Gareth and Jett take an in-depth look at three blockbusters, one of which is great, the other good and the third just rubbish. Yep, it's reviews of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, SHERLOCK HOLMES: GAME OF SHADOWS and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 4: GHOST PROTOCOL.
HUGO / THE MUPPETS / THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Preview / A DANGEROUS METHOD
Our Fifth Year Anniversary inlcuding reviews of Anonymous, In Time, our favourite films of the past five years and thoughts on the most TFT Film of all Time
MONEYBALL / REAL STEEL / COYOTE REQUIEM
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES / WORLD ON A WIRE / THE KILLING
From the Member Archives: IRON MAN 2 / TALES FROM THE SCRIPT
CAPTAIN AMERICA / THE ROCKETEER / BEGINNERS / COWBOYS AND ALIENS / Special Guest: Zaid Abu Hamdan director of Bahiya & Mahmoud
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 / PROJECT NIM / TABLOID / Special Guest: Jordan Bayne on her new film THE SEA IS ALL I KNOW
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON / Final Cut Pro X / Special Guest: Terry George and THE SHORE at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and Film Market
SUPER 8 / Special Guest: William Eubank at the 2011 Seattle International Film Festival
The 2011 Seattle International Film Festival / TABLOID / HOT COFFEE / X-MEN: FIRST CLASS / Special Guest Carl Spence
TREE OF LIFE / ROAD TO NOWHERE / Special Guest: Steven Gaydos
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS / How HANGOVER 2 Could Have Been Saved / Brief Thoughts on KUNG-FU PANDA 2 and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4
TFT 173 - FAST FIVE / Special Guest: Fast Five Stunt Coordinator Jack Gill
This is the End and the Beginning / YOUR HIGHNESS / Why We Talk
The Secrets of Pitching with Darris Hatch / The Nashville Film Festival / Erin Buckley on NDAPEWA
BUCK / An Interview with Director Cindy Meehl / THE CONSPIRATOR
SUBMARINE / Ursula Lawrence - Writers Guild of America East
Monte Hellman Interviewed / ROAD TO NOWHERE
SUCKER PUNCH / Elizabeth Taylor / TOPSY-TURVY
BATTLE: LOS ANGELES / LIMITLESS / The iPhone Film Festival
The Oscars / RANGO / THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU / SONG SUNG BLUE
UNKNOWN / a conversation on SHUTTER ISLAND with Glenn Kenny
John Barry Remembered / SOMEWHERE / THE GREY ZONE
THE GREEN HORNET / SEASON OF THE WITCH / FOUR LIONS
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER / THIS WAY OF LIFE / Tom Burstyn Interviewed
TRON: LEGACY / TRUE GRIT / The Films of 2010
An Interview with Armond White / Christmas Carol
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS / 127 HOURS
UNSTOPPABLE / FOR COLORED GIRLS / MORNING GLORY / HOWL / Goodbye to Dino De Laurentiis
THE MILLENIUM TRILOGY / WASTE LAND / MEGAMIND
HEREAFTER / WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS / An Interview with ENTER THE VOID's Nathaniel Brown
THE SOCIAL NETWORK / ENTER THE VOID / David Nadelberg Interviewed on MORTIFIED
SWANSONG: STORY OF OCCI BYRNE / Conor McDermottroe Interviewed at the 2010 LA Irish Film Festival
PERRIER'S BOUNTY / THE 2010 LA IRISH FILM FESTIVAL
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD / EAT PRAY LOVE / THE NATURAL reviewed
Francis Ford Coppola Interviewed on Tetro and Filmmaking
A TFT episode from the Archives, Quantum of Solace
THE OTHER GUYS reviewed plus thoughts on what makes the perfect cinema
Reviews of DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS, THE DINNER GAME and LE DîNER DE CONS
Reviews of M. Night Shyamalan's THE LAST AIRBENDER and Michael Winterbottom's THE KILLER INSIDE ME
I AM LOVE / CYRUS / Edinburgh Film Festival / Members Bonus Episode: SEX AND THE CITY 2
THE A TEAM / Ask The Film Talk on Movie Titles
