Click: great concept, ruined by Adam Sandler

As of late, Adam Sandler has decided to flex his acting muscle by delving quite a bit into the drama genre. STOP DOING THIS, ADAM, YOU ARE DESTROYING YOUR CAREER. I mean, Funny People, Spanglish, Punch Drunk Love, Reign Over Me, Bed Time Stories...need I go on? These are the most forgettable films you could ever think of, and in fact, I had to go onto imdb.com and look up the titles because I forgot them! No joke. Yet one of his serious movies stands out to me: Click. I wound up re-watching this film that I haven't thought of in ages since it was on TV (and nothing else was on). I think it's time for me to return to it and do a quick review!

I think this movie has a great concept: a power-hungry, greedy architect (Michael Newman) accidentally encounters some creepy dude (Morty) chilling in the "beyond" section of Bed, Bath, and Beyond who gives him a remote to remain in control of his life. Having been duly warned by Morty of its potential consequences, he disregards his advice and starts using it to avoid all the nuisances of life: fights with his life, traffic, showering in the morning, lectures, even all the hard work he puts in to land his big promotion. I mean, all that matters IS getting that promotion, right? Well, at least to Michael, it is. But Morty, played by the always brilliant Christopher Walken, gives him a chilling analogy about a leprechaun:

He's always chasing the pot of gold, but when he gets there, at the end of the day *dramatic pause* it's just corn flakes.

I don't think Michael realizes how much he can identify with that quote (as well as the audience!). It's not the positive end result that we strive to get to that is the best part, but rather, it's how you got there that makes it all worth while, where you can look back on everything you've come from and realize "Wow, look at what I've accomplished!" After all, as joy is a part of life, so is suffering.

Christpher Walken delivers yet another memorable performance. He was absolutely fantastic in this movie. Every scene that he's in I guarantee will haunt you. I can't seem to get over one of his last bone-chilling scenes when Michael suffers a heart attack and the Angel of Death (Morty) appears. He is swaying along with the singers at his son's wedding. As Michael topples over, Morty delivers one remark "It's just cornflakes......". And I can't describe it enough to give this scene justice, but it gives me chills just thinking about it. While you're dying, to hear something like this is just ... well, crushing to say the least. The life Michael COULD have led just vanishes right before him. His current life is awful (it's just cornflakes, if you will), even though he has attained so much. And, with a final kiss of death, Michael collapses.

Click here to see this incredible scene! (I think that the scene in full was a lot better, but at least you got the idea...)

Now, this scene was so effective that it should have ended the entire film. In fact, I was even expecting it to. I mean, how else can the movie resolve itself? Michael has realized his error (all too late) when his daughter Sam calls Bill, Donna's new husband, "Dad." Michael's been replaced as a father figure. He's a prosperous man, achieved all he possibly could have in his career as a CEO, but at the high cost of his family. He estranged himself from his own father in the scene right before he dies, barking at him that he knew the secret of the coin trick all along (a magic trick that he and his father used to bond over). In that fabulous ending scene of him tumbling over from a heart attack, Michael would have died as a lonely, miserable man who knew he made too many mistakes that were irreparable. After all, he's 'fast-forwarded' through almost his entire life and missed tons of milestones that we as human beings all go through, especially watching your children grow up. So why bother ending it in a happy way? Click decides to push itself: oh, it's all a dream! He's still on a bed in Bed, Bath, and Beyond! Great! Hooray! Now he can go back and fix his errors! And live life the way he should! Let's be real here, the only book to effectively use the "dream" tactic was A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. There, it felt real. Here the dream felt completely inappropriate and forced. The film could have never matched the nightmarish scene before.

So it seems that I've loved the film so far, right? (Well, except for the ending, of course). But, there remains yet another issue in this film: THE MAIN ACTOR! Adam Sandler was completely mis-cast. I think Click could've turned out a lot better without him destroying it. Even in serious scenes, he's too goofy to execute them. He can't portray the proper emotion that is required of him. Things that are intended to be serious come off as a joke. And corny. Ultimately, you need to stick with what you're good at, Mr. Sandler. Bring back some of that Happy Gilmore or Billy Madison humor. And he was trying to bring that cheesy humor (which is funny, don't get me wrong!) to this movie, which didn't befit it in the least. In my opinion, this movie is intended solely as a drama, not for cheap laughs. It really could've been a bit more creditable without him...

