Thursday, May 28, 2015

The Reef vs. Open Water


If you're like me, then sometimes, just to relax, you need to kick back with a good "revenge of nature" horror movie featuring sharks. I am a big fan of this genre, and while I do not watch every single shark attack film out there, and mostly avoid documentaries about sharks, I am always on the lookout for quality fiction films in which a bunch of poor bastards get stalked, terrorized, killed, and eaten by sharks.

Obviously, Jaws is the greatest of all such films and I have gone on record as a defender of its sequels as well.

Here I wish to talk about two lower-budget revenge-of-shark films that I find particularly enjoyable.* I started out thinking I would write this review solely about The Reef (2010, Australia, dir. Andrew Traucki), which is one of my favorites, but in the name of balanced reportage I decided to re-watch Open Water (2003, USA, dir. Chris Kentis), a movie that always "hangs together" with The Reef in my mind. Open Water was much better than I remembered it being so I decided to include it in my discussion.

I should mention that despite the post's catchy title, the pairing of The Reef with Open Water is not intended as a "versus" in the confrontational or competitive sense, but simply as a comparison of the two films -- in the end, I really like and recommend both movies, for different reasons.

One of the more frightening bits of underwater cinematography from Open Water

First things first: The Reef and Open Water both do very well with their shark photography, making it feel like the sharks and their victims share real space together. I appreciate that both films use footage of real sharks rather than depend upon CGI. I think the shark imagery may be slightly better in The Reef, if only because the film allows us to really see the shark up close several times in moderately long takes. By contrast, Open Water uses shakier handheld camera shots and quick cuts to give us only very brief glimpses of the sharks. While I like how some of these quick shots are framed, they get a bit maddening after awhile. As one disgruntled reviewer complains:
Open Water's "what's lurking beneath" technique is drastically overused. The "lurking" never pays off. One becomes numb to it. Just eat them, for crying out loud.
While Open Water's coyness about showing its sharks aligns it with some of the greats of the genre including Jaws, the film indeed lacks the pulse-pounding climactic payoff of its bigger-budgeted genre-mates. Given the movie's overall tone, I like Open Water's ending, both for its bleakness and for its homage to a key shot from Jaws' opening moments, yet I understand why folks like Box Office Mojo's Lane Ford find Open Water slow-moving and unsuspenseful.

While well-composed, Open Water's quick glimpses of sharks under the surface . . . 

. . . are not quite as horrifying as seeing the shark up close and personal in a sustained shot, as in The Reef

Open Water's deliberate pace is bound up with its inclusion of many elements that are not common to other sharks-murder-humans-type movies. The tension between protagonists Susan and Daniel introduces an "indie"-film edge to the story's central relationship. The nighttime storm sequence is shot quite daringly and artfully: it repeatedly cuts to pitch black screens. And at several points along the way (mostly in the beginning) Open Water goes into arty montage sequences of wildlife and landscape that feel imported from a Werner Herzog film and/or the opening sequence of City of God. I am not complaining about these elements, I actually appreciate them and the existential seriousness and visual beauty they bring to the proceedings. Nevertheless, they take Open Water slightly outside "kick back and watch sharks kill people and have a good time" territory.

In contrast, The Reef maintains a warm, light tone and fast pace. In The Reef, everyone starts off as friends and even Kate and Luke move from uncertain and tentative to clearly romantically interested in each other quite swiftly. The Reef emphasizes hope and love, with no heavy, existential darkness like that of Open Water's night storm sequence accompanied by Susan's fervent praying. No, the only darkness in The Reef is materially inconvenient, baldly terrifying darkness like that which Luke encounters as he looks for supplies inside the flooded cabin of an overturned sailboat.

The Reef's Luke looks for gear in the flooded interior of the overturned sailboat Boomerang -- in terrifying pitch-darkness.

Broadly speaking, Open Water is about how modern bureaucracy, white peoples' need for cheap tourism, and lack of personal connections between married people lead to mistakes that destroy us, then we get eaten by sharks, whereas The Reef is about bonding with friends and relatives, mending past relationships and discovering rekindled love, then we get eaten by sharks.

Interestingly, both films claim to be based upon true events, always a proposition to be treated dubiously when it comes to commercially produced fiction films. Yet Open Water in particular features several homages to Jaws: the clanging of the buoy bell, the film's last shot, and the surnames of its two protagonists, Susan Watkins and Daniel Kintner. These touches belie the film's claims to truth but are quite enjoyable.

Open Water's protagonists' IDs reveals their last names are Watkins and Kintner, in reference to Chrissy Watkins and Alex Kintner, the first two shark attack victims in Jaws.

