Late Night Trailers: The Wolf of Wall Street

As a final note before I actually sleep after yet another 20-hour day of nonsense, can we all just watch this trailer for Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street and give it a resounding hell yes? Scorsese re-teams with Leonardo DiCaprio for a tale of dark, debauched crime comedy about money laundering stockbrokers? Yes. "Black Skinhead" on the soundtrack, weird thing with the redeemed McConaughey I don't quite understand, extreme examples of inappropriate office partying? Ready. Set. Go. 

Like: Man of Steel

Beware, I'm about to spoil two movies (and a graphic novel).  Why? Well, it may be impossible for me to talk about Man of Steel without making note of the ways it often seems to be more of a loose addendum to the 2009 adaptation of Alan Moore's classic Watchmen than a zippy rehashing of the old DC Action Comics.  Our new Superman saga may correct some of the supposed wrongs wrought by Superman Returns (which I really must admit I didn't think was as dreadful as many), but in doing so it's a far bleaker affair. Man of Steel carries the weight of dead planets and features a Superman who can't yet stop the fatality count from rising, and whose no-kill policy of truth and justice is bent slightly out of whack. Though he didn't direct (as many misunderstand) Christopher Nolan's dark noir vision of comic legend colors his work developing the story. There are traces of something in line with the new Gotham here, but, ultimately, the lens flare fingerprints all point to a Zack Snyder coup that makes the movie work, but read to me as a bit like some sneaky trolling.

Man of Steel is a frantic, cobbled together affair built off the assumption that our cultural understanding of Superman's origin story will carry audiences through a very jarring, often completely unexplained sequence of early events. America - and perhaps the world- is well-versed in Clark Kent's years spent in Smallville, Kansas. Years of television shows and repeat films have made sure of that, and Snyder attempts to deftly veer away from spending too much time on the Kent family farm and show us a big picture we haven't seen quite as much of - and from a different angle.  While purists may cry foul, Man of Steel is a stylish affair devoted to immersing the viewer in something other than simple repetition.  After an extended moment spent in Kal-El's infancy on a crumbling Krypton, where we're introduced to a battle of wills and principles between "Superman's dad" Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and the megalomaniac General Zod (Michael Shannon), the narrative gets caught trying to pull too much together.  We see lessons from Earth dad Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) blended with occasionally tough to follow intersections of adult Clark (Henry Cavill) working odd jobs and sticking up for folks. This isn't a Superman tale that picks up with Clark Kent working at the Daily Planet, but it is one that finds Lois Lane (Amy Adams) hot on his trail.  The problem is, it's hard to figure out exactly why.      

The events that push Lois Lane towards her discovery are utterly forced and seem to swing out of nowhere. To get through them requires a suspension of disbelief far more potent than any required to buy into the notion of a flying dude in a cape.  If you can make it through the deep logical flaws and inconsistencies of the film's first half, and Michael Shannon's completely out-of-character lack of clout, you will be rewarded with a rich second half loaded with expertly designed comic book battles and stunning visuals.  When Man of Steel gets to the flying and fighting, it operates at a dizzying fever pitch.  When it stops? Things tend to get a little shaky.  Shannon, as mentioned, is a surprising dud here. After proving his ability to pull off menacing intensity in just about everything including Premium Rush, Zod's threats of genocide almost make Loki sound threatening. Someone seems to have caught on to this early on, as there's simply no other way to explain the plot's insistence on throwing the nasty Faora-Ul (Antje Traue).  Kryptonian nationalists aside, Cavill slips between 'aw shucks' native son and majestic alien-god figure with little difficulty, and he has the right look to pull off even the most constipated of facial expressions while hurtling through the Earth's atmosphere. The shrewder take on Lois Lane, too, is to be appreciated though at times the character's presence seems oddly contrived.

What struck me the most, though, were the aforementioned ways in which Man of Steel occasionally reads as a continuation/adaptation of some of Watchmen's M.O.  Sure, there's no Cold War or threat of nuclear war, but Snyder draws us a Superman who, once exposed, is not immediately welcomed by military forces or the general population.  He's forced out of hiding to become a costumed hero, but at points the threat he's battling seems more like the best case/unplanned version of the scenario plotted out by Watchmen's Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias): an alien invasion threatens Earth, lands in a major city (Metropolis/New York), decimates that city's population only to succeed in bringing together the world to combat a mutual threat.  Veidt kills three million with a giant squid monster to force peace and hope, Zod lands in Metropolis in a squid shaped vessel filled with squid-like things.  Superman, meanwhile, grapples with his outsider status. He too wants to bring hope to the people, he too is considered a threat.  What's uncomfortable about Snyder and Nolan's vision of Superman is that when he "saves" the city, he leaves most of it in ruins. We don't get the hero who appears just in time to sweep hoards of plummeting people to safety, we don't get the hero who we see picking up wreckage or ferrying away the wounded.  Instead, we get a shrug of acceptance from a military presence. Though the film ends on a winning, pumped-up note, there's a strange sense permeating the story that Clark Kent's logic is in line with Veidt: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Au Revoir, Google Reader! Time to get some Bloglovin'...

