It's nice to write a bunch of words about something that was definitely not a TNT Mystery Movie (glowing praise, right? Turn that into a blurb for the poster. "Definitely Not A TNT Mystery Movie!" --Pete Travers, Rolling Stone).
I went to Young Adult today. I've been wanting to go since it was released a few weeks ago. Then, 1+ weeks ago, a coworker saw it. She gave it one of those reviews that makes me want to obstinately argue despite having no basis to do so: "I don't know. It was kind of upsetting. And the ending doesn't resolve anything. And Charlize Theron's character is very unlikable."
And technically, upon seeing the movie, I can say all of those things are generally true. If it has a positive message, it's one about epiphanies resulting in small changes or baby steps, but not revolutionary "Why, today is Christmas Day, sir!" type 180-degree turns. The ending is, I believe, meant to reflect that and imply that Mavis will have to work long and hard to achieve happiness or peace or a clean apartment. And I'm guessing my coworker, like the person who exclaim-whispered "Disgusting," was "upset[ting]" by the sex scene at the end of the film--side note: Exclaim Whisperer is the reason I'm skittish about book clubs, as a rule.
And yes, it was hard to like Mavis but--and I realize what an earnest flake I sound like saying this--that's probably because Mavis doesn't like herself. In addition to being bitter, in a very specific way only former hot-shit high school popular kids are, she is a depressive, disturbed alcoholic who is the kind of pet owner that makes me grind my back molars (you know, in real life...). And since I didn't see Monster back in the day (2003), I'm new to the revelation that Charlize Theron is an amazing actress who can draw you in, even when her character is at the height of detachment from reality or at her most embarrassingly mean or unhinged.
Because I have my fingers on the pulse of today's music, I've taken to listening to Adele recently (mostly because she has been featured on Glee and because she has several live tracks on the KGSR and Cities Sampler I own), and her song "Someone Like You" makes me think of Young Adult, mostly because "Someone Like You" is the fairly normal, romanticized-a-little version of meeting a lost love and exposing the wishes and dreams you wear on your sleeve, and Young Adult is the messier, crazier, sadder version that is unflinching in exposing how pathetic those dreams and feelings are, because they come hand-in-hand with shoddy lies told to yourself and others with a horrid lack of self-awareness.
I loved the detail of this movie the same way I loved the detail of Juno: the small-town Minnesota touches like formal flannel and Corningware casserole dishes and the way a mother keeps a wedding picture hanging for reasons that sound nice and sweet but explain bits and pieces of Mavis's misery (if every action has an equal and opposite reaction, then passive-aggressive mothering likely results in some really bitchy, unvarnished expression-type kids). And speaking of Minnesota, it was really cool to see the Minneapolis skyline portrayed as something picturesque and worthy of being in a movie. I've never seen the Grain Belt sign look better.
I also loved the opening sequence of Mavis fleeing from a night of sex with a very nice guy she didn't seem all that into, digging out a Memorex mix tape her high school flame Buddy made her. As the credits rolled over the archaic mechanics of the tape playing, the pins and reels moving, spinning and grinding as Mavis rewinds the same track again and again and again, the grooves and scratches on the tape both immobile and fragile, it sets the whole tone: nostalgia externalized, tenuous, loud, and repetitive.
And despite what Exclaim Whisperer blurted, the more I think about the scene between Mavis and Matt (played by Patton Oswalt, and if Big Fan is more emotionally excruciating than this, I'm not sure if I can take it), the more beautiful I find it. Mavis, wine-splashed and destroyed from the scene at Buddy and Beth's house, where it's revealed that Mavis miscarried Buddy's baby in her very early 20s, strips out of her dress, standing awkwardly semi-dressd in her bra cups and pantyhose, plaintively requesting Matt's shirt. He removes it, equally awkward about his appearance. They embrace, comfort turning into a straightforward segue into sex. Their post-sex chat about Mavis's perceptions of Buddy and when she was at her best was so bittersweet that my chest does that pre-cry tightening thing just at the thought of it.
This film also makes me want to sit down and talk to Diablo Cody about her own experience with young mothers, her own mother, and motherhood. I feel like Beth and Jennifer Garner's character, Vanessa, are such similar characters, and she seems to have a great deal of affection for...well, lots of things about it, e.g., pregnancy, the women friends, the single-mindedness. But she also seems to include loss in both portraits, whether it was Juno's or Mavis's. Interesting. Makes a girl want to write a thesis.
In short, I liked it. I like thinking about it like I'm Cameron Frye looking at "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," seeing all the dots in the picture and thnking about the dots in my soul. What can I say? It got me when one of Mavis's tiny breakthroughs involved realizing that her dumbly happy dog loved her unconditionally and deserved hugs and kisses and walkies (maybe).
I was running late due to a decision to get off the bus too early (mistake) and an attempt to wait out teenage incompetence to get a popcorn (another, different kind of mistake), so I only saw two previews:
1) The Vow: if you jokers think you can curl Rachel McAdams hair into waves and put her in a variety of pretty dresses and have her pine and cry and love, thus playing on my attachment to The Notebook, well, then, you...win, and I probably will see it, if not in the theater, then eventually, because she looks so good in love. Though Channing Tatum? Really, Hollywood, with that guy? I specifically requested not to see Thunder Down Under in my rom-coms, thank you?
2) Titanic is coming out in 3-D. I was very recently tickled by a terrible trailer for Ghost Rider 2, but I think the delight I felt watching the advertisement for this absolutely uncalled-for re-re-re-release was almost greater. Yes, all, come and marvel as new technology allows us to see the old couple's shuddering last embrace IN 3-D! Hear Celine Dion's powerful swelling weirdo enunciations IN 3-D! Experience Billy Zane's hamboning and Moe Howard hairpiece IN 3-D! Feel yourself soaring at the bow of the ship IN 3-D! Which will make the inevitable hypothermia scene where Rose cracks Jack's blue fingers from her plank-raft all the more crushing IN 3-D!
