Dec 20, 2022·edited Dec 20, 2022Liked by Alan Scherstuhl, Scott Tobias
Me thought Away We Go was enjoyable fluff, largely because me had lot of goodwill towards leads. Until me got to head-smackingly bad ending (spoiler for 13-year-old movie you not should watch if you not have already seen it:) After seemingly finding comfortable home with Jim From Office's brother and his daughter, who Maya Rudolph have instant rapport with, they abruptly leave and Rudolph says, "well... me guess we could maybe live in gigantic beautiful old house me own and not have mentioned before now, last ten minutes of movie." What?!?
Anyway, me do think there certainly place for director like Mendes who visually gifted but have nothing to say. And Bond movies are exactly that place. But what he should do beyond that, me not could tell you. Maybe a Star Trek? Another franchise where sensibilities are firmly locked in place, but right director can give series shot in arm? (me still think Justin Lim's Star Trek Beyond is unfairly overlooked as one of best entries in series)
One of my foremost theatrical memories, for better or worse, is driving to Bismarck, ND (about an hour and a half) to see The Hurt Locker and Away We Go with my dad. I loved The Hurt Locker, he didn't, and he loved Away We Go while I didn't. We listened to Filmspotting's reviews of both on the way home and then got into such a heated debate that the last hour or so of the trip felt like three.
Say what you will about American Beauty, and I haaaate that movie, but at least it's pretty enough to look at. Away We Go can't boast that.
I’m curious how much of American Beauty’s problematic emptiness is the fault of Alan Ball’s script, or if another director might have made something more substantial of it.
Great essay, Scott! I doubt you're the only one with regrets about praise for American Beauty -- that seems like a pretty universal feeling. I somehow have avoided most of his later films, even though I have a blu-ray of 1917 in my stack of unwatched disks. As for Empire of Light, it sure LOOKS like the sort of movie I'd eat up -- but the trailers and commercials for it have been so opaque that I've never worked up any enthusiasm to see it. Even in that limited form, there just doesn't seem to be any life there.
One copy-editing quibble (and feel free to edit this out of my comment once you correct it if you have that capability) -- the Bong Joon-ho film from 2019 is Parasite, not Paradise. Damn you, Autocorrect!!
The unearned patina of American Beauty pervades his whole filmography. He can thank Hall and Thomas Newman’s enormous contributions for his entire career, which so far has produced no good movies while winning seemingly every major award. 1917, his best movie, is a dumb stunt with nothing to say about war, a finely-made and bone-stupid action movie for people who think they’re too smart for action movies. It’s like he wanted to make a World War 2 movie but the wrong truckload of props showed up and he just shrugged and proceeded apace.
Skyfall is stupid and somehow good but is a James Bond movie, which are different than regular movies so it doesn’t count. All of the rest of his stuff is well-tooled crap. His mediocrity is at its most impressive in Road to Perdition, where he somehow made a bad movie out of uniformly good parts. I don’t know what the problem is with that movie, I don’t think anybody really does, but who gives a crap about it? Who gives a crap about anything he’s done? Jarhead made 100 million dollars and doesn’t even exist.
I guess if I were going to make a case for Mendes - bracketing out his stage work, which I've never seen but I've heard a lot of it is pretty great - it would lean heavily on ROAD TO PERDITION, which doesn't get a lot of attention here. You can pick on the script for its adherence to a few gangster-flick chestnuts, but the film features a hall-of-fame cast doing stellar work, balanced by tons of Greek-tragic atmosphere and quite a few shots that are seared into my memory (I've probably only watched it once since it came out in 2002, but Mendes and Conrad Hall really outdid themselves.)
I don't love his Bond films - mostly for script rather than directorial reasons - and I can't say that I ever think about JARHEAD or REVOLUTIONARY ROAD or AWAY WE GO. I don't know that 1917 is, like, a top-tier war film or that it has anything significant to say about war, but it was a gripping experience and a super-subjective imagining of WWI in particular does seem to me like a project worth doing. (As someone who was a s%&thead college freshman at the time it was released, AMERICAN BEAUTY played a distressingly large part in my young-adult identity formation, something I'm still trying to atone for.)
Anyway, I've always wanted Mendes and Joe Wright to, at least once after their promising first 1-2 films, find collaborators who temper their ponderousness and high-concept cleverness into something great, and they never really have, and so everything's stayed in that B-minus-to-B-plus spectrum for them both.
God, I remember falling so hard for American Beauty in college. Very odd time.
