Trinity's one-sentence reviews of movies she TiVo'd

[trinityvixen]

Stay Alive: If only certain video games would come alive and kill their obnoxious players for real! ::cough cough WoW cough::

The Fog: Tom Welling is allowed to be overtly horny!

The Reaping: Well of course you abort the Anti-Christ.

No Reservations: It's a good thing I didn't see this before The Dark Knight, or Harvey Dent would have been ruined for me.

The Brave One: How "questionably immoral" can one person be if they are rewarded for their behavior?

Starz Inside Story: The Pixar Story: I love Pixar and Stacey Keach--WIN!

::bows:: Thank you.

While I was upstate, I also added a billion more movies to the TiVo. I'm not sure I came away with a net loss of programs saved there, though I did manage to watch a lot of stuff and get a lot of cross-stitching done. My mother is all set to invite me up again. I think I will accept because I was denied the pleasure of watching some true drivel (Shooter comes to mind) when my father literally forced me to watch The Godfather. That's THREE HOURS OF MOVIE.

Look, maybe, in its day, The Godfather was amazing. Cultural osmosis meant that I knew just about everything that was going to happen, which took the edge off the artsy-fartsy aspect. Which left me with just the story, and the story is grating. I do not like mobster movies. Like westerns and war movies only worse, mob movies are so infused with crises of masculinity and the bullshit that goes with that it bores me to tears. Mob movies also relegate women to the corners. Now, the majority of films tend to do this nowadays, but mob movies don't just forget that women exist, which wouldn't be so bad. Instead, they include women solely to be used by the men in the movie and to be shown to be shrill, unlikeable harpies, duly dedicated and submissive wives, or pathetic, longing, purpose-less-until-mobster-takes-an-interest puppies. That's really, really unflattering, and it grates.

If I hadn't been FORCED to watch it, I might not have had so many bad things to say about it. But that's my father. He doesn't realize that pushing doesn't work on me and often leads to the opposite reaction to his own. It doesn't help that he feels he is "educating" me (with all that that sort of patronizing talk really pisses me off) when he wouldn't extend the same courtesy to anything I suggested. I didn't defend any of the TiVo'd movies--I TiVo'd them because they were bad and I could skip them if they weren't watchable--but anything else I tried suggesting that I actually thought was good was ridiculed.

Comments

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Even if it fits all of your statements about mob movies, Casino is a great, great movie. Better than I thought The Godfather was, when I watched it, or any other mob movie I've ever watched, like Carlito's Way (predictable), Scarface (tiring), or GoodFellas (like a mob version of The Wonder Years). But then again, Casino has the benefit of being about things other than mobsters: the ending of an era, and the running of a casino. Still, admittedly Casino more than anything is guilty of the whole harpy wife thing, since Sharon Stone plays basically the worst character in the history of any movie.

There are also some good movies about other kinds of mobsters, since theoretically the villains in Snatch and/or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels are mobsters, but those are really designed and pitched as half comedy so maybe that's different.

Two days after I told you about him, Don LaFontaine, the main voice-over guy, from the Geico ad, passed away. Sucks.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't have been forced to watch The Godfather. It is a brutal experience and it presents us with a sordid spectacle of cruel and evil men. I still think it's a masterpiece, but I can't say I enjoyed watching it, or look forward to watching it again. That's often the way of tragedy, though, and The Godfather is a tragedy, the story of Michael Corleone slowly transforming into a cold, murderous machine.

As for the portrayal of women as harpies, submissives or victims ... Honestly, I think those are the only roles women can play in a realistic gangster movie. It's a violent and corrupt environment where rigid patriarchal codes are the only "morals" they have. Diane Keaton's character was about as strong and as decent as any woman could have been in that environment without getting squashed.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think it must be different when played for comedy because comedy pokes fun at the assumptions and deflates them. So you can have a man with a masculinity complex but he's a total buffoon, which is better than one with the same issues who's taken seriously and whose issues are treated as serious.

Re: Don La Fontaine: I was just watching those commercials you posted, too. So sad! No more "In a world..." :(

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I still hesitate to forgive a lot of my problems with the film because "it's a tragedy, it's not supposed to be fun to watch." Plenty of tragedies don't trip my bullshit sensor. This was three hours of MEN being MEN and that mostly meant proving themselves by killing people. No one was sympathetic in the slightest, so I couldn't identify with anyone or want them to succeed. When you can't be drawn in via sympathy, you're just staring at the scene playing out.

