The Weather Man

5 out of 7

The Weather Man (2005) delivers a child-like message in a VERY adult manner.

Since we’ve been young, assuming we had decent role models, parents, etc…, we’ve been told to just be ourselves. For David Spritz (Nicolas Cage), this message has yet to be taken to heart, even though he’s in his thirties, has two kids and is estranged from his wife. Sadly, the http://www.imdb.com/ plot outline sums up the entire film when it says “A Chicago weather man, separated from his wife and children, debates whether professional and personal successes are mutually exclusive.” For Spritz, he believes that if he can be something bigger, something better that all will go as he desires. As such, he sees his profession as a weather man as a hinderance to his personal happiness, though he complicates that idea with his desire to make it to the national stage as a weather man, with its big pay check and supposed greater esteem.

Yet, before this critique begins to paint this film in a bad light, it should be remembered that even though an old story (message) is being told again, it might still have meaning and, how it’s told is important.

The Weather Man succeeds in delivering this little moral on being one’s self through very adult situations and, especially, language. Very rarely does a film use “fuck” as many times as this film and still maintain its dignity. And while, the word is often used to its comedic end (which is no accomplishment when it comes to vulgarity), it also uses it well in dramatic ways. For a character who has “nothing to knuckle down on,” as Spritz refers to himself, sometime the most appropriate way to portray and articulate frustration, anger, and fear is through a few “fucks” (no joke implied there).

Finally, there’s a comedic part in the film that centers the message, where Spritz’s overweight daughter, who is called camel toe by the boys at her school, explains that she is called such because she’s tough. Spritz, of course knowing the true, vulgar meaning of this term, allows his daughter this illusion, if only to keep her in childhood a little longer. In this strange scene, the viewer can find the entirety of the film: Here is vulgarity, though here also is a moral, a message.

What the film succeeds in doing is capturing something quite real. It uses vulgarity as it is used in real life (ever have a fight with a lover and use fuck one too many times? Ever get mad at a friend and call him/her a name? If so, you’ve danced the same dance as this film). The film also gives a moral as one might find one if one were to spend some time in introspection. In the end, of course, the best story ever told is our own, but the ironic part is that we spend more time listening to/watching other people’s stories…even fictitious ones. What this film features is a fictitious character, who undergoes vis-à-vis a number of stimuli, a lot of personal reflection. To highlight this reflection, the film gives a lot of its story in the form of voice over from Nicolas Cage, which breaks one of the rules of good story-telling by telling, not showing. In the end, though, it works.

The film also takes on father-son relationships, a topic that very few films engage honestly, which allows Michael Caine (who plays David’s father, Robert) the screen time his talent deserves.

It was billed as a comedy, which its funny scenes certainly warrant, but do not be afraid to watch The Weather Man prepared to feel something, to learn something.

In the Company of Men

6 out of 7

In the Company of Men (1997) is a prime example of Foucauldian ethics played out in everyday life.

The film traces the actions of two business men on a 6-week project for their company who feel run-down and beat up in contemporary society. As a means of backlash (particularly against women, who they view as one of their chief enemies), the two devise a plan to “hurt somebody.” The plan consists of finding a slightly insecure woman to both pursue and then, when their time in Phoenix is up, break her heart. Their reasoning being – as it’s articulated early in the film – that no matter what happens to them in the future they can always look back and say that they were the victors in that situation.

The plan goes into motion when Chad (Aaron Eckhart) discovers a deaf girl, Christine (Stacy Edwards) working at the Phoenix office as a typist. He woos her with dinner and then dinner and drinks and so on. Simultaneously, Howard (Matt Malloy) begins to woo Christine as well. Now this once lonely girl has two men treating her like a princess and allowing her to feel feelings previously denied to her.

