Ten Statements About....SUCKER PUNCH (2011)

This film is built almost entirely on the look in those eyes...

1) I have to agree with a number of other writers when they say that Zack Snyder is arguably the most successful director whose aesthetic and storytelling is fully and totally informed by comic books. Every choice he makes--even his use of slow motion to make certain key movements static, like they are in a comic book panel--is designed to give us the sense that we are turning the pages of a comic story. Even the title card, formed out of the condensation of the raindrops as Baby Doll is being taken to the asylum, gives us the feel of something between the covers of a Vertigo graphic novel...

2) However....while Snyder does use the slow motion more subtlety here (confining it almost exclusively to the 'game missions' of Baby Doll), there is one sequence where he gives up and indulges in his love of 'ramp up' technology (you know, that whole sloooooooow-down-then-speedup thingie) and ends up complicating things instead of clarifying it.

3) Without a doubt, the biggest flaw--and it's a massively gaping one--is Snyder's use of contemporary music in the film. It's really annoying given how Snyder usually is very astute at handling music, and how he's painstaking in making sure the two other worlds of the film are identified as period pieces. That being said, I'd gladly buy an album of Carla Gugino singing hits of the 80's in that mock-Polish accent...or one of Emily Browning doing the same.

Somewhere down the line...the Spice Girls got weirdly militant...

4) About those three worlds--the 'game mission' world where Baby Doll and her coterie of female companions led by 'Wiseman' (Scott Glenn looking like he's having the time of his life getting his Yoda on), the real world and the intermediary world--Snyder is not as skillful in keeping the worlds distinct. Yes, we understand that the final twist depends on us realizing one of these worlds is false; but making one world almost as stylized as the 'game mission' world, it makes the switch as to which is real and which is false not make sense.

5) Snyder needed Emily Browning for the lead. There's such a gorgeous tension between the wounded look in her beautiful eyes and the way she walks like a panther that you can believe people read into her what they want. Thus, predators see her as a victim whereas victims see her as a savior...and they're both right.

6) All of the women are pretty decent--yes, even Vanessa Hudgens (who is called Blondie, even though she's not). Not as successful are the male characters. Oscar Issacs is all surface playing Blue, and he's never seems to be more than a cardboard villain. The other men are little more than ciphers (except, oddly enough, Jon Hamm, who gives one of his dual roles a great deal more depth than it needed). Of course, maybe that's because...

"Yep...I'm evil..."

7) It's obvious from the first moment, where we pass through a proscenium arch to begin the story, that Snyder intends this to be a fairy tale. However, the story he tells is much more Ambrose Bierce than L. Frank Baum, and the storytelling suffers from the misguided direction.

8) I do like the fact that even though Baby Doll has a sort of super-power in the way her dancing draws all the attention in the room, we never actually see her performance--each time she dances opens up the gateway to the game mission world, and Snyder is so clear on that rule that when her dance is interrupted in one sequence, she is briefly snapped back to her reality. A similar rule is enacted whenever Blue--who has the power of life and death over these girls--does kill some characters; we never see the gun fired, or the results of his actions...

"...so evil I'm thinking of slapping that weird
animal off Carla Gugino's head." 

9) If I had to guess, I would think that the negative reaction most people are having to this film lies in the fact that the ultimate resolution is extremely dark and unapologetic. It snatches a clear cut uplifting ending out of the hands of an audience who was led to expect one in favor of one that is more metaphysical and abstract.

10) Most of the game mission world's settings make sense in the context of the world in which Baby Doll exists at the time....save for the last one, which is way, way, way too much late 90's video game as opposed to late 50's movie--something that makes sense for Baby Doll to be inspired by given all the movie posters her place of dwelling is decorated with.

In short...is it a failure? Hell, no. Is it a triumph? Hell, no. It's somewhere toward the bottom of Snyder's canon, but it's by no mean a disaster. If anything, it fails because it's too ambitious for his skills at the time.

