Transgenre Tragedy

By
Leaves of Grass
2009.  105 minutes. USA. Directed by Tim Blake Nelson. Watchdate: 3/24/2011.
An odd duck of a movie that novelly attempts to use the delicately promising premise of Edward Norton playing mismatched twin brothers - one an Apollonian academic, the other a Dionysian drug dealer - to combine the utterly modern subgenre of a stoner action comedy (ala Pineapple Express) with the most ancient of genres, the Greek Tragedy (ala Antigone). The result, as one might expect, is very uneven. But it deserves some attention for the curiosity of its storytelling impulses.

Oscillating between ruthlessly violent Jewish gangsters and loving tributes to Walt Whitman, satiring the pretensions of cloistered academia alongside the antics of troglodyte rednecks, the movie virtuously tries to arbitrate the idiosyncrasies of the diverse ways people choose to live their lives. It's a valiant effort, worthwhile as much for how it fails as how it succeeds.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Whore of Rhodes

By
Image
The abandoned front of Smokey Joe's Artemis Restaurant  Don't go to Faliraki. Ever. It is one of the worst towns I've ever been to in Greece or anywhere else. Faliraki is on the eastern coast of the Greek island of Rhodes. It is infested with the dreary remnants of the most outlandish kitsch and sleaze. On one block you will find the Tiger Tiger Strip Club, on the next Bedrock - a Flintstones themed 'family restaurant - and on the block after that, an abandoned amusement park of horrifying clown faces that looks like it comes straight out of a monster reincarnation of Coney Island. The town is studded with massive, overpriced resorts that aspire to luxury but could never achieve such a thing in the place they are located. Everyone looks like they are taking their last vacation ever before they have to pack it in and face the cruel justice of death. Faliraki: Where the Fun Never Stops Killing You You would never know you're in Greece. All sig...
Read more

These Bland White Men Are Movie Stars For Some Reason

By
Image
Chris Evans Chris Evan is perfect for the role of Captain America because just like Captain America, Chris Evan is an utterly boring shell. He's a hollow white male mascot with nothing to say. Therefore he's a perfect avatar to represent diversity in Hollywood circa 2016. Sam Worthington Speaking of avatar, Sam Worthington starred in Avatar. The highest-grossing movie of all time. Everyone saw  Avatar , right? I will remind you, Avatar (apparently) starred Sam Worthington, at least if we're going to believe IMDb.com. How would you describe Sam Worthinton? Can you remember anything about him? Anything at all? Well, here's one thing I can say about Sam Worthinston. By virtue of his being a total non-entity, Sam Worthington is the only actor capable of making Giovanni Ribisi believable as a dynamic, menacing villain. Giovanni Ribisi. From Friends . Aaron Taylor-Johnson The new Godzilla movie was going to be great until Bryan Cranston died 15 minutes...
Read more

Somebody is Waiting in the Hallway

By
Image
Stop Making Sense 1984. 88 minutes. USA. Directed by Jonathan Demme. Watchdate: 1/26/2011 This is a movie about a giant suit that makes everyone happy and terrified. It's a giant suit that magnifies what is perhaps the craziest sense of rhythm in the Western World (whatever "the Western World" means nowadays). This movie is about sweat and white light and running and everything else people did in the 80s like wearing giant suits to make themselves seem bigger and more important than they actually were. It's great, it should be required viewing. PS - David Byrne looks startlingly like Cillian Murphy in this movie.
Read more