Delayed Reaction: Mine

The Pitch: Armie Hammer, alone in a desert, going a little insane. It's like Phone Booth, without the phone booth or a person on the phone.

A soldier gets stranded alone in the desert after stepping on a mine that he can't take his foot off.

I'm a sucker for these "bar challenge" premises. Ideas that sound like something a bunch of drunk screenwriters would boast that they could pull off.

"I can do a whole movie where a guy doesn't take more than 10 steps from a phone booth" (Phone Booth)
"So, this guy gets buried alive. The whole movie is him inside a casket on the phone" (Buried)
"It's one actor the whole time, driving on the highway while he juggles a bunch of personal crises over a bunch of phone calls." (Locke)

"The husband dies on top of his wife while they're having sex. She's handcuffed to the bed and in a remote area. And there's a wold" (Gerald's Game)

None of these are favorites of mine, but I like the audacity of the ideas. So, as soon as I saw the trailer for Mine, I knew I had to see it. Armie Hammer steps on a mine early on and can't take his foot off it without exploding it. His buddy steps on one too and dies  shortly after. The rest of the movie is Hammer occasionally getting help from a mysterious local who shows up (and probably isn't a figment of his imagination), trying to arrange a rescue via walkie talkie without actually knowing where he is, and fighting off predators at night. It's a lean movie and it still has to pad its brief runtime. Hammer gives it his all though. It looks like Mine's directors specialize in films like this. I haven't seen any of the movies, but the descriptions all have the same "person trapped in an isolated situation" pitch. I'd expect them to know a few more tricks to keep it interesting than are on display in Mine. This is a very tough story to pull off. There has to be something for the actor to play off. The ideas this movie comes up with don't work that well. The army officer on the other end of the walkie is designed to not be helpful. The local who is helping him doesn't make a lot of sense. I felt cheated by how his story ties into the climax of the movie. I love the idea for the movie. It's why I'm certain to see The Wall from last year eventually too. The execution is what left a lot to be desired.

It feels weird saying this, but I could really feel the lack of budget too. Perhaps it was the trailers of the DVD for other movies from that studio (I like to watch those for smaller studios, since it's likely I haven't heard of some of the movies), which didn't have such limited premises to hide behind. Or maybe is was that in the moments when a decent budget could've been shown off (the assassination mission early on, or when the friend hits the first mine), they didn't show off. This just always felt like I was watching a movie that was trying to hide its budget limitations rather than embrace them (See: Clerks, Tangerine).

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Lagaan

The Pitch: What's a sports epic the Americans haven't already done? Well, they don't understand Cricket.

In the late 1800s, the men of a small Indian village play a game of Cricket against British officers. They get no taxes for 3 years if they win and triple taxes is they lose.

Mark me down for two Indian movies now. I'm not sure why I've started tracking Indian movies down lately. The Chinese market is where international focus has been going in recent years. I mean Wolf Warrior 2 (a Chinese film) is the one that made over $850 million with only $2.7 million coming from the U.S. Given that I'm a movie populist by mission statement (See Club 50), you'd think I'd look in that direction. Personally, I blame my fascination with Indian films on IMDB. Indian films are well represented in the IMDB Top 250 considering the American slant of the site. There's always a few Indian movie trailers I come across for my monthly Movie Previews (I rarely include them because, I guess I'm xenophobic - or don't feel equipped to pass judgment). There's also that local theater that's always playing a few Indian films thank to a growing Indian population in the area.

Of the streamable titles, Lagaan is the most recommended Indian movie I've come across. So, I set aside an entire night (more on that in a bit) and decided to watch it.

Lagaan is conventional in just about every way. I mean this in a good way. There's nothing complicated about the movie. It's a sports movie. There are clear heroes and villains; haves and have-nots. The cricket team has every character type you'd expect - the reckless leader, the brute, the fool, the outsider, the veteran, the turncoat, etc. All of their stories play out exactly as you'd expect. The lead villain has no complications to him. He's just a bad guy. The stakes are simple: win and get no taxes, lose and get triple. Given the years of drought, that is essentially life or death. It's also a direct pull from Kurosawa. This movie is Seven Samurai. The first half is assembling the team; the second half is the battle. They are defending the poor village against outsiders who are trying to raid them. Don't worry, there's a love triagle too. The game? It's a come-from-behind victory. They find an unlikely ally among the ranks of the enemy too.

I honestly can't find a single original thought in this movie. Everything is pulled from Stroywriting 101. It works though, because there isn't a trace of irony to it. Lagaan isn't pretending to be anything more than what it is on the surface. It's an earnest sports movie, made epic by the stakes and length (I'm getting to it, I swear).

It's also everything I associate with Indian films*. There are big, catchy song and dance numbers. The movie is quite wholesome. It's about Cricket, for crying out loud. How much more Indian could it get? It's very long (I'm almost there). I came out of this movie feeling like I just had a crash course in the Indian film industry (kind of like seeing Forrest Gump in the U.S.).

