The Trip to Italy

Year: 2014
Genre: Comedy
Directed: Michael Winterbottom
Stars: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Rosie Fellner, Claire Keelan, Marta Barrio, Timothy Leach, Ronni Ancona, Rebecca Johnson, Alba Foncuberta Bufill
Production: BBC

The Trip to Italy is a sequel to the little known, little seen 2010 film The Trip, which in itself is a highlight reel of a little known, little seen BBC miniseries of the same name. Each reiteration of this franchise, I guess you could call it, feels like the rotating lenses of a microscope, filling in more detail while getting ever smaller in scope and appeal. Who exactly is this movie for? I'm not quite sure but whoever is on its wavelength will probably have a ball.

Why yes, I too like to spout nonsense while eating!

The Trip to Italy revisits Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as they are once again conscripted by the London Observer to eat at and review multiple restaurants. This time instead of driving through the foggy moors of Northern England, the duo drive their rented Mini Cooper through the sunny coasts of Italy. While doing so they once again trade witty repartee, relight professional rivalries and whip out their best Michael Caine impressions.

Let's hang out with this guy...again!

Its basically the same setup as the first only the location and power dynamic between our two leads is a bit more interesting. Coogan's star seems to have taken a dip since the cancellation of his American TV series. Meanwhile the less misanthropic Brydon is being courted by director Michael Mann for a billed part in a crime drama. Insecurities and the specter of aging into obsolescence abounds in this sequel, and the Italian countryside and tales of the Romantics serve beautifully as a stark juxtaposition.

Director Michael Winterbottom takes every opportunity to indulge in the sun and scenic poetry of Italy. As the characters retrace the steps of the romantics, Winterbottom takes delight in lifting visual cues from mainstay international cinema such as the bumpy road trips of Il Sorpasso (1962), the luxurious schooners of Purple Noon (1960) and the general feeling of ennui from La Dolce Vita (1960). As the film wears on, the actors become entrenched in a background literally alive with history, unable to make their pithy comments take you out of the beauty (though it's not for lack of trying.

Yet the same things that bogged down The Trip from being the best version of itself are still purposely present in Trip to Italy. There are the same insufferably self-centered characters, the same conversations and improvisational impressions, the same inattention to the freaking food! Seriously, I realize that oafish behavior set against the truly beautiful is partially the point but how do you NOT make Italian food the center of attention?

THIS! This should be what this is about!

Thankfully the two surly actors have much more to interact with. Actresses Marta Barrio and Rosie Fellner actually show up to dinner instead of being relegated to bits of cellphone asides. Steve's son (as played by Timothy Leach) shows up as well allowing us to see how two middle-aged men in a perpetual existential crises handle being around a child for a few minutes.

Overall Trip to Italy is in my mind a smidgen better than its predecessor and only because it trades temperate gloom for Mediterranean sunniness. But if you're the type who finds the fields, fog and verdant bluffs of England more appealing then the opposite might be true for you. Regardless, your ability to take this trilogy (so far) is wholly dependent on your ability to stomach two actors winging-it while sitting across from one another. I personally found my patience eroding by the minute.

Final Grade: C

After the Battle

Year: 2012

Genre: Drama

Directed: Yusri Nasrullah

Stars: Menna Shalabi, Bassem Samra, Nahed El Sebai, Salah Abdallah, Phaedra Al-Masri, Abdallah Medhat, Momen Medhat

Production: France 3 Cinema

Sometimes context can enrich a movie watching experience. In the case of the Egyptian movie After the Battle, the context is the experience. It’s everything to the extent that the movie, its characters its events and its cinematography are all dependent on knowing about a place in time. Additionally the clear and broad emotions therein, the anger, the disappointment, the resentments all comes boiling over in this film with the fervor of a witch’s cauldron. After the Battle is not a good movie but it is a decent snapshot.

The film takes place during the Arab Spring – specifically between the events of the February Tahrir Square protests in Cairo, Egypt and the Maspero television building protests along the Nile on October 9, 2011. To democratically minded Egyptians, the summer of 2011 was a time of possibility. The secular forces that initially sparked the Egyptian Revolution were eager to run their own candidates in the first free and fair elections Egypt had ever had. But to laymen like horseman Mahmoud (Samra), the revolution has only given him hardship and thrown his community into chaos and confusion.

Earlier that year, Mahmoud and his fellow horsemen attacked the protestors at Tahir Square to, in his own words “protect [their] livelihood.” After the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, the rest of the horsemen have stayed quiet and apolitical. But because Mahmoud had fallen off his horse and gotten his face on TV, the rest of his community has ostracized him and his family. Thus Mahmoud is forced to depend on a modern-thinking divorcee and passionate young turk named Reem (Shalabi) to get him and his family out of the rut they’re in.