Okay, Cameron, be honest: you just want to fling bodies at us in the she's-going-down! scene, right?
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Airport Novel Theatre: "Good Morning, Killer" on TNT
Initially when I saw the title to this latest chapter in "I left this book at our beach rental" (TM blahmanda) adaptations, all I could think about was the song from Hair:
I should stress that I like to think about the music from Hair as little as possible. My friend Kate and I watched the film adaptation when I was in the midst of a crush on Dr. Andy Brown aka Treat Williams, and it was, in my humble opinion, the worst. I was clearly the absolutely wrong audience as an individual who likes musical theatre big and old-fashioned and cheesy or, like, Les Mis.
Although I very much like the version from the X-Files/Simpsons crossover:
Then blahmanda called it Good Morning Comma Killer... which made me think of a much more enjoyable song:
But this post isn't meant to be about songs or Treat Williams or hilarious things blahmanda says (actually, that's not a bad idea...). This is about Good Morning, Killer. Like the TNT Mystery Movies before it, it was not very good. But it found unique ways to be subpar. Kudos, TNT Mystery Movies!
Catherine Bell, an actress I am not familiar with as I have somehow managed to live my tv-watching life without catching more than 3 minutes of JAG, plays FBI Agent Ana Gray. Ana Gray is no-nonsense and tough, much like Carla Gugino's character, Carla Gugino, in Hide. However, we see more of Ana's vulnerable side as she bonds with victims and is alone in a parking lot in an excerpt from a horror movie and having weird power issues in her sexytimes with Cole Hauser.
Cole Hauser. A name I should recognize, I suppose, because he was on ER for a while. But I draw a blank every time that guy shows up in something. And for some weirdo reason, I always wonder, when I see his name, "Was he the super-hot guy from Terminator and The Abyss?" Answer: no. That is Michael Biehn. Michael Biehn is older, not blond, and looks completely different. So...not sure where that comes from.
Anyway, Cole Hauser plays Detective Andrew, whom Ana's partner sarcastically refers to as The Santa Monica Cowboy. Ana and Andrew are Doing It. But I guess they haven't defined their relationship, according to a scene where, spoiler alert, it is implied that Andrew is Doing It with some other lady. Also, Ana and Andrew have sexytime problems where maybe they sometimes have "rough sex" (as defined by the premiere source for sex information, Silent Witness, this is when you do a lady from behind...though it did not seem like there was choking involved) and that it isn't a great idea because Ana has head problems from the horrors of her job...maybe. I don't know. I'm not 100% confident in my interpretation.
Here's where the movie is bad (and I know I haven't even gotten to the main crime part of the movie, but honestly: do you care?): it presents characters and information with a degree of trust in the audience to draw conclusions/be intelligent, but it does so in such a vague, incomplete way that it just makes things more confusing. I mean, let's be honest: as much as I complain about how paint-by-numbers these adaptations are, they're based on serial novels. There's going to be a degree of exposition and repetition. Since the movie didn't use its big-kid exposition, I'm still not sure why Ana had intimacy issues, or if Andrew was truly cheating or just being uncommunicative, or if I was supposed to assume they were still together despite their discussion or... et cetera.
The same thing happens with Ana and her relationship with her partner, Mike Donato, played by Titus Welliver. Holy buckets, Titus Welliver. Anyway, it's revealed 2/3 of the way through the movie that maybe Mike and Ana were also Doing It at some point in the past, either while he was married or separated or all of the above or none of the above or et cetera. And I guess my (somewhat off-topic) question there would be: if you were Doing It with Titus Welliver, how did you ever stop, Ana Gray? Were I in your no-nonsense yet vulnerable shoes, I would be waiting at home for Titus Welliver every single day in my most alluring pajama pants. I mean, even when he was wearing a jean jacket, which men should never do unless they are gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar or truck-drivin', orangutan-buddyin' Clint Eastwood, I was thinking, "Boy, I sure like Titus Welliver, and he makes me feel like a natural woman, even though he is still wearing a jean jacket."
I cannot stress how much I would like to make out+more with Titus Welliver, in a hypothetical world. I like him a whole lot. Especially when he carries a gun, as he did in this movie.
Soooooooo to get back to ripping on the movie: my complaint about the lackadaisical attention to detail or character development extends to the crime at the center of this movie too: we have a bunch of FBI agents and cops and profilers--many of whom are introduced for three scenes, then disappear, adding to the "This is like real life! We trust you, audience!" slapdash feel--but we're never given any insight into why the dude they're chasing does what he does. We know he's former military. We know he chokes girls and rapes them and that the girls have a very specific look (youngish, brunette, white). But didn't Silence of the Lambs teach every maker of a suspense movie about a sociopath that we need the scene where the agent displays the understanding of what makes the sociopath tick? That does not happen at any point. In fact, the movie introduces a bunch of detail dots that are never connected. What's with his attachment to his sister? Are we supposed to draw gross conclusions from that or empathize? What was with the weird relationship with his girlfriend and her daughter? That was never really resolved, was it? Why does he say "You'll never forget me?" I don't accept the answer that it is a message for the world. That is stupid. Why did he decide to go camping for a while? Was it because he had returned the girl? Why does he make his victims call their mothers? Was he abused by his mom? Is he simply a sadist? What was with the use of "ritual" about 40 times in the last 30 minutes of the movie?
So many questions.
