In addition, I spend most every other waking moment writing about and even making films.  I just started production on the low-budget action comedy Overtime, acting as writer, producer and director of photography.

While the production company I work for has many high-end cameras whose price tag is in the $20-30k range, we’ve decided to shoot this new film on a Canon 7D…the cheapest camera we own.  At $1,600, the 7D is affordable to just about all indie filmmakers, and because it uses the imaging technology of Canon’s Digital SLR still cameras, it mimics the “film look” (aka shallow depth-of-field, variable lenses and convincing film gammas) almost perfectly.  So I think it’s finally time for me to say it out loud for the world to hear.

Film is dead.

Below you’ll find a review of the 7D I’ve submitted to my friends over at MicroFilmmaker Magazine.  While the review is a bit technical and aimed toward a production audience, I thought it might be nice to put up here on MovieChopShop.

All the images on here are screen grabs pulled from the Overtime shoot.  They were all shot on the 7D at 1080P/24fps.  If that’s greek to you, no worries.  It just means we geeks are happy.

And stay tuned for a more in-depth analysis of the changing landscape of digital cinematography, including updates on the Red, the Canon 5D and 7D and other awesome low-budget shooting options…

Now for the review:

The future is here. For years (decades, even?), low-budget filmmakers have dreamed of being able to achieve the look of film without the headache and cost of film equipment, processing etc. Over the past decade we’ve seen digital cinema grow and develop, starting with 3-chip DV cameras and moving to SD 24P cameras and, most recently, prosumer HD camcorders that shoot true, native 24P video.

And while all these cameras did their best to mimic the look and feel of film by simulating film gammas and frame rates, they have all been a bit lacking with their smaller chip sizes and hardware limitations.

Unless you wanted to upgrade to a more expensive camera, say the Red One, you were stuck with these limitations. But now comes the 7D, out of nowhere, to redefine what we think of as a “video camera.”

The 7D, like the 5D before it, is first and foremost a still camera. Built in the body of a digital SLR, the camera takes fantastic images at high resolutions. But it also shoots video, and here is where we get the true advantage. By using a sensor size more comparable to that of film, we get a more robust image. And the interchangeable still lens system finally brings a filmic depth-of-field within the sights of the prosumer price range.

Basically, the 7D works so well because of its CMOS sensor. This censor is capable of scanning extremely high resolutions for still photographs. The images are then down-rezzed to create the 1080P video image. Basically, it looks more like film because the image system is closer to the way film works, complete with film lenses and a film-style sensor.

Of course, there are drawbacks to this system. First of all, it is in the unwieldy body of a still camera, so handheld work is difficult. The controls are often buried in menus, and there is no servo for smooth zooms. Also, because the lenses are still lenses, the focus distances are very short, making racks more difficult to pull off.

And the image, itself, has some problems. CMOS sensors are prone to the dreaded “jello effect.” This means that in high-motion camera movement, the processor has trouble down-rezzing the image on the fly for video, and so the image is distorted. Lines that should be straight are warped and bent. For this reason, the 7D might not be the best choice for handheld or high-impact action shooting.. And while shooting at 60fps seems to lessen this effect, there can still be problems with fast pans, tilts etc.

Finally, the camera has yet to develop a truly satisfactory audio system. While Magic Lantern is hard at work creating software to allow the camera to take mixed audio sources, the current audio track is auto-leveled and inconsistent. If you want to shoot with audio, you’d better get an external recorder and slate your takes.

Still, the image quality cannot be denied. And if you’re a filmmaker with only a couple grand to spend on a camera, this really is the only option to consider.

Ease of Use

If you’re used to a Beta body type (or even the Panasonic HVX-200), this camera is going to throw you for a loop. Lots of options are buried in menus, and the body style is not terribly conducive to video. Handheld shooting, zooms, and quality focus racks are extremely difficult to accomplish. While there are a few rail systems available for the camera, like those made by Redrock Micro or Zacuto, they can get to be pretty expensive–especially when compared to the relatively low cost of the camera. And they still fail to solve some of the body problems like button placement and menu accessibility. Focus assist systems can help with racking, but the focus wheel is so sensitive (due to the nature of still lenses) that it’s still hard to keep the subject in focus while dollying.

The whole thing works more like a film camera than a video camera, too, with variable film speeds, shutter speeds, and a fairly involved white-balancing process.

Another headache is the camera’s inability to monitor out in HD via SDI. Instead, the camera opts for a mini HDMI output which can also be used for low-quality SD video monitoring.

Also, the audio options are almost non-existent, requiring a separate audio recorder and slating takes.

Depth of Options
The versatility of being able to switch from still to video mode is a great feature to have. Images can be shot at different resolutions including both JPEG and RAW, and video can be shot at various frame rates. The camera includes a 60 fps mode to allow for slo-mo shooting, too..

In video mode, the 7D can shoot 1080P at 24 and 30 fps as well as 720P at 24, 30, and 60 fps.

Performance
The image is stunning…as long as you don’t try to pull off wild camera moves, focus racks or zooms. This one is definitely not a camera for all occasions, but is a great option for most low-budget filmmakers.

Value
The 7D is all about value. Very few cost-comparable cameras can compete with the 7D’s pure image quality. The headaches of operation, then, can be looked at as a necessary evil to get such a good picture for such a low cost.

Final Comments
There was a lot of talk about the 7D being a “Red Killer.” And while that might be a bit of an overstatement, I have been able to cut spots that use both Red One and 7D footage…the two cameras intercut seamlessly (with a little color correction, of course).

The cost of high-quality filmic images just dropped drastically with this camera, and you won’t regret buying it. At the same time, though, there is part of me that says “hold off.” There are rumors of Canon (among others) putting the guts of this camera in a more user-friendly body with better audio options and a more powerful processor that eliminates the “jello effect.” And if they can do that and keep the price tag under five grand, all my dreams will have come to fruition.         

So, I’m still confident that this movie will grow large and be a pretty sizable hit.  Will it be Dark Knight huge for Christopher Nolan?  No, probably not.  But it’ll be pretty big, and that, along with a wealth of great reviews and that new and improved 10-slot Best Picture ballot (not to mention the obvious weight it will carry in the technical categories), I’d say it’s an early shoe-in for a Best Picture nomination.  In a year of five, perhaps not, but I can’t see anything standing in its way this year.

But am I deluding myself?  It wouldn’t be the first time, I suppose.  See, I’m informed by the internet community, as I’m sure you are too, because you certainly didn’t run across this article in the Wall Street Journal.  And on the internet, we are all abuzz about this movie.  And the more people are talking about it, the more I think about the whole thing, and it’s consuming me—or at least the movie-obsessed part of me, which is a pretty big part, I guess.  For instance, right now I’m torn between writing this article and watching Memento, two decisions completely informed by my over-the-top consummation with Inception.  Right now, I’m going for the article, as it’ll make me feel more productive.  (Oh, did I mention I’m listening to Hans Zimmer’s Inception score right now too?  Yeah, colour me obsessed.)

As of this writing, I’ve seen Inception three times, with more on the way, most certainly.  Quaid and I were at an early screening last Monday, then I took my fiancé to the Thursday-midnight showing on IMAX, and then we caught it again on Sunday.  After the first viewing I thought I had pretty much everything figured out.  And on one hand, I did.  After all, in a gist-of-it sort of way, the movie really is pretty easy to understand so long as you’re paying attention (I’m talking to you, Rex Reed).  The details, however, can be a bit mystifying.

When I saw it the second and third times, already knowing the mechanics of the plot helped to enhance the experience as a whole.  I enjoyed much more Cobb’s backstory and I felt the emotional impact of that through-line much more strongly than the first time.  My head was clear and I was able to enjoy it out of pure entertainment.

However, with my mind that clear, it freed up some room for new questions to enter my head afterwards—questions that range from the ‘Wait, what?’s to the ‘How the?’s and everything of the sort.  And now my head is bursting and I’m feeling dizzy and disoriented and I think I need to brain-barf all over this computer screen.

