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College classics: Donnie Darko

Another film I think most current college students know, and should know, is Donnie Darko. This mind-bending thriller has been a cult classic for a few years. I once had an entire Philosophy club session devoted to it. We'll ignore the bizarre world of Southland Tales for now and go back to this great dark movie, which should be a hit with students for years to come.

From the shadows of obscurity comes one of the most fascinating films of our time. Donnie Darko appears at first to be a demented horror film, but as it progresses, it touches on all sorts of subjects, from social commentary to metaphysics. This unheralded film tells an amazing story about love, fate, and more.

The film revolves around the life of Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), a troubled high schooler in Northern Virginia. Donnie has had problems, and his current delusions include seeing a giant rabbit called Frank (James Duval). His mother (Mary McDonnell) wants to help him, but his troubles are deep and hard to solve. Donnie’s psychiatrist (Katharine Ross) tries all sorts of methods to help him.

Strange things happen after Donnie’s first encounter with the rabbit. His vision prompts him to sleepwalk out of the house, and while he is gone, a plane engine crashes into his room. No one is hurt, but if he would not have been led outside, he would have died. Authorities have no answer for how the plane crash happened.

Donnie’s troubled state worsens. Frank begins to visit him more and more often. At school, Donnie must deal with an annoying teacher (Beth Grant), who uses her class time to promote infomercials for local motivational speaker Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze). Donnie finds a love interest in Gretchen Ross (Jena Malone), a girl who has moved to escape her psychotic father.

Frank instructs Donnie to perform several acts of vandalism, all of which lead to bad things happening. Donnie has two positive teachers in school, aptly portrayed by Drew Barrymore (one of the film’s executive producers) and Noah Wyle. Donnie continues to get in trouble for talking back, and his actions lead to Barrymore’s dismissal. His life crumbles, along with his mental state.

Frank’s original message to Donnie is that the world will end in about a month. As the date gets closer, Donnie tries to figure out what this means. He begins to experience other delusions besides seeing Frank, which he discovers relate to Stephen Hawking’s theories of time travel. This is where the film broaches such subjects as time, fate, and predestination.

Without giving away too much, the ending is amazing and a shocking conclusion to the film. Audiences may not understand it at first, and this film may require several viewings, but it says a lot about the deep subject the film touches on.

Jake Gyllenhaal shines as the title character. He pulls off the demented side of Donnie well, along with his more average, teenage moments. Malone and McDonnell perform well as the women who care about him. The real acting treat of this movie, however, comes with all the minor characters, mostly hilarious chariciatures. Holmes Osborne plays Donnie’s aloof dad, Grant is extra annoying as his teacher, and Swayze makes his first appearance in a worthwhile film in a long time.

Writer and director Richard Kelly makes a stunning debut in a major film. Just a few years removed from film school, Kelly fits sci-fi special effects into a relatively low-budget film. He manages to capture the dread that Donnie feels, the ignorance of the community and the school leadership, and the unique relationship Donnie has with both his mother and his girlfriend. It is astounding that a young filmmaker could create a film that breaks so many different genre molds, but Kelly makes it look easy. His film is not only one of the best of 2001, but one for the ages.