Also, because I am your grandmother, I am going to complain that it was really super graphic and upsetting. Did we need to see so many of those creepy rape photos? I mean, I got the idea after the first two or three. There was a montage at the end, intended, I suppose, to let us know that Ana Gray was being overwhelmed with horrors while trying to think on her feet and save a girl from being raped. But...I'm not going to write a letter or anything, but yuck. And why was the post-return examination of the victim scene so fucking long? It made me squirmy, not in a The Accused way, where I felt upset by the clinical and detached treatment of the victim in a claustrophobic, real-life way, but in a "This is weird and not very well structured or acted" way.
The movie ends with Ana and the victim she bonded with (and I apologize for completely glossing over the oddly developed storyline where we hang out with the victim's parents who fight and are weirdly uncooperative, but that turns out to be nothing) swimming. Water is a metaphor for baptism and rebirth. FYI. In case you didn't take a 300-level lit course. You're welcome.
In conclusion, Titus Welliver makes my heart palpitate, even when his flirting is supposed to be unprofessional and in bad taste. I like him and wish he were the lead in a tv show where he was stoic and near-mute and carried a gun, like Timothy Olyphant.
Also: don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever trust semi-professional photographers. They are probably rapists.
Next TNT Mystery Movie stars Kathy Najimy. I sense wackiness ahead.
Although I very much like the version from the X-Files/Simpsons crossover:
Catherine Bell, an actress I am not familiar with as I have somehow managed to live my tv-watching life without catching more than 3 minutes of JAG, plays FBI Agent Ana Gray. Ana Gray is no-nonsense and tough, much like Carla Gugino's character, Carla Gugino, in Hide. However, we see more of Ana's vulnerable side as she bonds with victims and is alone in a parking lot in an excerpt from a horror movie and having weird power issues in her sexytimes with Cole Hauser.
Cole Hauser. A name I should recognize, I suppose, because he was on ER for a while. But I draw a blank every time that guy shows up in something. And for some weirdo reason, I always wonder, when I see his name, "Was he the super-hot guy from Terminator and The Abyss?" Answer: no. That is Michael Biehn. Michael Biehn is older, not blond, and looks completely different. So...not sure where that comes from.
Anyway, Cole Hauser plays Detective Andrew, whom Ana's partner sarcastically refers to as The Santa Monica Cowboy. Ana and Andrew are Doing It. But I guess they haven't defined their relationship, according to a scene where, spoiler alert, it is implied that Andrew is Doing It with some other lady. Also, Ana and Andrew have sexytime problems where maybe they sometimes have "rough sex" (as defined by the premiere source for sex information, Silent Witness, this is when you do a lady from behind...though it did not seem like there was choking involved) and that it isn't a great idea because Ana has head problems from the horrors of her job...maybe. I don't know. I'm not 100% confident in my interpretation.
Here's where the movie is bad (and I know I haven't even gotten to the main crime part of the movie, but honestly: do you care?): it presents characters and information with a degree of trust in the audience to draw conclusions/be intelligent, but it does so in such a vague, incomplete way that it just makes things more confusing. I mean, let's be honest: as much as I complain about how paint-by-numbers these adaptations are, they're based on serial novels. There's going to be a degree of exposition and repetition. Since the movie didn't use its big-kid exposition, I'm still not sure why Ana had intimacy issues, or if Andrew was truly cheating or just being uncommunicative, or if I was supposed to assume they were still together despite their discussion or... et cetera.
The same thing happens with Ana and her relationship with her partner, Mike Donato, played by Titus Welliver. Holy buckets, Titus Welliver. Anyway, it's revealed 2/3 of the way through the movie that maybe Mike and Ana were also Doing It at some point in the past, either while he was married or separated or all of the above or none of the above or et cetera. And I guess my (somewhat off-topic) question there would be: if you were Doing It with Titus Welliver, how did you ever stop, Ana Gray? Were I in your no-nonsense yet vulnerable shoes, I would be waiting at home for Titus Welliver every single day in my most alluring pajama pants. I mean, even when he was wearing a jean jacket, which men should never do unless they are gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar or truck-drivin', orangutan-buddyin' Clint Eastwood, I was thinking, "Boy, I sure like Titus Welliver, and he makes me feel like a natural woman, even though he is still wearing a jean jacket."
I cannot stress how much I would like to make out+more with Titus Welliver, in a hypothetical world. I like him a whole lot. Especially when he carries a gun, as he did in this movie.
Soooooooo to get back to ripping on the movie: my complaint about the lackadaisical attention to detail or character development extends to the crime at the center of this movie too: we have a bunch of FBI agents and cops and profilers--many of whom are introduced for three scenes, then disappear, adding to the "This is like real life! We trust you, audience!" slapdash feel--but we're never given any insight into why the dude they're chasing does what he does. We know he's former military. We know he chokes girls and rapes them and that the girls have a very specific look (youngish, brunette, white). But didn't Silence of the Lambs teach every maker of a suspense movie about a sociopath that we need the scene where the agent displays the understanding of what makes the sociopath tick? That does not happen at any point. In fact, the movie introduces a bunch of detail dots that are never connected. What's with his attachment to his sister? Are we supposed to draw gross conclusions from that or empathize? What was with the weird relationship with his girlfriend and her daughter? That was never really resolved, was it? Why does he say "You'll never forget me?" I don't accept the answer that it is a message for the world. That is stupid. Why did he decide to go camping for a while? Was it because he had returned the girl? Why does he make his victims call their mothers? Was he abused by his mom? Is he simply a sadist? What was with the use of "ritual" about 40 times in the last 30 minutes of the movie?
So many questions.