SPLICE / SEX AND THE CITY 2 / GET HIM TO THE GREEK
PRINCE OF PERSIA / F FOR FAKE / CAT PEOPLE - CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE / [Member Bonus: The Essential Dennis Hopper]
Harmony Korine Interview / TRASH HUMPERS
ROBIN HOOD / THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS / DOGORA / [MEMBERS BONUS: WALKABOUT / CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE]
Flooded Nashville Edition: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET / CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY
Kathleen McNamara / WHY ISN'T CHRIS VON SNEIDERN FAMOUS? / Fest Picks / Nashville Film Festival Day 8
Jim Barham / FOR THE SAKE OF THE SONG / Steven Condon / The Shawn and Hobby Band / RADIO ON / Nashville Film Festival Day 7
Jason Lehel / GAIA / Toby Leonard / The Belcourt / Nashville Film Festival Day 6
Steve James / NO CROSSOVER / Peter Wiedensmith / RAW FAITH / 2010 Nashville Film Festival Day 5
LUNOPOLIS / 3 ACTS OF MURDER / SATURDAY NIGHT / 2010 Nashville Film Festival Day 4
DO IT AGAIN - Geoff Edgers / FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE - James Bigham - Javier Peña / 2010 Nashville Film Festival Day 3
NOWHERE BOY / Brian O'Halloran / 2010 Nashville Film Festival Day 2
PROVINCES OF NIGHT / W. Earl Brown / 2010 Nashville Film Festival Day 1
CLASH OF THE TITANS / THE DHAMMA BROTHERS / ALICE IN WONDERLAND / Film Editing
Hot Tub Time Machine / The Ghost Writer / Yojimbo
TFT 115 - GREEN ZONE / THE ECLIPSE / An Interview with Ciarán Hinds
Brooklyn's Finest / Alice in Wonderland
THE WHITE RIBBON / ONE HOUR FANTASY GIRL / FLIGHT FROM DEATH
CRAZY HEART / EDGE OF DARKNESS [1985 and 2010 Versions]
RED RIDING Scriptwriter Tony Grisoni Interviewed / FISH TANK
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus / The Road / The Book of Eli / Up in the Air
THAT EVENING SUN and an Interview with its Director Scott Teems
The films of 2010 Preview / Prodigal Sons director Kim Reed Interviewed
Sherlock Holmes / Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
Ben Foster Interviewed / The Messenger / The Box / Our Favourite Films of our first 100 Shows
A Christmas Carol / Armond White Interviewed
This is It / Paranormal Activity / A Mad Mad Mad Mad World / Halloween Recommendations
A Serious Man / Amelia / Nostalgia / The Room
Where the Wild Things Are / 5 Ways to Make Your Films Better / Let's Get Lost
The Invention of Lying / Zombieland / Wolf
Capitalism / Zombieland / Return of the Living Dead / Wizard of Oz / Dark Crystal
The 2009 New York Film Festival - Lebanon / Inferno / Room and a Half
The Informant! / Lawrence of Arabia / Andrei Rublev / The Big Blue / Easy Rider
Actor, writer, director Ray McKinnon is interviewed about Randy and the Mob, the Southern film genre and his life as an independent filmmaker.
Ramin Bahrani interviewed about his film Goodbye Solo
Inglourious Basterds / Taking Woodstock / A preview of Gamer
District 9 / Avatar / Slashfilmcast interviewed
In association with the Film Society of Lincoln Center Elliott Gould is interviewed on Natalie Wood and the Films of the 70's
The bone throwing man-ape of 2001, Dan Richter, is interviewed on what it was like working with Stanley Kubrick, the meaning of 2001 and the counter-culture experiences of the '60s.
In association with the Film Society of Lincoln Center we examine the films of Ang Lee
Francis Ford Coppola is interviewed about his new film 'Tetro', discusses the themes of his work and the digital production process, enjoys 'The Hangover' and offers advice for young filmmakers.
Tetro / Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Andrei Tarkovsky / Interview with Dmitry Trakovsky
Glenn Kenny on The Girlfriend Experience and Film Criticism
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 / The Taking of Pelham One Two Three / Food, Inc.
