Amélie (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

I’m hesitant to call Amélie whimsical, though it’s the closest adjective. The film’s kind of a French New Wave-inspired fairy tale, except instead of being about magic magic, it’s about the magic of the everyday and, especially, its residents. There’s also something decidedly not fairy tale about protagonist Audrey Tautou’s quests. Broadly, Amélie is about Tautou interceding in her neighbors’ lives for good, but getting reluctant when she needs to act with as much agency in her own life.

The film sets Tautou’s character up with narration, something it keeps up throughout the whole film (flawlessly performed by André Dussollier). In summary, we meet Tautou’s individually and collectively odd parents—father Rufus and mother Lorella Cravotta—who keep young Tautou (a delightful Flora Guiet) isolated from other children. When Cravotta dies tragically, it gets even worse. A time-lapse and some narration later, Tautou enters the film.

She lives alone, except when babysitting someone’s cat, and keeps to herself. Then one day, she discovers someone’s forgotten treasure and charges herself with returning it to the person, who she doesn’t know, and who she doesn’t have any good information about. Getting better information requires Tautou to branch out into the world, which also provides her with further “do-gooding” opportunities (the film’s—or at least the English subtitles—word) for later as she discovers the sad state of her neighbors.

The film runs two hours, which includes a full subplot about annoying but apparently not dangerous and still lusty Dominique Pinon. Tautou works at a café near her apartment. Pinon used to date her co-worker, Clotilde Mollet, and now spends his day in the café stalking Mollet. Does France not have the right to refuse service? Café owner Claire Maurier knows Pinon’s harassing Mollet, knows Pinon’s interfering with Mollet doing her work, and being disruptive to other customers, but just shrugs at the inevitably of some men being that way. Eventually, as part of her new lifestyle approach, Tautou decides the best solution is to set Pinon up with another employee, hypochondriac Isabelle Nanty.

Tautou also gets involved with grocery clerk Jamel Debbouze and his abusive boss, played by Urbain Cancelier. Despite Cancelier being profoundly shitty to Debbouze, this subplot is probably Amélie’s lightest or at least most played for laughs. Tautou ensures Cancelier gets his just desserts in a pair of hilarious echoed sequences.

But her two most significant relationship developments are with dad Rufus and neighbor Serge Merlin. Rufus and Tautou start just as detached as the flashbacks show; once she realizes her capacity for playfully interfering for good, she also figures Rufus can benefit. It’s another subplot played for humor, with Merlin taking on the surrogate dad-for-character-development part.

Merlin’s a painter with osteogenesis imperfecta. Tautou’s only slightly aware of him, seeing him through the window in his apartment where all the furniture is covered in pillows so he doesn’t break any bones on it. The narration fills in the rest—the narration foreshadows all the pertinent characters, pausing on everyone long enough to give a brief character description and (usually for a smile) likes and dislikes. Amélie’s narration spends the first act handing the film over to Tautou and then shares some space with her alter ego and potential love interest, played by Mathieu Kassovitz. While Kassovitz doesn’t really join the action until halfway through the film, the film at least lets Tautou find out about him in scene. Tautou’s ground situation is dead mom, distant dad, isolated childhood, now in her early twenties. She doesn’t have a character development arc because the film never takes the time to establish her as a character, which allows for fun, impromptu diversions, but—even for something straddling magical realism—is a noticeable dodge.

Tautou’s charming, but director Jeunet’s exceptionally deliberate about framing her as such. In the third act, when people around her have to conspire to get her more active in her own destiny, there’s a slightly jarring shift in the narrative distance. Kassovitz suddenly becomes more the co-lead and even protagonist, with Tautou reduced to her life only having meaning as a romantic pursuit. At that point, Amélie starts leaning hard on the affable supporting cast—Debbouze and Merlin in particular—to distract from Tautou’s agency going out the window.

Though I suppose the approach would work just fine if Jeunet and screenwriter Guillaume Laurant (well, Jeunet and Laurant did the scenario, then Laurant did the dialogue; no WGF, I guess) were trying to comment on Tautou’s interfering adventures when she’s on the other side, but they don’t. Tautou’s strangely disinterested in the results of her actions, regardless of their positive or negative outcomes.

All the acting’s good or better. Ditto the technicals. Hervé Schneid’s editing is excellent, and while surprisingly muted, Bruno Delbonnel’s photography is strong. Good music from Yann Tiersen. And while I’m curious if Jeunet asked costume designer Madeline Fontaine to make Tautou dress like an Audrey Hepburn character or if it was Fontaine’s idea, very good costumes.

It’s a little long, and the third act’s wobbly (but most of the second act already forecasts the wobble, so it’s not a surprise); Amélie’s often hilarious, usually funny, and always delightful.

War Story: D-Day Dodgers (2001)

Dday D-Day Dodgers ends with a ten-page series of splash pages, with artist John Higgins moving through a battlefield, a poem accompanying the imagery. The poem, “The Ballad of the D-Day Dodgers,” is from an unknown author. Higgins’s pages tie the poem’s lines to the various characters we’ve met throughout the issue, which is a fairly standard war story until the “D-Day Dodgers” plot point arrives.

Writer Garth Ennis’s opening text block informs the reader of the setting and situation—the Allied troops working their way (too slowly to be exciting news) through Italy, which has taken long enough they’re basically forgotten, even though they’re still very active. A new second lieutenant is arriving, a blue blood named Ross, whose never been in battle before. He falls for the enlisted men’s chicanery, he’s shocked at the captain’s disillusionment with the war, and he can’t believe the British military would sacrifice all these men to keep the Germans distracted.

