Zack and Miri Make a Porno

One feels odd using the term mature to describe as sophomoric a director as Kevin Smith but a refined crudeness makes Zack and Miri an oddly satisfying film. Smith brings the joy filmmaking to his work, albeit the joy of a thirteen year old who has just discovered a camera. Of course, he also has the scene of humor of a thirteen year old boy. Yet the raw humor is so pleasingly set forth and supported by a strong sense of craft that the film works. The great moments in the movie come from Smith’s ability to support both the awareness that this is film while never throwing it in the viewer’s face. At times the camera lingers on an actor or a scene when cutting away would keep the viewer immersed in the action. This second or two in which the image is held in front of the viewer reinforces the basic pleasure of film, seeing things on the screen. We often make the mistake of thinking that seeing reality or being immersed in a world is the triumph of film. Instead the pleasure of film is its very artifice and Smith loves the artifice of film, recognizes it and uses it. He never teases the audience by jarringly breaking the barrier between film and audience or breaking it simply for the sake of breaking them, rather he sees film as a creative, playful medium whose artifice is its great joy.

Gran Torino

I had fun watching Clint Eastwood play a badass, epitaph spewing old codger. The role is a familiar one for Eastwood, a descendent of Dirty Harry and not unlike his character in Million Dollar Baby. But Eastwood is so good at playing the part it doesn’t get old (so to speak). One still marvels at his intensity and cool. I can’t think of another septuagenarian who could pull this part off with the gusto Eastwood brings to it. The rest of the movie, however, is nothing more than a hackneyed piece of garbage. The plot lacks surprises. The other characters have all the depth of those found in after school specials. In scene after scene Eastwood as director trots out one stenotype and cliché after another. The worst moment in the movie comes when Eastwood intervenes in a confrontation between a wannabe white gangster and the three tough black guys who stand on the corner. The white guy trying to pass as black by calling the black guys “bro,” is the best they could come up with? The black guys calling the white guy a pussy? One could say that these characters don’t matter. They are just occasions for Eastwood to be Eastwood. But the scene on the corner and others like it are so formulaic , the characters so flat that they kill the movie. One sees Eastwood trying to give these scenes emotional weight; there is a desire to flesh out the film, which causes some of the worst parts of the movie to get way more time on the screen than they deserve. But the writing leaves these characters as such voids and the scenes so unoriginal that there just isn’t anything there. The blame for this probably lies at the feet of first time script writer Nick Schenk. Which is not to deny that the script has potential; one sees why Eastwood was attracted to the project. But the script needed a serious rewrite, particularly its handling of the gang members. In the end, watching Eastwood in something so bad left me feeling sorry for him and wishing he had found a better vehicle to bring his tough guy persona to the screen for what may be the last time.