I have to say, though, that one of the things that impressed me most about Inception is that for each question I’ve come up with so far, there seems to be a perfectly logical answer—as if Chris Nolan was thinking ten steps ahead of me for everything.  OK, drop the “as if”—he was.

So I know these articles and discussions are a dime-a-dozen right now, but I’m throwing my hat in the ring and anyone who sees fit to agree, disagree, or build on what I have to say is strongly encouraged to do so!  Bear in mind that I’m completely open to the fact that even after seeing it three times, I have totally missed something.

If, however, you haven’t seen the movie yet, then by all means—please do!!  And then come back and join in the fun!  Just don’t read this now because this is all basically one great big SPOILER!! Anyway, let’s get started.

Now, the sequence of events at the end of the film is a tad confusing—and I do mean a tad.  I sincerely believe the overall plot of Inception to be pretty easy to grasp.  It’s not the kind of movie where you’re right at the climax, angry and muttering to yourself, “I have no idea what the hell is going on!” (My go-to movie for that feeling is the virtually incoherent Mission: Impossible 2.)

For me, Inception works kind of like any piece of modern machinery—you know that it works (if not how), you know how to use it, and both of those facts demonstrate its usefulness to its necessary extent without fail.  In other words, whether you’ve got it all figured out or not, Inception succeeds in being one hell of a cleverly entertaining blockbuster (and that alone is a pretty admirable accomplishment).

But, like with all that fancy machinery, some of us are just dying to open the damn thing up and see how it works.  It’s a tricky little movie, and it’s easy to overthink certain aspects and get a few of the rules of the world a bit jumbled up.  Personally, though, I think I’ve finally cracked it.

Okay, so let’s talk Level 3 now–the snowy-vista hospital fortress.  One common misconception that I’ve seen is that Level 3 is Fischer’s dream.  I thought this for a bit, too.  It’s all because Ariadne has that pesky line of dialogue right before they enter Level 3, where she asks “Who’s subconscious are we going into?” and Cobb says “Fischer’s.”  It’s my belief this line was put there to avoid any confusion that they might be going into Browning’s subconscious (since that’s what they told Fischer they were doing).  Unfortunately it just created more confusion.

See, there’s a difference between whose dream they’re going into and whose subconscious will be filling said dream—that’s the whole idea behind dream-sharing.  Cobb explains this when he is telling Ariadne the rules of dream-sharing in their stroll through her dream-Paris.  (It makes a lot of sense, really—after all, you don’t want the target creating the dreamspace; you’ll never find a damn thing!)

With that said, it’s actually Eames’s dream in Level 3.  This is explicitly stated by Cobb in a line of dialogue that I must have missed the first two times and I guess a lot of others did too.  Also, it’s Eames who Arthur puts the headphones on in Level 2 (the hotel) for the music cue—because Level 3 is Eames’s dream.

So, because of the strength of the sedative being used, when Fischer is killed by Mal in Level 3, he is sent down into limbo, where Mal keeps him captive to lure Cobb back.  Cobb and Ariadne go down into limbo to find him and kick him back up to Level 3 so that the inception can be successfully performed.

While in limbo, Cobb confronts Mal and admits to performing inception on her, thus planting the idea that consumed her and caused her to kill herself.  In doing so, he finally comes to term with his guilt.  Meanwhile, Ariadne pushes Fischer off the balcony when she hears the music cue to give him the kick needed to coincide with the kick that Eames is giving him with the defibrillator on Level 3.  Fischer wakes up, goes to the safe, and confronts his subconscious projection of his father who feeds the idea back to him to split up the company.  Mission accomplished.

Back down in limbo, Mal is upset with Cobb’s deception and brutally stabs him in a subconscious crime of passion.  This is bad news for Cobb because his resulting death will kick him out of limbo, where he means to stay so that he can search for Saito (who has died as a result of being shot in the city landscape of Level 1) to remind him of their reality and their arrangement to let him go back home.  However since Cobb was stabbed by Mal—and death is the way out of limbo—he presumably gets kicked back up to Level 1 and drowns in the van, sending him back down to Level 4/limbo.

Remember that just because we don’t necessarily see Cobb die in Level 4 and kick up to Level 1, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  One of the most simultaneously fascinating and maddening things about Christopher Nolan is the fact that he doesn’t always give you every piece of the puzzle he’s making.  Especially in a film about dreams, it seems like a pretty vital component, thematically, to leave a few details out, and make you question the logic.  It’s all the more refreshing when, with a little extra thought and applied logic, it still manages to add up.

After he drowns in the van, Cobb washes up on the beach–the shores of his subconscious and the limbo that he now shares with Saito.   This time, however, he is confused and out of touch with reality since he was sent there through death in a dream from which he was too heavily sedated to wake up.

Now, it’s important to remember that one’s perception of reality is key to emerging from limbo alive.  Unfortunately for Cobb, when he died in the van in Level 1 and was sent to limbo, his death created the ultimate mind-wipe which confused him and made him perceive limbo as his reality.  (If he were to continue out his days there and die an old man, while he would probably wake up, his mind would be completely gone–because in the reality he believes in, he is dead.)

He is found on the beach and brought in to see Saito, who is now an old man–because the way time flies down in limbo, he’s been there for much, much longer than Cobb (although on Level 1, their deaths were just a matter of minutes apart).  The spinning top reminds them both of their true reality and their arrangement.  With their subconsciouses now aware that their world is fake, they are able to escape from limbo through death and with their brains intact.  They wake up, Saito makes the call, and all is well, the end.

Whew!  That was tricky.  And I may very well be wrong about several details, but I think—for the most part anyway—I’ve finally got it!  If I am wrong, please–tell me!!  What do you think??

But even if I’m not wrong about that, I’d be all kinds of wrong if I thought I was actually done right here.  Now there’s this business of the last shot—you know, the one that’s got everyone all frazzled?

First, let’s acknowledge that the real question behind the last shot is simply a matter of whether or not the top falls or keeps spinning.  That’s the only thing that Nolan withholds from us.  If it stops, then the only real conclusion you can draw is that the whole movie was totally straight-forward with us and everything was as portrayed—little to no room is left to think anything else.  If it keeps spinning, however, it opens up a whole mess of possibilities!

When I saw the movie the first time, I thought there were only two possibilities: the top falls and it’s real, or the top keeps going and old-Saito never killed Cobb and himself, thus not waking themselves up, which only sent Cobb further into a dream-delirium where, at least now at terms with his guilt, he is at liberty to see his children’s faces in his dreams again.

The latter seems more likely.  I would be inclined to say the former, because I’d love for Cobb to return to his children in reality, but the fact that in that final scene, he’s in the same room, looking at his kids from the same angle, and they’re doing the exact same thing and wearing the exact same clothes as in his memory (not to mention the fact that they don’t look as old as they sounded on the phone at the beginning of the movie) leads me to believe that this is all a new (and healthier, at least) development of Cobb’s subconscious.

But I’m not totally satisfied; it’s still kind of a downer.  There’s another possibility—sort of a way to have your cake and eat it too.  This scene could simply be a stand-alone dream.  After all, though we didn’t see old-Saito actually shoot him in the dream, we did see him reach for the gun—what else was he gonna to do with it?  Maybe he did wake up with Saito, and Saito made the call and he went back home, but somewhere along the way, he fell asleep and had that dream—now that he’s free of Mal’s influence, he is now able to dream without the machine.  At first, that idea makes the scene seem a little arbitrary and silly, but it fits with the emotional/thematic through-line of the movie—it’s representative of Cobb’s newly peaceful subconscious.  I think I like this one—it’s a way to reach that redemption while staying within the poetically surreal cinematic language that encompasses the nature of the film and makes the scene the most powerful.