The plan begins to unravel when Howard actually falls for Christine, though Christine has already pledged her love to Chad, who Chad is not to be stopped and ultimately crushes the girl the night before he leaves to go back to his normal life. Howard, however, cannot get over Christine and becomes sick with the notion of what he and Chad have done to her, a feeling only enhanced when Chad reveals that he hadn’t had the love problems he claimed to have had (and which served as the impetus for the whole project). This revelation means that Howard had acted vulgar, while Chad – who had also acted vulgar – was able to return to a comfortable life with his girlfriend/lover. The film ends with Howard taking a red eye back to Phoenix, only to be turned down by Christine while he screams for her to listen to him (the irony of this is enhanced by the narrative point of view switching from objective to Christine’s, allowing the viewer to see Howard as Christine sees him – shouting, but unable to hear him).

The reason Michel Foucault plays so well into this film is because the whole premise is about a power relationship. Even the most meager reading of Foucault shows that human relation (within his philosophical framework) is a form of power relation. In this case, Christine has a need (intimacy) and she uses both Howard and Chad to fulfill that need. Howard, too, has a need (revenge, as well as intimacy) and he uses Christine to that end. But, it is in Chad that the greatest example of power relation is fleshed out, as his need is merely to always be in control. He even goes so far as to say “Never lose control, that’s the key” (http://www.imdb.com/). Chad’s character is exactly what Foucault wrote about, as well as a prime example of life in the Foucauldian schema.

If the viewer feels disgusted by the actions of Chad and Howard (and there are enough juxtaposed scenes of “love” between each and Christine and scenes of plotting to easily achieve that feeling), it is probably a response to a life without ethics – or, more fairly put, a life under Foucauldian ethics. The problem is that, within the film (that is to say, a viewing of the film where the viewer does not impose his/her own ethics), no one does anything wrong. If Christine gets hurt, it is only because she pursues her need to a point of punishment. Had she shown more self-control or, as Chad would advise, “never lost control,” then she wouldn’t have ended up crying on a hotel bed after being unable to articulate (both physically and emotionally) the pain caused by the ruse.

The film received its high rating for being able to stay consistent in its tone, even when pain was inevitable. It also brings to the viewer a thought of which is greater, love or power. The film, then magnificently, does not decide the answer, rather allowing the viewer to decide. If the viewer believes in love (and, thusly, that Chad is a dickhead), its not because the film has told the viewer to believe that, but more so that the viewer is seeing a reflection of his/her own personal ethics. The same is true if the viewer chooses power.

Stories can often carry with them a moral that is meant to be lived out. Aesop, C.S. Lewis and many others are prime examples of this. However, it is difficult and meaningful when a story can serve as a mirror by which the listener can better see himself/herself.

Badlands

3 out of 7

Badlands (1973) is a bad film. No. Badlands is a bad story. Yes.

This sort of introduction is probably true for most Terrence Malick films, as Malick finds little value in characters, plot, dialogue or any of those other elements that makes stories what they are.

To ask what this film is about may be a moot point, as Malick does not write stories. Rather, he creates images – spectacular images – and lets them speak for themselves. The problem being, though, is that analyzing images, particularly multiple images within a greater story, is as difficult as explaining why one love poem is better than another love poem.

A quick synopsis of the film goes as follows: Kit (Martin Sheen), a James Dean rip-off, falls for Holly (Sissy Spacek). Holly’s father doesn’t approve and after Kit can’t talk to the man reasonably, he kills him. Because of this murder the two go on the run and in the process kill countless others. Much like True Romance (1993) with a little Natural Born Killers (1994), the film follows the couple in chronological order until their undoing. The real value, though, comes in some of the shots.

Of most significance is the hide-out the two take after the initial murder of Holly’s father. They build a little home in the trees of South Dakota, where they steal or shoot the food they need and spend their days not-so-romantically together. The real importance in these scenes is the contentedness in which the two find themselves. They aren’t passionately wrapped in one another’s arms, nor are they planning any sort of return to civilization. They are contented being together and away in a manner that is not easily scripted nor shot. This may be the first key to understanding this cinematic poetry: Malick appreciates nature and its value over all else.

To continue this point, the two spend the rest of their days (after being flushed out of their Swiss Family Robinson-esque home) in the Badlands of South Dakota, traveling across the dusty and rocky land at night and dancing in the moonlight. One of the most poignant shots is of Kit holding his gun across his shoulders, turning himself into either a scarecrow or crucified man, staring at the moon as it makes its appearance in the dusk sky. Somehow in a film about a man with a gun who is killing people, the real star (no pun intended) of this scene is the sky…nature.

