Catfish

Catfish - or 'Why you probably shouldn't take someone you met off the internet to this movie.'

In order to really convey my thoughts about Catfish, I'll have to address the plot, which unfortunately gives away the main drive of seeing this film - the truth. In order to do so I shall write a brief teaser/critique, followed by four hash marks, where I will then freely talk about the plot, spoilers and all. Please see the film before reading ahead. As a great deal of the promotional material states - the less you read about this film, the better.

One of the other fantastic quotes I read really summarized the experience of Catfish for me: "If THE SOCIAL NETWORK is Facebook's origin story, then CATFISH deals with the consequences" (source unknown). The story is of Photographer Nev Schulman, who shares an office with filmmakers Ariel (Nev's brother) and Henry Joost. Nev recieves a painting of one of his photographs from an incredibly talented eight-year-old artist from Michigan - and the two force a unique friendship via Facebook. This friendship then expands from eight-year-old Abbey to her mother, Angela, half-sister Megan, Angela's husband and a variety of the family's friends from Michigan.

After this relationship is developed, Ariel and Henry become more and more intrigued with the situation, and begin making a documentary about the dynamic between the Pierce family and Nev, paying special attention to the romance blossoming between Nev and Megan. Much of the controversy of the film comes from the fact that people don't believe it to be real - however meeting the film's three mains (Joost and the Schulman’s) I will honestly say I believe the film to be totally factual, if they're fooling their audience, they fooled me. The film is completely simple, but it's gut-wrenching, horrifying and oddly mesmerizing. Not harmed by Nev's odd humor and off-handed comments, or the fraternal bickering throughout the film, it's a very interesting paring of social media and film. The film is being released within Australia in upcoming weeks, and I highly recommend you see it, especially if you speak to other social media users you've never actually met. Without spoiling anything, I can honestly say I really enjoyed the film, and with high expectations, I was not letdown whatsoever. Documentaries can so often be dry and slow, but this film manages to build tension, character and lead the audience by the hand down a story, which twists and turns like you wouldn't believe to be true. While most of the time is spent trying to decode if the men are actually 'acting' or faking any of the film, suspend your disbelief for 86 minutes, and allow yourself to really engage in the story, you wont be disappointed.

If, by chance, these three men have duped audiences, and have crafted a film so well to fool people into believing its sincerity, I'd still recommend it. The truth of the story only engages the viewer more so in thinking about how often we interact with those we really know nothing about. Too much time has already been spent nitpicking the veracity of the film, personally I find it to be a waste of energy. The woman next to me in the cinema obviously thought the film to be fictitious, and had already assigned herself to that long before the film had finished - she then huffed and rolled her eyes for an hour or so, and completely disengaged. It wouldn't have bothered me but her dress was really ugly.

Make sure you wear something cute, and do go see this film.

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SPOILERS TO FOLLOW:

In all honesty, I thought this film was going to take a Cloverfield-esque turn and have Nev killed horribly by a deranged farmer or mutated squid creature hiding behind a shed. When the men approach Megan's horse ranch there was just such a perfect moment for some kind of chainsaw massacre to occur, and the very fact that I had no idea what the major 'twist' was allowed me to come to several insane conclusions at once, hyping myself up to the point where when the truth was revealed, even that itself was still incredibly twisted.

I will admit there are some things that have left questions which raised the questions in my head - were the filmmakers already quite aware that the Pierce family was not what they appeared to be much earlier than they pretended to, yet continued their 'journey of discovery' in order to have a better plot? The fact that Nev never followed up on the delivery of the postcards, or the fact that many of the facebook profiles only had 10-15 friends, *no one* only has 10 friends. Even my mother has about 200, and she has trouble remembering how to scroll with a trackpad. But even still the scenes of discovery were amazing, when the men were finding the original artists of the songs Angela 'records' is fantastic. One can’t help but smile through the whole thing, fascinated by what is actually happening.