Of course, I’ve also seen some that subscribe to the philosophy that Mal was right all along—that Cobb was the one who became delusional in their shared limbo and once he consents to kill himself in what he perceives to be his reality, he will wake up and be back with Mal and his kids.  I don’t buy this one.  I think there’s most likely a good argument to be made for it (especially when considering the spinning top totem and just whose totem it actually is), but I still don’t quite buy it.  If this was the case, not only would it render the heist plot completely superficial and worthless, but it wouldn’t make sense with Cobb’s admission that he had performed inception on Mal, and his entire emotional journey would be a joke and a lie.

Some might say that the heist plot is superficial and worthless, and that that’s a big indicator that it was all in Cobb’s head—after all, a common complaint against the movie is that Cobb is the only character that’s really developed—maybe that was done on purpose; maybe everyone else in the movie was a projection of Cobb’s subconscious.

This reasoning, I don’t quite buy either.  True, we don’t really see or hear from anyone else’s subconscious except Cobb’s, but remember that only one person (the “subject”) can have their subconscious inhabited at a time.  Because Cobb is the only one who has been to limbo and been able to create something there, he is the only one of the team whose subconscious can penetrate the levels of the shared dream.

And besides, this is Cobb’s story, and for the script to further develop the supporting characters (and bring along any skeletons they might be keeping in their closets) would horribly clutter up the whole affair.  This is still a movie, dammit.  The supporting players in this story are developed perfectly fine through a wide range of really terrific and subtle performances.

All theorizing aside, though, if you think that it’s not Nolan’s desire to trip you up a bit, you’d be dead wrong.  Just think of the scene after Cobb tries out Yusuf’s sedative in that creepy dreamer-opium-den.  He wakes up and rushes to the bathroom to splash water on his face and take a look at his totem.  Saito interrupts him and we never see him successfully spin the top.  Many point to this scene as evidence that Cobb was dreaming the whole movie–or at least from that point on–but I believe it to hold a different significance.  After all, at the end of the movie, the spinning top would have meant nothing to Saito if he hadn’t seen Cobb trying to use it in this scene, and thus he never would have remembered his true reality.  Just because we never saw Cobb spin the top in the opium-den scene doesn’t mean he didn’t do it later—he probably did; Nolan just chose not to show us that—a piece of genius misdirection, if you ask me.  (Unless I’m wrong, and he is dreaming!!)

On one final, more cynical, note, let’s humor the idea that this was simply a way for Chris Nolan to defer any responsibility for anything that doesn’t make any sense.  If it’s all a dream, then that can easily allow for logic lapses, and so any that you find within the narrative can be chalked up to the fact that it was all one great big dream anyway, right?  Thus it’s a case of lazy filmmaking.  Well, if you sincerely believe that, then I defy you to take a close look at the plot, scale, and filmmaking expertise of Inception and sincerely call it lazy.  For me, it’s a wonder to behold.

On the other hand, I’ve seen some detractors of the film discrediting it for not being “dream-like” enough (Jim Emerson comes to mind); too actiony, too linear, not “out-there” enough.  I beg to differ.  First off, this allegation completely ignores certain facts.  One is that the dreams are being orchestrated by characters using their conscious minds to create a landscape and sequence of events that will comprise the dream, and so the dreams in question would logically be more controlled environments than the average dreams that we have every night.

Also, if things didn’t seem quite surreal enough for you, then you might have missed certain dream-like details that don’t call deliberate attention to themselves, such as the endless stream of attackers on the motorcycle chasing Yusuf (when one falls off, another one is still always on).  In fact, I’d wager that many viewers haven’t noticed this at all–and there’s more to see with every viewing, I promise.

Now, if the film seems like a grounded non-dream-like/semi-realistic action flick in tone (and I agree that it does), then I ask you to remember this line from Cobb: “Dreams seem real when we’re in them; it’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.”  The same sentiment applies beautifully to the film itself—I’ve seen the movie three times now and each time—while I’m watching the movie—it seems perfectly logical, working like a well-oiled machine. And when I think back upon it, that’s when my memory for small—but crucial—details escapes me, when I jumble up the exposition, and when certain things don’t quite seem plausible or even logical.  For me, Inception encompasses the present-tense dream experience on film—if the bizarre surrealism of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive understands how we remember dreams, then Inception, with its fantasy-laced straight-forward logistics, understands how we experience them.

So with that in mind, doesn’t that last shot seem somewhat crucial?  If you left a movie that took place almost entirely in the landscape of dreams feeling like you had it all figured out and there was nothing to think about, wouldn’t you be just a tad disappointed?  For me, this whole thing is a blast and I hope people continue debating it for years and years to come.

But whether or not the ending renders certain events real or fake, as an emotional and philosophical development of the movie it is an absolutely vital redemption for Cobb’s guilty subconscious.  This, I’m sure we can all agree on to be fact.  As far as the narrative of Inception goes, the ending can mean any number of things—choose the one you like and go with it.  But in light of all the pages and pages of conjecture, the constant scratching of heads, the endless discussion and theorizing, and the fact that it’s consumed many of you in the same way it’s consumed me, if that last shot is anything, then it’s most certainly Chris Nolan performing inception on us.  Well. Fucking. Played.

SIDE-NOTE: Since publishing this article two days ago, I’ve since gone back and revised and expanded it a bit.  Now, normally I would never do this, but—aside from the fact that Inception is the kind of movie that inspires a stream of “and another thing…and another thing!”—since the article hasn’t garnered any comments thus far, then I haven’t yet started the discussion I sought to start, and deem myself at liberty to amend my thoughts for the sake of clarity, newer inspiration, and generally better writing.  So there.  (PS, this is now the longest ChopShop article to date by almost 1,000 words.  If you stuck with it this long, you deserve a cookie and a great big hug.  Thank you!)
        

So I was really only starting to throw my hat in the ring of film-geekiness at the tail-end of the first “independent film” renaissance. You know, that period in the mid/late ’90’s when Hollywood studios began tracking down young talent like Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith and throwing multi-picture deals at them?

It was exciting…for the first time, young filmmakers were making really interesting, self-funded films and having the world handed to them. These movies were steeped in film history or covered with in a unique style. It marked a very different approach than the “work your way up” feel of the earlier days of the film industry. Instead of directors being hired by studios, it felt (whether true or not) like directors were being given full control of projects, and the studio was just there to write the checks.

This gave us crazy films like From Dusk ’til Dawn and wildly irreverent, intelligent and dialogue-heavy verbal style-fests like Chasing Amy.

While these directors were getting their “big break” in the mid 90’s, though, there was another director that was trying to match their success. In 1996, Christopher Nolan shot a movie called Following on Saturdays over the course of a year. It was a similar approach to what Rodriguez did with El Mariachi and how Kevin Smith managed to make Clerks. And, just like those guys’ films, Following was well received, and soon Chris Nolan was off and running with his cult-classic follow-up, Memento.

From there he made Insomnia with Robin Williams and Al Pacino. Then he was handed the keys to the kingdom of Batman, and he rebooted the franchise with two amazing films. In between, he managed to slide in a Christian Bale magician movie that was more than a little cool.

So…case closed. Another success story, right? Not entirely.

When sitting in line waiting to go see Inception last night, Shep and I got into a friendly tussle. While he argued that Nolan’s rise to success was the same as a director like, say, Peter Jackson–being handed a huge franchise after making only a handful of successful “cult” films–I disagreed. It wasn’t really that Nolan’s filmic ascent was different on paper, but it feels somehow more unlikely…because of the kind of filmmaker Nolan is.

You see, Robert Rodriguez makes movies with cool action and maintains his low-budget sensibilities, keeping the crews small and the craziness high. Tarantino is the poster child for auteur directors, his personality apparent in almost every frame of his films, and Kevin Smith makes movies so dialogue heavy with such a clear signature that they all feel like variations of his first film. Finally, Peter Jackson manages to imbue his Lord of the Rings films with the same giddy over-the-top wackiness that made him a genre favorite in the first place.

And Chris Nolan has a distinct style, too. He has a clear auteur presence in his films. Still, there is something that sets Nolan apart from his indie counterparts, and its the “classical” and complicated nature of his films.