For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism
Pather Panchali / Satyajit Ray / The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Weblog / Joseph Beuys / You Can't Take It With You
Walton Goggins interviewed about 'That Evening Sun'
Nashville Film Festival / William Shatner's Gonzo Ballet / Instead of Abracadabra / Arbogast on Film / Hunger
Shooting Beauty / Voices of El Sayed / Mechanical Love / The Cove / Love on Delivery / Ma Bar / Saint Misbehavin'
Saint Misbehavin' / Voices from El-Sayed
Mechanical Love / Wounded Knee / Voices of El-Sayed
The Films of Stanley Kubrick, Fear and Desire / The Killing / Paths of Glory/ Spartacus / Lolita / Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb / 2001: A Space Odyssey / A Clockwork Orange / The Shining / Full Metal Jacket / Eyes Wide Shut
The Pink Panther / A Shot in the Dark / Inspector Clouseau / The Return of the Pink Panther / The Pink Panther Strikes Again / Revenge of the Pink Panther/ Trail of the Pink Panther / Curse of the Pink Panther / Son of the Pink Panther / The Pink Panther / The Pink Panther 2
Gran Torino / Play Misty for Me / High Plains Drifter
Films Reviewed This Week: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the Best Movies of 2008
Films Reviewed This Week: The Day the Earth Stood Still / Happy Go Lucky
Films Reviewed This Week: Australia / Transporter 3 / Bolt
Quantum of Solace / A View to a Kill / License to Kill
Fear and Desire / Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Righteous Kill
Burn After Reading / Vicky Christina Barcelona
The Love Guru, Tootsie, Groundhog Day
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, The Visitor
The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin
Journey to the Center of the Earth / Hellboy
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Gareth and myself take an in-depth look at three blockbusters, one of which is great, the other good and the third just rubbish. Yep, it’s reviews of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 4: GHOST PROTOCOL.
Running time: 46 minutes and 24 seconds – 44.6mb
You know what? I think this ep is actually better than our Fifth Anniversary Episode. It has singing, sound effects, Fox Business News, Freud, Jung, 3D and a slight mention of Slavoj Zizek. What more could you want? Also reviews of HUGO, THE MUPPETS and A DANGEROUS METHOD.
Running time: 1 Hour 03 minutes and 48 seconds – 61.3mb
Here it is our Fifth Year Anniversary Special! Includes such items as banter, witticisms, back-talk and reviews of ANONYMOUS and IN TIME. As well as our favorite filmic picks from the past 187 shows, thoughts on Steve Jobs, the end of the film camera and the Most TFT Film of All Time.
Running time: 1 Hour 16 minutes and 20 seconds – 73.4mb
Join the Conversation in the TFT Forum
Thoughts on the beautiful and disturbing tone poem that is DRIVE and an exhortation to participate in the exciting new film COYOTE REQUIEM. Oh, and Gareth saw THE IDES OF MARCH apparently.
Running time: 40 minutes and 30 seconds – 37.2mb
Join the Conversation in the TFT Forum
[Spoilers for HOSTEL & HOSTEL: PART II]
I suppose there’s some virtue in showing revolting acts as revolting, and if nothing else, Eli Roth nails that segment of his tragically overreaching statement on globalization, the HOSTEL diptych. As Roth depicts it, torture is dehumanizing and sadistic, as well it should be. What’s more, his crassness keeps him from taking the easy way out, really challenging—insofar as such a film can—notions of deserved violence. Because the entitled hero-victims of HOSTEL are the ugliest Americans (and one Icelander) imaginable, laughing off any cultural experience and even throwing their weight around at a club—“I’m an American, I have rights!”—Roth gives us decidedly unsympathetic protagonists and then tortures them. The position is clear. Even these guys don’t deserve what’s coming (not that they’re warlords or something, either). There’s a parallel in HOSTEL: PART II where the torturer is trying to extract information from her victim. It shouldn’t work, as studies show, but it does, and not out of irresponsibility. It works to show the extreme: even if torture were efficacious, is it worth it?
There’s been some discussion lately about challenging yourself to sit through certain films like SALO or IRREVERSIBLE. It seems to me that lately the horror supergenre has been held rapt not by terror of what’s to come or horror of what just happened but revulsion. Torture-porn, a term that fits the subgenre like an overly starched hand-me-down suit jacket it wouldn’t be caught dead wearing, isn’t about scaring you but revolting you, which is its own kind of endurance test but one that, for me, lacks the fun of anticipating a good scare. Like the B-movies I rail against, it’s mired in self-seriousness with nothing to counterbalance. It’s 100-proof melancholy. HOSTEL always struck me as something that would mostly have my stomach in knots for a couple hours, so when I say I finally watched them, I mean I rented the DVD for HOSTEL in the full sunlight of noon and watched HOSTEL: PART II sanitized for my protection on Syfy. It’s not much different from covering your eyes through the grossest parts and having your parents cover your eyes during the full frontal. Personally, I’ll take it. When are they airing WOLF CREEK?