Even with the captain, Lovatt, calmly explaining the situation—sometimes while taking potshots at the local destroyed church’s Jesus on the cross (he’s not an atheist, just a disappointed Catholic)—the comic’s about Ross waking up to the reality he’s found himself in. He’s thick enough he doesn’t realize when he’s learning things, like when the capable sergeant major takes him out on patrol, and Ross proves himself to his fellows but doesn’t know it.

Much of the comic’s talking heads, Ross is going overboard trying to prove himself to Lovatt, who can’t make the new officer understand the bleakness of their situation. Not even after they get their mission briefing, and Lovatt explains (both to the brass and Ross) what’s wrong with the plan.

It’s a good comic throughout. Ennis brings up some interesting ideas but can’t really bring them into focus well enough; they’re ground situation instead of foundation when they ought to be the latter. But the visual montage and how Lovatt and Ross’s last conversation leads into it put Dodgers over.

Oh, right. “D-Day Dodgers.” Right before the army sent these soldiers to their deaths, some lady (literally a lady) told Parliament they were all a bunch of lazy “D-Day Dodgers.” However, since Ross is from the same social class (which gets addressed) and new (which doesn’t), it doesn’t really resonate other than as an apt (and tragic) title.

Higgins’s art is excellent; he changes his line thickness based on emotional intensity, which is cool. Then his montage sequence is just one emotional gut punch after another. It’s a rending, rewarding read.

War Story: Johann’s Tiger (2001)

Ws1 I was a little curious whether writer Garth Ennis was going to be able to get away withJohann’s Tiger in 2023. The comic came out twenty years ago when Nazis and Nazi sympathizers weren’t (openly) part of the public discourse. Tiger is one of those “German army” stories, though. They’re not Nazis; they don’t like the Nazis; they’re just trying to survive with war and preserve the lives they can. Well, the lives on the same side, but still. They feel bad about the rest, but it’s war, after all.

It’s a tank story. Ennis would go on to more tank stories, but he very quickly gets to the heart of what makes a tank story so singular. It’s a group of guys living inside “burning coal.” Tiger’s cast is also different because they’re trying to escape the war, heading west hoping to find the Americans. They want to surrender and be done with it. Germany has lost, the Russians aren’t so much kicking ass as grinding it, and the commander—Johann—doesn’t want his men to die for Hitler’s war of aggression.

Johann narrates the comic. At times, I wondered what it sounded like in its native German, then realized Ennis wrote it in English. It’d be interesting to hear in German. He’s trapped with his memories of the war and his profound (and profoundly justified) self-loathing. See, Johann wasn’t ever a gung-ho Nazi; he was just utterly indifferent to the suffering they and he caused. Until all of a sudden, he wasn’t, and it’s breaking him, page after page. Getting his men to safety is all he can do to alleviate the damage. It’s not about amends; it’s about saving instead of killing.

At the same time, he’s an experienced tank commander and sees the world through those eyes, which Ennis does a phenomenal job with in the dialogue and narration.

There are several excellent battle scenes, which artists Chris Weston and Gary Erskine visualize superbly. Weston’s layouts remind of more lionizing war comics, but he and Erskine’s details are all the horrors.

It’s an excellent book.

Hitman: Closing Time (1999-2007)

Hitman vol 07

Hitman: Closing Time opens the only way it can (or should) following the previous collection’s gut-wrenching conclusion, which saw Tommy’s surrogate father, Sean, die protecting him. It starts with a Lobo crossover. And writer Garth Ennis spends the entire issue shitting on Lobo. It’s a done-in-one crossover with art from Doug Mahnke. The art’s perfectly excessive, starting with Tommy and Sean (there’s an editor’s note explaining it takes place in the past) spitting in Lobo’s beer. Lobo’s in Gotham on an interstellar bounty hunt and stops by the bar, initially annoying everyone but then becoming a problem when he starts picking on Sixpack.

Thanks to his mind-reading superpower, Tommy knows how Lobo’s super-healing works and concocts a way to take him on. It becomes a foot chase of destruction through Hitman’s Gotham, complete with gangsters and Section 8 (Sixpack’s super-team). Lots of blood, lots of laughs (almost all of them at Lobo’s expense), and a lot of nice art from Mahnke.

Sure, the resolution gag is definitionally homophobic, but if you squint and look at it from a certain point of view, it’s fine… ish. It’s also just the resolution gag; the comic needs a way to wrap up, given Tommy can’t take on an indestructible space mutant forever. The rest of the jokes are just about Lobo being a stupid character. The crossover politics of DC Comics and Hitman must be a great story.

Then there’s a short story about Sixpack’s drunk-dream adventures with Superman, art by Nelson DeCastro (pencils) and Jimmy Palmiotti (inks). It’s from a Superman 80-Page Giant and is entirely for laughs, with Sixpack arguing about superhero morality with Superman, opting for killing the bad guys. Or trying to kill them, with Big Blue having to curb Sixpack’s enthusiasm. It’s very classy art for a comic where Lex Luthor gets gut-punched for a gag.

The story placement also sets up Sixpack as a significant player in Closing Time. The Lobo crossover kicks off because of Sixpack, has him bring in Section 8, then the Superman “crossover” is entirely his story. The following story–as Closing Time starts collecting Hitman proper—is also Sixpack-focused. Sure, Tommy and Natt are chasing a naked guy through the Cauldron, but the drama is about Section 8 giving up on Sixpack’s dream of a super-team. If only there were something he could do to prove himself.

