Contour At The Movies

Overall Impression – I’m not sure what liking this movie tells me about myself.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Dave.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Become a superhero. Personal: Get Katie to love him. Private: Overcome the loss of his mother and the breakdown of his family.

Who’s trying to stop him? – The very, very evil Frank D’Amico.

What happens if he fails? – He and 11 year old Hit Girl will get killed, and the city will be overrun by D’Amico’s evil criminal empire.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Dave is a social outcast at school, who claims that his only super-power is being invisible to girls.

Wanderer – He decides that he wants to be a superhero and goes about trying to figure out how to do it and not get himself killed.

Warrior – He becomes an internet sensation, and struggles to keep everything together as he realizes that things are getting out of control.  In addition, he meets some real (and really nuts) super heroes, Big Daddy and Hit Girl.

Martyr – Realizing that he can’t hide anymore, he needs to believe in his own hype and risk it all to save Hit Girl and bring down D’Amico.

AND, IN THE END…

CLICK to hear the PODCAST

Yes, everything you’ve heard about the movie is true: there is an 11 year old girl who kills with abandon, get’s the snot kicked out of her by a 40 year old man, and uses worse language than I ever did, and I grew up in Brooklyn.  This movie takes your moral compass and spins it like a top.

And yet…and yet…KICK-ASS is overflowing with a sense of fun and irreverence.  It dares you not to take it too seriously.  But, is that possible, with cute-as-a-button Hit Girl bloodily killing people with the abandon of a heartless abattoir worker?

I’m confident that KICK-ASS wasn’t trying to inspire moral hand-wringing, but it is what it is.  And considering that the movie didn’t perform as well as hoped for in spite of the skill and originality behind it, perhaps this is a good example of underestimating what the market will tolerate.

I’m glad I saw the film, and fervently hope that it doesn’t inspire a raft of similar movies.  And I’m not sure what that says about me, either.

- Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – More is sometimes less.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Tony Stark

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Keep his Iron Man suit from falling into various wrong hands. Personal: Make the ultimate connection with Pepper Potts. Private: Find a way not to die because his chest-mounted arc reactor is poisoning him.

Who’s trying to stop him? – A plethora or fairly useless villains, including bitter, revenge-fueled Ivan Vanko, jealous and egotistical Justin Hammer, and officious and misguided Senator Stern.

What happens if he fails? – The Iron Man technology will be used by the military who, presumably, don’t know how to use things that blow up other things.  The real problem is that if Tony Stark doesn’t come up with a new energy source, he’ll die.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Tony, knowing that he’s dying, is making himself more of a jerk than before, alienating those closest to him..

Wanderer – After narrowly suviving an attack by Ivan as Whiplash, Tony tries to come up some new energy sources (this is implied, more than shown).  Failing this, he shifts into uber-jerk mode and goes on a morbid quest to make himself happy (also, more implied than shown.)

Warrior –  Very, very weak.  Ivan is presumed dead so Tony’s not fighting Ivan.  Hammer is working quietly on his own mechanized robots, so Tony’s not really going mano-a-mano with Hammer, and the Senate hearings are over so he’s not going up against the Senator.  I guess Tony kinda fighting to stay alive, but he’s not actively doing anything until he bottoms out at the end of Act Two.  This section really dragged and was poorly defined.

Martyr – Tony realizes that he has to pull himself together in order to find the cure to his blood poisoning, defeat Ivan whom he now knows is alive, and save Pepper who somehow has managed to be able to command the NYPD and is in danger of being blown up.

AND, IN THE END…

CLICK to hear the PODCAST

I loved the first IRON MAN, and I have huge respect for Robert Downey, Jr.  This movie, however, in trying to humanize Tony Stark just seemed to play like a version of LEAVING LOS VEGAS as imagined by Stan Lee.