Also, because I am your grandmother, I am going to complain that it was really super graphic and upsetting. Did we need to see so many of those creepy rape photos? I mean, I got the idea after the first two or three. There was a montage at the end, intended, I suppose, to let us know that Ana Gray was being overwhelmed with horrors while trying to think on her feet and save a girl from being raped. But...I'm not going to write a letter or anything, but yuck. And why was the post-return examination of the victim scene so fucking long? It made me squirmy, not in a The Accused way, where I felt upset by the clinical and detached treatment of the victim in a claustrophobic, real-life way, but in a "This is weird and not very well structured or acted" way.
The movie ends with Ana and the victim she bonded with (and I apologize for completely glossing over the oddly developed storyline where we hang out with the victim's parents who fight and are weirdly uncooperative, but that turns out to be nothing) swimming. Water is a metaphor for baptism and rebirth. FYI. In case you didn't take a 300-level lit course. You're welcome.
In conclusion, Titus Welliver makes my heart palpitate, even when his flirting is supposed to be unprofessional and in bad taste. I like him and wish he were the lead in a tv show where he was stoic and near-mute and carried a gun, like Timothy Olyphant.
Also: don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever trust semi-professional photographers. They are probably rapists.
Next TNT Mystery Movie stars Kathy Najimy. I sense wackiness ahead.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Airport Novel Theatre: "Silent Witness" on TNT
Ugh. That's the main thought I have about this latest edition of TNT Mystery Movie aka Airport Novel Theatre. I wrote nearly three paragraphs about Dermot Mulroney and my high school semi-crush on that half-man, half-marble statue and then concluded, "You know what? In many ways, Dermot Mulroney is the actor equivalent of an airport novel: he's rather dense and a fine way to pass the time using your eyes, but in the end, he lacks substance beyond the heft of his bajillion abs muscles--for real, it looks like he pasted, like, four Ryan Reynolds's's to his tum-tum--and the gloss of his hair, which may or may not be a metaphor for 'slick' writing, so I'm going to spare everyone my thoughts because fantastic hair and alluring lip scar aside, he, like this movie, really isn't worth the effort."
I don't recall reading any Richard North Patterson novels, but I imagine I must have, somewhere in between the waiting for a new Grisham or Crichton or Patterson or King or Koontz back in my youth. I imagine this adaptation was a fair representation, even with my faulty memory. The film was a veritable dead zone littered with lurid details and tell-don't-show exposition. Weigh in, Readers of North Patterson, with an actual memory of how one of his books went. I bet that's not too far off.
Here's the cast of characters:
1) Dermot Mulroney as the big-shot defense lawyer who scooted from his small town not longer after being cleared of the murder of his high school sweetheart, who he deflowers, then finds defiled and totally dead, in flashbacks.
2) Michael Cudlitz as the best friend who stayed behind in the small town, became a teacher and a track coach, had some sex with one of his students, and is charged when she is found at the bottom of a cliff.
3) Anne Heche as Michael Cudlitz's wife. Yep, I'm with you: I immediately assumed she was guilty too. But mostly she spends her scenes being a befuddling mix of sexy and crazy ("In other words," said blahmanda in e-mail, "she was Anne Heche").
4) "Judd Hirsch as Fyvush Finkel" (blahmanda again). Whew, for those of you who saw Independence Day and thought, "Boy, Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch sure are meshugener and...well...Maaaaaaaaaaatzo ball soup," this performance will make that all seem subtle by comparison (at one point, he says, "Soooooo... was he giving her the blintz?" as a way of asking if Cudlitz was having sex with a teenage girl; deeeelightful). This character also has a drinking problem that is established in an unsubtle sequence of close-up shots of him pouring an assortment of alcoholic beverages at 10:00 in the morning, which is not ever really referred to again. I think he was the Jewish version of the character that Donald Sutherland played in A Time To Kill (which was based on a book, I suppose...), but they never really got around to giving him a subplot beyond his assortment of jewel-toned ties and hankies.
5) Hispanic Guy from Third Watch as the Hispanic guy who is being discriminated against, I guess, and works for the parks department and maybe was also having sex with this teenage girl who is now dead.
6) Lady DA Who Is Very Law&Ordery
7) A Heap of One Scene Types Playing Experts and Parents and Friends and Whatnot
Most of the movie takes place during the trial. There's a little bit at the beginning of the movie to establish Dermot's character and get him back to his hometown, and there's a wretched ending after the trial is concluded. But for the most part, we, the viewers, are on jury duty. It has a weird sense of time to it, overall. It's not that it feels especially long and drawn-out, but stretches and stretches of minutes go on, and you realize nothing is being said except expositiony words.
[Some kind of feminist reading of how the teenage girl is oversexualized and underdeveloped and also killed in a horrific fashion goes here.]
And let us indeed talk about sex, ba-by. Only let's not. Let's not talk about sex the way it is talked about in this adaptation and probably the book too, in this awkward, haunting gap between clinical coldness and the exploitative use of sexual assault and statutory rape as semi-titillation tools. At one point, Lady DA says, "She was entered from behind while being choked. Rough sex, it's called."
I think that says it all, doesn't it? I mean, first of all, what? I don't want to split hairs, but I think that rough sex covers a lot more ground than just that one thing. And second, something about "entered from behind" is so gross. It's repeated multiple times, and I started to shudder when a character would dust it off. Something about the way it is said sort of implies that that is almost hand-in-hand with rape...since we find out when Michael Cudlitz is revealed to be the killer of both the teenage girl as well as the teenage girl in the past, and that's how he sex-rapes both of them.
Ugh. Like I said: ugh.
