Review of J Edgar

J Edgar highlights the problems with the docudrama structure

Jenn and I went to watch J Edgar. It was sold out. We went to see Tower Heist instead. Pretty decent movie, actually. Then we pressed our luck and went to the late showing of J Edgar. We hit a whammy.

The movie started as J Edgar telling a story to a series of FBI plebeians in the setting of a memoir recording. This makes it easier to jump around in time and justify a narrator in a movie that wants to take itself seriously. But Clint Eastwood took a few too many liberties with his elastic structure. He had flashbacks within flashbacks, jump cuts across time periods and a Delorean that went 88 mph. It was more confusing than Inception in parts, only without the payoff. He stretched that elastic structure like a fat man’s bathing suit. And now nobody can wear them.

My first thought of the film was “That’s Leonardo with makeup on” and that was it for a while. Sure, he delivered a compelling performance and may get an Oscar nod because that’s what happens with these big budget biopics, but the problem with telling true stories is that they tend to be boring. Life seldom has a second act. I got bored early, making it tough to root for a character. His battle with sexuality was an interesting one, but the cross-dressing scene was overhyped and dull, though not nearly as overhyped as the revelation of how he got the name “J Edgar.” The way it was shot, I think they expected the entire crowd to gasp in unison. This movie lost me somewhere in the details I’m guessing they wanted to get right. And kudos for staying true (at least as far as I know) to the facts. It may not be entertaining, but no one will call Clint Eastwood a sell-out now.

There’s a difference between documentary, fiction and narrative non-fiction. Narrative non-fiction does not do its creators any favors. It gives the audience the illusion of fiction within the confines of documentary storytelling. Case in point, it’s not easy to pull off. That’s why Oliver Stone makes shit up.

In the end, it looks like Eastwood just needed to do something to do this year and not everybody golfs.

4 bugs/10
Dustin Fisher

Review of 127 Hours

127 Hours is equal parts intense and boring

I went to see 127 Hours by myself last week while Jenn was out of town fixing Egypt. I’ve gone to theaters on occasion by myself in the past. This time, I was completely by myself. It was somewhat liberating. I could laugh and not feel guilty, cry and not feel judged. I changed my seat three times to find the perfect one. It was pretty cool. I even left to get a snack and asked them to stop the film until I got back. They didn’t.

Just by coincidence, I was watching a film about a guy who happened to get stuck all alone in a rock climbing accident. Not that I was trying to empathize, but I also got my foot stuck between the two seats in front of me for about 5 seconds. Maybe not an exact parallel, but it was touch and go for a few seconds there. I also think I was sitting on my keys the whole time. So I could really identify with Aron’s plight during the movie. I also drank my own urine toward the end. Which is difficult without a container.

As for the film, it is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, who some of you may remember from the Man Laws commercials with Burt Reynolds and Jerome Bettis back in 2003ish. He was the guy without a right arm. I had to ask Tony who he was, but that is pretty typical of any information I accrued from 1999-2004. He got his arm stuck for, as luck would have it, 127 Hours in a remote part of some canyon in Utah and had to eventually cut it off with a dull knife to escape. It certainly puts my intramural badminton championship in perspective. And the movie did a good job of not making him out to be a cheesy hero, just some athlete trapped by a momentary decision.

It was a great film to see, in that it is a historical moment in triumph over impossible conditions. But the entire thing, save for a gratuitous opening scene with a couple hiking chicks in the canyon, was one man alone in a very small place. Danny Boyle, who also made Slumdog Millionaire (pretty much the same movie), seemed too scared of boring his audience in the middle of the film, and for good reason. He added in some hallucinations and an amusing relationship with his video camera to try to get the audience to forget that nothing was really happening.

In trying to figure out how good a movie is, I try to figure out if I’d like to ever see it again. I don’t envy Boyle’s dilemma, but I doubt I’ll be watching this movie again. And if I do, I’ll likely have to be doing something else at the time or fast forward through the middle half. I’m honestly more likely to watch Harry Potter 7.1 again before I watch this, however good it was. And Franco was worth the nomination for his nose pimple alone, but I doubt this flick will walk away from the Oscars with anything more than a “thanks for making this moment into a film” pat on the back.

6 bugs/10.
Dustin Fisher