I remember looking at my watch as the first Iron Man fight occurred in Monaco between Tony and Ivan.  It was around 4:50pm (if memory serves).  The movie started at 3:10.   Give 20 minutes for trailers and commercials, and that’s well over an hour into IRON MAN 2 before the first Iron Man fight.  And it wasn’t even that good of a fight.  That’s some superhero story architecture math that just doesn’t add up.

In attempting to make Tony more human, they made his Raison d’être an appendage.  Even my very non-discriminating 12 year old son was shifting in his seat, waiting for something to happen.  I think it says a lot that one of my favourite moments in the movie wasn’t even in the movie: in the trailer to the movie, Tony and Pepper are in the back of an open airplane and Tony asks Pepper for a kiss.  She sensually kisses Tony’s helmet that she’s holding in her hands and then tosses it out of the back of the plane.  ”You complete me” he says as he jumps out the plane and goes after it.  Too bad that scene isn’t in the finished film.  More of this and less of Tony Stark dressed as Iron Man and drunkenly blasting watermelons tossed by buxom partygoers at  his birthday party, I say!

Meanwhile, the movie has made almost $330 million dollars since it opened overseas last weekend and in North America this weekend.  That’s a pretty good haul and a good indicator that Iron Man 3 is already in the planning stages.  It’s also the exact reason I maintain that if you want to learn what makes a good movie, you have to ignore sequels and remakes and only examine those non-sequel, non-remake, non-adaptations that come out of nowhere and excite the masses.

- Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – Inside this raunchy, foul-mouthed comedy is a sweet movie.  Somewhere.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Adam

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Get back to 2010 from 1986.  Personal: Be a good friend to crazed, alcoholic Lou.  Private: Pull his life together and learn that some things just can’t be controlled.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Blaine, the ski patrol jock (although Blaine is after Lou more than he is after Adam.)

What happens if he fails? – They get stuck in the past and Jacob, his nephew (who technically hasn’t been born yet) phases out (aka, dies).

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Adam’s girlfriend has just moved out, leaving Adam with a very nice but fairly denuded apartment.  He’s got his shut-in nephew staying with him and a couple of sad-sack friends whom he isn’t close with.

Wanderer – After a drinking binge in a faulty hot tub, Adam, his friends, and nephew end up in 1986.  There is the usual wandering around, first to figure out what has happened, then to figure out what they need to do to fix the situation, all the while prodded on their way by the mysterious hot tub repairman who knows more than he’s saying.

Warrior – Upon learning what they need to do, the three set out to recreate the events of their night together in 1986 that has supposedly led to their current state of sad-sackiness.  They each have middling and modulated success doing this, until finally they’ve defeated the ski patrol jock and prepare to get back to 2010.

Martyr –   Lou realizes that he can change his future by staying in the past (betting on games he knows the outcome to and inventing that ubiquitous search engine, ‘Lougle’)  and Adam, not wishing to abandon his friend again is willing to stay with him even though he doesn’t want to live through the same twenty years all over again.  Lou sacrifices having his best buddy around by tossing Adam into the newly repaired hot tub (time machine!).  Even the ski patrol has a little martyr moment at the end, giving up their revenge against Lou, Adam, et al in order to save someone’s arm in one of the most over-the-top comedy runners of recent memory.

AND, IN THE END…

And the winner of the most F-words in a single movie goes to…

It’s probably not the winner, but it’s gotta be in the top ten.  At the very least, an honourable mention of some kind.  And not to be prudish, but this was a case where the overuse of foul language didn’t punctuate the movie, it defined the experience of watching it.  The over-application of the F Bomb actually interfered with what could have been a funnier, more satisfying movie.

To compare, THE HANGOVER, with its 78 F-words and its derivatives (according to www.kids-in-mind.com) managed to make me laugh with guilty pleasure.   HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (191 F-words and its derivatives) just made feel guilty.  The unfortunate thing is that there really is a good, kind-hearted story in HOT TUB TIME MACHINE, however my first memory after seeing the movie is neither the story nor the jokes (those memories come later) but apologizing to my wife and the other couple with whom I saw the movie for not investigating it more carefully before suggesting we see it.