The grand guignol style weakens whatever topicality Roth is going for, because the obvious response is “CIA torture would look nothing like that.” But as horror, the HOSTEL films cleverly refute the afterschool morality of HALLOWEEN or the ‘80s slasher flicks. Innocence is no shield; only street smarts and a lot of luck can save you here, in—forgive me—a post-9/11 world. But there is hope, if only barely, and that’s a crucial distinction from the films of Michael Haneke or THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. The problem is what that hope represents. Because as near as I can tell, the primary point of HOSTEL isn’t to let a bunch of gorehounds dream up creative ways to autopsy living humans. The HOSTEL films are revenge fantasies. Whatever nonsense Roth says about blowback for America’s foreign misadventures, HOSTEL gives our protagonist every comical opportunity to get even with his tormentors, and by that point, who isn’t cheering him on? Run over those prostitutes or they’ll just lure more unsuspecting kids into the torture factory! Slit that guy’s throat or he’ll strike again! Catharsis doesn’t come from surviving. It comes from killing the bad guys. Are we still talking about geopolitics, Eli?
DEMONLOVER has a few years and tons of style on the HOSTEL films, successfully navigating this labyrinthine (how long until I can use Assayasesque?) multinational corporate infrastructure that treats human beings like toys all through the haze of a good drug trip. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found HOSTEL: PART II much stronger than its predecessor, even with Derek Richardson’s wrenching performance, though both are tonally flat, blunt exaggerations whose cinematic style seems to rely entirely on drawing parallels, for instance, between an Amsterdam brothel and the torture factory (and a train, so . . . who knows what Eli Roth was trying to say with that). PART II follows in DEMONLOVER’s footsteps, fleshing out the inhumanity of its capitalist enterprise and illustrating the impossibility of toppling such a powerful organization. A bunch of rich white guys bid on victims, a scene with all the rhythm and release of masturbation, not really caring that all this money they’re spending eviscerates—literally—actual human lives. The message is that everything is a game to the superwealthy, not least the running of the world, because they will always be insulated from real life as the rest of us experience it. Both DEMONLOVER and HOSTEL: PART II are vertically integrated, but Assayas intellectualizes while Roth physicalizes. There’s a bold image at the end of the first HOSTEL of blood splattering across a crowd of bystanders. Provocation is HOSTEL’s greatest success, but the series’ impact is achieved with concision in a single frame: the grisly photo of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi that greeted so many of us when we woke up Thursday morning.
- – -
Brandon Nowalk writes about film and television for the AV Club, the Maroon Weekly in College Station, TX and at his blog But What She Said and Twitter @bnowalk. His favorite films beyond the usual suspects include Henry King’s The Gunfighter, Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, Orson Welles’ The Trial, Jan Nemec’s Diamonds of the Night, and David Lynch’s Inland Empire.
It’s the Occupy Wall Street Show as we review films that pit the little guy against the boss: REAL STEEL and MONEYBALL. Also we talk with director Jason Lehel, producer John Gordon and star Nicole Herold about their beautiful new film COYOTE REQUIEM as part of its exciting Kickstarter Campaign.
Running time: 43 minutes and 14 seconds – 41.6mb
Please do check out the $2 Kickstarter campaign for COYOTE REQUIEM - it’s a great opportunity to be part of the change in cinema culture!
[Photo by Jett at top: Producer John Gordon gives a hand to actor Kevin McNamara on the set of COYOTE REQUIEM]
Join the Conversation in the TFT Forum
Cough, cough. Eck. Cough, it’s CONTAGION folks and Gareth’s Film of the Year THE GUARD. All that plus Jett’s thoughts on the films of TIFF 2011 including THE BROOKLYN BROTHERS BEAT THE BEST, THE HUNTER and THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH and a brief mention of the new Criterion Jean Vigo Collection.
Running time: 35 minutes and 58 seconds – 34.6mb
Join the Conversation in the TFT Forum
In Which Olive Oyl and Carrie go Head to Head for the Sake of the Female Id, while an English lad and an Australian bloke re-enact the tortured soul of American masculinity, while Nick Nolte tries not to crumble, and Robert Altman smiles down from the heaven he didn’t believe in.
When you’re watching Robert Altman’s 3 WOMEN on Blu-ray, it would be easy, if potentially clichéd, to equate the grain of the image with the seriousness of the director’s intent. It’s like looking at the lined face of an old professor; but on Blu-ray you can see inside the lines. Everything looks so clear on the just-released Criterion edition, and the California desert images are so evocative of a world that hasn’t yet left the Old West behind that it almost makes you yearn to be watching it on a scratched and faded print at an isolated Drive In. The trouble with Blu-ray is that it makes everything perfect, which sometimes crowds out the space for an imperfect human response. It can be a bit like looking at the Grand Canyon: contemplation is invited, analysis pretty much impossible. (Think of the difference between watching ‘Attack of the Clones’ in high-definition [on disc or theatrically projected] and the first time you saw THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK in a theatre; the fact that EMPIRE felt more substantial wasn’t just because it has a better script and you were six: the grain and the matte paintings and the models and, yes, even the performances, were more real than a computer can generate, or a digital image can convey.)