Luckily, Natt and Tommy aren’t chasing just any naked guy. He’s a lab assistant at the Injun Peak Research Center. Thanks to demonic dealings, some scientist turned him into a tesseract (the infinitely vast container variety, not the Avengers MacGuffin). The first part of the story’s split between Tommy and Natt chasing the naked guy (who can pull pretty much anything he wants right out of his you-know-what), Sixpack and his colleagues arguing about their super-team efficacy, and the bean counter discovering worse and worse details in the scientist’s practices. The science talk has Ennis’s most inventive writing, while Tommy and Natt’s chase gives artists John McCrea and Garry Leach a nice absurd, slightly gross-out comedy action sequence.

The second half of the story has more gross-out comedy action, but also actual gore as interdimensional demons find a toe-hold in our universe. Ennis does horror, comedy, heart, and action with it, finding a rather nice resolution while also revealing it’s a story out of time. While not set in the past like the opening Lobo one, it’s detached from the overall Hitman narrative. Ennis is just doing a Sixpack story in Hitman, not fitting Sixpack into a Tommy story.

The three and a half issue starting bookend and then a two-issue closer will set Closing Time’s main arc (appropriately titled Closing Time) apart from the rest of the collection, which is appropriate. The Closing Time arc, an eight-issue epic closing off the series and its so far surviving cast, is a doozy.

Mainly having resolved all the mob stuff last collection—there’s still a bounty on Tommy and Natt’s heads, but the mob itself isn’t a villain, just its hopeful hitmen—Ennis goes back to the start to find strings to tie up the series. Though he takes his time revealing where all those strings come from. Instead, he sticks to the first one he introduces–the mom who lost her kid to the vampires a while back. She’s in trouble and, if you’re lucky enough to know him, there’s no one better to help you with trouble than Tommy Monaghan. It’s a nice way to open the story, with Ennis then putting in an echoing device. That echoing device is a quick, devastating rumination on the series’s overall tragedy; great stuff. But Closing Time is just a series of great stuffs.

Starting with giving Tommy’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Tiegel a character development subplot for the arc. She doesn’t get in on the action this time, with Ennis bringing back a rogue female CIA agent as Tommy’s love interest and he and Natt’s third. The rogue CIA agent, McAllister, is one of Ennis’s archetypes—the capable female espionage agent–with McAllister being both softer and harder than he’ll go with the template in the future. It’s particularly interesting because she’s a deus ex machina too early in the plot. Most of Closing Time is about her bonding with Tommy and Natt and the supporting cast. She gets to be a regular cast member faster than anyone else in the comic ever has (though I guess Ennis never really tried with anyone else).

The story’s villain will turn out to be an evil CIA guy trying to make government superheroes with alien technology from the Bloodlines. The experiments aren’t going well, though there’s actually a lot less with the flesh-eating human monsters than I was expecting. Ennis contains most of the gore to a subplot with the lead scientist. The villain, Truman, is another returning character. McAllister’s back from the Green Lantern crossover issue, Truman’s back from early on, then there’s the main hitman nemesis, the son of a vanquished baddie. Not to mention the mom in trouble. Or the Dirty Harry-esque cop who’s promised to protect Tommy against any enemy. Lots of return appearances, all tied together thanks to Tommy. No one can escape the Cauldron.

Ennis also does a bunch of flashbacks, setting up Tommy and Natt as teenagers in the Marines and Tommy growing up in the Cauldron, which means some old Sean and Pat appearances. Ennis writes Hitman to be binge-read, not just for the callbacks to earlier in the series. The Closing Time arc is paced for a single reading. It must’ve been very frustrating DC took forever to collect it.

The Closing Time story has a good three-act structure throughout the eight installments, with some big action set pieces throughout and a whole lot of heart. Everyone gets their appropriate farewell in the comic, with Ennis grabbing the heartstrings and yanking as hard as he can. There are some hints the story’s a rushed conclusion, the occasional plot detail Ennis has to push too hard on to make fit, the things he wasn’t done exploring. But they make it work. It’s a lovely finish for the comic.

So it not being the last story in the collection is initially a little odd, especially since the coda is a JLA crossover, originally intended for the JLA Classified anthology series, which got canceled before the Hitman one ran. So instead of a four-parter, it’s a two-parter, set six years after the main series, when everyone’s fate has cemented, and an intrepid reporter has some questions about Superman’s relationship with professional hitman Tommy Monaghan, a known killer, and man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. The reporter—named Kirby, with Ennis showing his soft side—interviews Superman’s de facto press agent, one Clark Kent.

At some point in the past, the Bloodlines aliens came back, and the JLA needed someone who they’d give powers for scientific reasons. So they go get Tommy and bring him to the moon, where Kyle Rayner Green Lantern’s embarrassed to know him, and Batman takes delight in telling Superman about Tommy’s profession. Ennis balances the alien threat with Superman reconciling being emotionally invested in a “bad guy” and Tommy having a blast in a superhero crossover. Some excellent writing on the characters from Ennis, who might not have wanted to write DC superheroes, but it’s too bad they didn’t convince him to do more of it.

The conclusion works as a rumination for the whole series.

McCrea pencils and inks the JLA crossover, busting ass to give it a unique, distinct feel from the regular series. Especially after Closing Time, it’s kind of hard to imagine Hitman without Leach inking McCrea. But then the crossover isn’t a Hitman comic; it’s a Superman story about Hitman.