The odd thing is that the more I think about the movie, the more moments I remember liking.  It’s both a shame that they got buried in an avalanche of foul language as well as a cautionary warning to writers and producers.

I’m not the first person to compare HOT TUB TIME MACHINE to THE HANGOVER, and their respective box office takes are: after 13 weeks in release,HOT TUB TIME MACHINE is at $40 million dollars.  THE HANGOVER, at 13 weeks, was at $163 million dollars.  Obviously there are many different factors that explain the relative success between movies, but one certainly cannot rule out the possibility that the pervasive, unnecessary foul language is a much bigger turn off than a turn on.

- Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – Alice’s return trip to Wonderland is curiously forgettable.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Alice.

What’s she trying to accomplish? – Physical: defeat the Jabberwocky and save Wonderland from the Red Queen.  Emotional: decide whether or not to get married.  Spiritual: learn that she can choose her own path.

Who’s trying to stop her? – The Red Queen, the Knave of Hearts, plus Alice doubting that she’s the Alice that Wonderland wants her to be.

What happens if she fails? – Alice and her friends will die, and the Red Queen will continue to rule Wonderland unopposed.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Alice has forgotten her first trip to Wonderland, so when she does return, it’s like venturing into a new world.  She’s also forgotten that Wonderland taught her to make her own destiny instead of doing what people tell her to do.

Wanderer – Alice explores Wonderland, meeting all of her old friends and learning what the Red Queen has done.  She tries to figure out if this is all a dream, and whether or not she’s the Alice that everybody hopes she is.  She learns that Alice, whether that be her or another Alice, is destined to defeat the Jabberwocky and free Wonderland from the Red Queen.

Warrior – Alice sets out to rescue the Mad Hatter from the Red Queen and to retrieve the fabled sword needed to defeat the Jabberwocky.

Martyr – Alice accepts her destiny as the White Queen’s champion, and faces the fearsome Jabberwocky one on one to save Wonderland.

AND, IN THE END…

This attempt to retell ALICE IN WONDERLAND as a linear story instead of a somewhat random series of events could have a certain appeal, and there’s nothing wrong with trying to add more depth to an already rich story.  On the other hand, by making sense of the non-sensical, you risk taking the heart out of what Wonderland is about.

Alice’s return to Wonderland felt a little flat, and even tedious at times.  Her first adventure was incredibly weird, and incredibly memorable.  As a result, I couldn’t buy that she’d chalked her first trip up to a dream, let alone that she spent the entirety of the movie convinced that she wasn’t the same Alice that had visited Wonderland previously.  Alice and her audience have already experience Wonderland, yet Alice is the only one who can’t remember anything about that incredible first trip.  Maybe it’s inevitable that this adaptation felt slightly old hat…  How much wonder is left in Wonderland when you’ve been there countless times before in other adaptations?

That being said, a lot about ALICE IN WONDERLAND is new, and often very fun.  The Mad Hatter’s crew and the Red Queen throw out some laughs, and it goes without saying that this is an incredibly visual movie.  I might have enjoyed the film more had I seen it in 3D.

One thing WONDERLAND does well is illustrating the power of ‘kick the dog’.  This land is so full of animal characters that you can tell who the bad guys are, and how bad they are, by how severely and how often they ‘kick the dog’.

The Red Queen is the worst animal abuser: she whacks rodents around the lawn using bird clubs, uses pigs as footstools, decapitates a frog servant, and holds a dog’s family hostage!  Next down the list is the Knave: while the Red Queen’s henchman isn’t exactly nice to the animals of Wonderland, he’s kinda chummy with his evil horse.  Follow this pattern down to Alice’s wimpy would-be fiancé, who’s about to squish a caterpillar on his shoulder before Alice manages to save it.