So anyway, spoiler alert, Michael Cudlitz is guilty, like I said, which should be a relief since he's "a gross creepy liar the whole time, just like he seemed," (blahmanda) but it's just rife with more yuck, since the film has to have a confrontation scene betwixt Dermot and Cudlitz and throw in one of those nifty guilty-party-has-a-gun-and-oh-he's-going-to-murdalate-the-hero-but-instead-he-does-some-confusing-wordplay-and-commits-suicide-and-Dermot-Mulroney-goes-batshit-recording-the-ADR-and-sounds-like-Mrs-Bennet moments.
So I guess I'd give this 2 out of 4 Hudson News receipts. It was like a book I bought for a flight in a last-minute rush only to disappointedly discover that it is even worse than the jacket blurb makes it sound, so then I read the Southwest in-flight magazine and SkyMall for the duration of my flight.
I don't recall reading any Richard North Patterson novels, but I imagine I must have, somewhere in between the waiting for a new Grisham or Crichton or Patterson or King or Koontz back in my youth. I imagine this adaptation was a fair representation, even with my faulty memory. The film was a veritable dead zone littered with lurid details and tell-don't-show exposition. Weigh in, Readers of North Patterson, with an actual memory of how one of his books went. I bet that's not too far off.
Here's the cast of characters:
1) Dermot Mulroney as the big-shot defense lawyer who scooted from his small town not longer after being cleared of the murder of his high school sweetheart, who he deflowers, then finds defiled and totally dead, in flashbacks.
2) Michael Cudlitz as the best friend who stayed behind in the small town, became a teacher and a track coach, had some sex with one of his students, and is charged when she is found at the bottom of a cliff.
3) Anne Heche as Michael Cudlitz's wife. Yep, I'm with you: I immediately assumed she was guilty too. But mostly she spends her scenes being a befuddling mix of sexy and crazy ("In other words," said blahmanda in e-mail, "she was Anne Heche").
4) "Judd Hirsch as Fyvush Finkel" (blahmanda again). Whew, for those of you who saw Independence Day and thought, "Boy, Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch sure are meshugener and...well...Maaaaaaaaaaatzo ball soup," this performance will make that all seem subtle by comparison (at one point, he says, "Soooooo... was he giving her the blintz?" as a way of asking if Cudlitz was having sex with a teenage girl; deeeelightful). This character also has a drinking problem that is established in an unsubtle sequence of close-up shots of him pouring an assortment of alcoholic beverages at 10:00 in the morning, which is not ever really referred to again. I think he was the Jewish version of the character that Donald Sutherland played in A Time To Kill (which was based on a book, I suppose...), but they never really got around to giving him a subplot beyond his assortment of jewel-toned ties and hankies.
5) Hispanic Guy from Third Watch as the Hispanic guy who is being discriminated against, I guess, and works for the parks department and maybe was also having sex with this teenage girl who is now dead.
6) Lady DA Who Is Very Law&Ordery
7) A Heap of One Scene Types Playing Experts and Parents and Friends and Whatnot
Most of the movie takes place during the trial. There's a little bit at the beginning of the movie to establish Dermot's character and get him back to his hometown, and there's a wretched ending after the trial is concluded. But for the most part, we, the viewers, are on jury duty. It has a weird sense of time to it, overall. It's not that it feels especially long and drawn-out, but stretches and stretches of minutes go on, and you realize nothing is being said except expositiony words.
[Some kind of feminist reading of how the teenage girl is oversexualized and underdeveloped and also killed in a horrific fashion goes here.]
And let us indeed talk about sex, ba-by. Only let's not. Let's not talk about sex the way it is talked about in this adaptation and probably the book too, in this awkward, haunting gap between clinical coldness and the exploitative use of sexual assault and statutory rape as semi-titillation tools. At one point, Lady DA says, "She was entered from behind while being choked. Rough sex, it's called."
I think that says it all, doesn't it? I mean, first of all, what? I don't want to split hairs, but I think that rough sex covers a lot more ground than just that one thing. And second, something about "entered from behind" is so gross. It's repeated multiple times, and I started to shudder when a character would dust it off. Something about the way it is said sort of implies that that is almost hand-in-hand with rape...since we find out when Michael Cudlitz is revealed to be the killer of both the teenage girl as well as the teenage girl in the past, and that's how he sex-rapes both of them.
Ugh. Like I said: ugh.
So anyway, spoiler alert, Michael Cudlitz is guilty, like I said, which should be a relief since he's "a gross creepy liar the whole time, just like he seemed," (blahmanda) but it's just rife with more yuck, since the film has to have a confrontation scene betwixt Dermot and Cudlitz and throw in one of those nifty guilty-party-has-a-gun-and-oh-he's-going-to-murdalate-the-hero-but-instead-he-does-some-confusing-wordplay-and-commits-suicide-and-Dermot-Mulroney-goes-batshit-recording-the-ADR-and-sounds-like-Mrs-Bennet moments.
So I guess I'd give this 2 out of 4 Hudson News receipts. It was like a book I bought for a flight in a last-minute rush only to disappointedly discover that it is even worse than the jacket blurb makes it sound, so then I read the Southwest in-flight magazine and SkyMall for the duration of my flight.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Airport Novel Theatre: "Hide" on TNT
I caught a glimpse of her face, framed with raven locks, her lovely hazel eyes widened in...maybe surprise or terror or...feelings.
And I knew I had to run to her ample bosom. O Carla Gugino! I swear I am not gay for you but probably I sort of am!
That would be the beginning of the poem and then it would go on from there.
