Doogie D

SIN CITY is an okay movie, but bothersome. It's just empty, vigilante nihilism, basically, except for Bruce Willis' character. It's a set-'em-up, knock-'em-down kind of movie -- establish protagonist, establish villain, establish heinous deed(s), kill villain heinously; next story. The three main stories which make the lion's share of the movie are also pretty similar, so it gets repetitive and feels too long. There are lots of acts of violence, but for the most part they're very cartoonish, so we can squirm happily and know that nothing's really at stake -- certainly not our notions of the world or anything.

This is the part that bugs me: stuff like this and Kill Bill are these constructs, these exercises, just as much as something like Wimbledon or Summer Catch are. It doesn't bother me so much that we as an audience will go see a fluffy romantic comedy as it does that the better directors in the machine are now cranking out vengeance scenarios with witless but kind of inventive brutality, and that's our popcorn. I'm not thrilled with what that says.

There's nothing there; it's not like the constructions of, say, the Coens or Kubrick, which you can argue are cold, but at least are recognizably informed by life and thought; this stuff is informed by movies, basically, so you get hallmarks of characters without any fleshing out which really lets you get lost in that world. There's not a lot to think about when it's over (except how empty it is). And I know the argument against wishing for more is "it's just entertainment." Well, okay: then that turns it back to us. What are we seeking out as entertainment? But, yeah -- I bought my ticket, so I contributed. I should have gone with my instinct.

Yep -- it looks good, but that pleasure disappears pretty quickly. It's not Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow -- which was ridiculous in a whole other way -- but it suffers a similar effect: good technology just can't take the place of a gripping story. If this movie had been as cleverly plotted and populated as, say, Blood Simple, and we actually gave a damn about the characters except as action figures, it could've been a masterpiece; it had all the elements except for some bad acting here and there (Jessica Alba, and especially Michael Madsen, who is just awful).

It's just sad.

I'm not amazed that people enjoy this -- there's always been a market for lowbrow entertainment with a sheer poverty of imagination (as opposed to lowbrow entertainment which really soars); still, it's almost an affront that the name "Kevin Smith" and the word "genius" are sometimes found together.

JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK is soulless comedy, almost entirely devoid of wit (that prologue with the two as babies saves the day, in this case). Comedy without wit gets trotted out anew for each generation, so maybe one can forgive thirteen year olds who don't realize that this sort of pairing -- the hyper-verbal lead coupled with the silent but sage second banana -- is a conceit older than Shakespeare. It's been done to death, folks, and it truly does take a genius to make it work for just walk-on parts; Preston Sturges himself would have been hard-pressed to squeeze 90 minutes out of it.

Nevertheless, these are the central characters, so let's see what they're up to. Ah yes: an entire movie devoted to making the mediocre feel superior to the mediocre. Lots of self-referential back patting going on. Inferior direction that could only aspire to blandness. Imagine Ed Wood stretching out to three or four takes, and you get the idea.

Boy, I like this movie.

Two guys out on a hike get lost. They're less than ill-prepared for anything like an overnight outing, and they make one huge "gerry" -- their slang for a mistake -- and they get so, so lost. The movie simply follows them as they succumb (a bit too easily) to nature. There's a bit more to it than that, but I won't spoil anything.

Some people refer to "the title character" (both men are named Gerry); I couldn't help wondering if the movie's name was a noun or a verb.

I don't see it as pretentious at all. It's so simple that I think the effort to read anything oversized into the movie is probably the stroke of death. Does it have to mean anything? Aren't people interesting enough anymore? If Bergman can make a chamber piece like SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE (tons of dialogue and largely medium or close shots of actors' faces), why can't we have a story about two guys who screwed up and found themselves dying of exposure?

This is a movie that insists on slowing things down to life-pace -- not to say real time. But I thought it captured boredom and drudgery so well that I was constantly engaged. I like the long silences of two folks who know each other (and perhaps a little resentful of one another) and don't have to banter. Most humans, in real life, don't try to be "on" all the time for some imagniary movie-going public; I think it's great that we aren't insulted or asked to be charmed by our desperate Gerry's "witty banter."

-- not that the film is without humor, either. There's an oft-mentioned long take in which one Gerry, stranded on a rock, is coaxed into jumping. The camera doesn't move, and the scene is a masterpiece of economy, suspense, and wit. It's a beautiful mini-movie inside the larger film, and, as mentioned elsewhere, is alone worth the price of admission.

I think the best way to watch GERRY is to let it dictate its own terms and not demand that it function the way movies usually do. Meet the film on its own terms, and I hope you're as riveted as I was.

8 out of 10.