When I was watching Inception, I was struck by the idea the this movie could have been directed by a Martin Scorsese or a Stanley Kubrick. It feels like a work that comes from directing dozens of films of various budgets and qualities, or a movie that would be made by a traditionally educated filmmaker who worked his way up the ranks in the film industry.

Whereas many of the movies made by “indie” directors are intimate or quirky or over-the-top, this one is polished, restrained, and formalist in the most traditionally Hollywood way. It’s wildly intelligent, has impeccable structure, and manages, somehow, to keep itself rooted firmly in the mainstream. It’s planned, polished and perfectly executed. Whereas those previous directors seem to thrive on surprises or on simplicity or on wild cuts and insane camera movement, Nolan’s films really feel like movies that are planned in the director’s head, word for word and shot for shot, months before a single frame of film was shot. Every shot and costume and lighting effect means something important…just like film school says it should.

But Nolan studied English literature in college. His first movie cost $6,000, and then he was off and running, always at the helm of large or spectacularly large productions. He didn’t spend decades around huge productions, honing his craft as a cinematographer or screenwriter and eventually getting his “big break” as a director. So where did he learn this very specific, classical style of film making?

In his review of Inception, Shep asks the question “How can one man put all of this together in his head?” I’ll take it a step farther. How can one man teach himself all the technical, artistic, and structural elements of classical filmmaking and still manage to give us something new and exciting with his brand of narrative/structural style all over it?

If you figure out the answer to that question, let me know. I’d like to give it a try.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that Chris Nolan has made the circle complete. Those other guys proved that “untrained filmmakers” can make great movies. They can breather new life into a stale Hollywood system and give people something fresh and stylistically different…movies that break the rules and are better for it.

Now, though, Nolan has proven that these plucked-from-the-masses directors can make a structurally complicated, mature, formalist movie within the rules of “Old Hollywood” without losing their ability to bring audiences something new, exciting, and thought-provoking. Tarantino taught us that the “unknown” can step up and make great films like we’ve never seen before. Nolan teaches us that the “unknown” can make narrative masterpieces in the most classical, clinical definition of the word. Without selling his soul.         

Like last night when Quaid and I—as recognized members of the “reviewing press,” as it’s called—were able to attend an advance screening of the only movie that’s really (and I mean really) piqued our interest this summer.  That little movie, of course, is Christopher Nolan’s Inception.  Does that mean we’ve hit the big-time?  Let’s just say yes and move on.

Now, surely you know Chris Nolan, don’t you?  After debuting with the low-budget black-and-white psychological thriller Following, he became quite the breakout success with his backward-narrative mind-exploding indie crime drama, Memento.  He then remade the Swedish thriller Insomnia with Al Pacino and Robin Williams before being bequeathed the Batman franchise and turning out the outstanding, dark, and mature Batman Begins, breaking records and making an instant-classic with its sequel, The Dark Knight, which today is the third-highest-grossing film of all time.  In between the two was the better magician thriller of 2006, The Prestige.

So yeah, that guy.  You know him.  Now, you may be asking yourself, “Dark Knight was pretty effing amazing—how do you follow up that?”  A very good question.  The answer is quite simple:  with one of the coolest movies you will ever see in your life.

That’s really the best way to describe Inception.  I’ve never seen a movie that left me so in awe of every last detail to the point where I walked out marveling at how one man could have created such an intricately layered tapestry of ideas, action, emotion, and nail-biting suspense all by himself.

If the screenplay for Inception goes unnoticed by the Oscars, a great injustice will have been committed.  It’s so good, so fascinating and complex that I feel wholly unworthy and pathetic just sitting here writing this review.  I’m pretty confident that I’ll never write anything a hundredth as skillful, smart, and incredible as Inception.

Hell, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to even write my name again without feeling self-conscious.  There Chris Nolan will be, standing over my shoulder, looking down and telling me “I could do better.”  Yes, you could, Chris.  Yes you could.

Now, I’d like those of you reading this to get the experience that I had, which means I don’t want to tell you much at all about the plot.  I made it my business to try and underexpose myself to this movie as much as I could so that I could go in as fresh as possible.  I’d say I did pretty well for myself.

But let me also say that the trailers for this film do it no justice—not like Dark Knight, which had some great trailers that I was addictedto.  Inception is a horse of a different color, however.  As excited as you are for this movie on the simple basis that it’s Nolan and he’s awesome, you will be even more excited upon leaving the theater, I promise you.

But maybe I shouldn’t promise; I don’t want to oversell it!  But how can I?  It really is that good!

And you know what?  I’ll admit to some flashes of mild concern.  I liked the trailers and was pretty confident the movie would be awesome, but there was room for doubt.  When the cavalcade of positive reviews started flowing in I was wondering if everyone—out of the same pre-ordained enthusiasm that I had—might have been making the movie out to be more spectacular than it actually was.

But now I understand, and soon you will, too.  Inception is utterly thrilling in the most unique ways I’ve ever seen.  There were several moments in Inception where I simply had to laugh—almost as if I couldn’t handle just how cool what was happening was.

You probably already know—and if you don’t it’s not giving anything away—that the film has a lot to do with dreams, and is largely a heist movie.  That’s fine, but just leave it at that for now.

There’s far more to it than simply that, of course, as Nolan has many a trick up his sleeve, but the experience of watching it unravel is absolutely mind-blowing.  It goes without saying that Inception is a movie that will demand repeat viewings, but there, I said it anyway.  Personally, I plan on getting my second helping Thursday at midnight.

Who knows what new details I might catch or what new shape the whole picture might take?  After all, perception is a key element to the inner-workings of this movie and is just as important to you the viewer, as it is to its characters.  However, no matter how you perceive it, I promise—you’ve never seen anything like this before.

One of the most interesting details about the film is the way that Nolan characterizes the subconscious.  Many movies have done many a trick placing minds inside of faux realities and even inside the imagery produced by the mind itself.  And in movies like The Matrix and A Nightmare on Elm Street certain characters are allowed total control over their fake worlds.  But Nolan acknowledges that we really don’t have any control over our subconscious mind at all—that’s what makes it the subconscious, and it presents one of the greatest dangers in the movie.

But here I go!  I’m rambling, I know, and talking too much about the movie.  However none of that will probably even make a lick of sense until you’ve seen the movie, so I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.  Instead of letting everything spill out of me, let me just try to break it down a bit.

Not the plot, though—that will stay tucked away safely in a vault deep in my mind for now.  There will be time for much discussion at another date, I’m sure.

But there are other elements at play, of course, and they’re certainly worth talking about.  It should be of no surprise that, visually, the movie is quite breathtaking.  But what’s also quite remarkable—and unsurprising considering that it’s Nolan—is that the key visual effects set-pieces of the promotional materials (the crumbling buildings on the beach, the folding city roads, etc) make little attempt to draw major attention to themselves in the context of the actual movie.  Inception has better things to do than dwell on Transformers-esque displays of visual machismo.

But that’s not to say that the action in Inception isn’t top-notch—it is.  There’s a fight scene in this movie that is one of the best ever (certainly it’s at least the best since the Viggo Mortensen naked-sauna-fight in Eastern Promises).

Also noteworthy is the score by Hans Zimmer, which fantastically compliments all the aforementioned elements.

Finally, there’s the cast.  DiCaprio is great.  Let me just say that if you liked him in Scorsese’s Shutter Island, you’ll like him in this—they are extremely similar characters.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a fine job as well, as does the extremely likeable Tom Hardy, who I haven’t heard of until now.  Ellen Page does what she’s there to do, and that’s about it.  She’s neither good nor bad, she just…is.

On the only down-notes, I do sort of wish that Ken Watanabe had come with a subtitle track (other than that, another fine performance), and I was also not the hugest fan of what Marion Cotillard brought to her character.  But, to be fair, it’s a very difficult role to cast and I have no idea who could have really pulled it off in the way it needed to be done.  I could explain what I mean, but to do so would take me into that spoiler territory that I refuse to go into.  So you’ll just have to trust me.

