The Late '00s: Everybody Hates Crash

I mean, we were sitting around drinking…what were we drinking? Bacardi cocktails. It’s just gold rum, fresh lime juice, and grenadine. Simple, (a bit girly) but delicious. Anyway, we were doing that, and I said that No Country For Old Men is the best film to win best picture this decade. (I waver between that and The Departed.) “Come on! What about Crash?” said Dennis sarcastically. Turns out Crash is the go-to “What Was The Academy Thinking?” movie. Yes, it won over Brokeback Mountain, so it might be good old-fashioned homophobia, but it also beat Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, and Munich. Munich, the only film (unless you count Star Trek) in which Eric Bana has been interesting since Chopper! (Americans, look up Chopper. It’s not about motorbikes.) So 2005 was not a quiet year at the pictures. I sense other forces at work.

Crash

I’m sure there are Terence Howard fans out there, but I can’t help but not be sad that Don Cheadle will now be the black Crash star to be playing James Rhodes/War Machine in the Iron Man movies. (I just accidentally typed Iran Man. Now that would be a different film. Might be interesting though, as long as he’s not Captain America’s lightsabre-wielding Middle Eastern counterpart from The Ultimates comics.) Terry’s great, and can obviously act, but we’re talking about War Machine – sorry, WAR MACHINE, because I don’t think you can write his name in lower case. The fast-becoming-more-arsenal-than-human, one-man army. Compared to Tony Stark the millionaire playboy, Jim Rhodes is supposed to be the militaristic, take-no-prisoners one. Instead Terence Howard manages to always give off this impression that there’s something he’d rather be doing, like filing his nails, which sort of worked for Crash, but in Iron Man just seemed rude to the pole-dancing flight attendants.

Lions Gate, 2005. Directed by Paul Haggis. Written by Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco.

The Depahted

Scorsese finally gets a Best Picture. What if Scorsese had made Slumdog? Now that would have been a good movie, with much better gangster scenes. His new film, Shutter Island, looks pretty awesome. Scorsese does horror, starring Leonardo DiCaprio’s Boston accent. Could be good. Hey, remember when LDiC used to be that annoying little shit from Titanic and Romeo + Juliet? (Romeo plus Juliet? Really, Baz?) Well what happened? The Departed happened. And those other Scorsese films and Blood Diamond, but mainly The Departed. This film not only has a fantastic cast, but it they’re all giving some of their best performances. Want to forget the remake of Planet of the Apes? Watch Mark Wahlberg in this. Just saw Team America: World Police? See Alec Baldwin and Matt Damon in this. Yeah, sorry NCFOM, but I think this film gets my Pick of the Decade.

Warner Bros, 2006. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by William Monahan, based on the film Infernal Affairs.

No Country For Old Men

Oh, God it has no incidental music! I like Carter Burwell though, and the credits music was sort of a Texas-themed Twilight (Burwell also did the Twilight soundtrack, and it’s the best part of the movie). Actually, I’m imagining that now. Josh Brolin plays a whiny teenager whose life is so hard because he’s the new boy in town, and therefore attracting the amorous attention of Kelly Macdonald and Mexican drug-runners, until he meets serial killer Javier Bardem who sparkles in the sunshine (all serial killers do that, didn’t you know? Sex offenders turn golden, and drug dealers turn to smoke), while Tommy Lee Jones plays baseball. I can see the scene at the prom where Moss begs Chigurh to shoot him with his cattle gun. Get ready for the sequel with Woody Harrelson as a werewolf.

Miramax, Paramount Vantage, 2007. Directed and written by the Coen Brothers, from the novel by Cormac McCarthy.

Slumdog Millionaire

Somehow they managed to take a protagonist who gets what he wants largely through destiny and make that interesting. Probably because the characters have to overcome a lot of obstacles in order to get to the right place at the right time, so when we’re in the thick of it the conclusions don’t feel foregone even thought we’re told “it is written.” But it’s so bloody feel-good that I think I’m going to end up hating this film. Slumdog does acknowledge the ugliness of the world, but ultimately we’re seeing the story of someone who’s been kind of lucky all his life. It’s that thing about chance in a story: it’s a lot harder for an audience to accept chance or coincidence when it favours the protagonists. We want to see our protagonists struggle against their fates, and succeed through wit and ability, not destiny. This I think is where a lot of the criticism that the movie presents a dolled-up or easy vision of poverty in India comes from. Jamal is rich and we’re left with the question, so what? Personally, I was left with the strong desire to become the presenter of the Indian Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or any program in which it is appropriate to dance in celebration of the contestant’s success.

Fox Searchlight, Warner Bros, 2008. Directed by Danny Boyle. Written by Simon Beaufoy, from the novel Q+A by Vikas Swarup.

Storytime!

These films and plays were obviously intended to tell individual stories, but seen together they tell a much bigger story of the development of theatre and film and culture and all that. So keep that in mind. But also, let’s that literally and make a story out of this week’s media:

Jamal Malik, a child of the slums, finds 20 million rupees in a bag after a botched drug operation. The money belongs to a crime boss, who sends his men after Jamal, including a crooked cop and a hired thug who is secretly also a cop. Salvation appears to come in the form of a film director, but his wife murders him in his SUV, and her lover Aegisthus takes all the money.