Last night's Academy Awards was one of the loosest and liveliest in a while. Elsewhere, U2 gets the concert film the band deserves, for better or worse, and Be Kind Rewind is a goofy movie with a warm message.
There are times when your opinion matches up with the consensus, and other times when you’re so far from the pack that you wonder what’s wrong with everybody else or what’s wrong with you. So, as someone who actually didn’t hate Vantage Point, I’ll step up to the plate with some other reviews that find me very much in the minority.
The 80th Annual Academy Awards (ABC, Feb. 24)
A great film year deserved a great Oscars, and, luckily, we all got our happy ending. Jon Stewart’s second stint as host easily trumped his smallish debut for obvious reasons – it was funnier, it was sharper, it was smarter, and it was entirely more confident. Where before he seemed like a nervous outsider, failing to replicate the success of The Daily Show on the world’s biggest awards platform, this time he seemed looser and livelier, playing the hand he was dealt without hesitation. There were no knockout punches in his monologue – just the happy zing zing zing zing zing of a strong monologue that accrues big laughs from the quick succession of good bits. He didn’t come across as apologetic, and his forays into political and topical humor were crisp and clean. And whether it was his idea or the producers’, bringing back Marketa Irglova (co-winner for Best Original Song for Once’s “Falling Slowly”) to the mike after being played off before the commercial break was a rare moment of grace for a program that values shiny and orchestrated while hoping for something spontaneous.
But it wasn’t just Stewart’s show. There were the movies. Even if Enchanted’s songs didn’t all survive their live treatment, they were a constant supply of smiles during the program. Watching and listening to “Falling Slowly” reminded me that I meant in my original review of the film to compare the song to the unspeakably gorgeous “I’m Easy” from Nashville, which won the Oscar, too. All four acting categories were satisfying, and, hey, I’ll admit that I was happy Juno didn’t pull a Crash on us. I’m annoyed they left Edward Yang off the list of “In Memory” names, but was happy with the decent pacing of the show. I promise not to miss Steve Martin as host as much this year.
U2 3D (National Geographic)
There’s no question that U2 was the right choice to be the first band to have one of its concerts filmed in digital 3D. Forgetting artistic merit (and Hannah Montana) for a moment, no musical act looms larger on the planet, equal parts legends and still-relevant pop figures. And speaking as someone who witnessed their PopMart and Elevation tours firsthand, U2 3D, directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington, is a startling accurate replicate of what it’s like seeing them live. This band doesn’t just have shows, they have rallies – precisely calibrated, large-scaled events that bombard you with a euphoric/religious fervor. Like fellow touring superstar Bruce Springsteen, U2 believes that its concerts should be a forum to continue an ongoing conversation with its immensely large, incredibly devoted fan base, and as demonstrated by U2 3D, which was filmed during South American stops on the band’s more-recent Vertigo tour, that telepathy between artist and audience extends beyond borders and language barriers.
But if the 3D technology is never less than astounding – I’m relatively certain the deaf could get almost as much from this concert experience as anyone else – it only brings into sharper focus the nagging problem with the endeavor: U2. Large as they may be, and impressive as their catalogue still is, ever since they moved away from their nervy experimentation of the ‘90s and back into the more traditional songcraft of their 21st-century records, a bland professionalism has settled over their music, and it’s all over the tour that U2 3D documents. Of course, bland professionalism elevated to the levels that U2 manages can be quite impressive – this might be the most fun version of “Vertigo” you’ll hear, and a few of the older staples still have plenty of juice. But no matter how much Bono contorts himself with his humanistic messages and theatrical silliness, the heart of this band was, is, and will be The Edge, whose guitar makes everything else around him possible. Yeah, U2’s the right band for this format, but since the film’s limitations are entirely due to content, U2 3D ends up being a very large reminder of the differences between Biggest Band in the World and Best Band in the World.
Be Kind Rewind (New Line Cinema)
A total mess, which you’ve probably heard by now. But so was The Science of Sleep – yeah, Michel Gondry directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, too, but can we now admit that screenwriter Charlie Kaufman had a lot to do with that one? Sloppy and odd as it may be, Be Kind Rewind is ultimately a goofy slice of a film with a resonant, sentimental, populist message about what movies mean to people. And, as has not been documented enough, its central idea is so stupidly funny that it follows Roger Ebert’s old principle of the double laugh where you laugh first at the joke and then laugh at yourself for laughing at it. Mos Def and Jack Black play New York buds who have to re-record their own versions of popular movie titles after Black accidentally erases all the videotapes at Def’s store. That’s barely an idea for an SNL digital short, and part of Be Kind Rewind’s charms is that it never worries about the logic of that conceit. The guys’ versions of Ghostbusters, 2001, and Rush Hour 2 are funny-bad and the moments we see of their masterpieces last precisely long enough that they don’t overstay their welcome. Which then leads to a series of nice, sweet plot twists about the nature of community and public duty and movie love that’s so beautiful that you forgive a bunch of junk and forced whimsy that came before it. Mia Farrow’s presence couldn’t help but make me think of a very different version of such a theme: The Purple Rose of Cairo. This movie isn’t nearly as good – not even close – but it does supply the happy, bittersweet ending Woody Allen never would have imagined for his own film.
George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead (The Weinstein Company)
It's impossible to know how I'd feel about George A. Romero's latest if I'd seen it before Cloverfield and Redacted (and The Road and 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead), but I'm guessing it wouldn't have helped much. For those who complain about Cloverfield's shortcomings – its "annoying" characters, for instance – I defy you to tell me what's more likable about Romero's collection of dolts, and whereas Cloverfield's young people at least seemed authentic in their emo musings, Diary feels very much like an older person's hunch about what "the kids" are like these days. Romero doesn't have characters – he has mouthpieces for his consistently on-the-nose observations about The Media and Our Miserable Society and Whatever Else He Can Think Of. A dumb movie with the honesty to acknowledge its limitations can be a blast. A dumb movie that thinks it's actually about something? Death.
Consumables is a biweekly overview of popular culture.