The Player: an academic reading

Robert Altman’s film The Player shows the inside dealings of Hollywood- what goes on behind the camera. Altman’s film is very ironic in that it really makes fun of the Hollywood system, while being a product of it. Altman teases the idea of having big stars in movies, only to get many famous stars to cameo as themselves in this 1992 film. It is a movie about movies, in short. Altman has a strong directorial voice in this; his shot selection definitely affects how the story is told.
The most obvious example of directorial voice comes early on in the movie. Altman shows the parking lot of the studio office where Griffin Mill works. With a very long take, he moves around different areas to show what’s going on. He shows Griffin, the young producer, listening to stories from writers. He then moves over to show tours going on inside the movie lot. He then shows some person stopping Martin Scorsese to tell him how much he liked Cape Fear. In all, this take lasts minutes before it is over and shows about 4 or 5 different events going on.
This long take shows that there’s always something happening in Hollywood. Everyday, people are denied (except for a few per year), tourists come, and a multi-million dollar business goes on. So many things happen at once, and this scene captures that feeling with its rambling style from one situation to the next. This appears to be a signature shot for Altman, and there are some scenes later that are similar.
One example of a recurring idea in mise-en-scene and framing is Altman’s shot from outside. Altman chooses several times in the movie to shoot people in a building from outside, leaving the audience with an obstructed view. He does this in the long take with Griffin talking to writers. The audience can hear them talking perfectly but the view remains from outside the window. This also happens when Griffin is talking to Kahane’s foreign girlfriend on the phone outside her house. The audience has the same view that he does: restricted and through the windows.
This is a strong directorial voice because Altman could have easily shot the characters from inside in both cases. He chooses not too because it keeps the characters somewhat mysterious. In the first scene, the audience cannot see Griffin’s face very well, even thought hey know what is going on. They know what his job is like before they can really see him. In the second scene, the audience sees as much as he can, leaving their attention to what the girl looks like. Griffin is intrigued by her, and by not showing her completely, Altman creates intrigue in the audience. This also reflects a change in Griffin: he has been faithful (or so it’s assumed) to Bonnie so far, but he begins to fall for the foreign girl.
Altman also likes to use the various close-up shots to show emotion. He often shows Tim Robbins’ face in detail to convey Griffin’s feelings and anxiety. Griffin becomes more irritable after killing Kahane, and Altman tries to show this with Griffin’s actions and different shots of him. One moving scene comes in the police station where (I forget their characters’ names) Whoopi Goldberg and Lyle Lovett interrogate him to the point of making him explode. Altman starts with a close-up of Griffin’s head and zooms in as he gets more and more irritated. This makes a dramatic, emotional scene.
Altman’s shots at the end show a happy couple with a beautiful house and seem so romantic. Yet the audience knows that Griffin has killed his wife’s former lover, and that if he hadn’t, this happy scene would not have happened. The shot, though very beautiful and typical of a classic happy-ending movie, seems tainted. Altman keeps that in the audience’s mind as he drifts away to the close.
The ending of the movie is very ironic and reflexive. After all their talk about making a real and truthfully dark movie, the writers in the mock-movie Habeas Corpus fall to temptation, hiring big stars Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis, and giving in to the classical Hollywood happy ending. This is a great movie-within-a-movie ploy because The Player is definitely not a true happy ending: Griffin has cheated on his wife, killed a guy, gotten away with it, and now is married to the dead guy’s old girl. Of course, for Griffin, it is a happy ending, so does that it make it good? Is it acceptable?
The last sign of reflexivity comes when a writer tells Griffin about a movie called The Player that basically is about what happened in this movie (hence the name). Altman does this to leave a hint of doubt in the audience: is this movie for real? He tries to make it look that way. Few would believe so, but the scene gives a sense of uncertainty to the movie (it also shows that Kahane may not be the threat Griffin thought he was). This is a dark scene, and what is worse is that Griffin knows very well what’s going on-and he doesn’t care. This is somewhat reflexive because he has admitted to himself the truth and will use his own murder story to make money- in the movie we are currently watching. Altman’s dark comedy can admit to the audience that it is indeed funny and disturbing. His satirical picture of Hollywood dealings is not Classic Hollywood Styled, and yet it makes for a good movie. He proved his own characters wrong.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Judd Apatow was on fire. I just caught this on cable, and think I might have laughed more at this one than the other two (much more successful) Apatow films of that year, Superbad and Knocked Up. It's silly and more of a straight up, winking at the camera parody than a perfect mirror image like Hot Fuzz, but it has some great moments. And some really ridic cameos.... maybe the most random cameos of various people portraying famous musicians ever. After being heavily disappointed with Ray and Walk the Line (in structure and over-melodrama, not performances), this was a great send-up. Every biopic cliche, every Behind the Music episode structure was made into comedy. It was about time John C. Reilly, one of the best supporting character actors ever, got to be the lead guy. He's great, as always.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2

I caught this on cable. The subtitle should be At World's Very, Very Long End.