Final Score: 7 (if we imagine that Adam Sandler didn't ruin it). I still enjoyed it, and I still can't quite get over Walken's performance! He gets a 10 for sure.

ROARRRRRRRRRRRRR THIS IS SPARTA

"Easy, son"..."Catch your breath, boy."
No, your grandpa is not instructing you on some life lesson using antiquated 1950's catch phrases; rather, you're amidst the silly and over-the-top, poorly written "300," a film about a Spartan man's (Leonidas) military quest to defend his love for his own country against Persia under King Xerxes.

The first error of this film lies right at the beginning. We start with this ridiculous scene of Leonidas as a young boy and a wolf that he eventually kills. What does his boyhood have to do with the rest of the film, you may ask? Well, nothing, really. It's merely an allegory attesting to his incredible strength and cunning, in addition to showing what young Spartans must endure in growing up.

The film only spirals downhill from there. As many (too many) battle scenes are fought on screen, the director continually insists on using slow motion. For no damn reason! Not for dramatic effect, no. Just randomly thrown in at the most awkward moments. You literally burst into laughter at its excessive usage. This is not "The Matrix," so stop using it so damn much! Slow motion works best when used sparingly, unless it's used in one of the coolest sci-fi (syfy? HAHAHAAHHA just kidding) films ever made.

To add to the over-use of slow motion, the director insists on using a voice over technique throughout, but the audience has no idea what the hell is going on when the voice over starts. Who's talking? Is it someone's thoughts? Oh, I see so-and-so has a close up right now, maybe he's thinking to himself? Eventually (maybe towards the middle of the film), you discover that the anonymous voice refers to Leonidas as "our king," so it must be one of the soldiers there at the campaign and his own thoughts. Right? Well, OK, but which one? At the very end we see the mysterious voice was in fact just an injured soldier who was sent back to the Spartan kingdom to report the fallen Leonidas's valiant campaign. But HOW CAN THIS BE IF WHAT WE JUST SAW WAS ALL IN THE PRESENT WITH NO INDICATION THAT IT WAS HAPPENING IN THE PAST??? THE ACTION WAS UNFOLDING AS WE WATCHED IT. Now, this isn't to say that this can't be done. Obviously many directors use the voice over technique effectively. So if the director wanted to go this route, he had to at least start the film off with this soldier speaking, so we can understand that it's this particular man recounting the story. In fact, the contrast of him with a bandage as opposed to without will make the audience understand that he is in fact injured and time has passed. Forget the wolf and strange allegory, start out with this! Imagine that you're touring a house for sale. Instead of the people taking you around the entire house and leading you through the hallways so you can get a sufficient picture of the entire place you're considering on buying, they blindfold you and just take you into the closet of some random room. Not only are you disoriented and don't know what the hell's going on (and who are these creepy people anyway...), but you haven't seen the hallways and rooms that have led to this one particular room. Exactly! THIS TACTIC MAKES NO SENSE. It doesn't work in real life, nor does it work in story telling. Confusing the audience is the last thing you want to do.

The director fails to capture the audience on a real story. OK, Sparta is at war against Persia...okkkk, that's fine, but what does that mean for the people (and do the soldiers have to perpetually scream throughout the film?)? We have to see the Spartan people panicking (or, even better, discrediting Leonidas for his hostility and war-mongering spirit, not just from the select group of the crooked council). And what about Sparta's honor at stake? This needs to be amplified. All we see is battle after battle and we don't really get to know any of the characters. Just blood and gore all throughout the movie. When we see a supposedly tragic death of a man's son, we feel no empathy towards this man and the loss of his son. I mean, I didn't even remember either of their names! We don't know any character's aspirations or any backstory...nothing! In order to efficiently establish solid characters, the audience needs to know what in the whole wide world they want so they can be believable. Not to mention the other story of Leonidas's wife should have been capitalized upon: when she gets raped by that nasty asshole councilman, we simply don't care. We don't know this woman, so why should we? All we know is that she is a snarky queen. She doesn't even put up a fight against her rape! She just quickly de-robes right in front of him. It's almost like that bitch wanted it. I literally burst out into laughter. This is how the scene went (I'm not even kidding, check out the DVD)...

