Tag: lazy filmmaking

So I watched this; I dunno, it was all right Review: Suspect Zero

Anyway, the story unfolds like a well-creased grocery list that’s been living in your pocket for a few days. There are some great scenes, and Kingsley ultimately carries the weight of the film while Eckhardt, who is serviceable, takes the film to be Srs Bznss instead of a Se7en knockoff. Carrie-Anne Moss runs around and does–something, I don’t remember what she was there for. Something.

Every time I sit down to watch a movie, I am conscious of how long the film is, sometimes down to the minute. The reason is because unless I’m doing something else, those minutes are time out of my life I will never get back. Do I expect every film I see to be worth 106 minutes’ worth of my time here on earth? Nope. I watch some bullshit too–looking into my queueueu is looking into seething madness. Kurosawa’s Rashomon rubs shoulders with Beverly Hills Chihuahua. A BBC nature program about the different meteorological regions of China and their native wildlife sits next to Bogie and Bacall in The Big Sleep. Gremlins 2 brings me a different kind of delight from Who’s Harry Crumb?, but both still delight me.

The point I’m getting to with all this rambling is that every film is a gamble, and your time is at stake. Some gambles are major windfalls for the mind, and in some, the house wins.

In Suspect Zero, a crime thriller starring Aaron Eckhardt,  Ben Kingsley and Carrie-Ann Moss and directed by Elias Merhige (he was redoing his bathroom that year), the house definitely won.

So here's the poster. It's all right, I guess.

I do not hate this film. I do not think it was a waste of time, or that it should be fired into the sun or any other example of internet film critic hypobole. I just don’t get what happened.

I suspect that Merhige, while he made the film, was either excited to be making a Hollywood crime thriller or wrestling with a choking case of self-loathing because he was making a Hollywood crime thriller. There’s a strange vibe of self-doubt saturating the film that has nothign to do with the story; I can’t even describe it except that it’s there, and it’s palpable.

The story is at least passable: an FBI agent who’s been transferred to a lesser field office because of something in his past is tracking a series of murders he believes to be connected, despite the fact that there is nothing to connect them. It turns out he’s tracking a serial killer who targets other serial killers, and kills them in new and creative ways so there is no pattern–the idea being that the FBI will only catch onto a serial killer’s existence if there is a pattern. Say, a guy who sets fire to his victims and then hits them with a car. There’s a pattern, so the FBI acknowledges a serial killer is responsible.  If a guy gets his head bashed in behind a gas station, and another just gets shot, and another gets skinned to death or something, the assumption would be three different perpetrators.

The movie starts out well–Ben Kingsley sits down at a table across from a restaurant supply salesman at an isolated truckstop and begins telling the man all the gruesome things he does to people, then showing pictures. Kingsley is incapable of losing his dignity–probably because he is always self-aware of the caliber of what he’s appearing in, be it Gandhi or Bloodrayne. He also seems to be one of those fortunate people who never get tied to bad movies. If you say ‘there’s a new video game movie coming out and Uwe Boll is involved’ sphincters immediately clench and oceans of vitriol roar forth onto the internet. Say the same thing about Kingsley and you get ‘Huh. That might be good.’ The man is bulletproof. Probably because he has a sense of humor about himself, from his appearance on The Sopranos (“Heyyy, guys. . .”) to his audition for Michael Bay’s Transformers 3.

Anyway, the story unfolds like a well-creased grocery list that’s been living in your pocket for a few days. There are some great scenes, and Kingsley ultimately carries the weight of the film while Eckhardt, who is serviceable,  takes the film to be Srs Bznss instead of a Se7en knockoff. Carrie-Anne Moss runs around and does–something, I don’t remember what she was there for. Something.

If you’re just looking for something to watch and are more comfortable watching films with famous actors in them (I’m guilty of that–Oh! So and so’s in this, well I’ll give it a whirl!) then you could do worse than watching Suspect Zero.

Also it has this guy, who is awesome, so it has that going for it.

Suspect Zero is available for viewing on Instant Watch. You know, if you’re interested.

‘Smiley Face’ with Anna Faris and John Krasinski

This is the sort of script I didn’t let students write when I worked at a film school–it’s a lazy script, with no imagination and nothing fun. Worst of all, it’s just flat out not funny. The characters are too pathetic to identify with, and Jane, as a blond skinny white girl, just reminds me how much I hate self-centered people.

In the interest of full disclosure, I really hate stoner movies. There’s nothing more odious to me than the idea that a film was made with the entire purpose of entertaining a demographic whose idea of mindblowing comedy is jingling their keys or farting twice in a row. Comedy to me is a  fine art, something practiced and refined; if you don’t believe me, look at the years successful stand-up comedians spend working their way through the no-man’s-land of crappy comedy clubs until they start acting or writing. To get up and have the courage not just to try, but to bomb (and you WILL bomb, it’s going to happen at some point) is a tremendous exercise not only in learning, but in character.

Which is why this movie disappointed me so. Anna Faris has definitely paid her dues in the comedy salt mines, which is why a role like this is beneath her. Faris plays Jane, an out of work actress. After smoking her usual morning’s bowl, she accidentally eats her room mate’s pot-laced brownies before realizing she has several tasks she must complete that day: she must pay the electric bill, pay off her dealer so he doesnt’ take her furniture, and go to an acting audition–all of which are transformed into herculean tasks by the amounts of pot she’s ingested.She seems to have a background in economics, no doubt the filmmaker’s attempt to give her character some depth, but the theories she spouts just sound like what they are: lazy writing.

What follows is a meandering exercise in stoner comedy. At the audition the other actresses are meticulously dressed and coiffed–Jane is slovenly in unwashed jeans, no makeup and lank hair. Her audition is with grim casting director Jane Lynch, who is always a treat except when she’s wasted in films like these–I hope doing this movie was a way to finish paying for renovating her kitchen or something.

Krasinski enters the scene as a friend of Jane’s room mate who, due to his attraction to her (what’s not to like? the not-showering, the constant smell of pot and sweat, the directionless lifestyle) she manipulates into driving her to Venice beach so she can pay off her dealer. She manages to get Krasinski’s wallet stolen, gives the investigating office a false name, then runs away in a paranoia fit and hides in her old professor’s house. Krasinski’s character is another lazy stereotype I hate: the guy into RPGs and comics who is desperately in love with a girl because she’s the only one he can get and he has no experience with women. I AM one of those people and am here to tell you that there’s no shortage of women into sci-fi and games, if you know where to look.

There’s really no more point to discussing the rest of the movie: crazy stuff happens, Jane gets her comeuppance, and sort of learns a lesson. The film is sprinkled with actors all worth much more than this sort of film: John Cho, Danny Trejo, the aforementioned Lynch, Danny Masterson, Brian Posehn, Michael Hitchcock, the voice of Roscoe Lee Brown (the narrator from Babe) and even Carrot Top all make appearances, leading me to suspect they thought they were appearing in a film that might make an argument for the legalization of pot.

I’m all for its legalization–there are slews of reasons in its favor, such as reducing the prison population, a new source of revenue and international tourism. But none of those arguments are made by this film. The closest thing to an argument that can be made is ‘high people are mostly harmless,’ and even taht’s a stretch considering the trail of destruction Jane leaves behind. This is the sort of script I didn’t let students write when I worked at a film school–it’s a lazy script, with no imagination and nothing fun. Worst of all, it’s just flat out not funny. The characters are too pathetic to identify with, and Jane, as a blond skinny white girl, just reminds me how much I hate self-centered people.