A Grain of Salt

Will there be blood? Or just a two and a half hour waste of time?

Just when I was worried that my nascent career as a movie critic might be dying, due to the fact that I don't go to many movies and tend to hate most of the ones I see, I found something else to write about: There Will Be Blood.

It is, as most people know, the much hyped movie based on Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil," starring the creepy-as-ever Daniel Day Lewis as an oil tycoon gone wild. And it is, in my often disputed opinion, really fucking boring.

Yes, I know what you're saying. I should never write movie reviews; I don't "get" genius; I have horrible taste, etc. That all may be true, but when I walked out of the movie theater last night, I promised myself I'd write something -- mostly to justify that use of two and a half hours of my Saturday night.

Because despite the movie's provocative title -- not to mention the jarring, stressful soundtrack, written by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood -- it's surprisingly dull. The movie stretches about thirty years, from the 1890s to late 1920s -- a span of time that you definitely feel, once you've entered the movie's interminable second hour. And yet despite its length, I, at least, never felt any real connection to the characters. Daniel Day Lewis wants oil? Fine. Give it to him. Don't really care. Crazy preacher character wants him to become baptised and accept Jesus as his savior? Fair enough. Take your little straw cross, make some profits, bash in some heads, and wrap things up already. The most compelling character in the story to me was Day Lewis's "son," orphaned early in the film during a mining accident. Only problem is, he doesn't talk much -- and then goes deaf halfway through the film (oops! Spoiler alert!), which means he spends the second half of the movie even quieter than he'd been in the first. That's about it for characters. (This is not to say, by the way, that Day Lewis is bad. I actually think he should get an Oscar for his performance. I'm just not interested in the character he was playing.)

Also, as anyone who knows me is very, very aware, I hate violent movies. So it might be strange to hear me say that, after the title of the movie, I was a little let down. Hardly any blood, people. I'd suggest turning your head, as I did, during the shooting and head-bashing scenes, but other than that? No blood.  I mention that not because I was craving more head bashing/shooting scenes (if I'd wanted that, I'd have seen No Country for Old Men), but because I wanted dramatic tension, some conflict, something to care about. Instead, no one really challenged Day Lewis's character in his quest for oil; he didn't appear to have any aspirations other than money and a pipeline and a whole lot of whiskey. Which, if you couldn't figure it out on your own, is not a good recipe for a well-balanced life.

Anyway, point being, this movie didn't particularly bother me, but it didn't entertain me either. And it was long. And I was in the middle of the row. And, more than anything, I do not understand why people are calling it an epic, let alone something that goes to the "depths of the human psyche." Really? Is it because of its set design? Or Day Lewis's moustache? I guess it's a good thing most other films don't attempt to examine our psyche's depths, since apparently they're really fucking boring.

Lest it sound like I am just entirely a contrarian hater, though, I should point out that I also recently saw Juno and loved it. Loved it, loved it. Couldn't have asked for more. Would watch it again. But as for There Will Be Blood? Consider me your cautionary whale.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Happy New Year!

Hello, my salty friends. 2008 is upon us and my review of Into the Wild is still inciting rage from fans of Alex Supertramp. Amazing! I should write about movies more often.

The most recent addition are several angry rants by someone going by the name "Warnie" (though his comments show up as being posted by "Joe" ) who wrote three comments to the entry and then sent me a personal email that began with the greeting, "You are an idiot." To which I say, right back at you!

Feel free to check out his diatribe if you'd like, but I gather from his response that he thinks that my "dislike of nature is evident" and that if I can't deal with a protagonist dying at the end, I should "clean out my diaper" and turn on my favorite disney movie because my "conservative nature is not fit to be reviewing movies." Also, I apparently like, totally missed the deliberate parallel between Alex's "king of the world/top of the mountain" pose and Titanic -- movies which both "showed the relationship between the two rebellious, adventurous youngsters looking for a new life, and both of them being the protagonist die knowing their life has been a success." Silly me, not realizing the emotional impact Sean Penn was going for by making a reference to a movie best remembered for a hit song from Celine Dion.

Anyway, I don't really see what the fuss is about me hating a movie that, in my opinion, sucked donkey balls. That's fine. Buy yourself the director's cut DVD and spend another three hours of your life with a self-absorbed whiney brat. For the record, I should point out that I also hated Pulp Fiction and the Big Lebowski, which I understand, from many friends' outraged responses, is not a majority opinion.  I could tell you why I thought they were dreadful, except I've got to clean out my rifle and go shoot some helpless baby deer.

Thanks, Wernie!

