Don’t Overlook It: Micmacs

For whatever reason, I didn’t end up posting this on Box Office Prophets. It’s a review of Jean Pierre-Jeunet’s newest film, Micmacs. I didn’t see it until well after its release date, but finally managed to get to it.

When I wrote whatever the column equivelant of a mini-series is with my “Best Overlooked Films Revisited” articles, my goal was to shed some light on great films that it seems like nobody but me saw, hopefully getting them a little more attention and some more fans. I’ve often considered myself a champion of the little guy (I’ll be rooting against the Miami Heat this season just to teach Lebron James a lesson) especially when the indie Davids tend to be so much better than the Hollywood Goliaths.

Now that I’ve caught all of you up on the great overlooked films released since 2004, we can start talking about movies that are currently being released in theaters and on DVD. Hopefully you’ve seen a few of the titles I’ve mentioned and you realize just how amazing these movies are. So after you get out of your midnight screening of Inception, you can get the inside scoop on the great movies that aren’t getting talked about on Entertainment Tonight or, really, anywhere else… ever. Until now!

Micmacs is a perfect example of a foreign, independent film that everyone should see, because it takes a classic Hollywood story and injects it with a delicious dose of whimsy and magic. If you hear the word whimsy and don’t immediately think of Jean-Pierre Jeunet then you clearly haven’t seen Amelie, Jeunet’s most well-known film. If that’s the only Jeunet film you’ve seen, then you’re missing out on the work of one of the most creative filmmakers in the world today, and I strongly suggest you get off your butt and go see Micmacs.

Micmacs is a change of pace from Jeunet’s last film, A Very Long Engagement, an epic and tragic war film. This time Jeunet focused less on the story and character development then on crafting superb visuals, perfectly executed with wonderful comedic timing. There might not be a better director of visual comedy right now than Jeunet, and he pulls out all of the stops with Micmacs. If Jeunet’s latest is at its most simple level an exercise in slapstick and farce, it hits the mark perfectly and draws comparisons to Jacque Tati or early Buster Keaton, comparisons that are high praise indeed.

And the story is entertaining enough to keep the film moving from gag to gag. The film’s protagonist is Bazil, a film buff who ends up broke and homeless after a stray bullet embeds itself in his forehead. Knowing that he could die at any minute, Bazil moves in with a strange collection of homeless people, each with their own unique talents and personalities. When he finds the company that produced the bullet in his forehead, and discovers that it is the chief rival of the company that produced the landmine that killed his father when Bazil was just a boy, Bazil hatches a plan. With the help of his new posse, he pulls off a series of elaborate heists to escalate the conflict between the two rivals as a way of getting revenge on them.

Micmacs is a film about taking control of your own life, as Bazil reacts to the misfortune thrust upon him with optimism and a proactive sensibility. It is also a classic story of the little guy sticking it to the big, evil corporate goliath. In fact, the film is remarkably similar to Ocean’s 11, and one of Bazil’s crew is even a contortionist. But mostly Micmacs is about the smile you’ll have on your face the whole time you’re watching it. It is a sweet, funny, beautiful film with fantastic performances from Dany Boon as Bazil, Julie Ferrier as his contortionist love interest, and a host of other wonderful actors nobody this side of the Atlantic has heard of. If you’re tired of big, bloated Hollywood action movies—and considering its summer time you probably are—then Micmacs is the perfect palate cleanser, a delightful way to pass a couple of hours and walk away happy.

What I Learned from Movie X: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

This is a column that I started writing for Box Office Prophets. I had a lot of fun with it, and hope to start it up again someday. We’ll see.

“I’m sure that you assumed, while walking into Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, that you were in for another Michael Bay smorgasbord of explosions, boobs and explosions, with some fun racism thrown in for the kids. And yes, all of that was in there, but there was so, so much more (there kind of had to be; the freaking movie is two and a half hours long). Little did you know that you were actually about to be treated to one of the most blatant pieces of conservative propaganda shown in movie theaters since Glen Beck’s Common Sense Comedy Tour.

Read the Rest of This Article Here

All Day, Half the Knight

This is an article that I wrote shortly after seeing James Mangold’s “Knight and Day,” starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. My piece was published on the website “Overthinking It.”

“Typically, yes, the protagonist reaches a point where they realize what kind of movie they are in; at the very least the genre or the main plot, if not all of the important details. From there on, they know how to act, be it to chase after the girl of their dreams or run away from the man from their nightmares. But what if a character was wrong? What if the protagonist figures out what they have just gotten themselves into only to then be proven completely incorrect in their assumption? You would have the only interesting aspect of Knight and Day, that’s what…”

Read the rest of this article here: http://www.overthinkingit.com/2010/07/19/knight-and-day-ghost-ship-moment/

Review: Inception

God bless you, Christopher Nolan. Two years ago you made one of the most remarkable, interesting, complex Hollywood blockbusters in history – The Dark Knight, a superhero movie with ideas and complex relationships and fascinating characters to go along with the big explosions. Not only that, but you made a movie that made more money in the United States than any movie not made by James Cameron. The sky was the limit for you. You could have become another Hollywood hack, directing sequels and remakes and sleeping in piles of gold-plated money. That’s what everyone else has done, including Gore Verbinski, Roland Emerich, Michael Bay, John Turtletaub, even Peter Jackson and George Lucas. You could have joined their ranks, churning out Hollywood garbage, disappointing your millions of fans.

Read the Rest Here: http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/column/index.cfm?columnID=13039