But a perfect film deserves perfect presentation, I suppose. So 3 WOMEN has what it warrants; and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple of mild insomnia-induced hours the other night. Given that the idea behind the film came to Altman in a dream, we were on solid ground. And when the camera opens us into a swimming pool in which young people are guiding the elderly toward their metaphysical exit, we the audience are being born too, so the shift in consciousness that comes late at night – reflective, open to something new – meant it was natural for me to be along for the trip.
Altman was an intellectual artist of the most engaging kind: his camera, fluid, as Bruce Cockburn would say, like the wind in grass, inviting us to observe just like he did, around and near the action, but never in it. He was a man of vast tastes (too easy it is to suggest that because his films had a certain demeanor that the themes were unified – I mean, c’mon, this is a guy who had Anouk Aimee take all her clothes off to make a satirical point about fashion, put US army medics in a Last Supper tableau as a preamble to suicide, and had Harry Belafonte invert everything we think we know about Harry Belafonte so that he could channel Christopher Walken into a jazz era Missouri psychopath). The intellect and tastes here engage the question of what it means to be human – so far, so much that’s-the-point-of-art, I guess – specifically what it means for its trio of female protagonists to be human in a world that wants to make them into machines; either as workers in the factory farm, or as the receptacles of men’s lust or anger, or as the bearers of the very image of humanity by having children.
These are not likeable people – played by Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall and Janice Rule – walking around in circles in the water as they’re dying. Their faces are frightening, their behavior irritating; they invite pity at best, and sometimes fear, because you wouldn’t want to get too close to them, partly because they are carrying on the surface that which you fear most about yourself: that you will never know who you are, that you will always be alone in the world, and that you will spend your life trying to impress people who don’t give a damn.
The murals that Rule is painting in the swimming pool evoke archetypal myth; but the pool obviously has to be drained to permit the paint to dry: it’s a barren space for her to project her fantasies. The 3 women seem to be animated only in their dreams: when Spacek’s Pinky convinces herself that she is someone else; when Duvall’s Millie thinks of the near-ridiculous cowboy Edgar; when Rule is painting ancient stories without ever uttering a word herself. No one could accuse Altman of wanting to be someone else – or at least no one could accuse him of being obsessed with trying. Is this the task of living: to avoid wanting to be someone other than who we are? Maybe. But is his coruscating critique of the lives of these women just cynicism? Does the fact that the film opens with people walking round in circles, waiting to die, suggest nihilism on the part of its director? I don’t think so. ‘3 Women’ is the work of a man in love with cinema (not just the obvious antecedent in Bergman’s ‘Persona’, but the mythic American West too, and there’s even a touch of ‘The Exorcist‘ in the nightmare sequence toward the film’s climax) – and just as Kubrick saw ‘The Shining’ as an optimistic film because it avers a belief in an afterlife, you can’t be entirely cynical if you’re in love. There’s a very telling moment when Millie walks in on an elderly couple making love, on a night when they are distressed by something that has happened to a loved one. Bad things happen, but you can still live; as a certain other film-maker/lover might say. We’ve mislaid some of the tools that might be useful in determining how to function as a whole person; the task for now is to figure out how to figure out who you are without stealing someone else’s soul.