"...you know what I want," says the councilman
[dumb bitch takes off her dress and gets raped in the ass]

The movie just sickeningly parades around silliness the entire time. When we first meet King Xerxes, he straight up looks like a tranny. Did they really have to put him all in gold glitter, perfectly plucked eyebrows, full shimmery eye makeup, and earrings? The only thing that they got right was his stature, but the rest is an epic failure. And the Persian army uses dark magic? And are immortal (but not really because they keep getting killed)? Really? And did they really need Ephialtes have his hunchback licked by the Persian whores when he betrays Sparta in order to tempt him to join Xerxes? All of this is completely unnecessary (but entertained me quite a bit because it was so ridiculous).

The ending was just a whole lot of wrong. So, as I said, towards the end we see the soldier talking to the entire army to pump them up for their battle. OK, so I assumed at this point we would see the last triumphant battle filled (of course) with tons of slow motion. But the film ends abruptly as they run off into the distance........um what? So we never know how this entire military campaign ends? So Leonidas just died in vain? Did Sparta win? All unanswered questions. It invalidates having sat through the entire film.


I have nothing more to say because I'm so disgusted by this film. Final Score: 3....only for its (unintentional) comedic effect. I seriously thought it was a parody throughout the first half hour until I realized: oh dear God, they're serious.

Genre of Choice: The Post Modern Western

Hello again all! I know what you're thinking. "Two posts in one week, is this guy on amphetamines?" or most likely "Hey, I should really click on that porn right about now." But, yes, I have returned since I'm getting the writing juices flowing for my grad school applications. Yeah, this is pretty much a procrastination measure now but, hey, more posts!

For this column, I'm going to look into a genre that hasn't been getting that much love and what doesn't get enough love as the Western? Who needs cowboys nowadays when you can have cowboys in space? These columns will mostly be about an obscure or an underrated genre and the films that should be your jumping points. The Post-Modern Western is a fascinating case study because you have a genre that, in a way, has really created many innovations later adopted by other films and, well, has effectively taken over the entire Western genre from the early 90's and on.

The Post-Modern Western's origins are dubious. Some say it began with "High Noon," a Western film disguised as a critique of the Hollywood Communist blacklist but most others agree it began with Sam Peckinpah's classic "The Wild Bunch." Up until "The Wild Bunch," there could be no doubt that the genre was all about black and white. "The Wild Bunch" introduced another color to the palate: grey. And lots of it. This is not a film about heroes. In fact, the film focus is on a band of outlaws that will and do kill anyone that gets in their way. Or just for no damn reaosn. It also brought a whole new meaning to the term "film violence." When the opening shoot-out has dozens of innocent people killed in the crossfire between two rival gangs within a matter of minutes, you know you're not seeing "The Sound of Music" (though Peckinpah did make a weird comedy/western/musical later on but that's for another time). If you want to watch some truly breathtaking sequences in modern film history, look no further than the beginning and the end gunfights. There really hasn't been anything made since that can really match the epicness of these gun battles. Okay, maybe "Saving Private Ryan" but, come on, it's bloody Normandy.

Sam Peckinpah continued making violent, violent movies after that (i.e. "Straw Dogs" was rated NC-17 for how realistic the violence was by 1970's standards) but it took Sergio Leone to really define what this genre could do. Honestly, when you need a bunch of gratuitous violence, you got to go with the Italians. Although best known for his "Man with No Name" trilogy starring Clint Eastwood as the namesake character, one of his best works "Once Upon A Time in the West" tends to go a little darker than others.