Now, since Inception hasn’t come out yet, let me just get this in writing first, just so it’s there whether I’m right or wrong.  But to say what I’m about to say, I’m going to have to go back a few months and tell a little story.

When I walked out of Avatar after its midnight screening, I hated it.  I’ve made no secret of that.  I believe it to be a truly terrible movie.  Now, you may not agree, and that’s fine (I guess).  But, for a second, let’s pretend that you do—that you believe my opinion to be right.  Just go with that for a second so that you may properly ensconce yourself in my shoes.

With Avatar, I put my faith in American audiences.  When I walked out of that movie, I said to myself, “People aren’t going to fall for this crap; this movie will bomb.”  I was wrong.  Avatar is now the biggest movie ever.  For those keeping score, that’s James Cameron 1, Shep Ramsey 0.  (Ouch, my ego.)

And now, with Inception’s box office numbers yet to be made, let me give American audiences one more chance—I think this movie, challenging though it is, will be huge.  Now, supposedly, American movie audiences don’t like to be challenged at the movies.  This is a true statement, and I’d never in a million years predict any kind of large monetary success for a movie like, say, Mulholland Drive.

But this isn’t Mulholland Drive.  I love that movie to death, but it’s made for a very specific taste.  Inception is a smart, challenging epic heist movie that’s made for the audience at large, and Nolan knows how to sell sophistication to the same audiences that stand in lines to see Transformers—he proved that easily with Dark Knight.  He knows that the key to giving mass appeal to a challenging film isn’t to make his audience understand everything, but to make them want to understand everything, and the rest will follow.  In Inception, when everything is at stake and the tension is at its highest peak, your mind is still racing to keep up with it all, and it’s exhilarating, exciting, fun, and the total epitome of the purest cinematic thrills!

I remember back when this project was first announced—back when it was being referred to as “a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind” (which made us all say “what??” back then, but now seems pretty spot-on).  It was actually one of the first news items we ever ran here at MovieChopShop.  I remember wondering if Dark Knight would be an impossible act to follow—if he really could outdo himself.  Well, I think he just did…which begs the question, if Christopher Nolan is only capable of outdoing himself for the rest of his career, will it even be safe for me to watch Batman 3 or will the hyperbolic metaphors applied to his films like “mind-bending” and “earth-shattering” suddenly become literal fact?  Well, if you gotta go, that’s the way to do it!

I’ve been a big detractor of this summer’s movies, but now there’s finally one worth going to see as soon as you possibly can!  This summer gets so much better than Twilight, people!  Do your horizons a favor and expand them!  Inception will open at midnight on Thursday–see the shit out of it!

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But that really isn’t the childhood that sticks out in my head.  No, the childhood I remember most fondly didn’t really happen at all.  It was filled with characters like Gordie LaChance, Scotty Smalls and Veda Sultenfuss.  These were the movies I grew up on, and they shaped my unrealistic idea of what childhood was supposed to be like.

It all came crashing back this past Fourth of July weekend.  On Saturday nights at the local “arthouse” theater, they show random midnight movies.  This year, the brilliant minds behind this practice decided that the perfect Independence Day movie would be The Sandlot (they played ID4 last year, so that one was out).

And as I ate my complementary hot dog and shot off my complementary firework, I was driven into the perfect mindset to watch the fantasy-filled tale of a group of kids who were looking for a baseball…but found themselves (*wipes single tear away from eye*).

If you haven’t seen this movie, do yourself a favor.  It’s one of the very few movies out there that really captures the ideas of childhood imagination and exaggeration, but tempers it with genuine emotional moments, character relationships, and humor.  It’s really a masterpiece of family entertainment.

Or maybe it isn’t.  Maybe I have a warped and unfair perspective on the film, having grown up with it constantly lodged in my VHS player.  Every generation, I’d argue, has what I call its “nostalgia” films.  Now, this can mean any number of things.  I know quite a few people who get nostalgic watching Star Wars or even The Evil Dead, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.  I’m talking about movies that are designed from the get-go to make you want to feel nostalgic.  They’re often nostalgic in-and-of themselves, told from a forward perspective looking back at life.

The Sandlot most definitely fits into that mold, and it got me thinking.  What other movies work on me in the same way?  The list is short…but epic.

Let’s start off with the obvious.  1983’s A Christmas Story sets the bar for uniting the most wide set of demographics in feeling nostalgic.  While it’s set in the 1940’s, the locale feels slightly timeless and applicable to any of our childhoods.  And while it was made in the year of my birth, I still grew up on it due mostly to its status as a cult classic, playing CONSTANTLY (quite literally, these days) at Christmas.

This one, too, has that sense of fantasy, jumping into ridiculous sequences of evil bandits and “soap poisoning.”  It also gets that perfect flavor of what it feels like to be a kid, helpless in the world and being pulled in a number of different directions.  Its episodic nature make it the perfect representation of childhood, where each segment feels like a slice of life that manages to relate itself to your own experiences without really trying.

Next up is Howard Zieff’s 1991 immortal classic My Girl. Now, I know I’m a boy (took me long enough to figure that one out…just kidding), but there is a universal charm and nostalgia to this story about a pre-teen girl dealing with her father’s newfound girlfriend, her “transition into womanhood,” and the friendships and budding romances that shape us in ways we rarely admit to ourselves.

My Girl has that feeling of first love, summer, and loss all rolled into one nearly-perfect whole.  And even though I was just eight years old when it was released, it quickly became a movie I watched constantly in my early adolescence.  So when I watch it these days, there’s no line between Veda’s childhood experiences and my own.

Finally we come to the ultimate in childhood coming-of-age nostalgic cinema.  And, ironically enough, it’s based on the writings of Stephen King.  Stand by Me has the most unexpected premise ever for a touching story about a group of friends learning to find strength and value in their friendships and in each other.  The movie is based on King’s story The Body and follows a band of outcast kids as they set off on a weekend camping trip to find the dead body of one of their schoolmates.

And while that premise is important to the movie, it serves more as a bookending metaphor and catalyst than as the macabre centerpiece we’re used to in King stories.  Instead, we follow these kids as they deal with societal and familial expectations, and the result is a story that delves deep into the psyche of kid-dom without ever feeling melodramatic.  These are, admittedly, experiences that most of us have never gone through, but all of us understand the feelings of loss, fear, and inadequacy that are at the center of Stand by Me.  That– and the “Lard Ass” scene–are what will make this movie a universally loved piece of nostalgia cinema for decades to come.

It’s really funny…looking back on these movies, I wonder what they make me nostalgic for.  It’s not related to anything physical or tangible.  Instead, when I watch these movies I get choked up over the emotions I remember when I would watch them as a kid.  These were the films that made me sad, scared, excited, and ponderous…often for the first time.  And those emotions, while always strong and meaningful, are most strong and meaningful when you’re young.

Or maybe it’s like Gordy’s experience with the deer in Stand by Me.  Something personal that you really can’t explain by putting into words.  Isn’t that what nostalgia’s all about, anyway?

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And it was…well, cute and fun. But that isn’t what this article is about. No, of all the nice things offered in this film, the most refreshing element lies in the opening credits sequence.

A simple title fades up saying “A film by.” I roll my eyes a little, as I hate these masturbatory title cards, in general. But then the rest of the title comes in: “A Lot of People.”

“A Film by A Lot of People.” Word.

In a world of film where everyone is jockeying for position, fighting for more titles placed in more prominent places on their films, it’s fantastic to see a team of filmmakers who admit the truth…it takes a very talented team of people to make a film.

Film authorship is one of those annoying pet peeves of mine. These days it seems it’s no longer enough for a director to put his title last before the movie starts or first after the film ends. Instead, he or she needs her name over the title, proudly proclaiming that this is “A (Insert Douchebag Director’s Name Here) film.” This philosophy goes so far, in fact, that some filmmakers even insist that their name be put before the title. So instead of Shitty Movie 2, we often get Lame-Ass Insecure Director’s Shitty Movie 2.