She's Egyptian, young turk is just an expression...

The film is a feral mix of On the Waterfront (1954)-type melodrama and Danton (1983) level political posturing, with a little bit of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) mixed in for effect. It goes about as good as you’d expect from a film that lends the tale a cinema verite intimacy that pays more attention to arms flapping about than real emotional payoffs. What’s more, the movie touches on many fault lines in Egyptian culture and the body politic but never develops any of them beyond being window dressing. Thus the melodrama intensifies and intensifies without bringing any new dimensions to the story.

As the film intensifies, the believability of the characters diminishes to the point of everyone looking like stock-types. Mahmoud is a simpleton in need of political awakening. Reem never internalizes her own hypocrisy and instead becomes a do-gooder nuisance. There’s the feckless crony capitalist, the besmirched wife, the ambivalent working-stiff – heck if Maxim Gorky gave this script a look he’d throw it out as a work of amateurism; socialist realism – more like socialist soap.

Yet one can’t help but imbue After the Battle with the slightest bit of value despite its faults. The film was released in its native Egypt in the fall of 2012, just after the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood backed Mohamed Morsi as President. Within the span of its production, After the Battle saw the idealism and socio-economic flux of the post-revolution era morph into something ugly, something intolerant and ultimately something undemocratic.

Thus when I say After the Battle is a decent snapshot, I mean that it captures the simplistic zeal of the revolution while unknowingly (though their treatment of Mahmoud) pointing towards it failures to address the problems of the everyday Egyptians. It’s almost by default that this film ends up being the best movie of its type since Memories of a Mexican (1950). That still doesn’t mean it’s worthy of a recommendation though historians may have to take note for the sake of recording the whims of the moment.

Final Grade: D

Redemption Rewatch: Inglourious Basterds

Year: 2009

Genre: Drama

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Stars: Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Bruhl, Til Schweiger, Gedeon Burkhard, Jacky Ido, B.J. Novak, Rod Taylor, Mike Myers, Samm Levine, Lea Seydoux, Sylvester Groth

Production: Universal Pictures

The first time I watched Inglourious Basterds, I was just beginning my junior year of college. At that point I was just beginning to study the classics of cinema in earnest; barely digging into Welles and Hitchcock let alone Pabst and Riefenstahl – two names that feature prominently in this film. Being a product of the 90’s however, director Quentin Tarantino had been a fixture in my life, even if at the time I didn’t want him to be.

Me whenever a film student tells me Tarantino is their hero...

I once called Tarantino’s work an amalgam of interesting ideas made boring. “Asinine segments of dialogue punctuated by flashes of violence, isn't my idea of a good time,” is a literal quote from an article I once wrote in 2010. Of Inglourious Basterds in particular I said, “At the end of a lengthy scene filled with trite dialogue, there is a shootout where both [Hicox and Stiglitz] are killed in a hail of gunfire. Two interesting characters, each with a solid back story are dispatched without so much as a goodbye.”

Inglourious Basterds sucked! Half Baked, now there's a movie!

Mind you, I watched Inglourious Basterds in theaters! So when I sat down to watch it a second time in the safety of my own home 8-years-later, I had to think to myself, what was I smoking? The scene highlighted in the previous paragraph is not “asinine” but rather a richly detailed, meticulously setup work of suspense. If you actually manage to pay attention to the scene and prick your ears up at the minutia of the dialogue, you’ll find a lot to love and a lot to fret over.

There’s the exposition, the rising tension, the slight relief, the tip off and the explosive climax, all of which are defined by bold characterization. All five parts or chapters of Inglourious Basterds unfold in this way - exemplifying the classical, Hitchcockian mode of suspense. It’s a movie of moments, of knowing glances, improbable coincidences and unseen calculations all to serve an uncommonly aggressive narrative that prizes only the dark and the splashy.

The movie even has Hitchcock-type time bombs!

This may be why I didn’t like Inglourious Basterds the first time. It masterfully succeeds in entertaining its audience, at least those who are paying attention; but does it enlighten? Its bloody climax on the surface doesn’t claim to do so. My sympathies were thrown in with the unarmed Nazis at La Gamaar Cinema and mowed down like so much Swiss cheese. My expectations were similarly blown to smithereens as the only good guys were the by-then dead Shosanna (Laurent) and the Gomer Pyle-esque Aldo Raine (Pitt), neither of which had the stuff to give me the happy ending I craved.

(facepalm)

Time, as it seems, changes people. And the events of the day may change the context with which one views their media. After the events of Charlottesville and the impending rise of white nationalism in our nation, Inglourious Basterds comes with an added layer of shade. The theme of Jewish vengeance in the film, while no less brutal, comes with added alarm in the form of Aldo Raines’s reoccurring monologue. “You see, we like our Nazis in uniform. That way we can spot 'em just like that. But you take off that uniform, ain't no one ever gonna know you were a Nazi. And that don't sit well with us.” It’s an easy thing to miss amidst the film’s sprawling narrative but it’s a tidbit of twisted wisdom that sadly feels more prevalent and foreboding today. And, watching it again made me see just how much this theme reoccurs.

