold child Dermot Mulroney’s uptight new fiancee, played by resolutely TV-acting actress Sarah Jessica Parker. A family’s own interior communication, the offhanded cruelty they display to those outside of their perfect circle; not a bad premise. Unfortunately, Bezucha deserves a big smack in the mouth for the film’s rapid degeneration into cutesy romantic comedy; the siblings arrive, and everyone pairs off and finds their perfect partner, all while matriarch Diane Keaton presides, hoping her children will find happiness on this, her last Christmas before the cancer eats her. Sanctimonious and tone-sloppy, yes, but also actively offensive in its propensity for tidy resolutions and easy outs for conflicts. Basically it succumbs to all the mistakes that Jodie Foster’s superlative Home for the Holidays, which resigned itself to pain and agitation as a way of life, avoided with deftness. By the way, the homo son here is also DEAF…talk about not letting the gay character speak for himself.

The White Countess: It pains me twofold, both because of Ismail Merchant’s sad recent death, and also because I am resolutely not one of those Merchant-Ivory bashers, a group that has grown exponentionally with each passing year. Howards End and Remains of the Day, wonderful films, are often dissembled for nothing greater than their stateliness, a pretty vacant criticism, seeing as how their interiors and exteriors are perfectly wedded. Even some of their lesser films, like A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries and The Golden Bowl, are wonderfully odd, engagingly lopsided narratives that seem to break rules of storytelling even while playing by the rules. Sadly, their last film, coming out finally, rightfully unheralded, is inert and simplistic. Ralph Fiennes has his touching moments as a blind American diplomat living in Shanghai right before WWII, but he also has just as many laugh-out-loud humdingers (remembrance of his beloved horse-race pastime is awkwardly depicted as he wistfully impersonates a solitary jockey…hard to explain now, but impossible to forget once you’ve seen it). Natasha Richardson chews on her accent like peanut brittle as the aristocratic Russian expatriate living in poverty with whom he falls in love. Dialogue like “I’m just a blind man in this crazy world!” follows.

Special shut-out also goes to the ass-scaldingly long King Kong…the T-Rex fight is fucking cool, but the film’s overall concept (as a supposed revisioning of an exploitation movie as an epic romance) falls apart due to its univestigated, jaw-dropping racism (more on that later in RS). Revisionism this ain’t. And as Oscar season approaches, let us not forget that last shot from Walk the Line, of Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash, surveying the pond-side idyll of his extended family, caught in an awkward freeze frame which made him look like he had just sniffed a butt. There’s treasure everywhere!

Not about movies obviously, but I think you missed the point a little, e. In that, not once do I here, or have ever, compared myself or my own situation to the MTA workers, and my week has hardly, at all been inconvenienced. I have no expectations or hope for pensions, and god bless anyone who can get them. The real issue is not the economy of New York for businesses at Xmastime, or having to walk across the bridge (which admittedly has a pretty darn good view), but the disregard for the other people who can't make it to their jobs once the whole system shuts down. People, most of them working-class people who make a lot less than the MTA workers, rely on the subways and buses more than any other city in the U.S., so when this happens, and there are no car alternatives, then everything shuts down. Doctors, nurses, teachers -- either they show up late or not at all. Very low-income families, parents who pull in 55 dollars a day to pay for three kids, have to forfeit days of work. And right before the holidays, too.

So, inversely, I would argue that your position is as much from a sufficient, sustainable plateau as well...liberal ideals are all well and good, and we can romanticize the strikers and the unions as much as we want (which we all do up to a point when it doesn't yet have repercussions), but the truth is yes, it's not affecting us. Not at all. But it's affecting a hell of a lot people who have it a hell of a lot worse than us, and for many (no, not us), it's simply devastating. Hoping for a peaceful resolution today or tomorrow.

Lets not going making a shining example of the French economy, buddy.

yeah, and the new world is so good even malick -- mr. intransigent auteur -- has been cutting it down from the unqualified masterpiece you've gushed about. you really want to hang your hat on that movie? you really think it couldn't have been much more effective as a narrative? i adore malik's other films, but please. king kong sucks? please. it makes me wonder whether you guys take these extreme positions on films because that's how you feel about them or that's how think "young turk" critics like yourselves are supposed to feel about certain movies in order to get your name out there. put down your back issues of cahiers du cinema and really deal with the films you write about without passing them through some bullshit academic filter. prime? it's fucking horrible. glib, broad, painful crap. munich? the sex scene at the end is just textbook bad filmmaking and storytelling. but you loved it. but according to you, it's better than kong. you guys have really been a disappointment.

uh oh, we like the Malick film and not King Kong....you guys ready to pack it up? I say we just stop right now.

"Mr. Bloe," I think you might need to recognize that three different authors have provided positive commentary on THE NEW WORLD, while only one has commented positively on PRIME and MUNICH as well. That's kinda the point of the blog, BJ: different perspectives, different voices. Please address yourself to the writer in question rather than making broad generalizations. We'd greatly prefer it.

As to your first point, well, I'd say that THE NEW WORLD is effective precisely because it plays with narrative form. It is very much a narrative, I wouldn't argue it as anything but, and, even worse for us Cahiers-wielding snobs: IT'S A LOVE STORY. How hackneyed!

Yet, here we are praising it just the same while J. Hoberman trashes it. And i'm quite sure more are to follow his lead. So how are we the extreme ones for priasing a film that is, at heart, based around the most fundamental of narrative conventions?

Did he just call us "young turk critics"? God, I love this blog.

Bloe Job,
Were you trying to win a prize by being lucky number 1000 to argue for a criticism that's less "academic bullshit" while simultaneously asking RS writers to "really deal with the films" in the same sentence? 'Cause congrats! You fucking won, Charlie, the factory's yours!

Is it just me or is there a legion of RS haters out there who channel the cosmos while they "deal" with films in a more appropriate manner? Where the fuck do I sign up? Honestly? Can the chief of the voodoo-crit tribe please stand up and make a cogent argument in the name of his followers because I'm at a loss as to why you all insist on spitting up non-commentary that asks RS writers to "get real" with our critical methods with a wink-and-a-fart's worth of insight from your end.

"put down your back issues of cahiers du cinema and really deal with the films you write about without passing them through some bullshit academic filter"?

I don't want to sound like a broken record but ONCE AGAIN: What the hell does this mean? How are YOU dealing with films 'cause apparently there's some method of dealing with cinema that I'm not quite attuned to, that RS doesn't get, and if you're not just that fucking kid in line spouting doofisms about Gus Van Sant and all the Ozu films (you haven't seen) - yes you, Johnny Transcendental - please come to the table with some goods 'cause my plate is STILL fucking empty.

God, I love this blog. It's you and me, Bloe Job. Together. Turk.

Oh yeah, and by the way, BloeJob, if you don't think there's something fishy afoot with King Kong's racial stereotyping, then you're a fucking moron.

Not to play devil's advocate here, but I found nothing "fishy," per se, with any of the racial stuff in Kong, and I'm no fucking moron. But, you know, keep jerking your knee in time with the tune of the faux-aghast liberal crit establishment. Lord knows the world needs more of that.

Uh...natives cast almost fully as actors with exaggerated African features, eyes rolled back to the whites, gigantic lips with sticks shoved through them, beating to death countless white protagonists with canes and sticks, then grabbing virtuous white Naomi to sacrifice to a giant ape? I know Jackson's been trafficking in this stuff his whole career (opening of Dead Alive, LOTR etc.) but whereas previously it's been relievingly tongue in cheek, this time it's just too much. Hence, it's finally become, I insist, "fishy." And when you extend a brief exploitation pic from the 30s into a 3 hour epic romance, revised in a sense into an emotional experience, then I think there's some sort of responsibility to revise the whole thing. As is, it's a pretty lopsided movie. Nothing kneejerk here...I would argue the utter embrace of the film critically has been strikingly forgiving of many of the film's idiocies (of which the racial stuff is just one).

Actually I much prefer mincing, lisping, ascott-wearing interior decorators.