So it turns out TNT is making some NBC Mystery Movies based on books. Last night's tremendous achievement of cinema was called Hide, and was based on a book by Lisa Gardner, who, I imagine, has written about as many books as your Tess Gerritsens or your Sandra Browns. If I may be such a literary snob--and I give myself permission, a-thank you--they are the kind of books you either grow away from, when you realize romance and/or suspense can be found in better written tomes that aren't produced in some sort of Mad Libsian (Libyan?) formatting; or they are the kind of books a person reads for the rest of her/his life, because the formulaic plotting, "shocking" endings, and stagnant characters are soothing (I guess, if you also find the occasional densely lavish description of sexual assault or torture soothing). Or, I suppose, if I want to break up the either/or: these are the kinds of books you buy in an airport bookstore because you forgot the copy of The Corrections you bought and have already read your three crappy magazines.
I will state here that I refuse to learn the characters' names because I like calling them by their actor names and/or plot devices. Here is the story:
Carla Gugino is a [tough] and [no-nonsense] detective who likes to [have sex] and [drink] and [takes the job too seriously]. But she [also cares!], damn it!, as evidenced by her relationship with Gay Police Guy, whose mother is dying, and she's always like, "Go see your mother" and "Do you need time off? But I'm not going to ask you again 'cause I'm TUFF!" So she's three-dimensional, as you can see. The guy she most likes to [have sex] with is Kevin Alejandro, who died on Southland only to live again on, um, True Blood or Showtime Presents Some Kind of Drama About Sexy Disease. Kevin recently became a detective, but does not have a desk, which is not as funny as when that happened to Veronica Corningstone in Anchorman.
The not-desk-having is pointed out to him once or twice by Zack Attack Morris from Bayside High. Zack Attack is an instructor at Police Academy. He is [soulful] and [caring], as evidenced by the fact that he wants to home-cook pasta sauce for Carla Gugino before he buries his face in her ample mounds, if you get my drift (boobs). Kevin Alejandro is also [soulful] and [caring] because he has blue eyes and wants to [talk about relationships] when he's not waving Carla Gugino's panties around in her office (literally).
Love triangle! Sort of! When they're not solving the elaborately expositioned crime that is so f'ing ridiculous that at one point I considered drawing a conspiracy chart a la The Wire to try and track all the goofery.
But I gave up because Carla Gugino took off her shirt. She was wearing a black bra.
So here's my word-chart attempt:
b) Bottles hanging from strings (serial killers like wind chimes?)
c)Skeletons in giant Ziploc freezer bags full of viscous fluid
2. Carla Gugino and Her Sensitive Menfolk investigate and make the observation that this crime is just like that one crime that one time where a kidnap victim was rescued and her attacker was put to death a few years ago.
3. Also there is a locket on one of the skele-bags that has a full name engraved on it.
4. It turns out the full name belongs to a girl who is alive!
5. Who eerily resembles the girl who was kidnapped and rescued in the crime I just mentioned in 2.
6. Turns out that alive girl gave the locket to her best friend, who was the girl who was in one of the skele-bags.
7. The alive girl has also had a bazillion names because her dad made her move a bunch when she was younger and also her mom committed suicide.
8. The alive girl is VERY JUMPY LIKE SOMEONE IS STALKING HER. Her best friend is the delivery man. She makes quilts.
9. Some Friendly Exposition Guy Who Formerly Worked or Volunteered At The Mental Hospital shows up and is Friendly and Helpful, so clearly he will end up being involved in the murders in some way.
10. Carla Gugino asks that her taskforce of Sensitive Menfolk run background checks and junk on the mental hospital patients and staff...including Friendly Exposition Guy.
11. The Victim of The One Kidnap Crime asks to meet with Alive Girl, and then is super mean and snippy to her, because the implication is that she was a stand-in for Alive Girl, which Alive Girl won't admit to, no way.
12. Some parents of a former mental patient are brought in and talk about how their son's au pair (not nanny, which becomes a running joke that is not remotely funny, not that it's delivered in a way that would suggest it's meant to be funny anyway) had The Sex with their son when he was 12, which made him Not Quite Right, because after that he killed squirrels and then raped his younger sister(?). And it turns out in order to get their son to voluntarily commit himself to the hospital, they promised to give him a skillion dollars when he turned 28, which is a random age for access to a trust, but what do I know?
13. Random characters begin revealing that Alive Girl's dad was super paranoid, always suspecting someone of stalking his daughter, which is why he moved her around a lot.
14. And then some more exposition reveals that Alive Girl's dad had a brother who was a super creep who was stalking the dad's wife, which is why she committed suicide maybe, and then the brother was a pedophile I guess, and he was REALLY obsessed with Alive Girl, and then Alive Girl's babysitter was shot in the park, and...things. He also mutilated neighborhood pets. That's always a good detail because we all know from Silence of the Lambs that serial killers start there.
15. I forgot to mention that Friendly Guy told a story about a nurse at the mental hospital being murdered on the grounds, and the killer was never found!, in a ghost-story setup that seemed like something Quentin Tarantino would spin off into a grindhouse trailer starring Darryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer. That part never has resolution. Unless I missed it, which is possible, because by Hour 2, I was dicking around on Facebook.
16. So then the killer calls Carla Gugino and asks for the Alive Girl's necklace back and asks her to meet him at the Old Haunted Carnival Mental Institution Scooby Dooby Doo.
17. And she does, and then a dog attacks her, and Zack Attack shoots the dog, which is, unsurprisingly, the most upsetting part of the movie.*
18. And then Carla Gugino realizes, gasp!, it was all a plot to get them away from Alive Girl!
19a. And it turns out, gasp!, Friendly Exposition Guy is the super-rich guy who was sexed by his nanny--I mean, his au pair, ha ha boo--and he shows up at Alive Girl's house with a switchblade, and tells Alive Girl that he didn't kill those girls in the skele-bags but he admired the work, and that he mostly killed hookers, in a prequel book I'm glad I'll never ever read, and Alive Girl looks SO much like his au pair that he just has to have her.
