middle cyclones and other references

Procrastination Theatre: April 5, 2012

Okay, I am woefully behind on these, but bear with me, because part of why I am behind on them is because I had exams and I just didn’t feel I had the time to really properly write about this movie. And mainly Michael Fassbender.

So I resisted seeing this in theatres for almost a year because, as I annoyingly said to everyone who asked me why I wouldn’t see it, having twelve good actors/actresses does not a good movie make. And after having seen this, I can confidently say that I am right. Having twelve good actors does not make a movie good. But apparently having Michael Fassbender does make a movie good.

Seriously - I am just distressed by Fassbender at this point. How does he do it? How is he so good in this otherwise uninteresting and mediocre movie? I mean, I like a lot of the other actors in this movie, but everyone pretty much delivers the Action Movie Special in this movie: the bare minimum, nothing compelling, a pretty standard dialing-it-in for a subpar script and a big budget. BUT NOT FASSBENDER. Fassbender is just, like, home run after home run in this movie. He is batting a million, and for what? For a stupid comic book prequel. Like, yes, bat a million for Steve McQueen. But you are batting a million in a movie where everyone else is sleepwalking through the dreadful dialogue. You are destroying it in a movie where January Jones plays a woman who can turn into a diamond and therefore justify her total absence of line delivery. I just…I can’t. Michael Fassbender has won. I finally found him devastatingly attractive in this movie (particularly the Argentinian Nazi bar scene), and the best way to characterize how I feel about Fassbender now is, quite simply, put upon. I feel put upon by Michael Fassbender. He is too talented and too attractive and too awesome at everything and I feel put upon because I do not have the time or energy to obsess over him as much as he clearly deserves to be obsessed over.

Other things about this movie: I love James McAvoy, but he is ridiculous in this movie, and it’s clear that he’s supposed to be, because I believe that this movie is really about discovering that Professor X is the biggest upper-class privileged piece of shit in the world. Seriously, I think the title X-Men: First Class is meant to signal to us that one’s position on what the mutants should be doing about their social situation depends a lot on whether you are perhaps an upper class aristocrat with a mansion. And, contrary to what everyone else thought about the movie, I don’t see it at all as a bromance between Charles and Erik. I mean, Charles is just so clearly light years of maturity behind Erik, it just seems like a remotely pleasant acquaintance to Erik most of the time. Like the new naive kid in school who you’ll hang out with absentmindedly because you’re not a bad person. 

Procrastination Theatre: February 27, 2012

In what I can best describe as a newfound commitment to Fassbender’s acting excellence, I watched this movie, knowing that things would happen in it to which I would only have square responses. Katie Jarvis is really profoundly good in this movie, and Andrea Arnold shows us her life with little to no dialogue, just brutally honest accounts of how this girl spends her day, and what exactly her family is like. (Side note: if you watched this movie drunk, the dirty-mouthed ten-year old sister would be your #1 favorite part.) Michael Fassbender is also, as always, remarkably subtle. I mean, this isn’t a predator, or even a bastard. He’s just an opportunistic man with an offhand talent for womanizing. It’s good. It’s great how he plays the line between fatherly interest and sexual interest.

But now I have to have square opinions, which is that I don’t think Fassbender and Jarvis’ characters have sex: I think she gets raped (spoilers or whatever…come on, if you’re watching an indie movie about a troubled 15-year old and her mom’s new boyfriend becoming close, you know they’re going to have sex). I just don’t think that kissing someone then provides consent for him pulling your pants off and penetrating you in less than 90 seconds’ time. Which doesn’t change my opinion and the value of the movie, it’s just a personal distinction I wanted to make. Also, no condom! Nothing makes me cringe more even though I realize that is realistic! If life really was like True Blood and everyone had a supernatural power in them somewhere, I would seriously want to be the Condom Fairy, where I flit around to all these impulsive sexual situations that happen so often in movies and, like, spray a condom onto the man’s penis before penetration. That would truly be a dream come true.

