Ong-Bak: There are two kinds of martial arts movies: Those that actually attempt to be good films, well-written, acted, and filmed (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero are my favorites in this category) and those that just try to stun the audience with amazing physical feats. Ong-Bak is firmly in the latter category. Astounding, jaw-dropping stuntwork, all done without wires. Thai action star Tony Jaa – running across opponents’ heads, leaping higher than you’d think possible, and sliding under moving trucks – is physically as astounding as Jackie Chan at his peak.
As “wow, look at the amazing physical stunts I can do” movies go, the story – about a small-town martial arts master forced to go to the big city to retrieve the head of his village’s sacred Buddha statue, which was stolen by an artifact thief – isn’t bad. Yes, it’s not much more than an excuse for fight scenes, but at least the main character has an interesting, admirable motivation.
There’s only one decent female character, a good-hearted college student paying tuition by being a con woman, played by the charismatic and funny Pumwaree Yodkamol. Odd-looking and with a grating voice, Yodkamol was a great casting choice; too many action films would have just cast a typical “babe” actress for this part and gone shopping for short skirts. Still, this movie utterly, completely fails the Mo Movie Measure.
(What’s the Mo Movie Measure, you ask? It’s and idea from an old Dykes to Watch Out For cartoon. The character “Mo” explains that she only watches movies in which 1) there are at least two female characters with names, who 2) talk to each other sometime in the course of the movie, about 3) something other than a man. It’s amazing how few movies can pass the Mo Movie Measure.)
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle dusts off a well-worn movie genre for another outing – “uptight guy and non-uptight guy go on a road trip.”
(Are these movies always about “guys”? No. Think of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, for example, or Thelma and Louise, or Outrageous Fortune. But there are probably a hundred of these films about men for every one that’s made about women, alas…)
Plus, it’s a stoner movie. But it’s also smart and funny, and under the crudeness this is one of the best treatments of race you’ll ever see in an American comedy. Racial politics is always present (Harold is Asian-American, Kumar is Indian-American), and the characters fairly constantly run into racism; but at the same time, the characters have lives and interests outside of dealing with racism. The movie doesn’t pretend race and racism don’t exist (which is the approach most American movies take) but never becomes didactic, either.
One touch I liked is the inclusion of two Jewish potheads – minor background characters who pop up again and again, named “Rosenberg and Goldstein,” which gave me serious giggles. They’re a lot like the title characters – they even spend the entire movie on a parallel road trip for fast food – but things keep on mysteriously working out better for the Jews than they do for Harold and Kumar. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it struck me as a very funny play on the “model minority myth.”
Anyway, this isn’t a movie you see for how it treats intellectual issues. If you like juvenile pothead flicks (and I generally don’t), then this is one of the funniest ever made.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for movies that can meet the Mo Movie Measure, then run the hell away from this thing. Female characters barely exist at all; of the three I can recall, two of them are there only for the male protagonists to lust after. (The third is a way-too-earnest student who runs a college Asian-American society). Needless to say, the female characters are not shown talking to each other in this film.
UPDATE: Bean pointed out that I’m mistaken – there is, for lack of a term I’m willing to use here, a “farting contest” between two minor female characters. So they DO talk to each other, and not about men. Technically, Harold and Kumar passes the Mo Movie Measure.
Sideways, like Harold and Kumar, is a “uptight guy and non-uptight guy go on road trip” flick. (And I bet that I’m the first person ever to suggest that those two films have anything in common.)
This is a beautifully written, funny, smart film. The story is about Miles, a fortyish, divorced schoolteacher and unpublished novelist, with a passion for fine wine (especially merlots) and guarded emotions. Mile’s more outgoing friend Jack is getting married, and Miles and Jack have agreed to spend the week before the wedding touring California vineyards. Jack is more interested in getting laid “one last time” before he marries, though, and starts a fling with Stephanie, while Miles is at first reluctantly pressured into dating Stephanie’s friend Maya.
What I’ve read over and over in reviews of Sideways is that “this is a grown-up movie,” and damned if that isn’t my reaction as well. Not “grown-up” in the sense of having lots of nudity or sex (there’s one brief nude scene, and for a change it’s not just female nudity) Grown up in the sense that the humor (and there’s a lot of humor) is rooted in the quirks and interactions of complex, believable characters.
And here’s a miracle – the two female characters are real characters, not just pretty faces with no interior lives stuck in so the boys have something to lust after (see: Harold and Kumar). And, although there are no scenes at all without Miles present (the movie is told from his point of view), I think this movie nonetheless squeaks by under the Mo Movie Measure – Stephanie and Maya talk to each other (and to Miles and Jack) about wine. (I’m not quite positive about this, I’ll have to watch more carefully for it the next time I see this movie). In any case, Maya and Stephanie are both written with interior lives, concerns other than men, and an actual (although not necessarily close) friendship.
There’s so much to like about Sideways; the storytelling is energetic and smart (there’s an amazing restaurant scene in which a long conversation is depicted almost entirely visually, with only snatches of dialog – but which nonetheless gives a perfect idea of what the conversation was like), all four actors are extraordinary without ever eating the scenery, and the script actually makes wine – in my opinion one of the world’s dullest subjects – seem interesting.
Hotel Rwanda is a movie about two guys, one uptight and one non-uptight, who go on a road trip to – no, no, just kidding. I’m sure that “Alas” readers already know the basic plot of Hotel Rwanda: it’s a fictionalized version of a true story, how Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager and Hutu, provided shelter and protection for over a thousand Tutsi refugees during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which half a million Tutsis (about 75% of all Tutsis living in Rwanda) were murdered by Hutus.
Paul Rusesabagina, in the film’s portrayal, is someone who knows how to work the system, which palms to grease and who to suck up to; at one point, he relates bribing the employers of the woman who would become his wife to transfer her to a closer location (so he could see her more often). It’s these skills that allow Paul to desperately plead, bargain and bribe to keep the murderers from massacring everyone in his hotel. I wish the movie had played a bit more with this theme; that the same character traits in Paul that in ordinary times are not totally admirable, are what made him a hero.
The acting is terrific, the storytelling and writing solid (the screenplay has an eye for how power relations change people, and is not at all sparing in its criticism of Western powers), the suspense is sometimes unbearable, and the story of a real-life hero is undeniably great. But it’s the compelling, chilling, and very persuasive portrait of a world suddenly gone terrifyingly psychotic that sticks with me about Hotel Rwanda.
The movie features two strong and well-portrayed women, Paul’s wife Tatiana (who gets the funniest scene in the movie – it involves a shower nozzle) and an Australian Red Cross worker, Pat Archer, who takes it on herself to rescue Tutsi orphans. Nonetheless, I don’t think this movie meets the Mo Movie Measure. Maybe that’s not a fair criticism, in this one case. This is a true story of a man dealing with a war run by men, after all. A novel (or non-fiction narrative) would have the space to flesh out the lives of other characters more fully, but a movie has to stick closely to the main narrative – and in this case, the main narrative simply doesn’t involve many women.
...raise taxes on all red states to pay for free healthcare for undocumented immigrants. I don't know, that last one…