For the past -what, twelve-fifteen years now, we've been subjected to the Independent-with-a-capital-I movie. I think it was the combined success of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Stephen Soderburg's Sex, Lies and Videotapes that got producers thinking that there was in fact, gold in them there arthouse productions. As a result, a lot of the marketing campaigns of many smaller-budgeted productions tend to focus on the stories behind the cameras. How many times have we heard about Kevin Smith selling his comic collection to make 'Clerks'? Or Robert Rodriquez working as a test subject to finance 'El Mariachi'? (And he only spent $7000 dollars on it! Wow!) This promotion technique reached the apex of absurdity back when Sylvester Stallone appeared in 'Copland' twenty pounds overweight- and proceeded to do the talk-show circuit blathering about his 'struggle' to be 'taken seriously' as an 'Actor'. (I believe he was also trying to make a go of being a faux-primitive painter in the George Basilitz-Julian Schanbel-Jean Michael Basquat 'school'. Ugh.)
The problem with movies trying to set themselves apart from the pack by trumpeting their 'independence' is that even in the age of digital video and Youtube, even a first-time feature that's looking to get on actual movie screens and not some burnout's bed sheet in the basement is going to cost at least a million dollars. Any one who thinks that their heartfelt coming-of-age pic of a young girl sitting in her living room and discussing her latent lesbian tendencies which they shot with their dad's Betacam is going to Sundance, or even Slamdance-the 'Indy' independent film festival... Is going to be horribly disappointed.
For me, a real independent filmmaker is someone like Derek Jarman or Kenneth Anger. That is, someone who's creative impulses put them in the position of the 90 year old virgin. They aren't selling it out, but no one's buying anyways. And let's be honest, if your interests, like mine, veer towards the odd, the quirky, the out-of-the-way... you have to sit through a lot of shit to find the true gems. I suspect if you hypothetically gave both Stanley Kubrick and a whinging art-film school twit a phone with a video camera on it that holds five minutes of footage- Kubrick would still turn out something more engaging and thoughtful then the twit would. So I really don't think bragging about the lack of money spent on a film is really a virtue.
Which is what turned me off Juno (C+) initially. Combined with the above hype of low budget 'integrity', it tried to make the previous job, stripping, of screenwriter Diablo Cody (the pen name of Brooke Busey, who worked at an ad agency longer than she did as a stripper.) one of its selling points. The whole exercise came off as tremendously condescending to me. So she was stripping while she was writing this movie? So what? Should movie executives start hanging out at Hooters or Score's or the Peppermint Rhino to find that next William Goldman? Fortunately, Busey seems savvy enough to start downplaying this aspect of her life and wisely went off the radar after her Oscar.
As for the movie itself, it's actually not too bad. The enjoyment comes from seeing the characters, as well as the audience, have their initial takes of the other characters brought into question. Juno's parents don't flip out or come off as clueless dolts, the adoptive mother (Jennifer Garner) isn't the yuppie bitch we and Juno thought, and the adoptive dad (an awesome Jason Bateman) comes off as ultimately more childish than Juno herself. Juno's pregnancy is handled without any melodrama, and we get to see her Groucho Marx sense of humour masks her genuine anxiety.
So why the C+? That damned soundtrack, which is so cloying and faux-naif, critic Theo Panayides hit the nail on the head when he commented that director Jason Reitman, " unwisely fills the soundtrack with songs that sound like they're written by Phoebe in "Friends". They make that 'Hey, Delilah' song sound like a Magnetic Fields track...
Iron Man (B-) How to film a movie based on a comic: 1: Keep the nudging, winking, and smirking out of the script and out of the direction. They play it straight in this one, and really, that's the only way to play this particular comic book hero. (I'll let the Stan Lee cameo slide, since Marvel probably has a rider for these things in their movie deals.) 2: As I've said earlier, if you're going to have a drunken prick as your protagonist, who better to play him then Robert Downey Jr.? (Unlike Peter Parker, Tony Stark isn't a superhero with personal problems, he's a superhero with VICES.) 3: Three big action sequences is far better than ten little ones. The extended buildup between Tony Stark's capture and the appearance of Iron Man Mk. I gets the adrenaline a-pumpin'. 4: Speaking of the action sequences, this is only the second comic book movie that I've seen- Batman Returns being the first- that has a sense of proportion to them. While Brett Ratner might say, 'Fuck it, we'll have them throw bridges at each other.", in this one, director Jon Favernau's best tension moment has the suit seizing up owing to Stark getting ice on the thing. Oops.
What not to do: 1: 'Good lord! (choke!) My best friend and father figure was the one who betrayed me! How couldn't I have seen that coming in a story taken out of a comic book?' 2: Yes, Samuel L. Jackson is Nick Fury. That's important for the sequel. Why they left it after the credits is beyond me.
In the case of Iron Man, it's the type of movie that could have been a disaster if the aforementioned Ratner had worked on it, so you come out more relived then energized. If this is the template for future comic book movies, they could do a lot worse. ( I believe Marvel is setting up a whole franchise around the Iron Man-Avengers-Nick Fury-Hulk axis.) By the way, if you were looking for a subtext about the morality of the American military picking fights with brown men in Iraq, and Afghanistan- this isn't the place to be looking. Matter of fact, the minute we start to get a judgement call on the Armed Services 'over there', or even have Stark confront his drinking problem in the inevitable sequel(s), the whole franchise will crash and burn.
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