I’m looking at you M. Night Shyamalan.

Now let me get something straight…I’m not necessarily insulting the film, itself.  For example, I’m a huge John Carpenter fan, and I think he’s a great, whacked out filmmaker that has done some amazing work.  But yes, it still bugs me that his name is before the title of Halloween.

Because John Carpenter did NOT author Halloween.  He co-wrote the screenplay and he directed it (and excellently, I might add).  Still, there was the incomparable Dean Cundy who gave the movie its eerie feeling using compelling lighting and camera angles.  There was Tommy Lee Wallace’s brilliant idea to use the white, featureless face.  And there were, of course, the actors who were actually on-screen bringing it all to life.

That’s how it is with every movie.  There is simply too much to do…to many specialized jobs…for one or two people to do everything.  Sure, the director gives guidance and signs off on everything.  And some directors, like James Cameron, micro-manage in a big way.  But they do not author the film.  No matter how “auteur-ish” these filmmakers are, the film is not “by” them.  Even when they are the key ingredient to keeping everything alive and bringing a unique style and tone to the table, the film does not belong to them.

This is a universal.  Even Tyler Perry Presents Tyler Perry in Tyler Perry’s Madea Kills A Hobo Part 2 is not A Film by Tyler Perry (written and directed by Tyler Perry).

And this epidemic of masturbatory directors-gone-wild is more out of control than ever.  Now you’re seeing no-name hacks insist they get their names above the title.  How many times have you seen “A (Name I’ve Never Heard of) film on a movie poster.  These are not auteurs, either.  Many times, these directors haven’t had a serious hand in writing or shooting these films.  They are, in effect, directors-for-hire in a studio system, yet their egos dictate that they fight for a meaningless credit for an oftentimes forgettable film.

STOP!  Just stop.  You have an amazing job, directors.  You’re able to bring together so many artists and craftsmen in order to put forward a collaborative film that conforms with your style, intention and vision.  It’s one of the most exciting and creatively fulfilling jobs on the planet.  Isn’t that enough?  Do you really need to stroke your ego that hard?

There is one final note, though, that does deserve some thought.  Sometimes a director is such a big name, they, themselves, become a draw for box-office.  And with that in mind, the studio marketing departments will put their names above the title on a poster.  For example, The Departed had “A Martin Scorsese Picture” plastered all over it.

And I do get that.  I understand the marketing needs of a film.  But I don’t see Scorsese fighting for a bigger title card or whining about his auteur status.  Because Marty’s got class.  That’s why he calls it his “picture,” not his film.

So there is some leeway with these rules.  But in general…get over yourselves, Hollywood directors.  Besides, claiming authorship of a film does not all of a sudden make it artistic or even good.

Just look at Uwe Boll.

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Last weekend, however, was a horse of a different color.  Obviously I wasn’t going to try and deter anyone from seeing Toy Story 3.  This was a sentiment I had both before and after seeing the film, which is every bit as wonderful as the first two Toy Story movies and the fourth Pixar movie in a row (and in as many years) that is an absolute four-star amazing classic of terrific greatness.  (Guys, guys!  I FORGIVE YOU for Cars, already!!)

On the other side of that equation was Jonah Hex, which most certainly looked awful and in need of a remedy.  I had been planning on writing up an Alternative article to that, but was having a difficult time settling on the right candidate.  I humored many a western from my stockpile of favorite westerns—movies like The Wild Bunch, High Noon, High Plains Drifter, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, The Proposition, and even Akira Kurosawsa’s western-inspired Yojimbo.  As great as all of those movies are, none of them really kept up with the summer-movie-spectacle tone that was sort of the point of this whole series.

Then I considered, seeing as Jonah Hex is a DC Comics character, to maybe branch out in that direction, and direct peoples’ attention to the absolutely outstanding DC Animated Universe movie Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.  But then, when the box office numbers came in and it turned out that America apparently didn’t need to be dissuaded from seeing Jonah Hex, then my inspiration for an article was completely squandered.

So for those of you who found yourselves lost without my guidance last weekend, I apologize.  But I hope you did the right thing, anyway, and saw Toy Story 3.  It’s the wonderful summer movie that we’re in need of.

This weekend, however, is back to the ol’ shitty grind.  First up, we’ve got Grown Ups, a movie that could not possibly appeal to me any less.  I’ve expressed before that I like Adam Sandler a lot when he’s doing serious and mature roles in movies like Funny People and Punch-Drunk Love.  But to look at this movie, and then look at Funny People and tell yourself that this one is features an older Adam Sandler than the other, it just seems like a sad massive step backwards.

And then there’s Knight and Day.  I honestly have no idea what to make of Knight and Day.  Some aspects of the trailer seem a little fun—mainly just that charming/zany version of Tom Cruise that I already admitted to liking.  He’s a genuinely funny guy when he wants to be.

The movie itself is clearly seeking to appeal to the Mr. and Mrs. Smith crowd, but doesn’t seem to be anchored onto any kind of tangible…idea.  Generally I take it as a bad sign when I watch a trailer for an easy-to-swallow summer action movie and can’t deter what exactly it’s about.

Such is the case with Knight and Day.  All I can really tell is that Tom Cruise is some kind of covert agent who pulls Cameron Diaz into his whacky adventures against her will.  Hmmm…sound familiar?  It should.

Let’s say that you’re really geared up this weekend to watch a movie where Tom Cruise plays an eccentric man who exists frequently in the line of fire and finds some poor unsuspecting third party to assist him on his journeys.  Well, you could wait in line all night and day to see Knight and Day, or you could stay indoors where it’s safe, cozy up with a White Castle Crave Case and watch Michael Mann’s 2004 thriller, Collateral.

Yes, I know—this is the second Tom Cruise movie in a row to be featured in my Summer Movie Alternatives series.  What can I say—I like Tom Cruise.  Sorry.

And I don’t care who you are or what your opinions on Sir Cruise are, you can’t deny that he’s pretty damn intense in this movie—as is Jamie Foxx, who scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role (the same year that he won Best Actor for Ray).

Collateral is a very taut and resourceful thriller, taking place in LA in a single night—or, according to director Michael Mann, specifically on the night of January 24/25, 2004 between the hours of 6:30pm and 5:40am.  Wow.

Jamie Foxx plays Max, a cab driver with a dream.  Specifically his dream is to start an ultra-luxury limousine service.  …Okay, so the guy has an odd passion for driving other people around; it doesn’t mean he’s not a lovely person that is completely undeserving of the horrible tumult that his next fare will bring about.

And his next fare is Vincent, played coldly and maliciously by Tom Cruise.  Vincent offers Max $600 to be his personal chauffer for the night as he makes various stops around the city, taking care of some business.  Mobile-escort enthusiast that he is, Max accepts…then when a body falls out of a second-story window onto Max’s cab, he finds out just what Vincent’s business is.

Yes, Vincent is a hit-man, and Max is pretty much trapped in the ultimate moral conflict—obviously he can’t help Vincent to carry out his crimes, but if he refuses, Vincent will simply kill him and subsequently find some other way to kill the rest of the people on his list.  What can he do?

And now that his secret’s out, Vincent must stick to Max like glue—even accompanying him to visit his sick mother in the hospital—pulling him deeper into the thick of danger bit by bit.

It’s a pretty engaging and suspenseful movie, even if the plot does take a bit of an annoyingly contrived turn in the final act.  It’s fast-paced and exciting—just like every good summer movie should be!

And it boasts a pretty strong supporting cast, too.  Irma P. Hall is fantastic as Max’s mother, who is simply charmed to death by Max’s mysterious new friend.  Mark Ruffalo plays a detective hot on the trail of the night’s murder spree, and Javier Bardem is downright scary (not quite Anton Chigurh-scary, but still scary) in an enthralling one-scene role as the crime boss that hired Vincent.