Leone tended to work with black and white more often than Peckinpah. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" is a perfect example of this. In most of his Westerns, a mysterious protagonist, at first considered a possible sinister force, turns out to have a heart of gold. Either Clint Eastwood carrying his six shooter with the ease of a truly unrepentant killer or James Coburn hurling nitroglycerin for kicks, they are always feared by those around them. In a way, they end up being windows into the sinister world that surrounds them. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" it's the Civil War and "Once Upon A Time in the West" is, well, the West. It's a pretty bleak world where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and evil has free reign. Casting Henry Fonda was a coup for this film. At the time, Fonda was considered the nicest guy in Hollywood much like how the Western was considered a shiny, nostalgic look back at the West. The sort of West where men became men and where anyone could get rich by just having enough pluck. By twisting him, Leone's commentary on what the West becomes crystal clear. Nice on the outside, evil on the inside.

One of Leone's main men, Clint Eastwood became the champion of the Western when he began to bridge his career into directing. Though the Western itself started to peter out in the 70's, Eastwood continued to make them in a variety of forms. You could see Leone's influence on the screen with each of his films. Eastwood's "Unforgiven" rejuvinated the genre after it was long thought dead. It's a slow burn of a film, which feels at times a mixture of Leone and Peckinpah, but it reflects on a world that Leone began building with "Once Upon A Time in the West." Here a clearly aged "Man With No Name", after hanging up the towel on his days as a killer and tries to raise a family, has to come face to face with his past as he battles with a slew of notorious ner-do-wells.

The violence in this film, much like post-modern Westerns is not supposed to pretty or glorified. You can feel everyone that dies here. Whenever someone gets shot in this film, you aren't rooting for anyone. You just look on in horror to see the pain violence actually causes. It's something Peckinpah was getting at in "The Wild Bunch" but the violence was so over-the-top that you couldn't look away. Here you want to cover your eyes.

After a brief flirtation with Westerns in the early 90's with films like "Tombstone" and "The Quick and the Dead", the genre essentially became dormant yet again after most of them failed at the box office. Recently, it has come back in the smaller, more manageable indie market with brilliant films like "The Proposition" and "The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford." The genre got its pulse reawakened by "Deadwood," a post modern Western show that lived a very short life on HBO. Nevertheless, it inspired every film in its genre since. The West has become a place where everything is dirty both literally and metaphorically. Or, more precisely, what the West actually was historically.

No doubt inspired by Cormac McCarthy's indelible, incredible, and intensely brutal book "Blood Meridian", "The Proposition" brings the West a little further to the outlands of Australia. As a commentary on civilization and the brutality of man, it isn't a pretty film to watch. Flies buzz around in almost every scene, a cop accidently blow off his toes, etc. The buildings look shoddily built as if "The Road Warrior" traveled back in time to Victorian England. Even a "civilized" dinner scene, is broken up with shots of how disgusting the food is they are about to enjoy. When the actual brutality starts in this film, you can feel your nails claw into the armrests of your chair. By the end, the people are just as ugly inside as the environment they live in.

"The Assassination..." (yeah, the title was way too damn long for its own good) relishes in the beauty of the West in stark contrast with its brutality. Every shot in the film is breathtakingly beautiful. Then the violence happens. As opposed to most other post-modern Westerns, it doesn't relish in violence. It happens and then it's gone. The ending acts as a meta-commentary about the genre in a way as people become fascinated with the murder of Jesse James (no yelling spoilers here people, it's in the bloody title) and Robert Ford puts on shows about it. In a way, we remember the violence the most in these films, but this film tries to bring back the human side to it all.

These films are not about humanity, though. They're about the people that lose it all. It shows how humans try to cling to what little humanity they have left in such a chaotic world that they still end up losing it in the process. With today's fascination with post apocalyptic stories, I'm surprised the post-modern Western hasn't caught on even though they're clearly inspired by much of the imagery and themes of these films. They are possibly the only pre-post-apocalyptic films around.

I am, as always, obediently yours
-Brett