19b. Also Friendly Exposition Guy is played by the dude who played Brennan on Burn Notice, who was one of those villains who was super super super evil and all-knowing but had a secret daughter somewhere that sort of made him a little vulnerable and then Tim Matheson killed him in a triple cross. I didn't really care for Brennan. The last Burn Notice villain I really liked was smooth, classy, gay Gilroy. They've all been annoying Sylars since then (look, Heroes remains useful if only for that particular term) (that only I use probably).
20. So Friendly Exposition Guy Who Was Secretly The Super-Rich Sister Rapist Who I Guess Killed Hookers is about to rape and mutilate Alive Girl when, ta da!, her friend The Delivery Man shows up and kills him!
21. And it turns out that The Delivery Man was secretly her Uncle! Who was obsessed with her and stalking her all the while! And I guess he's making an exception to his pedophile rule because HE wants to rape and rape and rape her forever all the days of their lives!
22. And then someone shoots Delivery Man. Um, maybe Carla Gugino. Or possibly Kevin Alejandro. I don't remember.
23. Oh, and Kevin Alejandro developed feelings for Alive Girl, and vice versa, so they were going to go on a date, which was okay, because he and Carla Gugino are still buddies (with sexual tension), and Zack Attack brought her a home-cooked meal, so she's probably going to bonk him.
THE END
So in conclusion, this movie was stupid and was like a mash-up of nine SVU endings and the dialogue was wooden, especially the attempt to give Carla Gugino a catchphrase of sorts ("Nothing is random," except, apparently, the six ducks and dives the storyline took to get to a resolution). The sexytimes were blurry and showery, which was probably for the best since, if they were in clear crisp focus like the forced scenes to establish Carla and Kevin's bed-buddy relationship, it would have likely been terrible and uncomfortable anyway.
I loved it! Four out of four Hudson News receipts! I would definitely recommend this if you're flying from Chicago to Cleveland and need a way to nod off just after the flight attendant brings around the 100-calorie pack of Lorna Doones.
Also, I like it when murdering hookers is given an enormous handwave. That's classy storytelling.
*This also, unfortunately, gave rise to my favorite moment in the whole stupid movie: after Zack Attack shoots the dog, which has been mauling Carla Gugino, he runs over and gives her this little hug. I feel like it was sort of ad-libbed, only Mark Paul Gosselaar wasn't quite confident enough in the decision, and it came off sort of perfunctory and awkward. It was the BEST.
And I knew I had to run to her ample bosom. O Carla Gugino! I swear I am not gay for you but probably I sort of am!
That would be the beginning of the poem and then it would go on from there.
So it turns out TNT is making some NBC Mystery Movies based on books. Last night's tremendous achievement of cinema was called Hide, and was based on a book by Lisa Gardner, who, I imagine, has written about as many books as your Tess Gerritsens or your Sandra Browns. If I may be such a literary snob--and I give myself permission, a-thank you--they are the kind of books you either grow away from, when you realize romance and/or suspense can be found in better written tomes that aren't produced in some sort of Mad Libsian (Libyan?) formatting; or they are the kind of books a person reads for the rest of her/his life, because the formulaic plotting, "shocking" endings, and stagnant characters are soothing (I guess, if you also find the occasional densely lavish description of sexual assault or torture soothing). Or, I suppose, if I want to break up the either/or: these are the kinds of books you buy in an airport bookstore because you forgot the copy of The Corrections you bought and have already read your three crappy magazines.
I will state here that I refuse to learn the characters' names because I like calling them by their actor names and/or plot devices. Here is the story:
Carla Gugino is a [tough] and [no-nonsense] detective who likes to [have sex] and [drink] and [takes the job too seriously]. But she [also cares!], damn it!, as evidenced by her relationship with Gay Police Guy, whose mother is dying, and she's always like, "Go see your mother" and "Do you need time off? But I'm not going to ask you again 'cause I'm TUFF!" So she's three-dimensional, as you can see. The guy she most likes to [have sex] with is Kevin Alejandro, who died on Southland only to live again on, um, True Blood or Showtime Presents Some Kind of Drama About Sexy Disease. Kevin recently became a detective, but does not have a desk, which is not as funny as when that happened to Veronica Corningstone in Anchorman.
The not-desk-having is pointed out to him once or twice by Zack Attack Morris from Bayside High. Zack Attack is an instructor at Police Academy. He is [soulful] and [caring], as evidenced by the fact that he wants to home-cook pasta sauce for Carla Gugino before he buries his face in her ample mounds, if you get my drift (boobs). Kevin Alejandro is also [soulful] and [caring] because he has blue eyes and wants to [talk about relationships] when he's not waving Carla Gugino's panties around in her office (literally).
Love triangle! Sort of! When they're not solving the elaborately expositioned crime that is so f'ing ridiculous that at one point I considered drawing a conspiracy chart a la The Wire to try and track all the goofery.
But I gave up because Carla Gugino took off her shirt. She was wearing a black bra.
So here's my word-chart attempt:
- Some CW extras are at the olllllllld abandoned mental hospital, and Vampire Diaries Call-Back Who Didn't Get a Role falls through a creaky trapdoor and discovers:
b) Bottles hanging from strings (serial killers like wind chimes?)
c)Skeletons in giant Ziploc freezer bags full of viscous fluid
2. Carla Gugino and Her Sensitive Menfolk investigate and make the observation that this crime is just like that one crime that one time where a kidnap victim was rescued and her attacker was put to death a few years ago.