Oh, and while his Bond movies aren't bad (well, I've only managed to get through Skyfall), it's telling that they're just as empty as everything else he makes. Like, Skyfall is gorgeous and fun to watch, but it has an air of being About Something, when it absolutely isn't; just a vague nostalgia for "Britain" or something, and a lot of story beats stolen from other movies. I realize it's bizarre to criticize a Bond movie for being thematically bereft, but Mendes has the unfortunate curse of being a shallow artist who's convinced he has things to say, and that's not really something you can escape, regardless of context. (Besides, as clunky as Casino Royale could be, it at least tried to make Bond human. Skyfall is mostly just "hey, wouldn't it be nice to have a male M again?")
He’s a shallow man but doesn’t know it, which is why his genre films are pretty good but any project of his that feels like it’s going for depth is actually just kind of embarrassing and meaningless.
I kind of equate him with Adam McKay and Todd Phillips who similarly demand to be taken seriously recently, to disastrous results imo.
Dec 20, 2022·edited Dec 20, 2022Liked by Scott Tobias
ROAD TO PERDITION is his standout for me - I agree that it's an overly serious take on pulpy material, but THE UNTOUCHABLES (and LAST MAN STANDING, and MULHOLLAND FALLS) already exists, so I'm happy for Mendes' Oscar-bait version of fedorah-hatted shoot-em-ups being out in the world.
If I didn't live on that bit of English coast where EMPIRE OF LIGHT is set (and was filmed), I would have no interest in it whatsoever - at least, I assume no-one's going to be firing a form of machine gun in it, which is my rule of thumb in separating the watchable from the insufferable in his oeuvre.
On the one hand, I understand the praise for Skyfall, because it’s pretty entertaining, and coming off the stripped down origin story of Casino Royale and the nothing-burger of Quantum of Solace it gave franchise fans more elements of the classic Bond films they were missing.
On the other hand, Bardem’s villain is essentially a Heath Ledger Joker retread (down to the “I planned to have you incarcerate me all along!” scene), and I still can’t forgive how tasteless it is to have Berenice Marlohe’s character reveal to Bond that she’s a victim of sex trafficking in one scene and then him basically go right from hearing that to walking in on her in the shower; why even bring up the trafficking thing? Not to mention that she is then immediately murdered by Bardem in a contest with Bond apparently to decide who is the most callous male on the planet? (and yes, I recognize this plays into the established 1st-Bond-girl-to-show-up-in-film-ends-up-dead trope, but it still feels like a gross misstep to me)
Me thought Away We Go was enjoyable fluff, largely because me had lot of goodwill towards leads. Until me got to head-smackingly bad ending (spoiler for 13-year-old movie you not should watch if you not have already seen it:) After seemingly finding comfortable home with Jim From Office's brother and his daughter, who Maya Rudolph have instant rapport with, they abruptly leave and Rudolph says, "well... me guess we could maybe live in gigantic beautiful old house me own and not have mentioned before now, last ten minutes of movie." What?!?
Anyway, me do think there certainly place for director like Mendes who visually gifted but have nothing to say. And Bond movies are exactly that place. But what he should do beyond that, me not could tell you. Maybe a Star Trek? Another franchise where sensibilities are firmly locked in place, but right director can give series shot in arm? (me still think Justin Lim's Star Trek Beyond is unfairly overlooked as one of best entries in series)
Yes, thank you! I keep trying to tell people this guy is way too self-serious and fundamentally kinda sucks. He’s like a low-key Iñárritu.
Amen to this: "or it would be if he didn’t consider it so broadly, as emblematic rather than specific."
One of my foremost theatrical memories, for better or worse, is driving to Bismarck, ND (about an hour and a half) to see The Hurt Locker and Away We Go with my dad. I loved The Hurt Locker, he didn't, and he loved Away We Go while I didn't. We listened to Filmspotting's reviews of both on the way home and then got into such a heated debate that the last hour or so of the trip felt like three.
Say what you will about American Beauty, and I haaaate that movie, but at least it's pretty enough to look at. Away We Go can't boast that.
Love this, Scott.
I’m curious how much of American Beauty’s problematic emptiness is the fault of Alan Ball’s script, or if another director might have made something more substantial of it.
Great essay, Scott! I doubt you're the only one with regrets about praise for American Beauty -- that seems like a pretty universal feeling. I somehow have avoided most of his later films, even though I have a blu-ray of 1917 in my stack of unwatched disks. As for Empire of Light, it sure LOOKS like the sort of movie I'd eat up -- but the trailers and commercials for it have been so opaque that I've never worked up any enthusiasm to see it. Even in that limited form, there just doesn't seem to be any life there.
One copy-editing quibble (and feel free to edit this out of my comment once you correct it if you have that capability) -- the Bong Joon-ho film from 2019 is Parasite, not Paradise. Damn you, Autocorrect!!
The unearned patina of American Beauty pervades his whole filmography. He can thank Hall and Thomas Newman’s enormous contributions for his entire career, which so far has produced no good movies while winning seemingly every major award. 1917, his best movie, is a dumb stunt with nothing to say about war, a finely-made and bone-stupid action movie for people who think they’re too smart for action movies. It’s like he wanted to make a World War 2 movie but the wrong truckload of props showed up and he just shrugged and proceeded apace.
