Essentials: Office Space

Year: 1999 (USA)
Genre: Comedy/Workplace Comedy
Directed: Mike Judge
Stars: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, Diedrich Bader, Stephen Root, Gary Cole, Richard Riehle
Production: 20th Century Fox

Remember the midafternoons and evenings when there was nothing to do so instead of doing something productive with your time you sat back and watched the umpteenth presentation of Office Space (1999) on Comedy Central? Those were the days before The Office was imported from Britain and Mike Judge's other magnum opus, Idiocracy (2006) made its way into our hearts and heavy syndication. Yes indeed there was a time a while back when Office Space was virtually worshipped by office drones who sat chained to their desktops, alternating dead stares between the computer screen and a Dilbert panel.

First world problems

In case you have lived under a rock for fourteen years, here the gist of Office Space. Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston), an unhappy computer jockey, is simply overwhelmed by the dreariness of his job. He sits in a cubical all day, is hassled by seven different bosses and suspects his girlfriend is cheating on him. He only solace are his equally unhappy coworkers Michael (David Herman) and Samir (Ajay Naidu) and the hopes of catching a glimpse of Joanna (Jennifer Aniston) the cute waitress at the local Applebee clone. Things however get complicated when he visits an occupational-hypno-therapist who calms his nerves a little too much for his own good.

Since 1999 (the year Office Space was released), the economy has upended and soulless collating and secretarial labor seems like a distant memory. Many of us today aspire to get a job that would afford us a single room apartment for fifteen minutes of real, actual work. Still, Office Space remains to many, classic comedy cinema. A movie so clear and specific in its satire yet so universal.



Will suck dick for 401K

I discovered Office Space probably the same way you did; I heard things here and there and my curiosity led me to Blockbuster for a two-for-one rental. At the time I was too young to have a job yet I still understood the film's caustic, all-to-real satire. It reaffirmed what I imagined adulthood was like back then, a life of quiet desperation.

As an adult who has worked a total of seven different jobs of varied responsibilities, I can tell you with a straight face that I have never worked in a place like Initech, yet there were aspects of Initech in all the places I have worked. I have worked in places where I had to slave away for a real chode of a boss, prepare reports for not well understood reasons and dealt with faulty tech. In that respect the troubles of our protagonist Peter are my troubles only in quick succession.

But lets not forget the troubles of his coworkers. Both have last names that are meant to evoke laughter and both deal with their own little problems. Problems that ultimately culminate in a pink slip and an escorted exit from the premises. Also for note are other supporting cast members, especially Stephen Root in a scene stealing role as the squirrely Milton.

Director Mike Judge has such a keen sense of savage satire that its a crime he hasn't gotten the reigns for a large budget comedy. The best exposure he's gotten at your local Cineplex was in 1996 with Beavis and Butthead Do America. I guess one shouldn't complain too much given his straight to video success, the aforementioned Idiocracy.

Office Space is a brilliant experience. It's smart, funny and brutally true to the day-to-day experiences we face. If you haven't seen it, grab your fifteen piece of flair and find it on Netflix. If you've seen it and you're not a fan, go home and kiss your Swingline.

Final Grade: A

Essentials: Goodfellas

Year: 1990 (USA)
Genre: Drama/Biography/Gangster Film
Directed: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino, Frank Sivero
Production: Warner Bros.

There was a time in my youth when I really didn't appreciate gangster movies. Maybe it was because of the way I was raised or the amount of estrogen present in my mothers womb due to birth order but I never saw the intense violence of that lifestyle as anything but a cry for help. It wasn't until watching Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006) that my notions of true-to-life crime dramas began to change. I then went back to watch Goodfellas (1990), a film I originally saw bits and pieces of when I was twelve.

This is what happens when horses talk.

Today Goodfellas remains to me a revelation. An honest portrayal of the Mafioso lifestyle told directly from the horses mouth.The movie itself takes the viewer through three decades of mob life. Our protagonist Henry becomes enamored with the lifestyle in early adolescence and is hooked with its excesses before costars Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci even appear on screen. Once they do, the trio become the focus of the film as they attempt to climb up the Lucchese family hierarchy. Ray Liotta serves as our narrator and double for real-life wiseguy Henry Hill a half Irish-Italian mobster turned informant who spilled the beans on the Lucchese crime family for the FBI and later writer Nicholas Pileggi. Pileggi would later release his book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family in 1986 which is around the time director Martin Scorsese got wind of the story.

Go home and get your shine box do-be-do-be-do!

The film is told through a series of episodes starting with the three protagonists driving in darkness and killing an unknown man in the trunk of their car. The film then linearly progresses through time, revisiting that gruesome scene halfway through. While the story structure diverges slightly from the traditionally linear, anticipating action, climax, resolution format, the movie keeps interest. This is to the credit of Martin Scorsese's direction as well as his habit of putting bubbly 50's and 60's pop songs over brutal acts of violence. Nicholas Pileggi should also take a bow both for the original book and countless rewrites that made Goodfellas possible. It was his authenticity that brought the characters dimension.

but while the writer gives characters motivations and plot, it is the actors that really make them flesh and blood. Robert De Niro's Jimmy "The Gent" Conway towers in every scene he's in with equal parts suavity and malice. While De Niro provides the group credibility in the yes of the mob and audience, Joe Pesci is pure id. A trigger-happy sociopath with a red hot temper and a gun; not a combination that leads to good things in a movie of this kind. Pesci would end up winning an Oscar for his work on Goodfellas; a role that was originally offered to Al Pacino.

unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty!