Michael Mann is an incredibly talented guy, and Collateral is one of his best.  It’s no Heat, but what is?  Where Heat had an intricate ambition that went beyond a simple pulse-pounder, Collateral is like an intelligently bare-bones Hitchcockian suspense yarn.

It’s also Mann’s most successful use of digital videography thus far.  Whereas it was a bit jarring in his period biopics, Ali and Public Enemies, it feels wholly appropriate for this after-hours crime story.  The visual style of the film sets it inside an in-the-moment urban night-vision, which greatly complements the urgency of the story.  It makes the film all the more unique.

Are you really going to get that kind of top-shelf excitement from Knight and Day?  Sure, there will be a few more explosions, and sure there’s the whacky funny version of Tom Cruise, but at the end of the day, how will you not feel like you simply wasted your time on C-level fluff?  Trust me, folks.  Collateral’s the way to go this weekend.

And here’s your added bonus for this one—forget MapQuest, and throw out Google Maps.  All you need to get someplace fast is Jamie Foxx.  Take this very honest, very succinct line of dialogue as he explains why it’ll take Vincent 14 minutes—not 15, not 13—to get where he’s going:  “Two minutes to get onto the 101. Transition to the 110 to the 10 and exit on Normandie is four minutes. North on Normandie is five minutes. Two minutes to South Union ’cause there’s roadwork. Thirteen plus one for ‘shit happens.’”  Ever since I first saw this movie, I have adopted the noun-form of “shit happens” into my standard traffic vernacular, and the spirit of it into all of my travel-time estimations.  Thank you, Collateral, for making the roads safer!

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Maybe I’m overstating the gravity of this situation for Warner Brothers, but…no.  The movie was made for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million.  It was to be a big box-office tent-pole, coming out in the middle of June.  This past weekend, it opened up to a whopping $5.1 million.

Ouch.  Assuming the falloff is in the 50% range, this movie really has no chance to make back its production budget much less the cost of prints and ads.

So what happened?  Everyone loves Josh Brolin, right?  Megan Fox is super hot, right?  People love supernatural cowboys stuff, and the filmmakers even worked in some machine guns and far-fetched ’splosions.  Everything a big blockbuster is supposed to have, Jonah has it.

Exactly.  The movie, based solely on the advertising and terrible terrible trailer, looks like it’s working so hard to fit into the box-office blockbuster mold that it doesn’t have much room to develop its own identity.  The trailer spends most of its time revealing cool weapons or making annoyingly on-the-nose jokes about how hot Megan Fox is.

I remember when the Transformers 2 trailer came out and we got that gratuitous shot of Ms. Fox in trashy cutoff jeans.  The crowd went wild.  The Jonah Hex trailer’s “they sure searched you thoroughly” joke just fell flat.

We get it.  She’s hot.  Moving on.

Does this mean American Audiences have wised up to this schtick?  Well, we can hope so, but I doubt it.  What it does prove–a point that continues to be proven over and over again–is that you can’t make a guaranteed hit just by throwing in the right laundry list of elements.

That’s something you’d think Hollywood would figure out by now, but they haven’t. A group of executives will be sitting in a room this week trying to figure out what happened, and instead of saying “we were trying too hard,” they’ll probably come to the conclusion that they weren’t trying hard enough.  This story didn’t fit closely enough to the Joseph Campbell myth archetype, or they needed a furry sidekick to liven things up.  They’ll come up with an easy answer to explain away this unfettered failure, and they’ll make a mental note to “fix it” next time.

In the end, though, there is one reason their movie failed.  It didn’t look interesting.  It looked standard and stock and easy.  Seen it, moving on.

I guess we can rule out a Jonah Hex 2. A shame.  I was wondering how they’d top themselves in a second outing, making Megan Fox even more period-defyingly scantily clad and writing new technologically baffling ’splosion machines.

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For me, the weekend was a godsend…the kind of event I think every movie lover needs every once in a while to recharge our film-loving batteries. It was a blast, and, ironically enough, not totally because of the movies. I met some amazing people and had great conversations about film, filmmaking, film watching and film loving. I got to meet some very talented filmmakers and I got to ask some really fun questions. I even got to sit on a film writing panel and answer a few questions of my own.

Going into the festival, I had planned to do a quick write-up right after the festivities wrapped up. I was going to give you readers a quick blurb review of the movies I saw as well as a overview of those I didn’t.

That didn’t happen, and it isn’t because I’m lazy (or not entirely, at least). Instead, this weekend got me thinking about a complicated question. One that I can only really skim the surface of in an article like this. How much of filmgoing is an “interactive” experience?

Until this weekend, I probably would have answered “very little.” Sure, we all love to see films on the big screen on opening night and feel the audience around us. Nobody wants to go to the theater without a friend to chat or geek out with. And we almost always make “movie night” at home a social occasion.

Still, there is a part of me that feels like movies exist all alone…and I love to lock myself in a room and experience a movie on its own terms. It feels like a closed system, and keeping the movie separate from the so-called social aspect of watching them together feels somehow more pure and honest. More respectful.

This past weekend, though, I think I changed my mind a bit regarding what “interactive” means in this context. It started (probably) when I went to a screening for Grace of My Heart. It’s a flick from 1996 directed by Allison Anders. I’d never heard of it before (even though it stars John Turturro, Illeana Douglas and Matt Damon), and I didn’t know what to expect. It was a really great film…a fantastic portrait of a female singer/songwriter as her career develops through the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.

You might ask the obvious question: Why screen a 14-year-old movie at a fairly hip and happening film festival? How about because the director, Allison Anders, was in attendance to receive a lifetime achievement award.

The woman was a joy, and the Q&A afterward was probing and insightful. It made me think about the movie more. It made me appreciate the movie more. And something about revisiting this film so many years later and wrapping the movie in the director’s personality really clicked for me.

From there, the festival just seemed to open up. I had late-night quasi-pitch sessions at a bar (which culminated in a light-hearted shouting match to determine once and for all whether the Canon 7D is a better value than the 5D. Yeah, I’m a geek). The following morning I talked with three supremely accomplished writers on a panel about the merits and purpose of film criticism…and what role supplemental elements like the “making of” and marketing campaign play in the audience’s enjoyment of a film. Somewhere along the line, I looked at Lexi (my Werner Herzog loving cohort) and said “This is the way you’re supposed to watch movies.”

For the first time, I really realized how much of an interactive experience film-going could…and should…be. It isn’t just about the feeling the audience reacting around you or pulling from the energy of the crowd, and it isn’t about having a “loved it” or “hated it” conversation at Steak ‘n Shake after the show (though those things are part of it). It’s about letting the film breathe…letting it change as the audience and the times change. It’s about bringing the filmmaker into the picture and asking questions…even if its just of yourself.

You see, watching Grace of My Heart with Allison Anders in attendance changed the film (and I’m not talking about the broken component cable that sucked all the red out of the picture). It made the movie more fluid and accessible. When I watched the unfinished print of the horror film a friend of mine directed, it was no longer this concrete “thing” sitting on a movie-store shelf. It was a growing and changing entity, and I could walk up and give feedback and get a better idea of how the movie does or doesn’t fit into my preconceptions about it.

By talking passionately with friends about the movies, I was able to fight with myself about a film and let it change after the fact in my mind.

If this all sounds a little existential or hippie-fied, so be it. I’ve realized that somehow a film, stuck on some disc or immobile in a series of cans, can still grow and change as the world grows and changes around it. This can happen over a number of years or over a series of seconds. I’ve read entire books on the importance of discussing films and how the review and analysis of film alters the public perception of a movie, but I think it’s more simple than that. By discussing a film or learning about a filmmaker or just actively coming to a movie with a different mindset, the film can help you as an individual change how the movie works on you.