3. Also there is a locket on one of the skele-bags that has a full name engraved on it.
4. It turns out the full name belongs to a girl who is alive!
5. Who eerily resembles the girl who was kidnapped and rescued in the crime I just mentioned in 2.
6. Turns out that alive girl gave the locket to her best friend, who was the girl who was in one of the skele-bags.
7. The alive girl has also had a bazillion names because her dad made her move a bunch when she was younger and also her mom committed suicide.
8. The alive girl is VERY JUMPY LIKE SOMEONE IS STALKING HER. Her best friend is the delivery man. She makes quilts.
9. Some Friendly Exposition Guy Who Formerly Worked or Volunteered At The Mental Hospital shows up and is Friendly and Helpful, so clearly he will end up being involved in the murders in some way.
10. Carla Gugino asks that her taskforce of Sensitive Menfolk run background checks and junk on the mental hospital patients and staff...including Friendly Exposition Guy.
11. The Victim of The One Kidnap Crime asks to meet with Alive Girl, and then is super mean and snippy to her, because the implication is that she was a stand-in for Alive Girl, which Alive Girl won't admit to, no way.
12. Some parents of a former mental patient are brought in and talk about how their son's au pair (not nanny, which becomes a running joke that is not remotely funny, not that it's delivered in a way that would suggest it's meant to be funny anyway) had The Sex with their son when he was 12, which made him Not Quite Right, because after that he killed squirrels and then raped his younger sister(?). And it turns out in order to get their son to voluntarily commit himself to the hospital, they promised to give him a skillion dollars when he turned 28, which is a random age for access to a trust, but what do I know?
13. Random characters begin revealing that Alive Girl's dad was super paranoid, always suspecting someone of stalking his daughter, which is why he moved her around a lot.
14. And then some more exposition reveals that Alive Girl's dad had a brother who was a super creep who was stalking the dad's wife, which is why she committed suicide maybe, and then the brother was a pedophile I guess, and he was REALLY obsessed with Alive Girl, and then Alive Girl's babysitter was shot in the park, and...things. He also mutilated neighborhood pets. That's always a good detail because we all know from Silence of the Lambs that serial killers start there.
15. I forgot to mention that Friendly Guy told a story about a nurse at the mental hospital being murdered on the grounds, and the killer was never found!, in a ghost-story setup that seemed like something Quentin Tarantino would spin off into a grindhouse trailer starring Darryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer. That part never has resolution. Unless I missed it, which is possible, because by Hour 2, I was dicking around on Facebook.
16. So then the killer calls Carla Gugino and asks for the Alive Girl's necklace back and asks her to meet him at the Old Haunted Carnival Mental Institution Scooby Dooby Doo.
17. And she does, and then a dog attacks her, and Zack Attack shoots the dog, which is, unsurprisingly, the most upsetting part of the movie.*
18. And then Carla Gugino realizes, gasp!, it was all a plot to get them away from Alive Girl!
19a. And it turns out, gasp!, Friendly Exposition Guy is the super-rich guy who was sexed by his nanny--I mean, his au pair, ha ha boo--and he shows up at Alive Girl's house with a switchblade, and tells Alive Girl that he didn't kill those girls in the skele-bags but he admired the work, and that he mostly killed hookers, in a prequel book I'm glad I'll never ever read, and Alive Girl looks SO much like his au pair that he just has to have her.
19b. Also Friendly Exposition Guy is played by the dude who played Brennan on Burn Notice, who was one of those villains who was super super super evil and all-knowing but had a secret daughter somewhere that sort of made him a little vulnerable and then Tim Matheson killed him in a triple cross. I didn't really care for Brennan. The last Burn Notice villain I really liked was smooth, classy, gay Gilroy. They've all been annoying Sylars since then (look, Heroes remains useful if only for that particular term) (that only I use probably).
20. So Friendly Exposition Guy Who Was Secretly The Super-Rich Sister Rapist Who I Guess Killed Hookers is about to rape and mutilate Alive Girl when, ta da!, her friend The Delivery Man shows up and kills him!
21. And it turns out that The Delivery Man was secretly her Uncle! Who was obsessed with her and stalking her all the while! And I guess he's making an exception to his pedophile rule because HE wants to rape and rape and rape her forever all the days of their lives!
22. And then someone shoots Delivery Man. Um, maybe Carla Gugino. Or possibly Kevin Alejandro. I don't remember.
23. Oh, and Kevin Alejandro developed feelings for Alive Girl, and vice versa, so they were going to go on a date, which was okay, because he and Carla Gugino are still buddies (with sexual tension), and Zack Attack brought her a home-cooked meal, so she's probably going to bonk him.
THE END
So in conclusion, this movie was stupid and was like a mash-up of nine SVU endings and the dialogue was wooden, especially the attempt to give Carla Gugino a catchphrase of sorts ("Nothing is random," except, apparently, the six ducks and dives the storyline took to get to a resolution). The sexytimes were blurry and showery, which was probably for the best since, if they were in clear crisp focus like the forced scenes to establish Carla and Kevin's bed-buddy relationship, it would have likely been terrible and uncomfortable anyway.
I loved it! Four out of four Hudson News receipts! I would definitely recommend this if you're flying from Chicago to Cleveland and need a way to nod off just after the flight attendant brings around the 100-calorie pack of Lorna Doones.
Also, I like it when murdering hookers is given an enormous handwave. That's classy storytelling.
*This also, unfortunately, gave rise to my favorite moment in the whole stupid movie: after Zack Attack shoots the dog, which has been mauling Carla Gugino, he runs over and gives her this little hug. I feel like it was sort of ad-libbed, only Mark Paul Gosselaar wasn't quite confident enough in the decision, and it came off sort of perfunctory and awkward. It was the BEST.
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