And it just makes you want to read the whole comic, all sixty issues plus crossovers, all seven trades, all 1,600 pages, all over again. Ennis, McCrea, and Leach do one hell of a job.

Pearl Harbor (2001, Michael Bay)

Pearl Harbor is a couple things. It’s a breathtaking historical visualization of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And it’s a patronizing, cynical, disinterested war melodrama. The big problem with the melodrama is Randall Wallace’s script, which is vapid at best. It also barely factors in to the attack sequence. The attack sequence is all director Bay, for better and for worse, along with some unfortunate digital blurring to keep the rating down.

The Pearl Harbor sequence comes about halfway through. The movie runs three hours, the attack is at eighty minutes. Before the attack, there are some scenes with the Japanese (led by Mako and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who are both great) planning the attack and the Americans worrying about an attack. The Americans are mostly Jon Voight as FDR, Dan Aykroyd as the Naval Intelligence guy who can’t convince anyone to be worried, and Colm Feore as the Pearl Harbor base commander. But even if Aykroyd did get boss Graham Beckel to listen, the Japanese plan was too good. The Americans are just unprepared, which actually brings in the closest thing to a political statement the film makes. It makes various implications regarding the American military brass, as opposed to guys on the ground like Feore or Alec Baldwin’s Doolittle; Voight’s FDR isn’t with the brass either. It’s… interesting.

It’s probably what happens when history fails the politics of the filmmakers.

In other words, the film does a terrible job essaying how 1941 felt to the average person. Because Wallace does a crappy job in general and Bay’s really not interested in doing anything with regular people, not when he gets to do a special effects heavy war movie. As for the melodrama… the only person more disconnected from the melodrama than Bay is leading lady Kate Beckinsale, who doesn’t even get a caricature to play. Wallace’s script is, actually, quite interesting when you realize Beckinsale doesn’t just have less character than practically every other nurse (who are all man-starved caricatures, the slutty one, the sweet one, the fat one, the nerd), but her lack of character is what obliterates the film’s potential. Not just Beckinsale’s performance, which is… fine, given the circumstances. It’s vaguely believable she’s interested in Ben Affleck, but they—Wallace and Bay—can’t figure out how to get Beckinsale interested in third love triangle leg, Josh Hartnett.

See, Affleck and Hartnett are childhood best friends from Tennessee—the accents are better than you’d think; maybe not authentic, but better than you’d think. Affleck’s the alpha, Hartnett’s the beta. Though Affleck’s still fallible, he’s got dyslexia in 1941.

So let’s talk about the melodrama.

The movie opens with a flashback showing Hartnett’s character has a bad but sympathetic dad (William Fichtner in a flashback-redeeming cameo—or at least flashback-evening cameo) and sets Affleck up as his protector. Only Affleck’s about to ship out to England to get in the war because he’s getting old and still wants to be a war hero. He lies to Hartnett about volunteering and breaks new girlfriend Beckinsale’s heart, but she’s going to wait for him. Coincidentally Navy nurse Beckinsale and Army flier Hartnett both get posted to Pearl Harbor, where they see each other to say hello but don’t hang out. Or maybe they do. Because their supporting casts hang out but the film doesn’t do anything with Harnett or Beckinsale’s character development. What you’ve got with Pearl Harbor is a film wanting a beta to alpha arc for Harnett, but resenting Hartnett for being a beta, and then accidentally coming to the conclusion the alpha and beta labels are a bad way to think about masculinity. Only it can’t recognize that possibility because… dudes. There’s nothing more painful than the scenes when Affleck and Hartnett try to bond after Affleck gets back to find Hartnett and Beckinsale together. Much like when Beckinsale’s character is so exceptionally shallow you have to wonder how she made it through the scene without just defaulting to an honest answer and then when she becomes literal background in the third arc, you eventually welcome Hartnett and Affleck just standing around looking pensive as opposed to trying to talk about their incredibly complex situation.

Even though there are a couple times they’re supposedly going to have a hard talk. And there are a couple times Beckinsale’s going to get real with someone. Only she doesn’t have enough agency to do it. And Wallace doesn’t know how to write men talking about anything not military or war expository-related except Affleck and Hartnett’s buddies trying to figure out the best way to manipulate the nurses into bed. But they don’t mean it in a bad way—come on, it’s 1941, no one knew women were people yet.

Not even women.

So, spoiler, no, Beckinsale doesn’t have some kind of empowerment arc.

In fact, even though she gets the ill-advised, poorly written, and awkwardly placed end narration… Bay cuts her out of the end of the movie because she’s not a dude.

I guess to simplify the problem with the melodrama plot—it’s about Hartnett having a man-crush on Affleck because Affleck’s a square-jawed superman only to realize he’d rather have a lady, something Affleck seemingly wanted for himself but wasn’t ever going to tell puppy dog Hartnett about, and then Beckinsale—the object of their affections—doesn’t have enough of a character to react honestly to either, but with Affleck there’s at least movie romance cuteness; with Hartnett it’s a chemistry-free, erotic-free, erotic affair. It’s wholesome. With shtupping. Is it wholesome shtupping? Eh? Bay’s really bad at directing sex scenes.

Really, really, really, really bad. You’re surprised the actors aren’t blushing red from the stupidity.

Not like the canoodling, which Bay does somewhat well. Hartnett and Beckinsale’s romance is mostly short montage sequences where they cuddle and breath heavy on each other and it looks like a perfume commercial.

