125 - Running With Scissors review

The most enjoyable part of a film critic’s job is to report wonderful films to their readers. The part that shouldn’t be fun is when alerting your audience to a wretched, truly vile film, though not enjoying this proves difficult. After devoting two hours of your life to watching a vile piece of garbage unfold on screen, a critic may be tempted to joyously and even zealously rip into the ill-fated artwork in retribution for time lost having to see it. In some rare, severe cases, the implied insult that someone in the audience might enjoy it is enough to prompt rage from a critic.

Thus begins my review of "Running With Scissors," with an announcement that I’m going to attempt to produce entertainment with my review that the film itself spectacularly failed to provide. How much did I hate it? Regular readers of mine – all six of you – will remember my fairly negative treatment of "Saw III." I can safely say that the grisly torture film was like an ecstasy-laced walk through a sunny park compared to "Running With Scissors." And that’s no idle simile.

Wouldn’t you know it, one solitary moviegoer had to walk in at the last preview, ruining my chance of a private screening where I could have least called a friend to express my agony as it was being inflicted.

The unpleasantness begins as we meet Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross), a thoroughly dull 1970s teenager with nothing even vaguely interesting to say. The only reason to sympathize with him is that his parents are two violently unstable sociopaths. Deidre, the mother, is played by Annette Bening, who needs a new agent, and Alec Baldwin plays Norman, the father, who must have done the film only because his shooting schedule couldn’t have surpassed 3 days.

Deidre believes her crappy poetry will make her famous, and loudly berates Norman for her failings, which does help explain his raging alcoholism. Enter Dr. Finch (Brian Cox, the latest great screen actor to be reduced to playing only deranged caricatures), a psychiatrist who shamelessly discusses his masturbation habits and lives in a squalid, pink mansion. As most responsible parents do when faced with an outrageous lunatic, Diedre sends Augusten off to live with Finch.

Thus begins the wacky antics of a morbidly insane family that would lend great credence to the argument that nutty people should be sterilized, if they actually resembled real people enough that one could cite them.

We meet Finch’s daughters, Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) and Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow, apparently with the same shooting schedule as Baldwin). Natalie curses a lot and acts like a goofy version of Wood’s character in 2003’s "Thirteen", while Hope acts like a Crazy Christian stereotype that was already overused in film back in the 1960’s. Agnes (Jill Clayburgh), the family matriarch, watches TV and eats dog biscuits. Har har.

The filmmakers obviously subscribe to the school of thought that crazy people are funny by default. Anyone who has actually spent even small amounts of time around the mentally disturbed wouldn’t ever use the word "funny" to describe their behavior. Similarly, I’d never use the phrase "remotely watchable" to describe any given 30 second period of "Running With Scissors."

Just because the character occasionally laments the state of his surroundings does not mean the film absolves itself of the imagery it is peddling: 15 year old Augusten having a sexual relationship with a 35 year old man, a black clad family funeral for an abused cat, predicting his future by the aesthetic of his bowl movement. It would perhaps be amusing to a child, if it weren’t such a poisonous combination of boring and dreadful.

As I bought my ticket, I noticed the advertising box announced that the film was "Based on the Memoirs of Augusten Burroughs." If a film is going to be pitched to an audience using the "Based on" ad, you’d think they might use the name of someone who actually did something in life worth caring about, like Harry S. Truman or Alfred Hitchcock or Robert E. Lee.

I haven’t read Burrough’s memoir, but if it bears even a passing resemblence to the film, I’m going to assert that they are as likely as much a bald-faced fabrication as anything by James Frey. Perhaps I could find a book critic out there who had to read through it and compare notes; if he has had a literary experience as bad as my cinematic one was, I just may be seeking the wrong profession.

0 out of 5

124 - Smoke Signals review

"You gotta look mean or people won't respect you. White people will run all over you if you don't look mean. You gotta look like a warrior! You gotta look like you just came back from killing a buffalo!" says Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) to Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams). "But our tribe never hunted buffalo - we were fishermen," Thomas replies. Although their relationship doesn’t allow it to be acknowledged, in truth Victor doesn’t know anything more about being an American Indian than Thomas does, except for what TV and pop culture have taught them.

The protagonists in Smoke Signals may be Native American (or Indians, as screenwriter Sherman Alexie and I prefer), but outside of appearance and a few traditions here and there, ethnicity doesn’t define either. Their problems may be common to Indians, but to unfortunate members of all other social and ethnic groups as well. Alcoholism, abandonment, money troubles, and identity crisis’s plague their days.

Victor and Thomas are 22 and live on a reservation with their mother and grandmother, respectively. When Victor receives news that Arnold (Gary Farmer), his long estranged father, has died, he and Thomas (who essentially buys his way along) set off to retrieve the ashes.

Much like his father, Victor has a severe attitude problem. He hasn’t fallen into alcoholism, but lashes out at those around him, especially the nerdy Thomas. On the way, Thomas passes the time by telling tall tales, involving themes ranging from Vietnam protests to reservation banquets, which Victor bluntly dismisses as nonsense. They may be, but Victor misses the point; when one’s own life has been full of forced mediocrity and sadness, the tall tale becomes an effective coping mechanism.

The film treats the first part of their journey fairly plausibly. Victor and Thomas’ interactions manage to build character and background without being too obvious about it. The temptation to overplay their emotions is resisted, resulting in an authentic feel, such as when a brief comparison to Charles Brondon comes up, or Thomas’ memories of Arnold taking him to Denny’s. Their journey takes Victor to Suzy Song (Irene Bedard), his late father’s lover, and a revelation that isn’t sensationalist, but genuinely puts a new spin on the lives of the character.

Unfortunately, in lie of settling for the temperate, easy-going pace, the film eventually delves into a standard cinematic Final Dilemma, presumbaly because Alexie’s How to Write a Screenplay book sold him on the three-point formula that dominates the film industry worldwide. Victor’s change of heart at the close doesn’t feel entirely believable, but shoehorned in to give the film a softer tone by making the primary lead more sympathetic. One could argue that they have simply been given a real story to tell, but when observing the adherence to formula, I don’t buy it.

But perhaps I’m just prematurely jaded. Despite the routine nature of the story, Smoke Signals has a charm that does ring true. The characters may have glaring flaws, but so do all real people, which does ultimately allow for some degree of satisfaction at the resolution. One of the (if not the) reasons we watch movies is to get a glimpse into the lives of others. Smoke Signals allows a view into the sadly neglected contemporary American Indian experience, and though we’ve seen much of it before, the characters are new, and that’s more than many films can say.

3 out of 5

123- Borat in South