What I also found incredibly interesting is once Angela's truth is revealed, the film never really portrays her as a villain or as an insane person, but as someone tortured. When she is drawing Nev and begins to talk 'as Megan', I was actually horrified, not just for Nev (though mainly) but for Angela as well. Her husband's monologue, where the title of the film hails from, is beautiful but also devastating. In fewer words, Vince tells the camera plainly that his wife may have aspirations, but she chose to abandon them and stay with him. To him, she obviously made the right decision, to the audience it is not as clear.

I'm still tentative to say that this film is completely true, but I do believe there is a lot of truth behind it, and even more important - I think it's a fantastic exploit of film and internet. While The Social Network really lays out the genius behind facebook, Catfish lays out the genius of the users, I can only hope this is the beginning of a new kind of documentary, one that documents human experience in real-time with the audience.

Burlesque

Burlesque - or 'What's the hardest thing about seeing Burlesque?'

The same thing as taking up roller-skating - coming out to your parents. This 'review' will probably have a lot of gay jokes in it- but I don't think you could really expect anything else, considering the only people who will be interested in this movie are homosexual men and straight women with a lot of homosexual friends and/or glitter fetishists.

Oddly, for a film that is supposed to be all about jazz-hands and theatrics, the beginning of this film is really sudden, so sudden in fact that most of the theatre patrons didn't actually realize the film had actually started. When it does however, abrubtly begin, we meet Ali (Christina Aguilera’s acting debut) in a small town in Iowa. Sick of working as a waitress, she decides she's going to move to LA to become, well, a waitress - but IN LA! The writing in this film is really consistently awful, but by buying your ticket, you're obviously going for the showmanship, Cher's comeback and Aguilera’s vocals.

My problems with this film are simple, and in list form:

1. The horrific laziness of the script - for instance, in order to give Cher a second number, rather than writing a bonding duet between Ali and Tess (Cher), the crafty writers simply put this dialogue in;

Lighting guy: "Hey Tess, you need to rehearse the moody ballad we'll never mention again because you need a second number."

Cher: "UGH. Being a performer sure is a tough life. Let me just perform my spanx off."

2. This is going to be a caps-heavy problem, so I apologize beforehand. Alan Cumming is in this film. You wouldn't actually know it from any of the film's publicity, nor would you know it from watching the film. Alan Cumming is like a beacon of amazing burlesque/cabaret heaven. He gets four lines. FOUR LINES. ALAN CUMMING IS NOT A DOORMAN. While Stanley Tucci makes for a fantastic Sean, Tess' right-hand man, but I honestly cannot believe in a film about burlesque, someone as seductive and talented as Alan Cumming is THE DOORMAN. This did not work for me at all. Also I can't believe that the guy Stanley Tucci played in The Devil Wears Prada moved to a small Burlesque club in LA. TYPECASTING.

3. Christina Aguilera has two emotions, confused and sultry. There was almost a slapstick kind of element to Ali's expression range, walking the streets of LA with her index finger at her pouted lips and a glazed look across her face. Then, instantly she becomes a sex kitten.

4. Kirsten Bell should have sung. KRISTEN BELL SHOULD HAVE SUNG.

5. Cam Gigandet is seriously good looking. But a man that dresses like he does, and wears eyeliner as well as he does is not a heterosexual male lead. That man is Adam Lambert's more attractive double.

Basically, my major critique of the film comes down to one confusing point: Christina Aguilera has had a successful career for more than a decade - yet this film seemed to be a vehicle to showcase her voice, with special cameo by Cher. The cast was a mixed bag of seasoned stage performers, so why aren't there more ensemble numbers? Even Kristen Bell and Alan Cumming doing a duet would have given me a Cabaret-boner to last at least 72 hours. And then the ever-necessary battle of the divas - a Cher/XTina duet. The film should have finished with one. It would have been predictable, cheesy, and a perfect way to end a film that had embraced both those qualities with open, shimmery arms!

All in all, this movie is one glittery hot mess, and I loved it. I looked past the fact that the script seemed to have been written in forty minutes and Cher's frightening appearance and accepted the film for what it was supposed to be -incredibly camp fun.

Tron: Legacy

Tron Legacy - or 'How the Combination of Daft Punk and 3D Films may have cured my Vertigo'

Just kidding about the Vertigo thing- if anything the film made me a bit nauseous and I'm still kind of dizzy. For some reason whenever I go into a 3D film I immediately turn into every octogenarian, complete with dizzy-spells and complaints about 'kids these days'.