Upon second viewing, my superficial expectations (such as having the movie focus on the Bastards as advertised) and illusions of fair play were all gone. What left at the start then is the story of the excesses of cinema chortling at the dogma that has become the norm for WWII movies. It’s an exploitation film told with the effortless grace of an auteur at the top of his game; one where the heroes aren’t any more immune to death than the Nazis are immune to stylized satire. Furthermore Inglourious Basterds stands in my mind in a new social context bringing another rich layer in an already layered film. I suppose Roger Ebert was right when he said, “Tarantino films have a way of growing on you. It’s not enough to see them once.”

Previous Grade: D

New Grade: B

The Trip

Year: 2010
Genre: Comedy
Directed: Michael Winterbottom
Stars: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Rebecca Johnson, Claire Keelan, Paul Popplewell, Margo Stilley, Dolya Gavanski, Kelly Shale
Production: BBC

The scant artifice of director Michael Winterbottom's The Trip is beguiling in an Edward Albee, two people sitting on a park bench kind of way. In this case the bench is replaced by some of Northern England's most elegant restaurants and the two people sitting opposite each other more or less play slightly wittier versions of themselves. But unlike an Albee play, The Trip doesn't delight in frankness or extremes. The stakes here are low, the conflicts intimate and sub-textual and the trials that befall our two heroes aren't likely to create much smoke.

Hey, you ever seen 'Zoo Story'?

This can be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on a couple of factors. Those who saw My Dinner with Andre (1981) back in the day and said, "give me more of that please," will no doubt already sold on the idea of two frienemies breaking bread together. Shot in a naturalistic style complete with muted color tones, The Trip doesn't exactly ingratiate itself as a fun movie for general audiences. Furthermore the film is a highlight reel of a BBC miniseries of the same name therefore guaranteeing that unless you're the kind of person who wonders into a movie blind, you'll probably walk in being a fan of the series and therefore you'll automatically enjoy it.

Insufferable?! Well, I never...

But to the rest of us, The Trip runs the risk of being insufferable. At the thematic center of the film is Steve Coogan's professional rivalry with Rob Brydon. A rivalry which is revisited repeatedly with long-winded conversations punctuated by petty one-upsmanship. The banter is funny, witty and refreshingly organic with equally on-point Michael Caine impressions serving the largest supply of belly laughs. Yet because much of the dialogue is improvised it's also primordial, relying heavily on the the occasional quip instead of the usual setups and payoffs.

This becomes a problem as the characters progress through each dinner. Coogan and Brydon are wisely concentrated on the power dynamic between them but they never seem all that worried about story progression. One dinner bleeds into the other, into the other with talk of media and name-dropping becoming conversational filler. It gets repetitive and even a little grating as the camera teases us with ten second reprieves in the kitchen to see what's simmering the the pan. Then we're brought right back to Coogan and Brydon who never seem all that jazzed about the food they're eating.

Those in the know will hopefully be entertained by the pleasant dinner conversation and the occasional drive through back country while listening to ABBA. Yet lacking buildup, tension or anything commonly associated with, you know, "movies", The Trip is liable to exclude regular audiences before they even hit coat check.

Final Grade: C

Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby

Year: 1999

Genre: Crime Drama

Directed: Matthew Bright

Stars: Natasha Lyonne, Maria Celedonio, David Alan Grier, Vincent Gallo, April Telek, Bob Dawson, Jenn Griffin, Max Perlich, Michael T. Weiss, Richard Hendery, Kendall Saunders, Nicole Parker

Production: Kushner-Locke Company

Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby is the answer to the question: what would happen if you mixed a cheap ‘women in prison’ skin flick with an episodic Mexican soap opera, then amped up the violence to full on Tarantino. It’s depraved, gross, mean-spirited, and unconscionably stupid, tonally all over the map and worst of all…actually kind of boring.

Director Matthew Bright first came into the public eye with the release of Freeway (1996); a Reese Witherspoon helmed crime drama that subverted the tale of Red Riding Hood. This unrelated sequel has a bulimic Natasha Lyonne and a murderous Maria Celedonio escaping from their prison-hospital and meandering towards a Hansel and Gretel parallel whereby Vincent Gallo plays their witchy tormentor. It’s not the worst idea and even with its cheapness and over-reliance on shock value, Trickbaby is still not the worst interpretation of the Brothers Grimm tale.

(cough, cough)

But even if you take away this movie’s top-level faults it still remains a rhythmically challenged dud. It jerks us along through episodic misadventures assuming that having the cops chasing our two leads is going to keep a level of tension throughout. It doesn’t; thus the movie runs the gauntlet of being too reckless and too posturing not just act to act but scene to scene. One minute the girls are killing Border Patrol agents in cold blood and the next David Alan Grier is getting a handy on a public courthouse bench. One minute we’re witnessing what basically amounts to a satanic ritual sacrifice and the next we’re being “charmed” by hacky Three Stooges slapstick. By the way this is all being done to the non-stop sounds of post-fad ska music and wannabe Alanis Morissette therefore guaranteeing no matter what you’re supposed to feel, it just comes across as annoying.

Annoying and infinitely puerile would be what I’d label this film. It’s a sequel that removes everything that made the first one work including its built-in tension and its humanity. It fails in its satire to an embarrassing degree and its shock value doesn’t go beyond ill-timed gross outs and in-your-face sexuality. My advice is if you really want to see Natasha Lyonne in prison garb, check out the first three seasons of Orange is the New Black (2013-Present). Otherwise stay far away from this horrid piece of trash.

Final Grade: F

Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead

Year: 2010
Genre: Documentary
Directed: Joe Cross, Kurt Engfehr
Stars: Joe Cross, Phil Staples, Siong Norte, Stacey Kennedy, Joel Fuhrman, Ronald Penny, Mandy Reinking, Barry Staples
Production: Us & Us Media

You know, I got to hand it to Joe Cross, the enthusiastic Australian stockbroker turned lifestyle guru who spearheaded this 97 minute infomercial. He instinctively knows that the best way to prime his audience is through personal stakes and dramatic results. Thus instead of going the sane, unsexy route of weening out of bad habits to slowly lose excess weight, Cross puts his body through a 60-day juice cleanse while driving across America, confronting ordinary citizens about their diets. Why; probably because its easier to hock his "Reboot with Joe" program to those looking for quick and easy solutions.

It's easy to buy into it. The rotund sufferer of chronic urticaria we meet at the beginning of the film has the easy-going personality of a lazed step-father being asked for $20 bucks. Even as he looses the weight, he massages the soft sell with a canned genuineness and an easy to digest chipper attitude. "I was fat, and there was no one to blame but myself," he says in a moment of reflection. He liquefies his veggies and goes all in. "Don't taste half bad."

I do what I want, because Amrica!

As the film wears on, Joe faces off against the litany of excuses people have for eating what they eat. "I only got so long on this earth, I might as well enjoy it," is the common refrain though my personal favorite answer to the question, "why do you eat all this junk?" has to be, "Because I'm sixteen." Everyone in frame seems to know they're not doing the right thing. To Joe these people are addicted to food and lack the willpower to seek solutions. The solution in his eyes is of course a "reboot" that will reprogram the body to readily take in micronutrients and macronutrients. "If all the world's major religions fast, then they must be onto something."

I'm no nutritionist so I'm not going to make any bold claims. Lest to say, there's probably more to a healthy lifestyle than Joe Cross's musings and a few choice doctors stating the obvious. This is where Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead gets into serious trouble. Thanks to clever editing, Cross's self-evident truisms seem to meld into doctor testimonials with no actual data to backup anything. Nowhere is this more evident than when Cross's third act guinea pig Phil Staples goes into the doctor's office with him and he prods the doctor with leading questions like, "What will happen if Phil continues to eat like he does?" and "Is Phil healthy enough to go on a fast?" Notice he never asks "Should he go on a fast."

The film also ignores the social aspect of its project. Joe's example, as amazing as it looks on TV, probably has more to do with him being able to spend 60 days consuming less calories than Gwyneth Paltrow starring in a Calista Flockhart biopic. The rest of us, you know, have to work for a living and need the caloric intake to make sure we don't collapse on our wheelbarrows and in our cement mixers (I'm assuming my readership are interminably sarcastic bricklayers). We also often live in food deserts, suffer from malnutrition, succumb to social and peer-pressure such as indulging in a Fourth of July cookout etc. Yes, it's ultimately you choice but your choice is informed by the world around you. And if you need any further proof that a 60-day juice cleanse may not work for everyone, check out Phil's article, "I Was the Poster Boy for Weight Loss...Then I Gained 200 Pounds".

Lack of data, lack of comprehensiveness and the nagging suspicion that you're being sold something you don't need, like a canister of turtle wax. That is Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead in a nutshell. The fact that it's so laser-focused on creating and maintaining a brand may just be its only saving grace because it least it doesn't have that far to fall. It simply wants to make what it does look great and I suppose it succeeds in those modest ends. It's ultimately a D+ doc; C- because I'm embarrassed to say I dusted off the old juicer after I saw it.

Final Grade: C-