The Proposal

Oh, Lordy

I was looking at movie showtimes on the Google jest a few minutes ago and I saw a film entitle "The Proposal" being shown at many local cinema outlets as if it was a major release. Having seen the Australian independent-type film that I rented on DVD from the ICPL (Iowa City Public Library) I near to peed myself. Danny Huston as a psychotic killer? Guy Pearce as a conflicted felon feeling the pressure between two conflitcting senses of family duty? Why would this film be shown in American cinnies years after it was actually released?

Twas only then that I remembered the vagaries of film-making. It is only a movie which has the same title as that which I have described. The film that is now being released stars Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock (both of whom I like) in some bland rom-com about a Canadian who needs American citizenship. In summarizing this plot through a haze of rum and Fat Tire ale I have exhausted all the narrative possibilities of the subject. I will never see it, I will never plumb its filmitive depths.

I feel no sense of loss.

In the other cinematic categories the only interesting promontory is Public Enemies, the Michael Mann feature which coincidentally stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. Michael Mann's name would have been enough to entice me. The man has an intuitive sense for how to direct a battlefield scene. In Hollywood the big-feature action movies are doled out to childish hacks like Michael Bay, or to mechanically inclined technicians like Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott. Somebody who has a true grasp of reality like Michael Mann is only given a moment, a minute, a slice of time in which to address the concept of systematized violence, before that moment passes. Hence the shootout scene in "Heat", which is as immaculate a firefight as could be committed to film.

So I think I should see Public Enemies, if only to observe the planning and execution behind Melvin Purviss's greatest sting.

Transformers 2 debuted recently. I have no idea what this entails, and no interest in exploring this concept. In 10 years, if the idea of these movies has held up to the march of time, if they still make sense in the context of the ages, I might see them. But at this time they have the appearance of garbage. I would sooner watch Porky's or Meatball's, or another film peculiar to the time of its production, than the bombastic offerings of Michael Bay.