What destroys this film is that it is still telling a story. In fact, it is based on the “Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950's, in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands” (www.imdb.com). Much like In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, Malick tells the story of treacherous doings in the gentle and idealistic parts of America. Capote, though, knows he’s telling a story and never loses sight of that. Malick, apparently, can’t keep his lens off the grasshoppers long enough to complete the task he started.

Is the film beautiful for what it’s doing? Sure. Should it be doing that? Maybe not.

If you’re looking for an aesthetic experience, visit your local museum. They’re in much more need of your attendance (and may be lost if you don’t) than this film is.

Failure To Launch

4 out of 7

Its tough to screw up a romantic comedy with two of the most attractive people in cinema today, but Failure To Launch (2006) comes eerily close to doing so. The film, which stars Sex in the City goddess, Sarah Jessica Parker (as Paula), and Texan stud, Matthew McConaughey (as Tripp), delivers an odd plot that never gets fully fleshed out.

The main problem with the film is that the viewer is supposed to join in on the woes of Tripp’s parents – Sue (Kathy Bates) and Al (Terry Bradshaw, of all people) – as they try to get their son to leave home. Yet, because the film starts with Tripp and his friends talking about how they love living at home, the narrative perspective gets a little screwy, so that when the parents begin to complain with other parents who have the same problem, the scene feels out of place. The viewer doesn’t know who he/she is supposed to side with, but all the sudden he/she is thrown into a plot with the parents against their son.

The plot is, of course, to hire Paula to come and woo Tripp away from living at home. Her diagnosis for his syndrome is “failure to launch,” a convenient term given Tripp’s profession as a boat salesman and his love for the open seas. Her confidence is all there and she’s had success in the past with a certain formula (a formula that treats men like dumb animals…whether justified or not, I will not commentate). The steps include making him like her (easy enough, she is beautiful), making him enjoy her company (by just liking whatever she likes), never having sex (it demotivates men…maybe the most honest point to the whole film), having the man help her through a trauma (faked, of course), getting the friends to like her (complete with “the nod” – you’ll just have to see it to understand) and then allowing the man to teach her something. Tripp clips along through all these steps nicely, but a few problems begin to arise, chiefly, Paula is falling for Tripp.

Of course, one of Paula’s rules is to never sleep with her clients, but once she realizes that she’s fallen for Tripp and that, subsequently, he is about to dump her (its his modus operendi for dealing with women), she breaks this rule, but under the justification that its to keep his therapy going. The problem with this is that it is supposed to be the physical representation of the turn in the film, with the turn being that Paula actually likes a man instead of wanting to fix a man. The turn, emotionally, happens while at sea and is believable enough. The turn, physically, happens with the sex, but is unromantic, unsexy and plain disappointing (she was on Sex in the City and while she never bared all, the average viewer has seen what SJP can do in bed). Again, this is just another little chink in the armor for the film.

Naturally, too, when it rains, it pours and Paula is discovered for who she is by Tripp’s friends, who then tell Tripp. AND Paula discovers (and this is the real twist to the film’s plot) that Tripp lives at home because a woman he was once going to marry, Amy, died suddenly. After which, he moved back with his parents. Now Paula knows that she must end the treatment (he isn’t, after all, your normal slacker, loser) as there are just too many elements working against it (including, still, her own attraction to him). Tripp, however, having been told about the whole plot by his friends, makes a big production out of ending it with Paula and letting his parents know that he discovered their little rouge to move him out.

So the whole thing is off and Paula is moving back in with her parents (oh the irony). This is when Paula’s roommate, Kit (Zooey Dreschanel), and Tripp’s friends and family conspire to get the two back together, which ultimately leads to maybe the only worthwhile part of the film. While planning to get the two back together, Kit’s boyfriend/Tripp’s friend (another little sub-plot), Ace (Justin Bartha), recommends that they send flowers to one saying its from the other and vice versa. He gets laughed down and the plot they settle on is to knock Tripp unconscious, tie him up and hide him in a closet. Then, Kit takes Paula to the place where Tripp is tied up and hidden and they lock her in the room. The play on the traditional sappy means of reconnecting lovers (ala Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail) is thrown out the window for a much more realistic trickery and bondage plan. Ultimately the two can talk out their differences and fall madly in love.

