Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and Changeling

Zack and Miri Make a Porno
When I first heard about this project, two names caught my eye: Kevin Smith, and Seth Rogen. I've always had a sort of love/hate relationship with Smith... Clerks is a great little movie, and Chasing Amy is one of the best films of the '90s, but everything else he's done has either been really bad (Dogma - I know some people love it, but I just can't stand it) or just a flat-out comedy with little substance (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). I thought we'd lost Kevin to mediocre films forever. My hope was restored after seeing Clerks II, a picture I had little interest in seeing until I finally caught it a year later on video. It was a great companion piece to the original, with a lot of heart and great Kevin Smith dialogue. People said he had finally grown up. To be honest, I saw evidence of this two years prior in Jersey Girl. Granted, it's not that great of a movie, but I really liked the first ten minutes - it was all high drama, and handled well. Ben Affleck turns in some of his best acting in that opening, and George Carlin is terrific all throughout the picture, in a rare dramatic role (and his last live-action role before his death.) Yes, everything goes downhill amazingly fast after that opening sequence -it's formulaic in the worst way - but I saw potential. Clerks II delivered on that potential, and I anxiously awaited his next movie. When I heard Seth Rogen was in it, I was sold. Thankfully, it was every bit as good as I'd hoped. And even though I doubt it will appear on many year-end best lists, it was, quite honestly, one of my favorite films of the year.
Obviously, this is a crude comedy. But it strikes that balance between laughs and sentiment that so many films strive for, yet fail to achieve. It's the best film of its kind since The 40 Year Old Virgin, and like that film, which was a surprise nominee for a Writers Guild of America screenplay award, I'd like to see the same thing happen here. It's a great film with memorable characters and strong direction from Kevin Smith. One scene in particular has some use of slow-motion in a dramatic context, and it's very effective.
It's unfortunate that this film wasn't a runaway hit. It was released on Halloween night, and I think had it been given a summer release, it would have fared better. But it's well worth a look. It's been given polite praise by the critics, but I have a feeling that if this $25 million dollar picture had been a $5 million independent production, we'd be seeing a few raves here. But it's no matter - Zack and Miri is a great movie, and Kevin Smith's best to date.

Changeling
Oh, no. Here we go again. A Clint Eastwood movie. Let me try and contain my sarcasm.
Most people who know me know that I'm not a big fan of Eastwood's films as director. I think he's incredibly overrated and out of everything he's ever done, Mystic River and Flags of Our Fathers are probably the only pictures he's ever done that have been deserving of the praise he seems to get consistently. I think Million Dollar Baby was one of the biggest pieces of shit ever nominated for Best Picture, and it was a crime that it won the award in a year that saw films like The Aviator and Sideways (one of the best American films of the last 10 years) released. But, as always, I try to go into a movie with an open mind. Even with the abortion that was Million Dollar Baby still fresh in my mind, I was able to go into Flags of Our Fathers and come out seeing that it was a pretty good movie.
But now we come to Changeling. This movie is overlong, overbearing, and overblown. I've never known Eastwood to be a subtle director, and this is clear evidence of it right here. People in this movie are either "good" or "bad", with no shades of gray. Each and every point is hammered over our heads, and then hammered down again, to make sure we've gotten it. The film proceeds to drag everything out over a two-and-a-half hour span, and as we think we've gotten to the end, it keeps going on - one, two, and three times over - until we just want to get the hell out of the movie theater. This movie could have easily been less than two hours.
People cheer in the courtroom and the judge never calls for "order in the court", the chief of police is horribly miscast - with a terribly fake Irish accent, and John Malkovich is wasted in a thankless role. Thank God the critics seem to have actually seen the movie this time, as the picture has gotten below-average reviews. I mean, listen: It's not a horrible movie. It's actually on-par with most of Eastwood's work - meaning, of course, that it feels like a film from the 40's: it feels scripted and it feels calculated. That's the way he does things. I guess my problem with it is that I don't feel his type of films have any real place in the film world of today. There are people out there who actually have something to say, and here comes Eastwood, still stuck in the past. It's a tried-and-true formula, but it's unrealistic. And I didn't buy any of it.