Despite their differences in style -- The Reef is pure low-budget suspense thriller whereas Open Water is more serious-minded and artsy -- both films convey their character-building and story development moments effectively. The Reef lays out the group dynamics of its five principal characters immediately, diving right into the matter of Kate and Luke's past romantic relationship. Similarly, Open Water opens with deft scenes illustrating subtle tension between Dan and Susan, and later on, the means by which the couple gets left behind by the diving company is made very clear over the course of two or three brief, momentary sequences.

The Reef gets its early character-building moments, like this one between romantic leads Luke (Damian Walshe-Howling) and Kate (Zoe Naylor), really spot-on. 

While this may reveal me to be too much a child of the 1980s, I love The Reef's soundtrack. Its main theme sounds like a nuanced version of something John Carpenter might have composed for one of his horror films in his heyday, and the "sailing theme" is a mellow piece that sounds similar to a Sade backing track. Open Water's score is more ominous and overblown than it needs to be, overselling many moments that would be more effective selling themselves. But though I don't enjoy Open Water's score quite as much, I suppose it suits the overall darker tone of the film.

It's hard to tell from this still, but this is part of a really nice, swooping helicopter shot during one of The Reef's sailing montages. 

In the end, The Reef, with its more straightforward genre-embracing pleasures, has more re-watch value for me. It is suspenseful and scary, and I like the main characters more than I do the couple in Open Water, therefore more is at stake for me. I really want The Reef's Luke and Kate to survive their ordeal with the Great White and make it back to land together. By contrast, in Open Water I think the pleasure comes from the other direction: I don't like the protagonist couple very much so I sadistically root for the sharks. Open Water's Susan gradually becomes more noble and relatable as the story transpires, but I never really like or care about Daniel, which lowers the stakes for me a little.

To sum up, I enjoy both these films, but maybe it says something that while I appreciated Open Water this time out -- only my second time viewing it since the mid-2000s -- I possess my own copy of The Reef and have seen it at least four or five times. And I will probably watch it several more times before I return to Open Water again.

The Reef's lead shark means business. 

--
* The Reef's budget is listed here as being $3.8 million, which is a tiny budget by Hollywood standards, and Open Water was made for less than $500,000, which doesn't even exist by Hollywood standards. In current Hollywood parlance, any film made for under $10 million counts as low-budget.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

On Trailer Park Boys


I am a big fan of Trailer Park Boys (2001-present), a Nova Scotia-produced "mockumentary" comedy series about the wacky denizens of Sunnyvale Trailer Park, especially Julian, Bubbles, and Ricky. The show originally (seasons 1-7) aired on Canadian television, though I first saw it streaming on Netflix, which it still does. Netflix is now producing new seasons of the show: Seasons 8 and 9 (2014-2015) are available now and Seasons 10 and 11 are in the works.

Trailer Park Boys is wonderful because it is one of those comedies in which very smart people are making comedy about very dumb characters, doing so with a lot of warmth, humanity, and love. The show's messages are in fact quite humanistic and optimistic, despite the show's constant swearing, pervasive drug use, and occasional gunplay. There is absolutely no mean-spiritedness about this show that I have ever been able to detect in my repeated watchings. Most importantly, the show is consistently hilarious. I place it alongside Party Down, Arrested Development, Fawlty Towers, PullingPeep Show, and the British version of The Office as one of the all-time funniest and cleverest television comedies I have seen.

Comedy genius Christopher Guest describes British comedy as "Silliness framed in intelligence. Even when it's stupid, you know intelligent people are doing it and that makes it a different joke." This principle applies to Trailer Park Boys.

The first five seasons of Trailer Park Boys are all excellent, with seasons two, three, and five particular standouts. I would say that probably season three, the one in which Julian and Ricky and co. save money toward a cruise, is the all-around best, though I also have strong affinity for season two, the "Freedom 35" season featuring Ellen Page as Mr. Lahey's daughter Trina.

So maybe season two, the Ellen Page season, is the very best overall season of the show. Although I am partial to season one (for reasons I'll come back to near the end of the review), the show really hits its stride in season two. It includes fine episodes like "Jim Lahey is a Drunk Bastard" (Ep02), about a crucial trailer park supervisor election, "A Dope Trailer is No Place for a Kitty" (Ep04), depicting the burning of Bubbles' shed and his relocation to J-Roc's van, and "The Bible Pimp" (Ep05), featuring (among its many delights) some suspicious bible peddlers and several classic Sam Losco moments during an extended conflict over discarded hot dogs.

Sam Losco will be sure to take care of the problem. 

That said, "Kiss of Freedom," the season three opener, is probably the best episode of the entire series. It is tightly scripted with a brilliant climactic payoff involving Jim Lahey's bare bum and it stands as one of the clearest articulations of the whole series' core values. In the episode, Ricky goes from prince to pauper in swift and hilarious fashion, yet he never loses sight of what's most important to him: his family, especially his daughter Trinity. "Kiss of Freedom" is as funny as any TPB episode but is also has the most heart of any of them.