But the Pearl Harbor attack sequence is awesome filmmaking. Editors Roger Barton, Mark Goldblatt, Chris Lebenzon, and Steven Rosenblum don’t get jack to do before it and about twice that amount after it, but the attack is breathtaking thanks to them. Their cuts are so good the digital vaselining of the frame to insure the PG-13 doesn’t matter. It doesn’t work, but it doesn’t matter. John Schwartzman’s photography is great throughout, especially on the attack. Even an uncaring bastard like Bay is able to make each death tragic. It also reveals if Cuba Gooding Jr., who’s shoehorned into the movie to give it a single Black character with a story arc, is Bay’s real hero. Gooding’s a cook who ends up shooting down Japanese planes; Bay’s a lot more interested in the ground action than the flying action. Pearl Harbor doesn’t reinvent any wheels (or even try), but it definitely gets a lot less interest when it’s “leads” Affleck and Hartnett hitting the sky to avenge.

But getting them to the planes to go into the sky? Bay’s all about their (ground) trip to it. It’s a problem. Bay’s a problem.

Other great crew contributions? Nigel Phelps’s production design is fantastic. Hans Zimmer’s score is fine. Nothing special, but nothing bad. It’s all about that editing though. All about that editing.

Now for the acting. Lots of good supporting performances. The film has a bunch of sturdy character actors giving sturdy performances in bit parts. In the bigger ones, Aykroyd’s pretty good. Voight’s no qualifiers good. He’s really able to turn FDR into an action hero. It’s something. Baldwin’s great as Doolittle. Gooding’s fine. It’s a shallower performance than it’s the part because Wallace does a crap job with it. Bay and Wallace believe in institutional racism in 1941 but not person-to-person racism. The movie’s patronizing as hell.

Of the main cast—Hartnett’s flying sidekicks and Beckinsale’s nursing sidekicks—Michael Shannon is a revelation, Tom Sizemore’s good, Ewen Bremner’s able to get over his stutter, which is only there to get sweet nurse Jaime King to fall for him. Jennifer Garner’s bad but likable as the nerdy nurse. Some of the better glorified cameos are Feore, Leland Orser, and Kim Coates.

Affleck’s a really good lead. He’s able to do it all. He’s not able to give he and Beckinsale enough chemistry to give their romance depth, but its all so disingenuous it’d be a miracle. And Pearl doesn’t have any miracles.

Hartnett’s got some really good moments and some potentially good scenes. It’s hard to wish for more because it’s so clear the film’s disinterested in him. Hartnett and Beckinsale start their flirtation just as the Pearl Harbor attack preparations subplot really gets going and, again, it’s not like Wallace and Bay are actually interested in how anyone existed in fall 1941 in Pearl Harbor and definitely not with a girl.

Beckinsale’s… never bad. She’s never… wholly unconvincing. Though she has an utter lack of chemistry with Hartnett, who she needs some with because they get so little in the script, and still not quite enough with Affleck to get over the silly romance stuff. You’d say she was miscast but she’s good with the straight nursing stuff.

In case anyone’s wondering, Pearl Harbor intentionally and utterly fails Bechdel. I suppose it’s technically exempt when they’re talking about the wounded but… the rest of it? This group of nurses moves from rural U.S.A. to paradise Hawaii and has no reaction other than “boys, boys, boys.”

When Wallace and Bay are bad at something… they’re real bad at it.

It’s shame the movie’s not better. But it’s far from a failure; Bay lacks narrative instinct and interest, he’s indifferent to his actors’ performances—which nicely doesn’t matter because most of the parts are thin and the performances grand—but he’s ambitious to the nth with the attack sequence and he’s at least willing to acknowledge it does need some kind of bookends. Unfortunately for the actors, the audience, the film, Wallace is writing those bookends. Because he’s inept. You’d expect more from an intern who watched a week of History Channel. Some of its Bay’s fault—if he’d cared about the melodrama, it’d be fine….

As is, thanks to the cast and crew’s work, Pearl Harbor is tolerable when it’s not phenomenal, which isn’t bad at all.

The Eltingville Club (1994-2015)

Either Evan Dorkin’s got the Eltingville TV rights back or whoever has them is a complete numbskull because the book’s so relevant you could subtitle it “An Incel Fable” and it’d be totally appropriate, narratively speaking.

But it’d be somewhat intellectually dishonest, as Dorkin started The Eltingville Club long before the incels had a self-identity or community. Dorkin’s actually way too optimistic… or maybe anti-pessimistic in his predications for fandom.

This edition collects every Eltingville story, published over twenty-one years from 1994 to 2015. The last two stories are the two-issue closer Dorkin did, which I had read when they were published; I hadn’t read any of the shorter strips. I did watch the TV pilot, which is “included” in the trade in the pilot was an adaptation of one of the stories.

I actually won this book in a giveaway promotion Dorkin ran. It’s one of the few things I’ve won online. Awesome prize.

I had planned on reading through the collection (does anyone else want to call hardcover collections trades but then can’t because they aren’t?), but an Eltingville-read friend told me it might be better with some breaks. And, wow, is he right. Eltingville is exhausting.

Although Dorkin published the book over twenty-one years, besides the final “flash forward,” no one ages. The Club is frighteningly eternal, its four members not growing any older or any wiser over their adventures. Their adventures always involve some major pop culture—or, at least at the time, comic book culture details, which do change to reflect current events. So it’s a comic strip where the characters don’t age but react to current events.