- Dan Pilditch

Overall Impression – A classic I wish I’d seen sooner.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Ted Kramer.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: balance being a single parent with his treasured career.  Personal: develop a genuine father/son relationship.  Private: realize what his priorities in life are.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Ted’s his own worst enemy, but deflectors include his ex-wife and his boss at the ad agency.

What happens if he fails? – Ted will lose his son.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan –Ted’s a ghost to his family because he puts his work first.  He barely has a relationship with his wife, and has pretty much no relationship with his son.

Wanderer – Ted figures out how to balance being a single parent and a working professional, and wrestles with why his wife left him and abandoned their son.  His priorities begin to change as his son becomes more important in his life.

Warrior – Ted starts experiencing genuine pleasure in being a real father, but when his ex-wife returns seeking custody of their son, Ted does everything in his power to build his case to win the upcoming court battle, including getting a new job in one day.

Martyr –  Ted and his ex-wife go to court, where the lawyers tear both of them apart.  Ted loses custody of his son, and while he could appeal the court’s decision, to do so would only make his son suffer, so he decides to let the kid stay with his mother.

AND, IN THE END…

The premise behind KRAMER VS KRAMER never sparked an interest for me when I was younger, but I wish I’d seen it sooner.   It’s a funny, moving movie, and Kramers Sr. and Jr. make for a great pairing.

Often, the first plot point of a movie introduces the hero, the villain or the victim (often as the stakes character).  The second plot point illustrates the hero’s flaw in relation to the stakes character.  If Kramer senior is the hero, and little Kramer is the stakes character, then what is Kramer senior’s flaw?  He’s a workaholic and never has time for his family. In contrast, little Kramer is a play-aholic and ONLY has time for his family.  These characters are polar opposites, conflict inevitably happens, and they learn and grow from each other.

Of course, the pairing of opposites isn’t anything new, but it’s always interesting to see how such dynamics play out, and valuable to learn from them when they’re done so well.

- Dan Pilditch

Overall Impression – Unmemorable fun with a smattering of man love, a dash of anti-Semitism, and a mean hook.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Sherlock Holmes.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Stop Lord Blackwood. Personal: Cope with the impending marriage of Watson. Private: Learn that emotion and feeling is just as important as thinking and logic.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Lord Blackwood.

What happens if he fails? –  Holmes, Watson, and Irene Adler will get killed, and the world will be taken over by a crazed genius.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Holmes lives the life of a recluse which is made worse by the fact that his trusted friend, Watson, is moving out to get married.  Nothing intrigues him or confounds him, and he resorts to various diversions to keep himself entertained: predominantly opium and bare-knuckle fighting.

Wanderer – Holmes is called upon to solve the mystery of Lord Blackwood, an aristocrat heavily involved in mysticism who was hanged and has now seemingly risen from the grave.  He is also reunited with the pretty con-artist, Irene Adler who has a case for him.

Warrior – Holmes is brought to Lord Blackwood’s father who tells him about the secret society that his son is involved with.  Holmes now fights to stop Lord Blackwood, reluctantly teaming up with the shady and untrustworthy Irene whom he knows has a secret employer.

Martyr – Holmes works with Inspector Lestrade and is brought before one of the more powerful members of the secret order Blackwood controls.  Holmes escapes and together with Watson and Irene risk their lives to save Parliament and defeat Blackwood.

AND, IN THE END…

Sherlock Holmes is a perfect studio movie; which is to say that it’s completely unwritable and unsellable by an aspiring writer.

Aspiring writers don’t have the clout or the access to sell this kind of story.  No matter how well written a spec Sherlock Holmes script may be, is the world clamouring for another Holmes story? No.  What got people excited about this Sherlock Holmes story was both the reimagining of Holmes as a drug-using action hero and the one actor in Hollywood who could play this Holmes: Robert Downey, Jr.   This was the right actor, in the right movie, at the right time.  For aspiring writers, this type of planetary alignment just doesn’t happen.