Two highly enjoyable musically themed episodes, "Who's the Microphone Assassin?" and "Closer to the Heart," occupy the middle of season three.

Late in season three, "Where the Fuck is Randy's Barbecue" (S03 Ep06) is a favorite, especially Ricky's balcony pepper spray battle with an elderly man and Lahey and Randy's big reveal at the end. Plus this episode introduces Constable Erica Miller into the mix and opens with one of the best Ricky vs. Randy battles, culminating in a spatula spanking for the ages.

"We're about to sail into a shit tidepool, Randy, so we better pull in the jib 
before it gets covered with shit."

Really, the whole narrative arc of season three, with the boys saving for a cruise and Constable Erica Miller complicating things for Julian, is pretty damn good.

By contrast, season four is a bit uneven, with flat-out great episodes sitting alongside some pretty mediocre ones. Yes, "The Green Bastard" (S04 Ep04), with its mighty showdown in the wrestling ring, is one of the best eppies ever, and "Conky" (S04 Ep05) is wonderfully off the rails, but "Rub 'N Tiz'zug" (Ep03) ain't great, recycling Cyrus as its villain in a mostly uninspired plot. And "If you Love Something Set it Free" (Ep06), the one with Steve French, bores me a little too. But the season finale, "Working Man," is pretty damn great, doing what most of the best eppies by this point in the game tend to do: going over the top.

Season four's outdoor dope fields, located away from the park, are clever way to integrate new locales into the series. I especially like the use of the King of Donair as a kind of funky musical hangout in "Working Man," yet overall there isn't much urgency in this season until right near the end. "Propane Propane," while not the most tightly scripted episode, flows well and has some terrific bits like Lahey and Randy's "cowboy and indian" outfits and blind Bubbles trying to get his rig license. "Propane Propane" makes for a good two-parter with the season finale, "Working Man," which is a pretty terrific episode culminating in Mr. Lahey's full-on showdown with Ricky in downtown Dartmouth.

"You just opened Pandora's Shitbox, Ray!"

Season five is especially good. In contrast to the somewhat meandering season four, the "hash driveway" meta-storyline in season five is awesome. It raises the stakes, fuels dramatic/hilarious tensions between Ricky and Julian, and keeps things geographically where they should be: in the trailer park. "The Fuckin Way She Goes," "Don't Cross the Shit Line," and "Jim Lahey is a Fucking Drunk and He Always Will Be" are especially superb season five episodes. Maybe the only somewhat weak season five eppy is "The Winds of Shit."

[UPDATE 5/22/2015: I just re-watched "The Winds of Shit" and now regret naming it as a weak episode. It really isn't. It features Mr. Lahey explaining the "shit barometer" to Bubbles, one of Ricky's best negotiations with local law enforcement, and a sweet finale in which Ricky apologizes to Trinity after he is caught in a deception. These wonderful details and nuances that come to life anew with every re-watch exemplify something that is true of the series in general: it is a very confident show. I always feel like Trailer Park Boys knows where it is going, both on the micro- and macro-levels. Bravo.]

In any case, Lahey's obsession with his "shitmoths," the liquor bottles ornamenting the interior of his trailer from "Don't Cross the Shit Line" onward, is fricking priceless.

Special note on the Bladerunner reference in "Give Peace a Chance," the season five opener: Ricky and Bubbles discuss the film during their visit to Terry and Dennis's place, then outside Lahey's trailer Bubbles looks at a bee yard ornament, an homage to Olmos' origami unicorn.

Season six is also pretty good, it's the last Cory and Trevor season and it ends well.

[UPDATE 5/26/2015: Wow! Season six RULES. The season opener has Lahey fighting Trevor and Cory inside their new "Convenients Store," episode two "The Cheeseburger Picnic" is a great one, and "High Definition Piss Jugs" -- with guest star Steve Rogers and the debut of Bubbles' Kittyland Love Center -- probably belongs on the list of all-time best eppies. The Rashomon-like revelations of "Halloween 1977" tell a crucial part of Jim Lahey's back story, plus we get to see young Julian, Ricky, and Bubbles in their Chewbacca and C-3P0 costumes. And that episode's opening vignette, in which Bubbles counsels Randy about some inexplicable but ultimately "normal" sexual feelings he's having, is another favorite. Then Sam Losco violently returns for season closer "Gimme My Fucking Money or Randy's Dead!" Good times!]

Sebastian Bach is truly hilarious in Season 7 Episode 4 "Friends of the Road."

Season seven is diminished by the absence of Cory and Trevor, yet features some great Sam Losco stuff (him wooing Barb Lahey, singing at the nightclub, etc.). Also, the guest appearance of Sebastian Bach in "Friends of the Road" is an exhilarating high point of the entire series. Sebastian Bach is fuckin' funny!

