Genres vs. Stories

The other day I had a chance to watch the BBC Films comedy “In the Loop”. The movie is flat out hilarious, but it got me thinking – It seems that writers and directors have choices to make about whether or not their film is going to be story driven or genre driven. In “In the Loop” for example, the film is a political satire that is clearly driven by its humor, meaning that the genre of comedy is what dictated how the dialogue was written and how the film was shot and progressed. If the film was more driven by a particular story and it simply used humor as a mechanism to further the story or make the story more interesting, it still would have fit the comedy genre, but I think it might have been written much differently. I’m not entirely sure which is better, but here is the issue in as simple of a question as I could think of – Is it better to write a good story and let the humor help tell the story, or is it better to write good jokes and humorous dialogue and write a story as a backdrop to the jokes? This question works with any genre. For horror – Is it better to write a story and fuse it with horrific elements to tell the story more effectively, or is it better to simply concentrate on scaring the crap out of people and write a story to serve as a backdrop to hold up the horror? For fantasy – Is it better to tell a good story and include fantasy elements for higher entertainment value, or is it better to just make up a wonderful world of awe inspiring characters and special effects and use the story as a secondary element that helps put your fantastical world on display (Avatar)? I haven’t put too much thought into this quite yet, but it’s intriguing to think about.

Seven more movies in for the year:

Sandlot (rewatch for the 20^th time)

Julie and Julia

Shutter Island

An education

Detective

The wolfman

In the loop

Year of Kurosawa begins

So I finally began the year of Kurosawa, a month late. I started by reading his autobiography (at least the first few chapters) and I am pleasantly surprised by how very…normal…he is. In the book he admits that he is presenting himself in a more favorable light than is accurate, and yet he has some honest things to say about the flaws in his character. I will probably spend the next week or so slowly reading through this work so that I can get to know the man better (I don’t just want to speed through for simple information). After that my plan is to cover all biographical information from each of the other books I have about his life and career before moving onto the information about his films and career. As I study each film, I will be watching the movie I’m studying about a few times through to more purely analyze the film from the perspective of Kurosawa’s biographers and critics.

Also, I fully intended to slow down on my movie watching, and then I got sick. While in bed I did nothing but watch movies for two days, so now I’m still on a crazy pace. Nine more, now I’m at 42 for the year.

Nights of Cabiria

Hot Fuzz (rewatch)

First Name Carmen

The Freshman

Last of the Mohicans (rewatch)

Hana

State of Play

Passion

Easy Virtue

Trendy Criticism

I recently read a review of a small independent film that criticized the film for being too trendy. Is that really a valid criticism?

Think about it, you’re criticizing a film for what’s happened around it, not for the film itself. This particular film was criticized because it had trendy music by a small but popular band, it was inexpensively made and focused on acting and characters rather than larger scale gimmicks, and because the only truly worthwhile thing about the film was its charm. We’ve had too many of those, says the critic. If the film is made well, is that a bad thing?

Let me call out my own hypocrisy for a second. I consistently slam romantic comedies and horror films for being too formulaic, and I slammed on Avatar a bit for being the EXACT same story we’ve seen in countless other movies, but I think this is different.

When I slam on rom com’s, horror films, or Avatar, I’m slamming the reproduction of the SAME movie, with the same story, same gore and porn, same banging of pots and pans, same jokes, and same characters over and over again. The critic mentioned above was ambiguously slamming an independent film for being…independent. Is it the fault of the director that he had to make a movie with a small budget, therefore relying on charm because there was no money to do anything else with his material? Isn’t this really why most independent films feel the same, because they all have to make due with what they have, and what they all have is good ideas and no money?

Now don’t get me wrong, the popularization of these independents has made them a bit too trendy. It’s become popular for indie bands to play the soundtrack for small films starring huge stars who want to make something “real” rather than the crap they normally make. Ben Stiller might be jumping on that bandwagon a few months too late with “Greenberg”, because people really are growing tired of this trend. But just because it’s a trend, does that mean that we have to discount ALL of the films that fall into the trend. Does something being trendy make it bad?

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, “Stranger than Fiction”, “Dreamgirls”, “Napoleon Dynamite”, “Little Miss Sunshine”, “Margot at the Wedding”, “Juno”, “500 Days of Summer”, the list goes on. Jim Carrey, Will Farrell, Steve Carrell, Jack Black, Jennifer Garner, Eddie Murphy, the list goes on. Overwhelming maybe, but look at the list. There are some excellent movies here.

Could it be that criticizing trendy films is just as trendy as the films they criticize?

By the way, I finished January at 33 movies. More than one per day. I am going to slow down a bit this month so that I can find more time to read. Also, We’re a month into the year and I haven’t even started the “year of Kurosawa”. It starts now. Here are my last 6 films for the month.

Alphaville
Elevator to the Gallows
Whatever Works
Is Anybody There?
Jules and Jim
A New World
5 great films and one horrific film (Whatever Works).