I didn’t realize how long the two final issues ran and I expected to read the book in three sittings; first two sittings the shorter stories, last sitting the two-parter. But it turns out there actually isn’t a lot of shorter stuff, it’s sixty percent of the material sure, but it’s nine strips adding up to sixty percent.

It’s fine—it makes the first issue of the two-parter even more impressive to see how artfully Dorkin is able to scale to a longer narrative—but it did leave me focused on the finale more than the first twenty years of material.

Most of the stories involve the Club getting into either a fight or significant trouble (or illness) because leader Bill is a complete dick. Bill is the comics guy. Josh is the sci-fi guy. Pete is the horror guy. Jerry is the RPG guy. Bill’s the leader and finds himself constantly arguing with Josh, because—as it turns out as the series progresses—they’re alter egos. Sort of. Enough. Pete and Jerry are mostly just there, though Pete gets enough material over the stories it’s too bad when he becomes such a significant creep in the flash forward.

Dorkin doesn’t have any sympathy for the Club and doesn’t ask for any from the reader. They’re assholes. To each other, to their parents, to everyone. It’s incredible. And incredibly funny. Dorkin gets some crying laughing laughs into these stories. Sometimes you don’t even need to get the pop culture reference.

Reading the original, mid-nineties stories, Dorkin’s prescient about where fandom and the Internet is going. Eltingville never feels dated, even when they’re talking about Batman Forever. Dorkin was really good about anticipating burgeoning fandoms too. The older stories are also relevant as a documenting of the evolving fandom awfulness.

Dorkin’s epilogue is somewhat hopeful (realistically hopeful?) for things, though it’s from 2015 and 2015 was a time where measured hopefulness was still a thing.

Would Eltingville be as good if the world weren’t such a shit show? Yes, but there’d be different adjectives to use about Dorkin. The comic is just the right combination of hilarious and terrifying. Excellent art from Dorkin—it’s really cool to see how he’s developed, cartooning-wise, with the last two issues. Eltingville is a must.

Small Favors: The Definitive Girly Porno Collection (2000-2003)

I have no idea how I’m going to talk about Small Favors; it’s my first “erotic” comic. Possibly ever. (The first edition of Lost Girls is sitting on my shelf, still unread).

The collection’s subtitle is “The Definitive Girly Porno Collection.” I’m just worried what kind of SEO I’m going to get from frequent usages of the phrase “Girly Porno.”

So. We’ll see how this post goes.

The collection—three years of short stories, plus sketches, plus at least one new story—starts with compulsive masturbator Annie (set off by her fetching neighbor) getting in trouble for her lack of conscience. So she gets assigned on in the form of Nibbil. Nibbil’s probably the size of an action figure. And Annie seduces her before they even get back to the real world from the magical sexy land. Sexy but no sex. Annie’s got too much of the sex is the whole point.

After the setup, each strip is basically Annie and Nibbil being adorable and then having sex. Eventually they make a girl friend—every character in Small Favors is a woman, which becomes apparent after Nibbil reveals to Annie she can grow to human-size (instantaneously, which writer and artist Colleen Coover uses imaginatively)—and have adventures with her. Though their adventures tend to all go the same way. Adorable setup at the beginning of the strip, then sex.

There’s some tension involving a bean counter out to confirm Nibbil’s doing her job in keeping Annie’s sex addiction under control and another subplot involving the girl friend trying to find love. But mostly it’s just explicit and very positively portrayed sex.

Coover’s Good Girl art is fantastic. All but one of the strips are in black and white, with Coover occasionally trying a little bit different of a style. The color entry is fantastic; color adds a whole new dimension to Favors. Not the sexy time, but the narrative stuff. Well, probably the sexy time stuff too but the big surprise is how lush the Coover intends the world. The strip’s positivity doesn’t start and end with its constant hay-rolling.

I’m now getting into euphemism territory so it’s time to wrap up; Small Favors is precious and quite exquisitely executed.

Rat Race (2001, Jerry Zucker)

If you had told me there was a movie with John Cleese in funny fake teeth and Smash Mouth as a plot point (a positive one), I don’t know I would’ve believed it. But if there is going to be a movie with John Cleese in funny fake teeth and Smash Mouth as in a positive cameo… it’s going to be a movie like Rat Race. Rat Race is a big budget situation comedy masquerading as a madcap comedy adventure. Cleese is a Las Vegas casino owner who sends six or seven or twelve random people on a race from Vegas to New Mexico. Whoever gets there first gets two million dollars. Little do the contestants know Cleese has arranged the whole thing as a bet for a group of high owners at the casino.

Though it wouldn’t matter much because the stuff with Cleese and the high rollers is just for interlude gags.

The main race contestants are Cuba Gooding Jr. and Jon Lovitz. Maybe not in screen time (but maybe in screen time, it’s not worth counting), but definitely in extreme gags. Gooding at one point has stolen a charter busload of “I Love Lucy” Lucy cosplayers and Lovitz kind of kidnaps his family to go on the race with him (he doesn’t tell them about the race because he’s Jon Lovitz and it wouldn’t work if he wasn’t a liar). Then there are the couples. Breckin Meyer is a pointlessly straight-laced young lawyer (his character details don’t matter at all) who gets helicopter pilot Amy Smart involved in the race; he’s crushing on her, she’s not crushing on him. Whoopi Goldberg was at the casino to meet long-lost daughter Lanai Chapman; not long-lost but Goldberg gave her up for adoption. Again, the character details don’t end up mattering at all. Once the couples are paired, they’re paired. Like idiot brothers Seth Green and Vince Vieluf (who apparently dropped his agent for not getting him more face time on Rat Race promotional material, but should’ve sued him for letting him do the role, which has him suffering from an infected tongue ring piercing and unintelligible the whole time—Andy Breckman’s screenplay never goes cheap or obvious when it can do both at once). Green’s the weasel, Vieluf’s the dumb lug. Evil George and Lenny, basically. They talk about splitting up for about a half hour of the film’s near two hour runtime but never actually get around to it. Breckman’s script also has its red herrings to fill runtime.

