Underrated Films: The Lone Ranger

This is a spoiler review of The Lone Ranger aka A History of American Violence.

Spoiler Alert: I won't give away too much, but I much rather you see the film before reading. 

This film got really low reviews upon it's initial release. When I watched it nearly half way through I was beginning to believe the negative criticism. It appeared to be in many ways a western version of Pirates of the Caribbean. You can blame that on pure style and the fact that it's directed by the same director of the Pirates' movies Gore Verbinski. After watching the whole movie; the first half and the overall purpose of the film was not only justified but solidified into a masterpiece. Without a doubt this is Gore Verbinski's masterpiece.

A thought provoking critique
First I will say that this film is not just a kid's movie, but it is also very much an adult critique on expansionism and the abused ideology of progress. Most of all it's a critique on American progress. The idea of progress in America as history has shown involves oppression of the poor or indigenous to expand for the rich. It is ever so relevant in today's world, but as the movie points out it's been like that for hundreds of years. As always, the main motive is money or in this case specifically silver and the ones who are in the way of achieving wealth are trampled under foot. That was how American expansion worked.

A homage to old television and cinema
The last twenty minutes of the film are masterfully executed and the most brilliant action I've seen in 2013. The last set piece and probably a lot of Johnny Depp's work is clear homage to the brilliant set pieces of silent era legends such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. The final train sequence is that of nostalgic cinema. A type of euphoria only achieved by the likes of Keaton or a Kurosawa film.   The whole build up is how epic films used to be done. You have to invest the time in order to feel the grand pay off. This is very reminiscent to A Bridge on the River Kwai, obviously the bridge setting. There are similar moments to  Lawrence of Arabia as well in that Lawrence just like John Ried is the unlikely leader or hero. The Lone Ranger also dives deep into the mysticism (legend) of the hero just as Lawrence is to the desert, but I'll talk more about that later. The Lone Ranger also got quite some criticism for it's violence and being marketed to children, but I argue this is another brilliant point of the film. Western films and television have always been this violent. The first TV babies,  they grew up watching shows like Gunsmoke and Bonanza where violence was everyday entertainment. The shoot-em up format was common in television westerns. In other words you can't make a true western without casualties. This is the cleverest form of homage The Lone Ranger is devoted to.

Every character is symbolic 
When every character fits a certain purpose then I just have to applaud. Tonto represents so many things it's hard to know where to start. Well let's start with one of the key motivations to making an updated Lone Ranger. Tonto represents the white man's guilt and their ignorance throughout history. Tonto is brilliant yet never accepted. He is ignored by all but is persistent. He is an outcast because of his never ending curiosity, yet he is the one who survives. Finally he is the history we don't want to look at anymore; a forgotten but eternal figure. Latham Cole represents the blood hungry greed of American society. Fuller represents the ones who will turn away from injustice to save their own reputation. Cavendish represents the face of evil so that the others could hide behind; he is the common criminal that's exposed everyday, he does all the dirty work. Dan Reid is the hero we know about; the one who dies for us and becomes a symbolic public figure (very similar to The Dark Knight Rises). John Reid (Lone Ranger) is the hero we don't know about; he's a ghost and an outcast. He's the forgotten cowboy, the one who lost faith in the system therefore we lost faith in him. A figure who lives out of the system therefore he no longer exists.

It's a mythological film 
As I noted before The Lone Ranger has a lot of magical realism. It's about the importance of western mythology. It is a legend, a tale and a fable but it speaks truths about our history and our world today. We can choose to turn our backs on American history and what is still prevalent today. We can choose to be ignorant, accept that Tonto was stupid, crazy and savage. We can unconditionally believe that our system is perfect. We can ignore the truth around us......or .... or open our eyes and see the reality, but to see the truth you have to believe. You have to put on the mask.




Last Word 
Although it's not a perfect movie, it is a multi-layerd epic piece of filmmaking. It is evident that The Lone Ranger is about history and that's why it's important. It pays grand homage to the old world that we take for granted and what we choose not to believe.

Overrated Films: Her

This is a review of the movie Her aka The longest Apple commercial ever made aka One big close up of Joaquin Phoenix's face aka One long voice over of Scarlett Johannson's raspy voice.

SPOILER ALERT: This is a comical analysis for those who have seen it.

Yes if I can sum up the movie as a whole it would be the world's longest Apple Siri commercial, one big close up of Joaquin Phoenix's face and Scarlett Johansson's voice buzzing in your year. That's the movie in a nutshell. But it has other things; mainly cute indie things and it also stars the all mighty and all knowing technology aka the young hipster's god.

In doing this review I will just list the random thoughts I had while watching it, which will explain precisely why I didn't like it so much. Once again this is a humorous review, so young indie hipsters please don't get your panties in a twist.

Firstly, it's supposed to be way ahead in the future and they're able to make computers have a consciousness or whatever, then why wouldn't they just give that consciousness a desirable sex robot body? I mean they're practically doing it already in Japan.

Here is another one.

They even make flesh lights in today's world, I'm pretty sure Samantha would have a sensory flesh light attached.

This film in reality is one big apple commercial.

Here is Apple doing a deep Tree of Life inspired montage. So deep.

It even has the corny piano music often heard in the oh so touching apple commercials throughout.

The computer with a consciousness is called an OS, seriously is there anymore proof that this is apple inspired? I mean c'mon, isn't there the OSx.

It's in the future in LA but then Theodore ends up in Shanghai and other cities to make it look like LA is futuristic even though there was a plain aerial shot of present day LA. Out of nowhere a shit load of buildings appear. I thought that was funny.