Procrastination Theatre: February 16, 2012

I think this might be the Boyfriend’s new favorite movie. He’s been listening to the soundtrack non-stop for two weeks. He got genuinely annoyed with me when I forgot to tell him that its run at our local independent theatre had ended the day before. (If any of y’all have a download link, he might forgive me.)

But here is what I have to say about it: I can’t believe that such a fuss was made out of the nudity in this movie. The nudity itself is completely asexual. Even the sex scenes themselves, which don’t involve full-frontal, are asexual if you’re paying any attention to the movie and Fassbender’s acting at all. So I guess the first comment I have is, how sad that the excellence of such a movie can apparently only be spoken of after we address the fact that the male organ has a total screen time of maybe 30 seconds in it. Shouldn’t the old, white, male Academy be used to seeing that? Maybe Fassbender’s junk just made them jealous. They are pretty old, after all (median age is 62! 14% are under 50! That means a lot of Viagra, I’m guessing.)

Anyway, obligatory anger being over, this is a beautiful film. And it stayed with me. Fassbender’s performance stayed with me. And I know this might sound ridiculous, but I loved the movie and his performance so much for giving me some insight into this condition, for letting me see the prison and the sadness of the sex addict, for putting Brandon up against his boss and negating all of our stereotypes about sex addicts being womanizers or charmers or emotionally abusive. I am just grateful because I feel that this is the kind of movie that breeds compassion in us for people we hadn’t understood or thought about before. In fact, this movie probably actually does everything that The Help pretended to do. And I mean, of course, McQueen is an artist, so you can expect a lot from the formal execution and visual set-up and character within this movie. 

And on a technical note: when the porn on Brandon’s computer starts blending in with Sissy’s pleading conversation on the phone to one of her lovers? It’s brilliant. It’s such a subtle way to suggest that they are both addicts, by blending the auditory sound of one with the other, the moans and the pleas together. Stop being so damn smart, McQueen. 

Procrastination Theatre: January 19, 2012

This was honestly a bizarre movie-watching experience, especially if you’ve seen any other Cronenberg movie ever. It was just - really inconsequential. And I am fully willing to appreciate intellectual conversation, it’s just that it didn’t actually seem to capture the complexity of the issues as much as it could have, and as much as normally Cronenberg is capable of. I mean - Freud is a lot more than talking about sex incessantly, which you sort of see but not really. So much of the film felt goofy - like Jung’s “I”m back” and Freud’s constant phallic cigar and the way they talked about dreams. There just wasn’t that much at stake - you caught glimmers of it, like when Sabine and Freud discussed the climate of anti-Semitism, and in Michael Fassbender’s whole general performance - but it was vague and loosely formed. Like, my friend fell asleep next to me during it. The only thing that has any life to it is actually Keira Knightley’s performance, which I thought was absolute perfection. Honestly, haters can just shut it, because that was a fearless, seamless performance. She became something completely different to me. That performance to me indescribably defines the difference between true acting, which sometimes has to be intense, and painful overacting, which is what Natalie Portman did in Black Swan. 

And I mean, Michael Fassbender also does a fine acting job, but precisely because Jung has to be an absence in the film. It’s weird to see him so restrained and hollow - he does it perfectly, but it leaves the movie empty too. I have a theory, which is basically that because Cronenberg made a movie about something he was interested in and might even be passionate about, he had no chance. The hardest things to talk about are those you care about. And the way he characterized Jung and Freud felt so intimately goofy, like how the Boyfriend and I joke about theorists and authors. 

Procrastination Theatre: January 5-6, 2012

There are a lot of things to say about Hunger and I really just don’t have the energy to say them right now. I will say, however, that although what Steve McQueen gets immediately praised for is the visual presence of this film, I think that what deserves more credit, and is maybe even more arresting, is his use of sound as a physical presence within the film. I think my favorite scene of the movie has to be that, like, five minute take of the guard cleaning up the hallway with a mop. The sheer sound of the relentless, even onslaught of his mop down the hall and back up again was incredible. Plus, okay, I’ve bought a ticket and I’ve boarded the Fassbender train (but I still don’t find him attractive.)