One underrated aspect of Goodfellas is the character arch of Lorraine Bracco's role Karen Hill; Henry's wife. There are moments of the film narrated by the tragic heroine that provide the movie with a sense of perspective just as Henry's objectivity has gone off the deep end. She's an outsider who is at first overwhelmed but becomes seduced by the decadence of mob life and breaks bad. I would argue that the river runs deeper with Karen than with the dejected Henry. Henry wants the fancy cars, excessive Staten Island home and the most expensive artificial Christmas tree money can buy. But when Karen is handed a gun and told to hide it, right after a aberrant neighbor gets his faced smashed with the butt-end, she claims arousal. This is not a woman who craves simple security in the arms of the hero, she wants respect. That's why every transgression Henry or anyone makes is met with hostility. What isn't shown in the movie but detailed in the book was Karen's affair with mob capo Paul Vario while Henry was in prison; little more Lady MacBeth than Ophelia if you ask me.



Dexter knows how to prepare food and violence!

Of course, Goodfellas as a whole is studded with set pieces of violence and cruelty that in a lesser movie I wouldn't be impressed with. But as with good food, its not just ingredients that make the meal, its how its presented. The violence of Goodfellas is presented with a matter-of-factness and purpose that isn't gratuitous. Scorsese doesn't want you to bask in the glory of outright gore, he wants you to experience the world as the characters do, a task which he largely succeeds in.

I love this movie if for no other reason than it breaks the mold and sets a gold-standard for other genre movies to inspire to. It features topnotch performances from actors and actresses at the top of their game, and it showcases the uncompromising vision and talent of one of the greatest auteurs of the late 20th century.

Final Grade: A

Exercising Idle Hands

Yea, I know I'll be missed

It was with great trepidation and sorrow that I left the City of Chicago. With outstretched arms I accepted the Windy City as my spiritual home back in August, and since then the experience has been incredibly rewarding. My contractual obligation in the city required a lot of my time and as a result my writing was very inconsistent. I do not regret the things I have accomplished in the Second City; now a few weeks free from my obligation, I graduated from my position with a new sense of purpose and self.

Unfortunately the "city of the big shoulders" has also left me broke, unemployed and living at home again. I suppose there are worse things in this economy and after a few days of sulking I am grateful for what I currently have. Grateful however does not mean idle so I have dedicated every day I'm back in Michigan as a day of self-improvement. No longer will I sit inert as the world passes me by, frustrating myself without action. I won't be

I  will be accepted dammit!

Charlie Chaplin, the inept outsider but Buster Keaton, the inept outsider looking for a way in.

I have been taking a lot of drastic steps towards self-improvement but the one that most concerns this blog is my new exercise regiment. To lose the weight I need to look presentable, I will be walking on a treadmill. A simple exercise that requires little (other than a treadmill) but can do a lot. The speed and slope of the treadmill will be up to my discretion but the time allotted to my workout will depend solely on the movies I watch. Out of the movies I own, I will be choosing my favorites, one hundred of which I will watch while I run. This is my way of motivating myself while putting a little funk on the arduous proceedings.



Or maybe it will kill me...

There may be a lot of you that will question this method. Won't I plateau? aren't movies between 80 minutes to 120 minutes average? What about weight training? To those criticisms I say...nothing. This is not traditional training. I'm not running a marathon here, just trying to do slightly more work than nothing at all. If I loose 40 pounds, great! If I don't well at least after 100 days I have created a habit that can be a building block towards a more conventional workout. At the very least I'm making up for all the exercise I'm missing after leaving Chicago. Relying on public transportation and street walking (not to mention the daily grind on my job) guaranteed at least a mile of pacing a day. Walking on a treadmill for 90 minutes at 3 MPH surely won't kill me.

Additionally this little experiment will get me to re-watch all my favorites and examine them through new perspiration tinged eyes. Let's face it, its easy to write about something that is objectively horrid like Twilight (2008), but its another thing entirely to critique, argue, and champion a work of art that
can be near perfect at least in the eyes of one writer. Plus working thirteen hour days in the Windy City has changed my perspective on a lot of things. Perhaps after watching my all time favorites, I'll figure there are a few bad apples in the basket.

Look forward to the new reviews of old classics, not-so-old classics and even a few controversial choices. I am already a week into this experiment so there's a little backlog. Expect a few new reviews soon. In the meantime I will close this entry with this poem about the streets I have made home for the last year:

CHICAGO

     HOG Butcher for the World,
     Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
     Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
     Stormy, husky, brawling,
     City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
     have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
     luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
     is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
     kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
     faces of women and children I have seen the marks
     of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
     sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
     and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
     so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
     job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
     little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
     as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
          Bareheaded,
          Shoveling,
          Wrecking,
          Planning,
          Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
     white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
     man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
     never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
     and under his ribs the heart of the people,
               Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
     Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
     Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
     Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

-Carl Sandburg