As a script, Sherlock Holmes is serviceable.  I don’t know that there’s anything in particular one can learn from its structure or execution that can’t be learned better elsewhere.  As an object lesson in the business of writing stories however, Sherlock Holmes is very informative.

Look at the stories you are working on.  Ask yourself what it is about them that’s going to get people excited?   If you don’t have the access or the clout to deliver those elements, you may want to rethink your business plan.

Oh, and another thing; if you’re a gifted director who’s recently ended a multi-year relationship with a wacky, Kabbalah-spouting spouse, go easy on the negative associations with Jewish iconography in your movies.   One doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what you’re thinking.

- Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – As smart and distant a movie as it’s main character.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Ryan Bingham.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Keep his job, which involves helping people lose theirs. Personal: Maintain a relationship interruptus with a fellow traveller he meets hit and miss on the road.  Private: learn that putting down roots isn’t a form of death and that human connections are as important as human disconnections.

Who’s trying to stop him? – His boss who wants to turn his job into ‘virtual’ firing instead of face-to-face.

What happens if he fails? – The job he loves will be altered into something he hates, as will the life that he loves.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Ryan is a man without a real home.  Even though he has an apartment, it has the feel of having barely been lived in, which is the reality.  Ryan spends most of his time traveling.

Wanderer – Ryan has to travel and train Natalie, a young hotshot at his company who has a plan to make what Ryan does obsolete.  Ryan’s attempts to show Natalie the ropes are thinly disguised ploys to demonstrate to her and their boss that his job is irreplaceable.  While on the road, Ryan also meets Alex, a female executive who travels almost as much as he does. They develop a relationship.

Warrior – When Natalie gets dumped by her boyfriend, Ryan’s ‘unpack your backpack’ philosophy is quietly vindicated.  Oddly, the more he swings Natalie over to his way of thinking, the more he gets swung over to wanting human connection, largely because of his relationship with Alex.

Martyr – Ryan walks out on the dream lecture he wanted to give (he’s a motivational speaker) in order to pursue Alex.  Unfortunately, Alex had a secret which leaves Ryan more broken and alone at the end of the film than he was at the start.

AND, IN THE END…

This is a very good movie with nothing really innovative to tell us.  Do we ever, ever actually buy into Ryan’s ‘what’s in your backpack?’ way of living his life?  Do we ever think to ourselves that we want to be like Ryan Bingham?  That his worldview, job, or lifestyle is in any way enviable?  No.  Ryan Bingham is a human zoo exhibit.  We get to see how some other species lives and then we move on.

Perhaps the point of the film is to make us more appreciative of our lives by comparing ours to the protagonists.  But Ryan Binghan isn’t Precious Jones.  We never cheer on Ryan’s worldview the way we cheer for Precious to change hers,  and when he does attempt to change and he is made bereft as a result, we are left with a very ambiguous message.

As everyone who knows me and my writing can attest to I’m a storytelling market capitalist.   Stories are products, audiences are customers, and the customer is always right.  UP IN THE AIR is doing good business but at the end of the day do people want to leave their homes, pay a babysitter, and spend their money and time watching a story that not only tells them what they already know (human contact is good) but doesn’t reward a earnest and not unattractive main character who tries to embrace this message?

It’s interesting to compare UP IN THE AIR with THE BLIND SIDE.  Both feature award-contention performances, strong main characters, were released around the same time, and cost about the same to make ($30 million) however THE BLIND SIDE is about human empowerment and UP IN THE AIR is about human disempowerment.  At the risk of oversimplifying, this may be why THE BLIND SIDE has earned around three times what UP IN THE AIR has made.  That doesn’t just translate into extra trips to the bank for the filmmakers of THE BLIND SIDE, albeit true, it translates into a story that is being sought out and heard by more people than UP IN THE AIR’s.

And to a storyteller, that’s better than being bumped up to first class.

- Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – Whether you’re a fan of Tarantino or not, if you love the language of movies you must, Must, MUST see this movie.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – There are really TWO stories at work here, however the main character is Shoshanna Dreyfus .

What’s she trying to accomplish? – Professional: Kill Nazis. Personal: Not be discovered to be a Jew in hiding.  Private: Avenge the death of her family.

Who’s trying to stop her? – At the most basic level, SS soldier Hans Landa.

What happens if she fails? – She will be discovered and killed.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Shoshanna’s family is wiped out by Nazis when they are given up by the dairy farmer who has hidden them.

Wanderer – Shoshanna inherits a movie theatre in Paris where she blends into the city life until she is courted by the pestering war hero Frederick Zoller.

Warrior – Zoller convinces Goebbels to hold a premiere at Shoshanna’s cinema, inspiring Shoshanna to come up with the idea to kill all of the Nazis who will be in attendance.  She recruits her lover to help, and together plot the destruction of her theatre and all the people in it.

Martyr – Shoshanna gives up her beloved cinema and ultimately her life to carry out her plan, unaware that there is a band of murderous “Basterds” in the theatre with the same idea.

AND, IN THE END…

Quentin Tarantino seems like such a train-off-the-rails in interviews that it’s hard to imagine him inspiring so many talented people to work at the highest levels in the business which they so clearly do in his movies.  But perhaps I’m just jealous, because here is a man who doesn’t just loves movies more than I do, he loves them more than ANYONE does.  That love must be contagious because not only is INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS a lesson in audacious dialog, it’s a master class in filmmaking and acting.  Every shot is beautifully composed and lit; every performance is startling and pitch perfect.  Much like PULP FICTION, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is a multi-strand story, layered with stunning dialog and punctuated by machine gun fire.

Why have I pegged Melanie Laurent’s character ‘Shoshanna’ as the main character when it’s Brad Pitt’s face on the posters?  I’ll grant that it’s tricky identifying the hero of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, but  I always fall back on five principles when trying to determine the main character:

Principle #1 – The climactic battle  is always ‘the Good Guy vs the Bad Guy over the Stakes.’ In INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, one might argue that at the end it’s Brad Pitt’s character battling Landa over whether he’ll stop the Basterds plot to kill Hitler, but it’s not much of a battle.  More of a chit-chat.  Shoshanna is fighting to carry HER revenge plot to it’s conclusion.

Principle #2 – The main character is the one who changes the most from the start of the film to the end.  Aldo is exactly the same at the end as he is in the beginning.  Shoshanna goes from dirty, scared girl to self-assured, self-sacrificing woman.

Principle #3 – The main character is exactly like the main opponent, but with a moral center. The Nazis want to kill Jews.  Shoshanna wants to kill Nazis.  And while it’s true that so do the Basterds, their desire is built on racial revenge: they’re all Jewish.  Shoshanna is the one whom the Nazis were personally cruel to, the one with the deepest wound.  She has a moral centre, and the Basterds…well…perhaps less so.

Principle #4 – The main character drives the action. Aldo gets his order from OSS.  Shoshanna comes up with her plan on her own, by her own.

Principle #5 - The main character usually gets the biggest martyr moment at the end. Hands down, Shoshanna gives up the most in order to see her plan through.

Not unlike PULP FICTION, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS doesn’t violate the rules of storytelling (vis Contour) but demonstrates how structure need not be formulaic.  It’s also an object lesson on scriptwriting that gets noticed.  I often caution people against trying to launch themselves with a script that’s too difficult.  I have to believe that if Joe Blow from Ogallala had written INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, people would have sat up and noticed him.   An ear for dialog, an understanding of human nature, the ability to communicate your love and passion for story with single-minded devotion, an innate comprehension of how stories work, and cajones the size of Nazi-Occupied France are all you need to be your own Tarantino.

- Jeffrey Alan Schechter