Because somehow it matters Rat Race goes on for near two hours? Like the runtime is going to give it legitimacy.

The last contestant is Rowan Atkinson, who appears to have done Rat Race in yet another attempt to breakthrough in the Colonies. Snideness aside, Atkinson’s great. Everything he does is great. Even when it’s in his dumb subplot involving jackass ambulance driver Wayne Knight and a transplant heart.

Rat Race is kind of a catch-22. The subplots are so bland, you need someone as bland as Meyer do one of them. And, frankly, Smart too. They’re both middling. She’s a little better, but only because Meyer’s unable to appear to listen or think. Green and Vieluf do a lot of terribly executed, large scale physical humor. Director Zucker isn’t necessarily really bad at the giant sight gags, it’s just he’s using CGI and it’s poorly done. And Thomas E. Ackerman’s photography is bad. It’s more often less competent than competent. So you don’t care Green and Vieluf are one-note because the scenes are so perfunctory, even when they’re effective. Zucker’s got a couple good shots in the movie—establishing shots for the large-scale sight gags—and they’re the same shot. It’s like he has one good shot, but only two opportunities to use it. The rest of the time… middling direction.

Cleese too. He’s really funny. Especially with those fake teeth. But it’s a movie where the joke is John Cleese in some obviously fake fake teeth.

Dave Thomas has a really small part and, much like Atkinson, is able to get away successful. Goldberg isn’t bad, she’s just not successful. The movie ditches her and Chapman pretty quick, after one really funny sequence.

Gooding and Lovitz are both… inoffensive, while managing to also be the least sympathetic characters in the film. Maybe because Gooding’s supposed to somehow be inherently sympathetic because he’s a victim of unfair public shaming and because Lovitz is supposed to be saddled with an annoying family (wife Kathy Najimy wants to see David Copperfeld instead of gamble and spend time with husband Lovitz because… harpy?; the kids are just annoying, but end up being sympathetic because Lovitz is… Lovitz). I already said Atkinson is great. Who else is there… Green and Vieluf. Vieluf’s more likable than Green and probably better. Green just mugs.

Last thing. The music. Not the Smash Mouth performance, which sucks, but the “score” by John Powell, which reuses familiar classical ditties like In the Hall of the Mountain King and some also La Traviata. Trust me, you’ve heard the music. Probably in television commercials because it’s effective music. Just culturally rote. And that music ends up in some big set pieces, so it’s unclear what Powell’s actually bringing to the film other than making it sound consistent with a television commercial.

Rat Race is cheap and obvious but occasionally funny and usually inoffensive.

And Atkinson is exceptional.

1/4 ★

CREDITS

Directed by Jerry Zucker; written by Andy Breckman; director of photography, Thomas E. Ackerman; edited by Tom Lewis; music by John Powell; production designer, Gary Frutkoff; produced by Sean Daniel, Janet Zucker, and Jerry Zucker; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Cuba Gooding Jr. (Owen Templeton), Jon Lovitz (Randy Pear), Rowan Atkinson (Enrico Pollini), Breckin Meyer (Nick Schaffer), Amy Smart (Tracy Faucet), Seth Green (Duane Cody), Vince Vieluf (Blaine Cody), Whoopi Goldberg (Vera Baker), Lanei Chapman (Merrill Jennings), Kathy Najimy (Beverly Pear), Wayne Knight (Zack Mallozzi), Dave Thomas (Harold Grisham), and John Cleese (Donald P. Sinclair).


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OTHER 2001 RELEASES

Disco Pigs (2001, Kirsten Sheridan)

Disco Pigs might not be the best title for Disco Pigs, but it’s hard to imagine any other title for it so an imperfect one is better than a wrong one. Maybe disco had some appropriate cultural Irish relevancy. Or maybe playwright Enda Walsh, who adapted the screenplay himself, couldn’t think of anything else either.

The film opens with an unborn baby–who will grow up to be lead Elaine Cassidy–with Cassidy narrating her thoughts about being born. Writer Walsh gets in some foreshadowing during this narration, kind of some sore thumb foreshadowing, only it takes a long, long time for it to come out in the narrative.

The film quickly fastforwards to Cassidy at sixteen years, 348 days. In her crib at the hospital, she meets another baby in the adjoining crib. That baby grows up to be Cillian Murphy. He too is sixteen years, 348 days, when the present action begins. They live next door to one another and have been their entire lives. Their rooms are mirrors of one another, each with a secret window between so they can hold hands as they sleep each night.

Disco Pigs is the story of their seventeen days until their seventeenth birthday.

For the first third of the film, about ninety percent is Cassidy and Murphy together. They’re so wrapped up in one another–and have been for so long–they don’t seem to form outside relationships as individuals, just as a unit. They have their own shorthand language, somewhat fantastical, with the rest of the world utterly detached.