I understand that women don't have a place in mobster films. Believe me, women are excluded from a lot of boys-only genres because they're historical, a, or fictional but based on a reality that won't/doesn't put women in a starring role. As I said, I've come to expect that from war movies and westerns and not let it get stuck in my craw. But mobster movies do their damnedest to short-straw all the female characters as useless. I'd sooner they just ignored the women, thanks, rather than use them to advance the men's plots without giving them any other character. Nice of Michael to mention his first wife exploding to his second. Oh wait, no, shit he didn't. We're still supposed to feel bad for him that his pretty piece of ass no-lines wife blew up. Not that we give a rat's ass about her, nor or we supposed to. She only existed to make an unlikeable character "pitiable."

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't asking you to forgive it. "I was miserable watching this movie" is a valid reason not to like it. And if you find it hard to sympathize with amoral characters, well ... movies about violent thugs probably aren't for you. :)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh, I can sympathize with amoral characters, but they have to have an element of humanity to them that mobsters often seem to lack. In which case, I'm being asked to root for someone who hasn't got a single feature that could be described in a flattering or approving term. A person can be unbelievably cruel and still be captivating if he/she demonstrates some attribute that might be seen as, outside the circumstances, positive. Or, conversely, if the opponents of the protagonist are worse.

This is how I can like the protagonist of Dexter even though he enjoys butchering people. He's clever, he hurts people who are cruel bastards with petty agendas, and he's got the "Don't kick the puppy" aspect in the way that he's very indulgent, caring, and almost fond of children. He also is very socially awkward and unsure of how to react in situations, which is a universal human paranoia--how am I coming off to these people? do they like me? why don't they like me?--and making part of him identifiable saves him from being totally unlikeable. (Condemn Dexter, you condemn yourself, and most people really, really don't like self-tarnishing their self image.)

A more classic example: Iago. He's wicked, mean-spirited, and shamelessly plays upon prejudice and pride to sabotage people who are supposedly his friends. He's also clearly the most intelligent player (intelligence being an intrinsically good attribute). He's better than Othello in that Othello is so crippled by rigid ideas about matrimony and love that doubt alone about his wife's fidelity is enough to make him a murderer. (Iago was cuckholded by his wife, but he doesn't actually kill her--use her, yes, put her in danger, yes, kill her, no.) His other point of sympathy is that he was passed over for promotion, and there's another fairly universal fear/grudge that people have, one that in the Iago/Othello example is one that we have seen attract even more anger over time as people begrudge affirmative action as "reverse racism."

Mobsters, on the other hand, only really fight other mobsters to the death, and it's usually a given that the other guy is the same as the mobster we're following just opposed to him. So that avenue of sympathy is out (the other guys isn't worse). Frequently, they mistreat, abuse, neglect, or even murder family members (or ignore slights/murders committed against family) in favor of "business," which is also contrary to our sympathies, especially when they're shown to abuse people with fewer resources or less physical strength (kids, wives). They possess few intrinsically good traits that aren't slaved to the "just business" aspect of their characters. (i.e. they only control their temper so long as losing it would cost them money; characters--like Sonny Corleone--who act on passion are ridiculed, belittled, slapped down, or killed off.) I just can't see any avenue of sympathy for them, whereas I have, frequently, found sympathy for people equally as brutal.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

I am so glad I'm no longer alone in hating westerns! (Mob and war movies are a close second in my disgust...) :-P

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I'd prefer a western to a mob movie, mostly because I've come to appreciate some things about them, and how they're not all cowboy movies etc. And I'll take the screwy dame in a western before I'll take any of the women in your average mob flick.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Another reason I like Casino. Robert De Niro's character is connected to the mob, but he's also a good businessman and the movie's conflict is him trying to keep the gangsters he's known in check while he attempts to run the casino the right way.

Since you didn't comment on it before, I'm presuming you haven't seen this movie. I don't think I would have enough faith you'd like it to tell you to rent it, but if it pops up on a pay cable channel you should TiVo it or something.

