May. 11th, 2007

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Such is the fate of 28 Weeks Later, the movie that I want to see alone in a theater, having been obsessed with 28 Days Later and seeing that alone in my dorm room. 

This usually does not happen.  Usually, the Journal Star (our hometown paper) gives okay grades to bad movies that may still appeal to a mainstream audience, while the New York Times will bash it.  This is what happened to Spider-Man 3 - the Journal Star said it's a "popcorn movie masterpiece" that's "never even close to boring" and urges viewers to see "your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man".  But the Times said it's "Aesthetically and conceptually wrung out, fizzled rather than fizzy... just plods and plods along". The Journal Star will also give high grades to most indie movies, documentaries, foreign films, and deep dramas - not because its reviewers think that the movie is actually good, because they probably did not understand it, but because they think it looks like a movie they should give a high grade to.  The New York Times is more cynical with those movies as well. 

My dream last night said that 28 Weeks Later got four stars, and I was amazed.  Well, when I opened the movie review section, "Ground Zero", this morning, I saw that 28 Weeks Later had instead received 1 1/2 stars.  The review was actually stolen from The Orlando Sentinel, because they don't have the staffpower to see every movie that comes out, apparently, and it says, "another Hollywood killing machine, brutal and heartless", apparently not fond of the central message of the movie: "here's a movie that comes out on the side of genocide.  Sympathy is weakness.  Empathy - for children, innocent civilians, parents and your own offspring - will get you killed", and also criticizes the familiar whipping point of the first movie: the "jaded attitude about the coarse and callous U.S. Army". 

The New York Times, however, denotes the movie a "critic's pick", an extremely rare honor.  Chief reviewer A. O. Scott says of the movie, "brutal and almost exhaustingly terrifying, as any respectable zombie movie should be.  It is also bracingly smart, both in its ideas and its techniques".  To Scott, the central message of the movie is: "To the soldiers and survivors alike, there are only bad choices, and doing what seems like the right thing - firebombing an open city or rescuing children from the bombs - can turn out to have horrendous consequences."  It also points to something I agree with - the ability of the zombie movie to serve as grand allegory.  Here it's the war in Iraq - Americans occupying a ravaged land in order to return stability to it, then destroying it to save it, etc.  Benevolence is punished, but for the Times, that's a political point. 

Incidentally, 28 Weeks Later has a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the Cream of the Crop reviewers giving it 88%.  (Spider-Man 3 has a 61% rating, and a Cream of the Crop rating of 45%)

The reviews lend themselves to issues I'd like to resolve for myself:  the good Samaritan issue, the overkill issue.  Along with who are the sympathetic characters, why does anyone do what they do, how are the zombies dealt with - standard zombie movie questions.  My impression is that whereas 28 Days Later was post-apocalyptic, this movie is apocalyptic - it's about breakdown, not the survival of a few in an already broken world.  And anything that concentrates on the breakdown itself is bound to be more depressing than that which concentrates on the perseverance of survivors.  I guess that when everybody said 28 Days Later was smart and meaningful, it was only because the embedded message (or so they thought) was the triumph of the good guys.  If that's not the message, simple minds get uncomfortable. 

But I would like to see it myself.  Alone in a dark theater. 
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Malcolm:  The kind of control you're attempting is not possible because if there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained.  Life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but uh... well, there it is. 

Malcolm:  Gee, the lack of humility before nature that's being displayed here... staggers me.
Gennaro:  Well, thank you, Dr. Malcolm, but I think things are a little bit different than what you and I feared.
Malcolm:  No, I know, they're a lot worse.
Gennaro:  Now, wait a second, we haven't even seen the park yet...
Hammond:  No, no, let him talk. 
Malcolm:  Don't you see the danger, John, inherent, in what you're doing here?  Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun.  I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using.  It didn't require any discipline to attain it.  You know, you read what others had done, and you took the next step.  You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it.  You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now, you're selling it, you're selling it.  Well...
Hammond:  I don't think you're giving us our due credit.  Our scientists have done things which nobody has ever done before.
Malcolm:  Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. 
Hammond:  Condors!  Condors are on the verge of extinction.
Malcolm:  No...
Hammond:  If I was to create a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn't have anything to say.
Malcolm:  Now hold on.  This isn't some species that was obliterated by deforestation or the building of a dam.  Dinosaurs had their shot and nature selected them for extinction. 
Hammond:  I simply don't understand this luddite attitude, especially from a scientist.  I mean, how can we stand in the light of discovery and not act?
Malcolm:  Well, what's so great about discovery.  It's a violent, penetrative act, it scars and destroys.  What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world.

Malcolm:  Oh, God help us, we're in the hands of engineers.

Malcolm:  Now eventually you might have, uh, dinosaurs on your, uh, dinosaur tour, right?
Hammond:  I really hate that man.

Malcolm:  See here I'm now by myself, uh, talking to myself.  That's chaos theory. 

Malcolm:  Kids okay?
Grant:  I didn't ask, why wouldn't they be.
Malcolm:  Kids get scared.
Grant:  There's nothing to be scared about, it's just a hiccup in the power...
Malcolm:  I didn't say I was scared.
Grant:  I didn't say you were scared.
Malcolm:  I know.

Malcolm (as the t-rex is breaking through the fence):  Boy, do I hate being right all the time.

Hammond:  All major theme parks have delays.  When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked.
Malcolm:  Yeah, but John, if Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.
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"I don't want to be a product of my environment."

THE DEPARTED:  *spoilers*  When I told my mother I had seen The Departed, she responded, "What's that movie about?"  I said, "It won the Oscar."  She looked at me as if that told her nothing - and indeed, given every year's oscar picks, it really doesn't.  I elaborated, "It's a mob movie.  There's the mob and the police and they each have informants."  She added, "Yeah, and it had a lot of big names in it?"  I nodded.  "Jack Nicholson is the mob boss, Leonardo diCaprio is the informant for the police, Brad Pitt is the informant for the mob, and they're in each other's corners, so it's like cat and mouse."  "Tense?" my mother asked.  "Yeah.  And lots of... bang bang."  "Shoot 'em up."  "Yeah." 

This of course is an extremely simplistic explanation of The Departed.  However, there are a few things I must get across before I get any further with this review.  I don't believe that The Departed has a message.  There's no parable, no moral to the story, no allegory, no step toward greater understanding of the state and purpose of humanity.  It's just a damn good movie, and that's all.  It's not a popcorn movie either.  It's too suspenseful, too nervous, too jumpy, too anxious, too in need of the Valium that DiCaprio's character craves, for that.  This is much more along the lines of the old movies that Scorcese never won the Oscar for - Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator (not so much The Last Temptation of Christ).  The only message in this movie, if any, is that as Nicholson says, you can be cops or robbers, but when you're staring at a barrel of a gun, it doesn't matter.  A better one, actually, comes from the Pakistani proprietor who watches a Bostonian mobster beat up two Providence mobsters in his store for insulting Irishmen - "What's wrong with this fucking country?  Everybody hates everybody!"

The theme is lying.  Everyone lies.  And you must always, always assume - if survival is your goal - that whoever you're talking to is lying, and further, that they have something planned.  I won't go into the plot of the movie, which is too long and which you can look up on wikipedia.  I'll just say a few things.  First, all the acting is excellent.  The most likable character is hands down Leonardo DiCaprio's (listed first on the credits, this is first and foremost his movie, and he is excellent... after this and Blood Diamond, he's steadily rising on my list of favorite actors), and the most dislikable character is hands down Matt Damon's - ironic since they are foils for each other, and DiCaprio is the one living the shady life as the undercover officer, having to participate in mass murders and all, whereas Damon is living the life of Mr. Perfect - except that of course he's actually a rat for the mob - and plays a role very similar to the one he played in The Good Shepherd - the pinstriped prick.  The twisted allegiances make it extremely hard to root for either the corrupt, uncommunicative, and yet determined, police or the immoral, backstabbing, and yet sympathetic mob.  And I think it's supposed to be that way - I think if we ended up taking sides and making proclamations about good and evil (except that they're blurred), the movie would fail, and that serves as evidence of the actors' aptitude in their roles, even the ones I couldn't stand. 

Which brings me to the second thing I have to say - Jack Nicholson is absolutely excellent as the evil mob boss.  He's king of political incorrectness, speaking of "Guineas" and "cunts" and threatening horrendous deeds without flinching, but of course Nicholson has a way of being charming even when he's being sadistic.  He is also the father figure for both DiCaprio and Damon.  And what a twisted father he is.  But so, then, are they twisted sons.  This is sort of a Hobbesian movie in that sense - these men are savage men, living without commitments or real relationships, to even each other.  The most important thing is the ego - not only in the sense of macho, cock-wielding bravado, but in the sense of ego = I am.  As in, I have a sense, a self, an identity, inalienable rights that come with my soul.  Sometimes it seems they really just spend the whole movie trying to reach that.  As DiCaprio keeps demanding, "I just want my identity back." 

Finally, I lied.   I did take sides.  I hoped Damon would die, and I hoped DiCaprio would live.  There, I said it.  And yes, I'm telling the truth.  I said it was fucking true.  Let's just say that I was compromised, but that in a movie like this, you couldn't expect anything less, or more, than compromise - because the way the world works, it's like a business deal.  You win some, you lose some.  Good people die, and bad people die.  Everything dies.  Oh yeah, I lied again.  This movie does have something to say, and that's what it is - everything dies.  As Nicholson says in all his wisdom, we're all on our way out: act accordingly.  Somehow this message doesn't end up being all that depressing - it just makes you feel like karma has won out, with a bullet.  The balance between good and evil, with neither side winning, continues.  The slate is wiped clean.  Both boys wish that they could start over, because they see that they can't have their selves back: they may as well just get a new self entirely, not a muddled, puzzled self stuck between two or three existences.  They realize this when they're about to die, when they've lost everything: please, let me start over.  But well, they don't get to in life.  Hopefully they believe in reincarnation.  It's still a damn good movie.  Will it change your life?  Probably not.  But it's a hell of a good way to spend two and a half hours. - Highly Recommended.


nota bene:  I'm slightly disturbed that KM, head of our department, disliked this movie so much because it was so mindlessly violent.  I wonder if AC felt the same way... and perhaps I should just avoid KM, who is apparently also a republican.

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