It was a sad sad day a few months back when Google announced they'd be retiring Google Reader from their Skynet-sized roster of resources. While I haven't a clue what brought about the decision (I certainly used it, did you?), I've since been idling on where to transfer my RSS subscriptions.  There are any number of options out there (Feedly was recommended to me), but for now I've opted to run with a service this very blog has previously pulled readers from, and which possesses a glossy, user-friendly feed to help smooth out the already tough transition: Bloglovin'.

If you follow Love & Squalor here or on Twitter, you know I periodically remind folks it's an easy place to keep track of new entries and to find all kinds of amazing new blogs to read.  As I was transferring over my subscriptions (holler at me if you feel like I should be checking out your site!), I took a screen shot to help catch the simplicity of the design:

 
If this is sounding like a big plug for Bloglovin', I'm afraid it's far more self-serving than that.  I wish Bloglovin' encouraged me to do this, but I totally just want to keep seeing people. Whatever your method, as the change comes, I'm hoping not to lose all of you quiet but present repeat visitors.  Bloglovin' has been working for me thus far, but if you've got a method you prefer, I'd love to hear it.  Digg will have a Reader replacement soon, as will many others; Pulse and Flipboard seem to work for some (though I find the latter glossy but claustrophobic).

Anyhow, follow Love & Squalor on Bloglovin' by clicking here.

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Love: Mud

Despite a surplus of positive word of mouth, I'd sort of written off Mud as some inevitably exhausting bore. It read like the bastard child of last summer's big-ticket indie films: kids floating around southern waters, Matthew McConaughey, other stuff...you know what I mean. There was little chance of Mud surprising me, and so I didn't run to it.  I'm a bit ashamed of this fact, of course. Not because the film proved me wrong, no (sometimes you can just sort of see the way something will unfold), but because that excuse is a terrible reason not to experience the nuances and methods of an individual story.  It shouldn't matter whether the trailers have made the outcome transparent, or whether we've seen material like this before.  A film like Mud is simply about the storytelling process. We're watching something slowly unfold, not flailing towards the inevitability of the ending.  

Mud is the third film from Take Shelter director Jeff Nichols, and he seems to have a knack for pinning down the way life in rural settings seems to accentuate the balance between man and nature. Here, the natural provides something of a fairy tale quality to the lives of young Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Loflan).  Ellis lives in a shack of a houseboat along the Mississippi with his unhappy parents. Given even a ghost of a chance to, he escapes on small adventures with Neck. Together, they're a modern Tom and Huck, a pair who get up to trouble in Piggly Wiggly parking lots and who take things in stride. Ellis and Neck have an enviable freedom, a lack of responsibility that finds them riding dirt bikes through the woods and slipping away to a deserted island in search of a boat lodged by flood waters in the branches of a tree. Of course, when they find it, it's already inhabited by a mysterious vagrant who calls himself Mud (Matthew McConaughey).  Because this is that kind of movie, the kids strike a deal with him a la Great Expectations.  They'll bring him food from the mainlands. When he leaves? The boat will belong to them.

With Mud, Ellis and Neck are given a purpose. They're amateur detectives, scavengers, and assistants. Though they have no real reason to, they are drawn to the man, Ellis in particular.  Perhaps it's because he communicates with them without condescension, perhaps because they feel they can truly help, or maybe because sharing a secret builds a powerful bond.  Whatever it is, as the secrets of Mud's past are slowly revealed, the necessity of this connection becomes palpable in its energy.  What's surprising about Mud certainly isn't its concluding chapter, but is instead the individual potential of its characters. They have the ability to surprise us while remaining in character, and we become close to Ellis and Neck as we first realize that they are more complicated than we gave them credit for, and then as they themselves begin to understand that the adults in their world all house richer past lives and stories 

Ellis and Neckbone are written a bit like Spielberg kids, the sort you'd expect to find populating one of his earlier films, hiding away Mud like E.T.. Nichols allows them to carry the film and doesn't divert our attention to the talented adult actors just on the sidelines. Sheridan and Loflan hold the story up between dalliances with McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Michael Shannon, and Sam Shepard. And though McConaughey here has a certain charismatic charm that makes for a powerful performance, he shares his scenes with Tye Sheridan, and the kid makes a good go of it.  




While the film's final act is unfortunately also its weakest moment, Mud has a life to it that makes it something better than our last glimpse.  Though the story shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone, Mud is a good, solid film made of sturdy stuff that's just plain better than should be possible.