*I'm trying to avoid "Bollywood", because I know that's just one variety of the Indian film industry. I don't want to incorrectly attribute Lagaan to the wrong one, although I have a feeling it's like calling a movie produced by Canada a "Hollywood movie" (i.e. an understandable and not that meaningful distinction).

That length though. Good god. I'd like to watch more Indian movies, but they are so damn long. Inexplicably long. The movie doesn't drag. There's just 40% more of everything. I'm used to the American version of this that would have 3-4 more montages, no song and dance numbers, and would focus on half as many people on the team. I'm not suggesting that the American version or cut of this would be better. Lagaan works because of the specific balance of all the pieces. I just don't know how it filled almost 4 hours. It reminds me of when I read the unabridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Despite being 3-4 times as long as the abridged version I read in high school, I couldn't think of anything in the full version that the shorter version was missing. I didn't get appreciably more out of the unabridged version despite having substantially more content. What I'm trying to say is this. If I like an Indian movie as much as a similar non-Indian movie that's one or two hours shorter, I'm less likely to pick the Indian movie. So, I won't be getting to as many Indian movies as my enjoyment of them would suggest.

Make no mistake, I did like Lagaan. I was fully invested in the game at the end (once I kind of figured out the rules). I liked and disliked all the characters the appropriate amount. My notes called Paul Blackthrone "Wannabe Billy Zane" until I finally looked him up. Aamir Khan is great in the lead role. That man has charisma. The songs have been stuck in my head since watching this. Correction: an approximation of the words of the songs have been stuck in my head. Any fan of sports movies would get a kick out of this. Just, you know, set time aside that's equivalent to  watching a basketball game that's gone into 6 overtimes or a baseball game with a long rain delay.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Kill Your Darlings

The Pitch: The lives of the beat generation writers were kind of fucked up.

The story of how many of the beat writers first met.

There is a reason why some movies disappear.

I was pretty excited about Kill Your Darlings when I first heard about it. I don't know much about the beat generation writers although I recognize a lot of their names. I liked how terrific the cast of the movie was. In 2013, I already knew I liked Daniel Radcliffe, Michael C. Hall, Ben Foster, David Cross, and Elizabeth Olsen. I've since rediscovered my appreciation for Jennifer Jason Leigh. Dane DeHaan and Erin Drake are known quantities now too. I'd probably know who Jack Huston was as well if I ever picked Boardwalk Empire back up. However, after hitting the festival circuit, this movie disappeared. I never heard another thing about it. I never read a Valerian review saying "you may remember Dane Dehaan from indie movies like Kill Your Darlings...". There's no Now You See Me 2 review talking about how "Daniel Racliffe returns to a summer franchise after spending his early post-Harry Potter years making smaller movies like Kill Your Darlings". The director hasn't used the movie as a lauchpad to bigger movies. It's not on any overlooked gems lists for the year. I spent so long waiting for the movie to show up on a streaming service that I finally gave up and rented the DVD from Netflix.

This movie is OK. It hits its points a little too hard. I smirked at any of the classroom scenes. Of course, they have the oldest, whitest, stodgiest professor delivering a speech about the strict rules of poetry. Ginsberg (Radcliffe) raises his hand, and like a luminary, asks why can't someone break the rules. I get it. The beat writers were about doing whatever society said they shouldn't. There are subtler ways to say it and there's no need to underline the same point so much.

Some version is the phrase "the truth is stranger than fiction" is repeated too much. It's not actually true.

            A unicorn speaking Latin taught a lizard how to ride a bike.

The truth is never going to be weirder than a sentence like that. "Strange" is literally defined by being unfamiliar, alien, or hard to understand. What the phrase "the truth is stranger than fiction" is really trying to say is closer to "if it wasn't true, then I wouldn't believe it".

            I met 14 people today who were all named Gwendolyn.

The odds of that being true are just about non-existent unless you went to a medieval fair or you work for the census bureau and are tracking people down alphabetically by first name. So, if that sentence was true, it would be more remarkable than any fiction. Truth is bound. Fiction is not.

The reason I bring this up is because the true story of Kill Your Darlings is pretty hard to believe. Any time a small group of friends or associates can all become big names relatively independently like Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac is pretty incredible. The fact that there's this sensational murder in the middle of it all adds another layer. I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't true*. The movie struggles to deal with this. It wants to fit all these disparate pieces into the story, because it's really cool that the disparate pieces are all really connected. But, they aren't connected in a way that fits an easy narrative. Even just the beat generation philosophy and the murder story are at odds a lot of the time, let alone the individual characters' stories.

*Yeah, I understand that there are certain liberties taken with the story, but even just the true parts feel unlikely.

I apologize for this Reaction being 90% side-tangents. Kill Your Darlings assembles a better cast than it knows what to do with. I was fine watching it. It's competently made. It just tries to do too much and feels pretty fragmented as a result.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend