Jolt Country

WARNING: SPOILERIFFIC!!!!

Finally got around to watching this last night, and I wrote a mini-review to my father (with whom I often exchange movie reviews), but I thought I'd post it here, too, so that anyone who's seen it and came away with a different impression than I did can, you know, argue with me and get yelled at by me and stuff...

---

Vanilla Sky (**) -- Well. First of all, the absolutely coolest scene in the
movie was the first one, where T. Cruise is in the middle of an empty Times
Square. Interesting trivia: That was not faked. They actually cleared out
Times Square for that shot. I assumed it was faked. But it wasn't.

Now, onto the movie.

There are several different ways of doing a movie like this, where the
audience has no idea what the hell is going on. You mentioned Memento when
you mentioned this movie to me, and Memento (****) takes the (much
preferred) path of gradually revealing itself to the audience (providing
they're paying attention), until at the end, *snap*, everything fits
together and the entire story is understood and everything is just so cool
you can't see straight.

Then there's the technique of getting off on confusing the audience, until
right at the end, where there's a fifteen minute expository scene with one
character droning on and on, explaining the entire movie to the audience.

That's bad enough, but what's worse is when the explanation of the entire
movie doesn't indicate what the actual point of the movie was, and why any
of the things we've seen over the past two hours are important, or even
interesting. This seems to be what happened in Vanilla Sky. The story,
from what I could tell, was: "Man's subconscious haunts him after he dies."
The movie tries to indicate that there was some sort of "spiritual
awakening" at the end, but it's not clear what the awakening was, or what
has changed, or what the POINT OF THE FUCKING MOVIE WAS.

This is Jacob's Ladder without the purpose. Total Recall without the
entertainment.

That being said, it still gets two stars because, although the movie left me
with a very empty feeling, 1) I was never bored, and 2) it was pretty well
done.

For what it's worth, I didn't understand 'Eyes Wide Shut' or 'Natural Born Killers' either. I guess I need to eat more peyote.


THE
ERRUGHINNG
FARTLGIBBET
AARDVARK

I didn't read your review yet, because I haven't seen the movie yet. Somehow, I've managed to gain awareness that there is some sort of "twist" to the movie, but I don't know what that twist is.

If Brodie Bruce himself was not in this movie I wouldn't give a damn. But he (Jason Lee) is. So I am obligated to watch it at some point.

At that point I will read your review and comment on this thread again.

Unless your review is without spoilers. Actually, shit, you're pretty good about not giving away spoilers. I can trust you, right?

Anyway, I think I saw what the "spoiler" was, but I will try to blot it out of my head. I do realize that it is utterly impossible for me to comment on what you (Pinback) wrote, though.

So, uh, hmm.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Actually, shit, you're pretty good about not giving away spoilers. I can trust you, right?

Yeah, except when I put up huge capitalized banners warning people of a spoiler.

So, sorry if you got spoiled, but you should watch it anyway, since:

1. Nothing will make any more sense anyway.
2. You won't feel the experience has been "ruined" for you, since the entire movie is pointless to begin with.

You know, Cameron Crowe is Mr. Bigshot all of a sudden, but other than Jerry McGuire, has this bitch done anything worth watching? I saw Almost Famous, supposedly the greatest movie of all time, and it was just like Vanilla Sky, except less confusing: Two-plus hours about a non-story where nothing interesting happens.

Nothing happens in Almost Famous? I never saw that, either. At least when nothing happened in Clerks you felt you got your money's worth of plotless filmmaking.

Nothing happens in Almost Famous.

Now, by and of itself, having nothing happen doesn't necessarily consign a movie to mediocrity. Hell, not a damn thing happened in "M*A*S*H", but it's one of the greatest, funniest, most enjoyable movies of all time.

The trick to doing a movie where nothing happens is to make it, oh, I don't know, interesting? Entertaining?? Something like that?

Vanilla Sky was interesting, which is why I don't hate it with the passion it deserves, but by the end, I had given up on it having any purpose or meaning or anything you could take from it. "Say, Ben, tell me what Vanilla Sky was about." "I have no friggin' idea."

Almost Famous was neither interesting nor entertaining. I kept wanting for the story to come together, and for something meaningful to happen, but no, all the characters just kept going on and on with their little lives, and then eventually the movie was over. What the hell?

At least Jerry Maguire had a POINT to it, and was entertaining to boot. At the end, he gets with (the extremely adorable, and my favorite actress in terms of how big my cartoon-heart pounds out of my chest) Renee Zellweger, and everyone's happy. There ya go. A purpose. A point.

I've now heard Vanilla Sky compared to: Fight Club, Total Recall, Memento, Jacob's Ladder, etc. Except the difference is, with all of those movies, you could actually kind of *understand* and *appreciate* what the hell just happened, rather than just scratching your head and screaming maniacally at the screen.

Speaking of Renee Zellweger, please go see Nurse Betty. It has the three things I like most in a movie:

1. It's kinda dark.
2. It's kinda funny.
3. Renee Zellweger.

Now there's a movie.

Ben wrote:
You know, Cameron Crowe is Mr. Bigshot all of a sudden, but other than Jerry McGuire, has this bitch done anything worth watching?

Singles. Singles is worth watching. Be forewarned: it's about four or five story lines told in little discrete units, rather than merging into one a la Boogie Nights or Nashville. But it's genuinely entertaining, and it has a soul.

I saw Almost Famous, supposedly the greatest movie of all time, and it was just like Vanilla Sky, except less confusing: Two-plus hours about a non-story where nothing interesting happens.

Hmmm... if Almost Famous is like a meal that's so empty it leaves you wondering if you actually ate anything, Singles is much like getting one tasty appetizer here, another there, until you haven't exactly had a meal, but you've had enough of these little bite-size morsels that you're smacking your lips contentedly.

I suppose two more advisories on Singles: 1.) It's a romance movie, and completely unabashed about it, but not in a ultrasappy bad-chick-flick way, like say, Bed of Roses. *
2.) It's set in early-90s Seattle. Eddie Vedder even has a cameo as the drummer in Matt Dillon's grunge band, Citizen Dick. I like all these things, understand, but the reasons I like Singles may be the exact reasons someone else hates it.

*[[Offtopic warning: if you peruse a video store with some woman and the choice she suggests is "Bed of Roses," RUN AWAY. I'm not kidding. I nearly was forced to gnaw off my left arm at the shoulder to escape just such a predicament. It's like looking at your date's bookshelf and realizing in a cold sweat that this person reads nothing except Danielle Steele novels and Chicken Soup for the Soul books -- a harrowing glimpse into the void of the banal.]]