I was back to the AMC Loews' Village 7. The trailers were a strange mismash, although I managed to see two things I definitely didn't expect--a trailer for Friends With Benefit, a rom-com that seems to be cloned from the earlier No Strings Attached except that it seems, you know, genuinely funny (I actually laughed with delight when Mila Kunis goes off on a rant against Katherinne 'I Have A Stupid Face' Hiegl), and one for Your Highness, which actually seems to be amusing and has Zoe Deschanel as a Renfair dream come true. Even more amazing was the Firstlook piece on Pirates of The Carribean: On Stranger Tides which was actually innovative and was hosted by Jack Sparrow....

Ten Statements About....FASTER (2010)

Now this...this is the stuff....

1) Welcome back to where you belong, Dwayne Johnson. You were sorely, sorely missed.

2) The influence of a number of things is very evident in the script by Tony and Joe Gayton--I detected whiffs of Donald Westlake, Brian Garfield and a whole slew of 70's action revenge flicks. Hell, the only name we know Johnson's character by is Driver, which I swear is a reference to the Ryan O'Neill vehicle The Driver, because we don't even know if this is Johnson's name or his role in the bank job that caused his prison stay.

3) At first, I thought the smallish role by Better In The Dark Hottie Hall of Fame Inductee Moon Bloodgood was gratuitous, and her suicide attempt nonsensical...but once the connection between two of the characters becomes revealed, it's obvious that the Gaytons intended this as a significant clue.

4) Similarly, another clue is laid right out there in the very beginning as to what is really going on with the three leads, but the acting on one of those leads obscures the fact that he's not what he pretends to be.

5) If there's one biiiiig problem with Tillman Jr's direction is that sometimes it's too stylish for its own good, like when he inserts a sideways angle (it's so vertical it's Dutchness is phony) in the middle of one of the major suspense pieces.

6) I thoroughly respect how nowhere are we asked to consider Driver a hero. We are asked to show sympathy for him, but never condone his actions (although I really felt the closing song touting 'there's no room for a good guy,' was laying it on a little thick). Hell, even when he does positive things, like saving a young girl from the sleazy second man on his list or sparing another man who attributes his participation in Driver's Brother's murder to his finding god and becoming a pious man, it's never glorified.

6) It's interesting how the people who murdered Driver's brother start out as cookie cutter stereotypes--we know nothing about the first one--but they gain more depth the lower down the list we get...until, when we hit the person who should be on the list, but isn't, he's the most well-defined of all.

7) I was surprised at how invested I was in Killer, the hired gun who's assigned the task of killing Driver. Even though he's given enough quirks to count for overkill, Oliver Jackson-Cohen's performance sells me on the fact that this could actually be a real person. But then, seeing him interact with his fiance' wife, Maggie Grace's Lilly, helps a lot. In one sequence, they almost make me wish the film was about them.

Carla Gugino and...I don't know...just...Carla Gugino

8) Carla Gugino....I just wanted to mention Carla Gugino, because she is her usual volcanic self.

I like Carla Gugino.

Carla Gugino.

9) This is a hard R film...and yet, it dances around the proclivities of the second target on Driver's list, referred to in the credit as The Old Man. We see him feign weakness to lure a teen girl into his apartment, see him dose her with a paralytic...and yet the script hints at, but never explicitly says that he's either a serial killer, a serial rapist or an amateur snuff film producer. Sometimes, it's just better to out and out say what you want to say.

10) It's interesting how, even though there is a definite fetishization of cars in this film, the only real chase scene happens in flashback toward the end of the first act--a successful way of having your cake and eating it, too.

In short--there are loads of positives, and yet I'm not sure it adds up to a great picture. Maybe if the film was a bit more streamlined, it might have been more effective and well-paced.

It's fascinating, incidentally, how the trailers before this film included one for the Jason Stratham/Ben Foster remake of The Mechanic, which seems to have less kinship with the original Charles Bronson starrer than this film did, and Drive Angry, which seems to be the Bizarro World version of this film, with the back-from-Hell Nicholas Cage driving a wicked car to destroy the cult that killed his daughter. There was also a trailer for The Rite, which soooo wants to be The Exorcist it isn't funny, and The Eagle, which seems to be telling the same story as Centurion....only, you know, with Channing Tatum and now wacky gore.

Oh...and a trailer for Season of The Witch, a ludicrous looking period-set Nicholas Cage horror flick that asks us to buy Nicholas Cage as a medieval knight transporting a witch to her trail, and has been 'coming soon' for over a year.