Skyfall is stupid and somehow good but is a James Bond movie, which are different than regular movies so it doesn’t count. All of the rest of his stuff is well-tooled crap. His mediocrity is at its most impressive in Road to Perdition, where he somehow made a bad movie out of uniformly good parts. I don’t know what the problem is with that movie, I don’t think anybody really does, but who gives a crap about it? Who gives a crap about anything he’s done? Jarhead made 100 million dollars and doesn’t even exist.
I guess if I were going to make a case for Mendes - bracketing out his stage work, which I've never seen but I've heard a lot of it is pretty great - it would lean heavily on ROAD TO PERDITION, which doesn't get a lot of attention here. You can pick on the script for its adherence to a few gangster-flick chestnuts, but the film features a hall-of-fame cast doing stellar work, balanced by tons of Greek-tragic atmosphere and quite a few shots that are seared into my memory (I've probably only watched it once since it came out in 2002, but Mendes and Conrad Hall really outdid themselves.)
I don't love his Bond films - mostly for script rather than directorial reasons - and I can't say that I ever think about JARHEAD or REVOLUTIONARY ROAD or AWAY WE GO. I don't know that 1917 is, like, a top-tier war film or that it has anything significant to say about war, but it was a gripping experience and a super-subjective imagining of WWI in particular does seem to me like a project worth doing. (As someone who was a s%&thead college freshman at the time it was released, AMERICAN BEAUTY played a distressingly large part in my young-adult identity formation, something I'm still trying to atone for.)
Anyway, I've always wanted Mendes and Joe Wright to, at least once after their promising first 1-2 films, find collaborators who temper their ponderousness and high-concept cleverness into something great, and they never really have, and so everything's stayed in that B-minus-to-B-plus spectrum for them both.
God, I remember falling so hard for American Beauty in college. Very odd time.
Oh, and while his Bond movies aren't bad (well, I've only managed to get through Skyfall), it's telling that they're just as empty as everything else he makes. Like, Skyfall is gorgeous and fun to watch, but it has an air of being About Something, when it absolutely isn't; just a vague nostalgia for "Britain" or something, and a lot of story beats stolen from other movies. I realize it's bizarre to criticize a Bond movie for being thematically bereft, but Mendes has the unfortunate curse of being a shallow artist who's convinced he has things to say, and that's not really something you can escape, regardless of context. (Besides, as clunky as Casino Royale could be, it at least tried to make Bond human. Skyfall is mostly just "hey, wouldn't it be nice to have a male M again?")
He’s a shallow man but doesn’t know it, which is why his genre films are pretty good but any project of his that feels like it’s going for depth is actually just kind of embarrassing and meaningless.
I kind of equate him with Adam McKay and Todd Phillips who similarly demand to be taken seriously recently, to disastrous results imo.
"To answer this question, I rewatched all nine of his features"
oh Scott, the things you're willing to do for us.....
so, is Skyfall Mendes' only unquestionably good film, then?
I was never able to take the plastic bag scene seriously again after seeing Todd Solondz thoroughly take the piss out of it in Storytelling.
ROAD TO PERDITION is his standout for me - I agree that it's an overly serious take on pulpy material, but THE UNTOUCHABLES (and LAST MAN STANDING, and MULHOLLAND FALLS) already exists, so I'm happy for Mendes' Oscar-bait version of fedorah-hatted shoot-em-ups being out in the world.
If I didn't live on that bit of English coast where EMPIRE OF LIGHT is set (and was filmed), I would have no interest in it whatsoever - at least, I assume no-one's going to be firing a form of machine gun in it, which is my rule of thumb in separating the watchable from the insufferable in his oeuvre.
Now that you mention it... "Jarhead" had no urgency to it at all. Great essay, Scott!
On the one hand, I understand the praise for Skyfall, because it’s pretty entertaining, and coming off the stripped down origin story of Casino Royale and the nothing-burger of Quantum of Solace it gave franchise fans more elements of the classic Bond films they were missing.
On the other hand, Bardem’s villain is essentially a Heath Ledger Joker retread (down to the “I planned to have you incarcerate me all along!” scene), and I still can’t forgive how tasteless it is to have Berenice Marlohe’s character reveal to Bond that she’s a victim of sex trafficking in one scene and then him basically go right from hearing that to walking in on her in the shower; why even bring up the trafficking thing? Not to mention that she is then immediately murdered by Bardem in a contest with Bond apparently to decide who is the most callous male on the planet? (and yes, I recognize this plays into the established 1st-Bond-girl-to-show-up-in-film-ends-up-dead trope, but it still feels like a gross misstep to me)