Tropic Thunder

Ahh... The beauty of controversy... Especially when the people who are kicking it all up have either not seen the thing their complaining about, or completely missed the point. Tropic Thunder is Ben Stiller's first time back in the directing chair since Zoolander, a film that made fun of the idiocy of the modelling business, and male models, in particular. This time around, Stiller is taking on the idiocy of his own breed - actors and directors. With a well-rounded out cast of talent, including once, and now current, golden boy Robert Downey Jr., Steve Coogan, Danny McBride, Jack Black, and Tom Cruise (in a surprisingly hilarious role), Stiller is out to win your heart for this movie with a lot of R-rated laughs.

The film centers around the production of a war movie, also titled Tropic Thunder, which is being led by an ego-maniacal director, Damien Cockburn (played by Steve Coogan). Cockburn has wrangled up several of Hollywood's leading actor's, including action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller), comedian Jeff Portnoy (Black), and Kirk Lazarus (Downey Jr.), an Australian multi-award winner. After only a week of filming, the production is hopelessly off schedule and over budget, and the actors aren't cooperating with Cockburn's direction. Fearing his eminent dismissal by the head honcho's in charge, Cockburn decides to gather up his leads, along with explosives expert Cody (played perfectly by Danny McBride), and the author of the source novel, Four Leaf Tayback (played by a very grungy Nick Nolte), and head out into the jungle to shoot the film guerilla style, in hopes that this will inspire his actors to deliver the performances he's looking for. Needless to say, things go awry from the moment they touch down, and soon enough, the whole Tropic Thunder crew is living out the movie there supposed to be making.

This film was hilarious! That's it. That's all I can say. One of the funniest things I've seen all year. And, it's sort of like The Dark Knight of comedy's - you feel like you could watch it over and over, and it would never stop being funny. Everybody's performances were great, and Stiller did an amazing job for being co-writer, director, AND actor. I can't imagine what that process must have been like.

The controversy, though, centers around the inclusion of a movie that Tugg Speedman did, as a chance to get an award, called Simple Jack. That "film" was about a mentally challenged individual. Several mental disability advocate groups have taken to saying that the film makes fun of the mentally disabled. I got news for you - It doesn't. If they had SEEN the movie, they would know that. Simple Jack isn't about showing mentally disabled people as stupid or people to be made fun of. It's purpose is to show the idiocy of actors who try desperately to attach themselves to projects like that, because they think it will get them awards. Tugg Speedman is an action star. He doesn't get any real respect, so he goes out and makes a movie like Simple Jack thinking that everyone will love it, and be challenged by it, and they'll heap awards on him. Instead, people laugh at him, and scorn him (until he finds some people who DID like the film, but I won't ruin that for you). It's the same concept that he's using for Downey Jr.'s character Kirk Lazarus. Lazarus lobbies to play the part of the platoon's black leader. There's only one problem, though - he's white. So he goes through an operation to have his pigment darkened so he can play the role. AND THEY HIRE HIM! Why would anybody, in their right minds, hire a white, Australian guy to play the part of a black, southern platoon leader? But that's the point! It's to show the ridiculousness of some of the decisions that Hollywood makes sometimes. And if you watch the movie, and you don't get that fact... Honestly, I'd feel a little sorry for you...

Tropic Thunder is great. It's almost constant laugh's, a great satire of one of the largest entertainment industries in the world, and its done with great skill and loving care. Don't believe the negative hype about this film - go see it.

DVD - Youth Without Youth

It's been ten years since Francis Ford Coppola's last, credited, film as a director (he did directorial and editing work on a film called Supernova, when the studio was unhappy with the cut the original director turned in). Youth Without Youth represents Coppola's return both to directing, and, supposedly, to his roots as an independent filmmaker.

Tim Roth plays an elderly professor of linguistics who, on his way to Bucharest to kill himself, is struck by lightning, burning his body badly, but leaving him still alive. He wakes up in a hospital and is presided over by a medical doctor/professor played by Bruno Ganz (who was incredible in Downfall). Roth's Dominic begins to make leaps and bounds in his recovery, and when they remove his bandages, the professor and other doctors find Dominic to be a man in his late thirties/mid forties, as opposed to the seventy + years old he claimed to be when he still had the bandages. Through this accident, Dominic realizes that he has been given, not only a new lease on life, but extraordinary powers. Just as he is beginning to realize this, though, the Nazi's are beginning their attempt at taking control of Europe. They find out about this anomaly of a person, and come after Dominic, who slips out from under them to Switzerland.

After the war ends, Dominic meets up with a woman, Laura (played by Alexandra Maria Lara), who is a spot on re-incarnation of his lost love from decades before, Veronica. He begins a new love affair with Laura, who has some supernatural issues of her own. But will this relationship help them discover the mysteries they seek to solve, or destroy them both?

Youth Without Youth is a good film. It's not great, but it is good. I don't really feel that this represents a TRUE return to the kind of independent filmmaking that Coppola used to do. I mean, c'mon, let's be real, who else out there has the money and studio connections to fund a period piece with the kind of subject matter that Youth tackles? Would this film have been made in the 1960's, before The Godfather, The Conversation, or Apocalypse Now? I doubt it. This isn't The Rain People, or even THX-1138 (which Coppola served as producer for).

The plot was just interesting enough to keep me focused on it, though, if you asked me what the movie was about, I would probably tell you that I have no clue. There are more twists and turns in the meaning of this film than I could count. The acting was well done, and felt very natural, considering the somewhat strange story. But, isn't that what Coppola does best? Deal with actors?

The visual effects that he uses throughout the film, and the general visual style, I thought was interesting, though the cinematography itself was, at times, sorely lacking. Especially in the night scenes, where they pulled the student film trick of just shoving some blue gel on the lights to give it a "cold, night time" look. C'mon Francis, you've been out of film school for, what, forty years now? I know you can light better than that. The HD, also, looked kind of crappy sometimes. I think it would have served him much better, if he was trying to save money, to shoot Super 16. He would have kept all of the detail in the highlights, the night scenes would have looked better, and the over all look would have been much richer and deeper. Oh well, Soderbergh's Bubble suffered from the same problem.

I don't know, I liked Youth Without Youth, but, like I said before, I have no freakin' clue what its about. It's worth a watch, though, even if its just to enjoy an interesting story, and an interesting visual experience.