I think we should force Diznee to use that title in all packaging of this movie now. They ended their big franchise with so many drawn-out fights and tough posturing, that I was just bored during the last two. How can you make an action film geared mostly for children and teenagers that last three hours and puts you to sleep? I could sit through Barry Lyndon easier than this.

Look, I was pleasantly surprised like the rest of you with the first one, despite my hatred of uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and my total apathy towards the whole pirate fad. They got me. Then they wasted their good graces by going way over the top with the next two and making it a world-wide battle and having too many fight scenes and effects and melodrama and JUST END THE F-----G MOVIE ALREADY! You see why I hate him? And why I can never trust the mouse again?

Of course, there will be a third.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score (direct to DVD)

To break from all this serious-ness, I turned to a very unheralded comeback. Futurama was granted a new life through a straight-to-DVD release, which isn't perfect, but enough to satisfy all us nerds who grew to love it too late. This 90 minute journey is like three episodes stitched together, but it helped me feel better. They did go the Family Guy route of bringing back things from the series as nostalgia (Fry's dog, Al Gore, owls, the Harlem Globetrotter science team) but they also made some nice jokes. It's something. Not enough Branigan, though. Also, watch on the DVD for the extras, as you can see how just how huge nerds they are, and us for loving them.

Retro: All the Real Girls

After the success of Pineapple Express, I wanted to take a look back on the first David Gordon Green movie I saw, All the Real Girls. I actually got to meet Green and star Paul Schneider at a screening after I wrote this.

There has been a trend in several low-budget, independent films made within the past few years, focusing on the struggles of relationships between rustic people in small (often Southern) towns. Films in this pattern include The Good Girl, In the Bedroom, You Can Count on Me, and now, All the Real Girls.
David Gordon Green, who wrote the screenplay and directed, gives audiences a simple but stunning look at a small town in Appalachia. Paul (Paul Schneider) is a goofy but seemingly good-natured young man. His womanizing, however, has left him with a bad reputation. He hangs out with his buddies like Tip (Shea Whigham) and Bust-Ass (Danny McBride), drinking beer and talking about girls. Things change when Tip’s little sister Noel (Zooey Deschanel) returns home after graduating from an all-girls private school. Paul instantly becomes enamored with Noel, and Tip, knowing Paul’s ways with women, warns her not to fall in love.
Paul begins to let his guard down with Noel. He becomes more sympathetic with her and shows signs of maturation. Paul has slept with many different girls, and Noel is a virgin, but Paul does not push anything too fast. Just when the film seems like a lower-budgeted version of a sappy romantic comedy, Noel turns the tables on Paul. Now he must deal with the feelings of loss and heartbreak that he has caused so many girls.
Paul also has to deal with a depressing situation at home. His single mother, wonderfully portrayed by Patricia Clarkson, takes a job as a clown. Paul wants to help her, but he also wants to keep some of his individuality.
Paul eventually learns something about relationships, young love, and maturation. After his breakup with Noel, he begins to see how his past mistakes have hurt many people. Even Tip and several other characters go through a maturation process. These are simple people, but they can learn. In the end, it seems as though every character has learned something.
This is a solid film, supported by Green’s appropriate cinematic work. He captures the stale atmosphere of the town beautifully. He shows the monotony of the factory that holds the town together and the decaying neighborhoods on its riverbanks. In a memorable sequence, he juxtaposes drawings made by sick children with their actual facial responses to Paul and his mother dancing at the hospital. He includes enough comedy to keep things from being overdone, but for the most part, it is a serious and well-made drama.
The cast includes some unheralded actors, but performs well. The one film veteran, Clarkson, does a fantastic job. Deschanel, who was in The Good Girl (and makes the connection between these two films stronger), aptly portrays the naïve but unique love interest of Paul. Schneider, who helped come up with the story, handles the main role with a good amount of goofiness and seriousness. McBride, another newcomer, is a hilarious scene-stealer.
Green succeeds in his second feature film. Sometimes it seems a bit hokey, and a little overdramatic, but All the Real Girls holds up amazingly well for a film with its budget. This heartwarming and serious tale of young love is as strong as most independent films can hope to be.