Is this Moore’s last documentary?
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - 6 Comments
If people aren’t going to rise up, why bother? That’s too bad: ‘Capitalism’ is his best one yet.
Michael Moore is frustrated. He’s the most commercially successful documentary filmmaker in history. He’s won an Oscar and a Palme d’Or from Cannes. And while the American Dream lies in ruins, he’s become an odd embodiment of it, acquiring fame and wealth by serving as scrappy champion of the poor—capitalism’s Little Tramp, as the New York Times dubbed him. But Moore is getting weary of the role. Two years ago, he made Sicko to expose the horrors of private health insurance, only to see his showroom-perfect new President savaged in a losing battle for publicly funded health care. So last week, as Moore launched Capitalism: A Love Story at the Toronto International Film Festival, he threatened to take his marbles and go home: if the people aren’t going to rise up, he may quit documentaries altogether and do what he’s often been accused of doing all along—make fiction movies.
That’s too bad, because Moore is at the top of his game. Capitalism: A Love Story may be the best film of his career. In all the debate over his politics, Moore’s artistry tends to get overlooked, but this blunt instrument in a ball cap has, in fact, become a highly sophisticated filmmaker—something he feels he gets no respect for. “I never have a discussion with anyone about the art of this,” Moore told me recently, “or how much time or effort I put into trying to make a really great movie. But I’m a filmmaker. I don’t run a political organization. That is part of why I’m feeling this way. I have movies I want to make. I led the charge during the eight years of Bush, and it would be nice to have some help so I can go make that romantic comedy.” Continue…
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Why remake a perfectly good movie?
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments
‘The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3’ turbocharges a cult classic with a double dose of adrenalin
Hollywood loves to cannibalize itself. Every summer, the studios plunder past glories with sequels, prequels, reboots—and remakes. The most shameless of those ruses is the remake, which makes a virtue of unoriginality. It begs the question: why remake a perfectly good movie? Usually the motive is crassly commercial—to reproduce a proven hit for an audience unaware of the original because it’s too old, too obscure, or in French. Sometimes a remake is an auteur’s arty homage, such as Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot facsimile of Psycho (1998)—or, more perversely, Michael Haneke’s shot-for-shot American clone of his own German-language Funny Games.Like sequels, remakes tend to be inferior to the originals. Prominent stinkers include star-driven vehicles like Swept Away (Madonna), Get Carter (Sly Stallone), The Nutty Professor (Eddie Murphy), Vanilla Sky and War of the Worlds (both with Tom Cruise). But some are classics in their own right—most famously The Wizard of Oz, which was a remake of a silent movie, and The Magnificent Seven, a western based on Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Then there are the customized knock-offs of genre films by classy directors, like Brian De Palma’s Scarface, David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.
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When you’re upstaged by a highway
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM - 2 Comments
Joshua Jackson’s stardom takes a back seat in the most slavishly Canadian movie of all time
For Joshua Jackson, it was supposed to be a triumphant homecoming. After spending a dozen years in the U.S.—half of them coming of age with Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams in the cast of Dawson’s Creek—at the age of 30, this Vancouver-born actor was finally making his debut as a Canadian movie star in a Canadian movie. He had got time off from his Fox TV series, Fringe, and was flying from his home in New York to attend last fall’s premiere of One Week at the Toronto International Film Festival. Then he lost his passport; he had to cancel the trip. Making matters worse, his wife, actress Diane Kruger, had flown in ahead of him, and had to wait five hours to catch a flight back to New York. “I completely screwed the pooch,” Jackson told me sheepishly in a recent interview. “Rarely have I been so embarrassed.”
What’s ironic is that this émigré actor who somehow misplaced proof of his national identity is starring in what has to be the most slavishly Canadian movie of all time. He plays Ben, a frustrated Toronto teacher and novelist who learns he’s dying of cancer. Impulsively, he buys a vintage Norton motorcyle, ditches his brittle fiancée (Liane Balaban), and heads west. Shot along the Trans-Canada Highway, en route to Tofino, this bittersweet road movie turns into a virtual souvenir shop of Canadiana, from the roll-up-the-rim message on a Tim Hortons cup that lifts Ben’s spirits to the kitschy roadside monuments that serve as his stations of the cross—including the world’s biggest Muskoka chair, Inukshuk, hockey stick, paper clip, fire hydrant, nickel, teepee, dinosaur, goose and muskie.