Director Sheridan keeps a bit of distance, occasionally developing Cassidy separate from Murphy–though Murphy’s the one who gets the eventual big scene in the first act. Even though they’re teenagers, surrounded by teenagers doing teenage things, there’s a chasteness to their relationship. Physical romance is still something for a giggle, not a fantasy. Until it becomes clear Murphy’s moving away from the giggling to the fantasy faster than Cassidy and even though they have their own language, it’s a child’s language, without the words they need to communicate now.

Their respective home lives reveal some more differences. Murphy’s mother, Eleanor Methven, finds him more of a laugh than a concern. She’s got another kid, a younger sister (presumably from a different dad, but it’s never mentioned). Meanwhile, Cassidy’s parents–Geraldine O’Rawe and Brían F. O’Byrne–are far more concerned Cassidy’s future. So they let the school talk them into sending her away.

The middle portion of the film is Murphy’s quest to find her juxtaposed against Cassidy socially developing away from him. It’s also when it becomes clear Murphy’s not just missing his best friend, he’s severely mentally disturbed. While Cassidy’s section quickly becomes affable (thanks to the influence of roommate Tara Lynne O’Neill), Murphy’s half is harrowing.

The third part of the film is the birthday, which director Sheridan and editor Ben Yeates methodically pace. It retains some of that harrowing momentum, only cut loose of any expectations, both from the viewer’s perspective and Cassidy’s.

Both Cassidy and Murphy are exceptional. It’s a toss-up who’s better; even though they start from similar positions, Walsh’s narrative gives them entirely different character arcs. There’s a relative staticness to the roles in the beginning, something Murphy retains, only it becomes clear entropy is affecting him as well. And he’s aware of it; it’s never part of the script, but it’s always present in Murphy’s performance.

Sheridan’s direction stays calm, even after she closes the narrative distance. There’s seemingly a greater sympathy with Cassidy, yet in hindsight–and after some foreshadowed backstory gets covered–it’s there with Murphy as well. The third act really is about integrating the various styles Sheridan’s been working with–that joint first act, which develops stress fractures, and the separate, wildly different second act. It’s all got to come together.

Great photography from Igor Jadue-Lillo. Great music from Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer.

Disco Pigs is difficult, terrifying, and lovely. Cassidy and Murphy give breathtaking performances.

4/4 ★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Kirsten Sheridan; screenplay by Enda Walsh, based on his play; director of photography, Igor Jadue-Lillo; edited by Ben Yeates; music by Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer; produced by Ed Guiney; released by Renaissance Films.

Starring Elaine Cassidy (Runt), Cillian Murphy (Pig), Tara Lynne O’Neill (Mags), Brían F. O’Byrne (Runt’s Dad), Geraldine O’Rawe (Runt’s Mam), Eleanor Methven (Pig’s Mam), Darren Healy (Marky), and Michael Rawley (Foxy).


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Batman: Gotham Noir (2001) #1

Batman gotham noir

Gotham Noir is a Jim Gordon story. Only he’s ex-cop Jim Gordon, divorced ex-cop Jim Gordon, just trying to get by as a private investigator. Only he’s a drunk. It’s 1949 and Gordon had a bad time in the war. Bruce Wayne was there. Bruce Wayne knows the secrets. Lots of secrets in Gotham Noir. Writer Ed Brubaker has this endless drawer of revelations to throw in to explain why a character did or said something ten pages before. The Noir is heavy.

Some of the comic is Gordon narrating why he’s on the run from the cops. Corrupt politicians have pinned a murder on him, a murder he’s trying to solve. Because when a man’s partner gets killed… oh, wait, no, wrong story. Gordon’s trying to figure out what happened because he woke up from a bender next to a dead body. Though his motivations waver and do a 180 at some point in Noir. Brubaker likes threatening and victimizing to get a reaction in the book, which is really too bad. There’s a lot of gimmick–the Batman cast back in the late forties, complete with Selina “The Cat” Kyle and a guy named Napier who ends up the ill-advised, last minute supervillain.

And Harvey Dent’s around, of course. And some crime boss. And some dirty politicians. And who knows who else.

With Sean Phillips’s beautiful, post-war urban Americana noir art–ably colored by Dave Stewart–Noir shouldn’t be able to go off the rails. Unfortunately, Brubaker runs out of mystery a lot sooner than he should. He goes for sensationalism for impact, instead of ingenuity of solution. It’s not like Gotham Noir’s Jim Gordon is particularly smart. He’s not smart, he’s not charming, he’s just pitiable. Strange setup for a protagonist, which Brubaker enables by keeping the rest of the cast obtuse. They’re obtuse to Gordon, who recognizes it and doesn’t care, and to the reader, who probably should care because it’s supposed to be a mystery after all.

There are some similarities to Batman: Year One in terms of cast list and general plotting. And Phillips’s detailed, lush art… well, it doesn’t break the reminder.

But the problems with Gotham Noir aren’t from it cribbing Year One’s climax or Harvey Dent. The problems are with Brubaker’s handle on the whole thing. He sets it up to be interesting with Batman and then has to fall back on a Batman villain to make it interesting. Gordon’s a bystander in much of the story, which is fine for a hard-boiled p.i. story, but the other characters don’t make up for it. They’re boring. Selina The Cat’s a yawn fest–and the hinted love triangle (Bruce, Selina, and Gordon) never manifests into anything. Gotham Noir is a bunch of hints not manifesting into anything.

It’s got some good art and is wholly readable, but Batman: Gotham Noir is “just” another Elseworlds book.