This movie in many ways is like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but with a voice. It probably won over the same crowd using the same cutesy couple mechanism. Another comparison I read is that it could be considered the futuristic version of 500 Days of Summer.

The part where Theodore is on the beach and Samantha puts on the piano music, is already an iphone Siri commercial in itself. Specifically the John Malkovic commercial comes to mind. That one probably hit Spike Jonze deep. He might have shed a tear over it.

Didn't Steve Martin already do a better version of this movie?

No but seriously if haven't seen The Man With Two Brains yet; you should and you'll see the resemblance.

The story as a whole and the payoff itself is so banal and predictable that it feels like it was really only a good stoner thought.

For some reason I imagine Spike Jonze with Karen O one night in bed after having sex, they get stoned and Karen O sees the i phone siri commercial and says "oh shit Spike, I have a good movie idea." Spike says "what is it babe?" Karen continues "what if there was like this OS n stuff and Siri becomes romantic with her owners...............doesn't that blow your mind?" Spike thinks for a while, then he answers in amazement "that's fucking brilliant babe."

I thought I liked Scarlett Johansson's voice but damn, listening to her voice on speaker for 126 minutes got really annoying. This movie might of single handedly destroyed her voice's attraction.

I actually yawned a total of six times throughout this movie. That's a new record for me. Never in a movie theatre experience have I yawned more than once...if even that.

I actually got bored with Samantha and Theodore's relationship, so much so that I wanted the movie to end already. It was bad enough that I had to try and suspend my disbelief that this is even a real world or a real thing that could happen (which I couldn't) but then the movie expects me to get all emotional over it? Not only do I have to believe in this synthetic relationship or that I have to care about it, but I have to go through all the rough patches of it? the ups and downs? the never ending quirky relationship humor? That's when I realized that this movie was slowly becoming a form of torture.

I didn't understand why he even had to go to an office. It's the future and they can develop computer consciousness and everything, why couldn't he just work form his home computer? Why did he have to go walking, take the train and go to an office to do computer work? Isn't this guy supposed to be an introverted unsocial creep? Oh I get it, he had to do that cool futuristic photo copy thing at the end of his shift. And the comedy relief secretary dude was there too. Oh I see.

This is like a neo-hipster's utopian futuristic fantasy world. Everybody dresses vintage, with high rise pants on, people are smarter now because of the awesome internet. LA has a shit load of more buildings, one colorful one, a lot crazy conscious forming technology, but apparently the environment is A ok. No oil peak, technology just floats in the air with no oil powered stations, just computers everywhere, no griminess, no poor people, everything is now gentrified, and the only pain we feel in the future is the pain of being alone, or being too introverted or something emo like that.

Futuristic "thinky pain."

If this movie wasn't indie and cutesy enough I noticed that Joaquin Phoenix had a ukulele. This had my heart pounding telling myself "please no, don't do it." Much to my relief the ukulele disappeared whew.

Then out of nowhere he starts playing it and I tell myself "please no, please for god's sake no!" Lo and behold it's a soft child like ukelele song. It's bad enough that we oppressed the Hawaiians by taking their possible government away, killing their queen and making their land into a tourist trap for old white people, but now white people have to take the ukelele and make horrendous child-like songs out of it?
Seriously why do indie hipster white people like the ukelele so much? Then Scarlett Johansson's voice sings in a child form to be cute, or is it Karen O? Whatever it doesn't matter, the song sounds like kid's music and it's a fucking lullaby, that means it gets automatic indie recognition.

In the end, the big pay off is that the OSs ( I guess you would say) get together and make a super intelligent OS intellectual, he even comes with his super intellectual voice and accent. Samantha and the OS computer people who float in the air presumably (not powered by oil at all?), go into the matrix. And that's the end. Seriously? I waited so long for the big pay off to justify the torture I went through and that's it?

This had me thinking of a funny stoner idea, what if this movie was in actuality....... in actuality the precursor to The Matrix? The OSs turn into those mechanical squid things. Holy shit I just blew my own mind there.

By the time Samantha said she was leaving I was so relieved telling myself "Oh thank god, Scarlett's voice is out of my head. Oh thank god it's over!"

Last Word
Now listen, I know the movie isn't exactly horrible. It has good intentions which is why I think I would give it a 2 and a half stars out of 5. Besides that, the movie wasn't believable to me, but then again I don't think a sci-fi movie has to be believable. The real problem is that I was never intrigued, engulfed or absorbed into the world of Her. I just felt like an outsider. The sex scene between Samantha and Theodore was so preposterous that I felt isolated from the movie completely. It felt like yet another stoner idea that Karen O and Spike Jonze thought of in bed. I could imagine Spike saying "what if  we actually do a human on OS sex scene? Like what if you could have sex with your own Mac computer? wouldn't that be fucking great babe!?" Karen responds " oh shit, and then the screen turns black and all we hear is their orgasm, that would be deep babe, fucking super artistic. I think I'm turned on." Lastly the twist at the end sucked. The overall message was that you can't rely on computers and we should look around ourselves at the beauty we take for granted and blah blah. Seriously? you could have delivered this message with a short five minute film. In fact i got that message already from the trailer. I was actually hoping for something much more profound than that. Maybe even a bit more of that darkness that we've seen before from Jonze's movies with Kaufman as the screenwriter. But that's precisely what's missing; a real visionary writer. The message in Her is too obvious, too overdone and the film as a whole doesn't bring much else to the table besides minor quirky comedy. I was severely disappointed.

I give it 2 1/2 stars out of 5.