Visually this movie was stunning - and I'm not talking about the Benjamin Button Shit they did to Jeff Bridges' face - and the music was great. Though on the topic of music, I can't say I understand why everyone is so excited about Daft Punk's soundtrack. I can honestly only remember one scene where the music wasn't comprised of that "VROOOOOM" noise made famous in the trailer for Inception.

The film itself is not a groundbreaking story; a sequel to the 1982 film Tron, director Joseph Kosinski continues the story of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), and his grid world. Back in 1982, Flynn disappears, leaving his young son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) without so much as a quarter. After some business with his father's company and a pager (such technology even existed? Can you imagine?) Sam then discovers his father's secret office, and secret computer where he did his secret business. Sam is transported into the grid, and must find his father and escape before the unfriendly local villain (Kevin Flynn's double, Clu) is able to kill the Flynns and take over earth. Republicans, you just can't trust them.

I was about to say, "obviously there's more than that" but there actually isn't. It's a simple plot - Bridges actually brought a Zen Buddhist as a story consultant in order to add a sense of spirituality to the film - but honestly all of that is really heavy-handed and I almost pulled an eye-rolling muscle. Sam describes his father's meditation as "knocking on the sky and listening to the sounds" or some such rubbish. Pause for momentary vomit and roll of the eyes break.

Olivia Wilde as Quorra was surprising, a wonderful mix of two incredibly overdone models of female action characters - both the strong fighter and the vulnerable doe-eyed character. But none of the characters were really written in a way that made me care for them at all. If I’m honest, I was waiting for a major character to die as my attention wavered while they were just sitting on a train or flying something.

Also - I'll have to admit, the one major thing that really confused me was that Tron isn't the grid. It's a guy. Tron is actually a character in both the original and in Legacy. And he has one line. Going to this film and expecting anything other than fantastic visuals and a pretty basic plot is a mistake, but that isn't a critique on the film, in fact for what it was - I enjoyed it on the whole but I'm not sure I could watch it again. Nor do I have much faith the film will be interesting to own in 2D on DVD- without the graphics it's just a run of the mill sci-fi action flick where Garrett Hedlund hardly even takes his shirt off!

Black Swan

Black Swan - Or 'How I learned to stop worrying and watch Natalie Portman masturbate for two hours'.

It's dawning on me why so many people desperately see films on opening night. Hype is like a drug, a merciless and cruel drug that builds up your expectations then crushes your heart with saddening reality. Recently my general lethargy has meant that I have been late to see many highly recommended films - The Social Network being one - where the collective mind of society is imploding in orgasmic appreciation for the film, which afterwards leaves a dry taste in my mouth. Just like missing the punchline of a joke, hype makes you feel like you've missed the greatness of the film.

I will be honest, as a flagrant homosexual the idea of Natalie Portman, ballet and casual lesbianism is more arousing than I'd like to admit. Seeing the trailer for celebrated director Darren Aronofsky's dark 'psychological thriller' Black Swan was like soft-core pornography of the highest caliber. (Note: I say 'psychological thriller' in sarcastic finger-quotes because the film is no more a psychological thriller than Confessions of a Shopaholic, but more on that anon) So when I was given the opportunity to own quite a high quality version of the film more than a month before it's Australian release date- I jumped at the opportunity. I'll try and avoid writing about the plot too much for those who still haven't seen it (it is not released in Australia for another few weeks). However the main plot focuses on Nina, a ballet dancer in a company who is given the lead role in Swan Lake. Nina must embody two parts of the same role, the fragile and pure White Swan and it's evil conniving twin, the Black Swan. Feeling the pressure of perfection, Nina begins to feel concerns of being replaced, not being good enough, and needing to feel herself up all the damn time.