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Into the Wild Got People Into this Blog

Whoah -- I was just about to write a different post and then noticed that my "review" of Into the Wild (where "review" is defined as "hating") has garnered more comments than any other post on this whole blog -- minus, perhaps, the "Ugg is for Ugly" fiasco of 2004. How exciting!

Several readers disagreed with me so strongly that they claim they'll never return to my "crappy website," (thanks, "Knark"!) -- and some people offered helpful suggestions, including the idea that I shouldn't go to any movie that might make me "feel or think," and that I might enjoy watching "Fantastic Four." (For what it's worth, I'm going to predict that I would hate that movie, too, but for different reasons.) My response: If you enjoyed Into the Wild, more power to you. Buy Krakauer's not-entirely-accurate biography of "Alex Supertramp," download the Eddie Vedder soundtrack, and hire someone to follow you around doing pretentious voiceovers of famous nature writers as you set off on a journey for your own magic school bus. All I am saying is that I, personally, did not like the movie and that it put me, personally, into a bad mood. If you loved it, and if you write comments about "Pure nature" in which the "P" is capitalized (for purity?) then that is fine. We probably would not be friends, and besides, you're right: in this case, I am indeed a hater. That does not actually mean that I would like to be an entertainment lawyer -- though if I were to become one, I suppose that might give me the training necessary to take legal action against Sean Penn's horrible movie. Not because of trauma, as Sam suggested, but for suckiness.

This is the blog for Salt Magazine.

Into the Wild put me Into a Bad Mood

Hi. So. Last night I saw Into the Wild, a movie which I hated. I hated it so much that I have spent the past ten minutes reading A.O. Scott's glowing review of it in the Times, which has gotten me so worked up that I feel the need to write about it myself.

Here is the brief, sum-it-all-up Catherine take on this film: It is bad. I do not care that Sean Penn directed it. I do not care that Eddie Vedder wrote the soundtrack. I do not care that A.O. Scott found it to be "infused with an expansive, almost giddy sense of possibility," or that he believes it "communicates a pure, unaffected delight in open spaces, fresh air and bright sunshine."

It sucked.

Things I do care about?

1. That it is two and a half hours long. TWO AND A HALF HOURS. If it were an enjoyable film, this would not be such an issue; as it is, I kept checking my watch to see how long its protagonist had to go before he died.

2. The protagonist dies. Don't worry; it's not a spoiler. Everyone who hasn't spent the past 100 days locked in a "magic school bus" knows that. What's weird about this particular movie -- compared, that is, to other movies in which you know the protagonist gets knocked off -- is that you spend most of the movie wanting him to die. I mean, really. It's the story of a totally narcissistic, idealistic 23-year-old guy who decides to give his life savings (by which he means the money his parents gave him) to Ox-Fam, burns up his ID and social security cards (and his remaining $500, just for kicks) and heads out on the open road, spewing irritating, self-aggrandizing quotes from the likes of Emerson, Thoreau and Tolstoy along the way.

3. Regardless of how strained his relationship with his parents was, I'm still irritated that he abandoned his family for over a year. I say this because he's got a sister -- mostly seen through melodramatic voiceovers (i.e. "After a while Chris's absence began to lie down on me full length" and a story about Chris breaking into a neighbor's candy drawer that concludes, "Whatever drawer Chris was opening now, I knew must have something truly sweet inside"). And I mean, SHE sticks around. So why is he given the moral high ground for up and leaving everyone with no communication, pushing his parents to nervous breakdowns? Go on ahead to Alaska, I wanted to yell. Say hi to the bears!

4. Gratuitous sweaty hippie sex scene between Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker. Need I say more?

5. Way too many scenes of him appreciating the beauty of the outdoors by climbing up on hills/mountains/magic schoolbuses and stretching his arms toward the sky in a Leonardo DiCaprio's Titanic "I'm the king of the world!" pose as the camera pans in a wide circle around him.

6. Upsetting scenes of him starving to death because, as Penn has chosen to portray it, he eats berries that ruin his ability to digest food and, if left untreated, cause death. I was like, first of all, you headed to Alaska to live in the woods and don't know what kind of fucking berries are safe to eat? And secondly, fine, you made that mistake. But now I the movie goer have to sit here and watch you die. Also, the final aerial shot of the schoolbus with the dead body in it? Totally Dead Man Walking.

7. It was two and a half hours long. Did I mention that already? Fine, he starved to death. Do I have to suffer along with him?

In conclusion, I hated this movie. It pissed me off for the first two hours and twenty minutes, and then the final ten minutes made me so upset that I went home and started crying.

Rated R for stupidity, melodrama, explicit starvation, brief Christ-like male nudity, annoying 23-year-olds, and self-aggrandizing voiceovers by wispy voiced younger sisters.

(This is the blog for Salt Magazine.)