Failure to Launch is a fine date movie if your significant other likes those sorts of films. The acting isn’t terrible and there are some genuinely funny scenes that I did not highlight in this review (it should be noted, at least, that funny men Patton Oswalt and Rob Corddry both have small roles). The main problem is that the director leans too much on the viewer’s understanding of the genre and as such, while the viewer knows what he/she is supposed to feel, he/she doesn’t necessarily feel it. For those wanting to write a romantic comedy, this is often a problem, so keep in mind that the leg work of establishing a solid point-of-view and creating a complex, but believable plot must be undertaken or the whole film should be scrapped.

The Notebook

6 out of 7

There isn’t much to say about overly sappy love stories, except that anyone with a heart will inevitably be drawn to them. So it is with The Notebook (2004), the Nicolas Sparks novel turned sentimental sensation.

The film has a metanarrative of Duke reading a story to Allie in a retirement home. It doesn’t take long (or much guessing for that matter) to discover that the young lovers in the story Duke reads are Duke and Allie in their youth. Time, however, has taken its toll, particularly on Allie, whose mind has begun to falter to the point that she no longer recognizes her husband or children. But Duke, who begins the movie with some of the most touching sentiments in film when he says, “I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough,” has a stance that love may just conquer all.

The main story (that of Young Noah and Young Allie) is touching, if not a little trite, but by surrounding it with the greater story of love in its twilight years, everything witnessed takes on a deeper meaning.

With a constant whirlwind of debate around marriage in our culture, all would probably benefit from an honest viewing of this film. Don’t get caught up in the romance (though it is great), nor allow yourself to cry (except when appropriate), but really ponder the significance and power of pure matrimony. Such a viewing puts petty debates of tax rights into their appropriate place.

The story’s moral can’t be found in the story of the two young lovers, but rather the story of the two old lovers. When a doctor cautions Duke from trying to revive Allie’s deteriorating memory by reading to her, he calm ticks off that “where science ends, God begins,” and so the viewer is left no option but to try to understand love in its deepest meaning.

The film ends with the two lovers – once young, now old – dying together in a nursing home bed. For these two it is a miracle of Love and the film does little, if anything, to dissuade the viewer from such a stance. On their final night together, Allie recognizes Duke without the aid of the story and questions how long they have and how long they’ve been living like this. It is she who hopes that Love will bring them to an end together.

What is interesting about this film is that its significance is found in love that has aged and matured and weathered all sorts of toil and trouble. In fact, it might be that for any love story to truly succeed, it needs to be told from the perspective of love near its completion. A friend challenged me after viewing the film to try to think of a romantic film (not a romantic comedy) that isn’t a period piece. He reasoned that by using the time period of the 40’s and 50’s, there is an implicit innocence that amplifies the love on the screen. While I certainly see merit in such thoughts, I believe more that love in its infancy, while magnificent to live through (and even enjoyable to view), is less significant if we don’t know how it ends. Inevitably this film would have boiled down to some simple conflict of man vs. man or man vs. society if not for the metanarrative. The viewer would be left with Titanic – just a story of a boy overcoming social classes and another lover to be with the woman he is supposed to be with. The Notebook goes that extra step further and lets the tragedy be found not in the untimely death of young love, but the timely death of it, and in doing so, demonstrates that there is no “timely” end for love; it is a tragedy at any age.

The Notebook takes on serious issues of our culture, including the significance of marriage, respect for the elderly and the emotional impacts of the increasingly frequent dementia attacking the elderly in their last years. These are emotionally-charged issues for most who’ve had to encounter them personally and the story handles them all very well.

The film does not succeed without the superb acting of James Garner, who plays Duke. He adds a maturity and lovingness that will take in even the staunchest cynic. Go ahead and rent this film the next time you’re with your lover, but don’t treat it so lightly.