Ocean's Thirteen

We love thieves. Not some dude who breaks into your car or pulls a gun on you in a dark alley. Those guys suck. No, we love heist-pulling, safe cracking, masterminding, acrobatically flipping, car chasing thieves. You know, the kind that only exist in movies. They act a whole lot like Bond, all classy, sneaky, and above the law. But instead of saving the world they’re sticking it to the man whilst serving themselves.

Ocean’s Eleven was a great heist film. A big fancy pants cast with a nice elaborate heist and just the right amount of twists, all set to great music… what’s there not to like?

Ocean’s Twelve I didn’t care for as much. It was fine, but it got a little too elaborate and twisty for my tastes. Plus it lost the unifying goal of nailing the casinos - a villain that we can all easily unite against.

Ocean’s Thirteen is a return to the first movie. We’re back in Vegas, although this time we’re sticking it to Al Pacino instead of Andy Garcia. There are still twists, but not to the extent of “everything you saw in the last 30 minutes was a lie.” The scale is much more reasonable… well except that whole business with the Chunnel drill. The result is that the film doesn’t have a mega climax with everything is being turned on its head left and right. But I really don’t have a problem with that, I love it when a plan comes together. Instead of being on the edge of your seat, Ocean’s Thirteen is more like a laid back music video. Pleasant sights and sounds, not too much thinking, but satisfying.

Hot Fuzz

Created by the same people (and sharing some of the same cast) as Shaun of the Dead, I was totally excited for Hot Fuzz, even though I didn’t know anything else about it. Which is dangerous, because coming into a movie with expectations of any kind is basically asking for trouble. But Hot Fuzz totally delivered, and is definitely the best movie I’ve caught in the theater in a long time.

Although Hot Fuzz covers different subject matter than Shaun of the Dead, they are very similar in that they succeed at both honoring and satirizing their respective genres. Just as Shaun of the Dead made a good zombie film, Hot Fuzz is a good action film. It makes good use of the same sort of rhythmic tension building transitions that Shaun had, and the action scenes are simultaneously awesome and hilarious. The characters also get a good amount of development, and are very different characters from Shaun, even though the actors are the same. It’s a movie that manages to be many things, but the one thing that it never compromises on is being flat out fun. Seriously, it was awesome - go see it.

The movie was preceded by a trailer for another Simon Pegg movie. And although the trailer pretty much told me nothing, I’m already excited to see more.

Why We Fight

It’s been entirely too long since my last post. Work has been very demanding lately, and it’s left me tapped. All my critical thinking has been dedicated to my professional life. And I’d bore you with that, but I’d have to kill you afterwards. Which given the general anonymity of the internet is a task that I just don’t have the energy for.

So I’ve been coasting along day to day. And invariably in a time like this the fluff in my Netflix queue sticks me with a bunch of heavy stuff. I’m loathe to switch the brain back on, but eventually I have to succumb. At least afterwards I never regret it.

The film this time was a documentary called Why We Fight. On one level it works to answer the question of how we got to where we are today in Iraq (which is summed up quite well, and you can watch it on YouTube here). But on a deeper level the documentary is an analysis of our gradual slip from an isolationist nation into the self-appointed global police force and what the implications of our militarization has on our social and political structure.

At the heart of the film is President Eisenhower’s farewell address, which is startling in its candor… especially in the context of the modern world where our president is a complete tool. Seriously, I ache after hearing real public discourse like that - the kind that builds real confidence in our nation and its future. But one of the key parts of the message of Why We Fight is that there is no villain. The problem lies not in a person but the military-industrial complex - a interdependency of defense industries and politics that’s good for business but bad for people.

While it seems that Michael Moore’s documentaries lose a good deal of their bite by trying to blame the world’s problems on a single person (be it Charlton Heston or George W. Bush), Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight comes out a lot more sensible. Even Dubya comes off as a victim in this huge military machine that we’ve built for ourselves. Unfortunately that also makes the solution more complex: there’s no motivation in the system to stop, so I guess it’s up to We the People to say that spending more than half the budget on defense is officially ridiculous.

I’m finding myself so frequently frustrated with politics these days. I wish that the political wheels turned without having to be so carefully monitored. I realize that I get the majority of my information in entertainment form, but it seems to be the only honest filter out there. I don’t have the heart to take it straight. Wrap it up in a joke, work it into a narrative (I caught Syriana a couple weeks ago, which incidentally is another (well told) story of shitty foreign policy)… just do something with it. Well, something other than spread it out over 24 hours of “crap your pants” fear-mongering that is at the same time both too serious and not serious enough. Wait, I take it back - maybe I can take it straight. It’s just sad that my only reference of what that would be like is footage of our president from 50 years ago.