[Brief note: I’ve been thinking about something that Thulsa Doom, the bad-bad-BAD guy in CONAN THE BARBARIAN (which I saw for only the first time this month), says to the Austrian oak at that film’s violent climax, so derivative of the final encounter between Willard and Kurtz that it’s a good thing John Milius wrote that film too otherwise Francis Coppola would be the new Art Buchwald. Thulsa Doom killed Conan’s mother when he was a child; and Conan has pursued vengeance against Thulsa Doom ever since. When he is just about to kill his enemy, Thulsa Doom suggests that this might not be in his best interest, because his whole identity has been so shaped by revenge that he will not know how to live after eradicating his enemy. ‘It will be as if you never existed,’ says Thulsa; and for a moment I thought that Milius was going to tell the truth about retribution: that it serves to perpetuate, not heal, the wounds of violence. But such moments of philosophical clarity do not a Dino de Laurentiis 80s epic make; so Conan cuts Thulsa’s head off, and all is well. Just such a kind of vengeance drives Pinky in ‘3 Women’, and in one of the most surprising collisions of artist intent I’ve seen, you can see a populist male version of ‘3 Women’ at your local multiplex right now. WARRIOR is a far more thoughtful film than its posters suggest; in fact, it may be the post-9/11/Iraq war/war on terror/WTF just happened? movie we’ve been waiting for. Two angry brothers and a broken dad isn’t the most original narrative trope, but neither is love conquers all; doesn’t mean it can’t contain vast emotional truth. WARRIOR is about the need to transcend the violent shadow and the avoidance of anger alike; about how being a man who hopes to do justice to the calling of being human requires integration of what is too simplistically called ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’; about how people deserve a second chance, not least because your desire to withhold that chance from those who have harmed you may actually be continuing your own experience of woundedness. It’s a wonderfully engaging, brilliantly edited, emotionally honest film that moved me. Its vision of what the integrated US American male could be is the inversion of Conan’s path: violence begets violence until someone is willing to change the script. We need an interruption.]
WARRIOR is on general release; 3 WOMEN is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Criterion.
For a film about mixed martial arts, it would have been cool of Gavin O’Connor’s WARRIOR to demonstrate some mixed martial arts. But maybe I’m projecting my own priorities onto a film more interested in showing us, ad nauseam, how this great whatsit is provoking the audience. No matter how fly-on-the-wall the angles or how human the camera, this isn’t FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. That film and TV series is all about the community investing in the game, whereas WARRIOR is a stage piece with a spotlight just big enough to illuminate its hero-brothers and their father. All the cutting pretends this match means more than it does, desperately seeking entry into the Hall of Fame. I see the potential, but in practice it’s a deathless conceit that clarifies its own redundancy not only with twelve shots of the exact same person doing the exact same thing but also by mimicking the real life audience in every way except one: our furious cries to get the camera back to the ring!
This is just one example of WARRIOR’s overinflation, but most of the two-and-a-half hours is actually muscle. Sure, it’s largely masculine melodrama, but like the MMA process* it’s painstakingly procedural, showing every step of the characters’ reunion. [*Well, every step of the physical MMA process; for some reason they elide the scene where Joel Edgerton gets his vanity shot taken for the program.] It may be lengthy, but that’s because the characters—especially the unstoppable Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte—are so damn restrained, so unsure of how to say the things they’ve bottled up for fourteen years. There are fatty moments— like when the principal refuses to let Edgerton’s students watch the fight in the auditorium, and it’s played like a cancer diagnosis as the sound drops out and thuds boom and they walk away for nine minutes—but WARRIOR doesn’t pretend to be any grand artistic statement. It’s a sports film, right down to its costumed predictability. It’s not trying to be Greek myth, but it sure would like to be a statue.
Unfortunately, they don’t give statues for pretending. The clearest sustained shot of MMA is from the nosebleed section, although there are a few exciting fly-bys including a gasp-worthy body-slam. But mostly O’Connor just wants us to know that two bulls are charging each other, not the specifics of their athleticism. This isn’t the first film to cover for its actors-not-athletes as they manage a demonstration of physical performance sufficient for the film’s purposes and no more—BLACK SWAN, GLEE, BUCKY LARSON—but WARRIOR is practically embarrassed of its sport, like a weedy kicker refusing to take his shirt off at the football team’s pool party. Oh, we get plenty of that, by the way, in this beefcake parade, and it only puts the rest in relief: WARRIOR may be a film about muscles and physicality, but it has no interest in the particular application of those muscles, which is what sports is all about (thereby honoring strength, perseverance, character, and other poster slogans). It gives us trains and factories and old-fashioned crank slot machines and a story about someone ripping a door off a vehicle and a philanthropist who pointedly turned his back on digital Wall Street in favor of sports, but the only physical labor we see is Nick Nolte struggling not to laugh at how typecast he’s become. It’s an exciting, moving male weepie, but it’s hard to concentrate on the fight between the heroes when the real tension is between the filmmaker and the film.
- – -
Brandon Nowalk writes about film and television for the AV Club, the Maroon Weekly in College Station, TX and at his blog But What She Said and Twitter @bnowalk. His favorite films beyond the usual suspects include Henry King’s The Gunfighter, Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, Orson Welles’ The Trial, Jan Nemec’s Diamonds of the Night, and David Lynch’s Inland Empire.