The “interactive experience” of movie-watching, then, isn’t really always about the interaction of people…it’s about the interaction of the movie with our perceptions, and the interaction of us with ourselves. I don’t want to get too annoyingly existential on you, but saying “the movie doesn’t change, you do,” doesn’t cut it. Because my perception changes, the movie does change. The light hitting my retinas stays the same, sure, but that isn’t what the movie is.

I’m reminded of an old Buddhist (I think) story I read once. An enlightened person once brought a cart in front of the king. He asked what it was…and the king, of course, said it was a cart. Then he pulled the wheels off. “Is this the cart?” he asked. Of course, the king answered in the negative. Then he pulled off the sides of the cart. “Is this it?” asked the man. The king says no.

You can see where this is going. All the way down to the platform and the axels. None of it was the cart. When there was nothing left, the enlightened man asks “So…smartypants king…where is the cart?”

I guess we could ask the same thing about movies. The movie isn’t the disc. It isn’t the actors, or the script. It isn’t really even the light that hits our eyes. A movie, you could argue, is itself a relationship–the relationship between the elements that make up “the movie” and our own minds. The way we interpret it. So, by definition, a movie is always an interactive experience, even when we’re alone.

I’ve gone a bit farther with this than I originally intended, but it’s the only way I can think of to both work out my own experience and try to impart it to you. That’s kind of what writing (even about film) is all about. But in the end, I do admit that a great film-going experience (or spiritual awakening, or orgasm) is like a great movie. No matter how much people try to explain it to you, you just have to see it for yourself.

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Two weeks ago I offered up Conan the Barbarian as the perfect alternative to Prince of Persia, and just last week I urged you to stay home and watch Detroit Rock City instead of Get Him to the Greek.  Now this past weekend has hit us with its own thunderous boom—a remake double-hitter of The Karate Kid and The A-Team.

Now, The Karate Kid was the box office winner easily over the weekend, but personally, I couldn’t care less about it.  I never saw the original, so there’s no nostalgia factor, and the whole premise simply doesn’t appeal to me.

The A-Team, I could honestly say the same thing about.  I’ve never seen an episode of the TV show in my life and frankly don’t care to.  But this movie clearly doesn’t care that I don’t care about the TV show.  It’s updating its techniques in an effort to appeal to a far larger audience.  In fact, I’d bet that at least half of the $25.7 million worth of people who saw it this weekend weren’t even aware that it was based on a TV show.

But you are, aren’t you?  At least you are now, anyway.  So with that in mind, let’s say that you’re really in the mood for an action movie based on an outdated TV show, but The A-Team doesn’t exactly look like the team you want to be joining.  My best advice would be to stay in, cuddle up with a loved one and some delicious Indian food, and watch J.J. Abrams’s Mission: Impossible III.

Yeah, I said #3!  I’m starting with a sequel.  Deal with it.  Brian De Palma’s first Mission: Impossible film is certainly a good and classy thriller, although I think we can all agree that John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 was…well, let’s just say it was no Face/Off.  But for me, the best of the series was absolutely J.J. Abrams’s high-energy 2006 threequel.

First off, let me just say that I like Tom Cruise.  I genuinely do.  I apologize to anyone who thought my taste was more in line with theirs than that, but I had to get that off my chest—I like Tom Cruise.  Of course, the guy works best for me when he’s not asking to be taken seriously as any kind of a “normal” person.  M:I-2 isn’t really the movie for that, as he’s trying too hard to come off as an pseudo-quintessential action star.  Neither is War of the Worlds or The Last Samurai or…well, the majority of his early stuff.

But sometimes the guy can be frighteningly enigmatic like in Michael Mann’s Collateral, or he can be totally—and shockingly—unhinged like in Tropic Thunder.  He’s also been quite good in a host of other roles, like in Minority Report, Eyes Wide Shut, and his Oscar-nominated turn as Frank T.J. Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.

In the case of M:I-3, however, he’s simply enthusiastically charming.  A lot of actors could enjoyably sell the line “I’m gonna die unless you kill me”—because it’s a great line—but the only one I really want to hear say it is Tom Cruise.

Now onto the movie itself.  I think it was probably the most unexpectedly wildly fun movie released in the summer movie season of 2006.  It suffered a bit of a box office blow since it was right at the peak of America’s wariness of Cruise and his peculiar behavior (what with the Oprah couch-jumping, the Matt Lauer berating, the Brooke Shields scolding, and the general bizarreness of scientology).  But anyone who turned their nose up to this movie out of any discomfort that Cruise’s admittedly strange personal life might have caused them was missing out on what was surely one of the best action movies of the last decade (and subsequently, THE MILLENIUM!!!).

And the flick comes to us straight from the immensely talented leadership of J.J. Abrams, who’s given us Lost and last year’s outstanding reboot of Star Trek.  No one else in the film business knows how to make a movie as frantically energetic as this guy, and as a result, M:I-3 is the most alive, entertaining, straight-forward, and flat-out fun entry of the entire series.

Abrams pulls you right in at the very beginning, starting the show in the midst of the film’s ultra-tense climactic moments.  The scene is shown to us in tight close-ups as the emotionless, merciless bad guy Owen Davian (an outstanding Philip Seymour Hoffman) demands that Ethan Hunt (Cruise) tell him the location of the “Rabbit’s Foot” (which is the most wonderfully shameless MacGuffin since the briefcase in Pulp Fiction).  He has a gun trained on Ethan’s wife (Michelle Monaghan), and he counts to ten.  Ethan is losing his mind.  We can tell he has no idea.  We can tell that Davian doesn’t care.  Davian makes it to ten.  He shoots.  Credits.  Whoa.

At this point, we don’t know where we are, who that guy was, or what the hell is going on.  But we’re certainly intrigued, to say the least.  And to be honest, the opening scene is a great sampling of the entire movie—it’s intense, exciting, and, unlike the first and second films, the plot really is as simple as just that—where’s that damn Rabbit’s Foot?  “And what the hell is it?” is a pretty decent question too, but I wouldn’t go in expecting an answer if I were you.

Like Lost and Star Trek, this movie is a loud, crazy adventure that never lets up, and it’s the first of the Mission: Impossible films to actually live up to its title in its own winkingly amusing way.  One scene in particular explains in perfect detail how what Ethan plans to attempt is virtually impossible…and then in the next scene, he does it.

And remember that horrible, cringe-worthy line that poor Anthony Hopkins had to dribble out of his mouth in Mission: Impossible 2?  “Mr. Hunt, this isn’t mission difficult, it’s mission impossible.”  Yikes.

Well that hideous moment in screenwriting history is rectified in M:I-3 by this fun exchange:

ETHAN:  “I’m part of an agency called the I.M.F.”
JULIA:  “What’s that stand for?”
ETHAN:  “Impossible Mission Force.”
JULIA:  “Shut up.”

And for an added bonus, you actually get to see how they make and apply those wonderful life-like masks that they’re always pulling off each other.  Not enough?  How about some strategic subtitled lip-reading?

And remember that quote from earlier—“I’m gonna die unless you kill me”—don’t you want to know what that’s all about?!

And like The A-Team, Mission: Impossible III–and its predecessors–are based on a TV adventure show from years back.  Admittedly, The A-Team looks like it’s retaining a bit more of its humble origins than any of the M:I films–they’ve really only kept the self-destructing tapes with the line “Your mission, if you choose to accept it…” and the way-badass theme music.  But what M:I-3 lacks in faithfulness, it makes up for in being FUCKING AWESOME!  So suck on that, A-Team.

But in all seriousness, you just can’t go wrong with Mission: Impossible III.  It’s the best of the series, hands-down.  Word is that Brad Bird (The Incredibles and Ratatouille) is heading up the next one (with J.J. Abrams back to produce), so I’m certainly excited for a new good time.  But for now—and to effectively counter the dull-looking A-Team—I’m popping M:I-3 back in my DVD player for a thrillingly great time and then I’m goin’ to bed!  Wake me up when Inception’s out!

Wanna own Mission: Impossible III for far less than the cost of paying for A-Team tickets for you and your date?  Of course you do!  Click here and make it all happen!

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