I mentioned the supposed genre of the film - a 'psychological thriller', yet the film does nothing to delve into the psychology of the characters, nor does it thrill. It attempts to shock the viewer into a state of frenzy to mirror that of frail and deeply unlikable main character Nina (Portman) with cheap and pointless scare tactics. In once scene Wynonna Ryder takes a nail file and begins stabbing her face - screaming, "I'M NOTHING, I'M NOTHING, I'M NOTHING." The irony was not lost on me, considering the same could be said of Wynonna's recent career - however I wasn't afraid, I wasn't overwhelmed, I was just amazed that this film had been going on as long as it had. Possibly the most psychologically taxing element of this film is that apparently every man within the ballet company is a heterosexual - still, days later I cannot understand this.

This is not an original film, what it is, however, is a combination of preexisting films, fused together for no real reason, which makes it clumsy and clunky. It's said that Aronofsky 'conceived the premise' after watching a production of Swan Lake and connecting it with a preexisting yet unrealized screenplay about understudies. This 'preexisting yet unrealized screenplay' being 1995 classic Showgirls, however where Black Swan is broody and confusing, Showgirls has boobs. So at the moment we have Black Showgirls, a film about ballet dancers fearing replacement. But what about the 'psychological' elements- lets add the concept perfected in the 1999 film adaption of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. One man, two characters - reality fractures and he is consumed with destruction. In Fight Club, we see one man's complete destruction, in Black Swan we see Natalie Portman go to the ULTIMATE rebellion against ballet and her mother (who I will dedicate a paragraph to in all good time) by having sex with a woman. I honestly don't think ballerinas would be so interested in oral sex - sounds like a lot of empty calories. So, combining these three filmic elements, Black Showgirl Club is born. I hesitate to call this movie Black Showgirl Club Shoes, including 1948 classic The Red Shoes because honestly the ballet elements of the film aren't original either, but I like the imagery of Black Showgirl Club. If Kanye calls his next album that, I want royalties.

Possibly the only redeeming part of this film for me was the character of the mother (Barbara Hershey). For no reason at all, the mother is insane, now it's debatable if some of her antics are just projections of Nina's insanity, or if she actually is just sitting up late at night painting pictures of Natalie Portman and weeping (but honestly, who hasn't done that?). Due to the ever exhausting character of Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) the ballet company director who really only exists in the film to remind the audience that Nina is pure and virginal and cannot achieve the darkness of the Black Swan- Nina is urged to (say this in a heavy French accent) "go 'ome and play wiz 'erself". Nina wakes up the next morning and decides to say good morning to the vicar downstairs - midway through mounting her own hand she turns and there, sitting next to her bed is HER MOTHER. Luckily she's asleep, but the situation alone is one of the funniest and most scaring scenes in the history of film. And I thought my mother liked to smother.

The film is like that, though. It's not subtle in the least. The plot itself is so overdone that one can pretty much guess what is going to happen within the first ten minutes of the film (extra time allotted if you haven't seen the trailer). Unlike Fight Club, there is no clever twist at the end because we know Nina is crazy, and by the time you've finally made it through her transformation from lacking any substance or personality to a sex-crazed, psychotic and uninterestingly crazed woman - you really don't care what happened to her mother's 'good girl' (remember that she's a good girl, you might forget in-between the four or five minutes where a character doesn't say it).

I would have given Aronofsky credit for creating an interesting element to the film by having all the characters within the film mirror that of the ballet - however he credits his characters with their character name AND the name of the character they're based off of in the ballet. Like the delicate kiss of being slapped in the testicle with a pregnant trout, Aronofsky actually spells everything out for the viewer. It's condescending and tiresome. Similarly, the cinematography - akin to that of his earlier film The Wrestler, shot close and using handheld cameras to create a sense of claustrophobia and psychological chaos - it's wasted in this film. Portman obviously went through strenuous dance training and it's not shown when the camera is shakily consumed with a shoulder or a knee rather than a distant, still shot of dance.

Understand these are my opinions only. I do not represent a majority with my reaction to this film - in fact I believe the only reason I'm so tragically upset by it is because I had such high expectations for its success. I plan to view the film, legally, in the cinema for a second time to see if my views change. If they do I will change my opinion here - however if they don't, I'll probably just have more of a reason to whine to my friends about how much time I wasted watching Natalie Portman masturbate in ballet shoes.