Though I like the campfire scene near the end, and love that the music of Kim Mitchell saves the day, I nevertheless declare "We Can't Call People Without Wings Angels" to be the weakest of season seven and possibly the series. It's too narrative-driven and there isn't enough time alotted to spontaneous comedy gags (though Ricky slipping down the riverbank multiple times is priceless).

"Jump the Cheeseburger" is awesome though.

Season eight is worth watching, it is solid but maybe not great. Season nine, however, is really strong, maybe the best season since six or even five. The stuff with Ricky's manger and Willy the goat is really terrific, as is the storyline with J-Roc's long lost son.

To bring this back to the beginning, season one tends to get slightly weaker reviews due to its slower first couple of episodes. I love those early character-builders, however, and would place midseason episodes "Mr. Lahey's Got My Porno Tape" and "I'm Not Gay, I Love Lucy. Wait a Second, Maybe I am Gay." alongside other series-best nominees.

Ricky and this bank employee on the right have a glorious altercation midway through season one episode "I'm Not Gay, I Love Lucy. Wait a Second, Maybe I am Gay." 

To sum up, I agree with this:
"Imagine the consistently taut plotting and surprising humor of the Simpsons set in Desperate Living's landscape of trash and indignantly crass characters and you've basically got Trailer Park Boys." -- Lily Sparks
Ricky's finest hour. The choice he makes here catalyzes a remarkable climactic incident in "Kiss of Freedom," my choice for series-best episode of Trailer Park Boys.

Trailer Park Boys' Six Most Essential Episodes:

1. "Kiss of Freedom" (S03 Ep01)
2. "The Bible Pimp" (S02 Ep05) (esp. as a stand-alone)
3. "Jim Lahey is a Drunk Bastard" (S02 Ep02)
4. "The Delusions of Officer Jim Lahey" (S03 Ep07)
5. "The Green Bastard" (S04 Ep04)
6. "Conky" (S04 Ep05)

It's splitting hairs between those top three. "Jim Lahey is a Drunk Bastard," the election episode, may actually be the single best episode, or else "Kiss of Freedom," for the reasons stated earlier. "The Bible Pimp" has one of the very best opening vignettes (see list below) and probably works best as a stand-alone introduction to the series since the impact of "Drunk Bastard" and "Kiss" may depend upon knowing the back stories of Jim Lahey & Randy and Ricky & Trinity, respectively. I could also name "The Delusions of Officer Jim Lahey" as a particular standout, featuring "Deputy" Randy and Officer Lahey's attempt to clean up the streets of Sunnyvale once it is temporarily declared a town. Hell, any episode that commences with Jim Lahey declaring "I'm getting drunk today. Big time!" is obviously going to be momentous.

Bubbles vs. Tania and Hampton in the opening vignette of "The Bible Pimp," one of the most hilarious openers and all-time funniest stand-alone episodes of Trailer Park Boys.

Trailer Park Boys' Five Funniest Opening Vignettes:

1. "A Man's Gotta Eat" (S04 Ep02) has the BEST cold open of the whole series, involving Dino the satellite television guy. Listen carefully to Bubbles during this one, then, at the end, sit back and enjoy Ricky's classic van-windshield-trashing.
2. "The Bible Pimp" (S02 Ep05), a vignette in which an interesting Socratic dialogue between Bubbles and the Bible salespeople takes place.
3. "Where the Fuck is Randy's Barbecue" (S03 Ep06) has one of the best Ricky vs. Randy battles featuring an epic spatula spanking.
4. "I'm Not Gay, I Love Lucy. Wait a Second, Maybe I am Gay." (S01 Ep05), depicting the "family day" battle, in which Ricky grapples with Randy while wearing an MLK shirt.
5. "Rub N' Tizzug" (S04 Ep03): The baseball bat-wielding samsquamsh battle.

Mr. Lahey sez: "Don't cross the shit line."

Bonus Afterthought: IF you like Trailer Park Boys, then it is probably worth your time to check out Swearnet: The Movie (2014). I haven't seen any of the other TPB films, of which there are several.

UPDATE 10/17/2015: I have now seen Trailer Park Boys: The Movie (2006) and can report that it is delightful. Maybe not as consistently great as the best of the TV episodes, but surely better than the worst of them. Good solid fun. Lots of cute kittens.

UPDATE 10/19/2015: I have also just seen Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day (2009). It is even more tightly scripted and generally funnier than TPB: The Movie. Highly recommended! (It also occurs to me at this point that I should do a supplemental post listing all the TPB seasons and films in chronological order. There are a number of films and specials -- about six -- in addition to the regular seasons of the show, and each seems to fall at a different point in the show's internal timeline.

"Ispo fuck off-o!"