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

Mob movies suck! The only reason The Godfather is a great film is because it sets up The Godather Part 2, which is amazing and, imho, the best film ever made (with competition from City of God). My roomate Ralph walked in at one on a Wednesday a little while back and put it on. I was compelled to stay up for a few hours despite work the next day because it would have been shameful to let the photons go to waste on only one pair of eyes. Nothing has ever left me with a feeling so deeply, terribly empty as the final scene. Please stay at least 10 miles away from part 3 at all times.

Also, westerns suck! except for Unforgiven. It's not so much a western as a redemption story gone terribly wrong that happens to be set in the old west (much like The Host is a family movie that happens to have a big murderous monster). I like to think of it as a western that's slowly bleeding out its life as the film progresses. Ugly, ugly reality.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I would have gotten around to watching both Godfather I and II at some point and with more interest than I display here or did at the time if not for the fact that it was being forced on me like a "re-education" programme. No, thanks. I will get around to seeing II sometime. And I've been warned off III sufficiently, I think. Given my general aversion to mob movies, I won't bother myself with it, not even for completion's sake. (At this point, I'm hard pressed to find a trilogy with a third act that I wouldn't have been better off skipping. But there's still time. You never know what the next Nolan-led Batman movie might do.)

Westerns have a place in American identity. Understanding them is useful, even if watching them is fairly middling-to-poor of an experience. The notable exceptions are, as you point out, those films that don't feel like westerns so much as other films set in the west. That's key: horses do not a western make, but films without them can still be westerns. (Lone Star, possibly even No Country For Old Men.)

My favorite western is undoubtedly McLintock, for the obvious reason and for the fact that it's a "Taming of the Shrew" where the masculine control aspect is successfully updated in the guise of the cattle rancher/cowboy. Other westerns I enjoyed tended to be similarly borrowed in story (The Magnificent Seven, Ravenous). One notable exception is the story of the OK Corral, either in Gunfight at the OK Corral or Tombstone. Both are brilliant in totally different ways, with the fun of it all being both the faithfulness to and bastardizations of the true story coming through; what's more fun that shooting a lying, manipulative goddamned Hollywood movie about a fight that was more or less an almost forgotten scrap over nothing that some guy trumped up in a fit of self-aggrandizement? What could be more American than that?

[(Anonymous)]

I was drawn into 3 for completion's sake despite the warnings and suffered through it. It's not just bad "for the Godfather", it's just bad. Two is very different from the others, much bigger and with a Shakespearean feel. Michael Corleone is a amazing tragic lead once the more distracting characters from the first film are gone.

I'd call No Country a western if Anton's character didn't feel so much like an alien landing and wreaking havoc on the locals. It could have been dropped into any setting where a guy with poor judgment crosses paths with a madman. Then again, you seem to have a lot more experience with the genre than I do, so I'll defer my own judgment a bit.

Mag7 I dug, but I much prefer 7Sam, but I guess that often how it goes with recycled material. Ravenous sounds fascinating, though, and I'll have to catch that sometime. The supernatural lends itself well to the western since the era lies just at the cusp of the modern world. Are there any other examples?

OK, you've got me with Tombstone, I loved it. There's a sprawling, expanding, contracting sense to the story and its portrayal that reflects the senseless rise and fall of aggression that fuels the plot. It's a great view of people living within an almost lawless society... and where else can you see Val Kilmer completely steal the show?

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

god, I hate those session timeouts

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

OK, you've got me with Tombstone, I loved it. There's a sprawling, expanding, contracting sense to the story and its portrayal that reflects the senseless rise and fall of aggression that fuels the plot. It's a great view of people living within an almost lawless society... and where else can you see Val Kilmer completely steal the show?

Doc Holliday always steals the show. He's the more interesting and, oddly enough, most accurate character in the whole Earp/Holliday story. (Holliday, unlike Earp, was a gunfighter and a notorious one. Earp was a nobody who self-published his way to fame.) It's funny because the one exception is Gunfight at the OK Corral. Story has it that Kirk Douglas was jonsing to show up Burt Lancaster (they'd had a sort of rivalry), and went right for Doc Holliday. Lancaster went, "Sure, go ahead, have the best character. I will still be more awesome." And lo, you have the only truly great Wyatt Earp on film.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I thought it was you. I responded to the one above before I noticed it wasn't logged in, but yeah.