Don't get me wrong, I like the movie well enough and think it holds up but it kind of went the way of Walk the Line and Ray.

@ Fight Club

What can you do? The movie achieved a cult within months of opening and will be divisive so long as there is an audience. As the movie will likely attract new members to said audience, at least until the themes begin to wear quaint, it's safe to say the Fight Club has achieved generational classic status. Like it or not, the movie has a lot of appeal for a surprisingly large demographic. Like American Beauty, for example.

Either way, Scorsese's Bringing Out The Dead is better than both. But that's for a different thread, one that's probably already been created.

As far as I'm concerned, biopics almost by definition can't be great films. If they are great (Schindler's List, Lawrence of Arabia) it's because they're not really biopics.

I'm not so sure. I think the problem with a lot of bio pics is that they whitewash or lionize the protagonist. Like with documentaries, there's also the issue of picking the right subject. Pick the right person to make a biopic about and tell the story that does not lionize the hero, but rather shows some respect for them warts and all, and I think a biopic can easily be a great picture.
-Jeremy

The tendency to gloss over problems with the protagonist is definitely a huge issue (e.g. Gandhi) but for me, the biggest problem lies with the fact that peoples' lives don't fit a Hollywood three-act formula, so they have to be awkwardly shoe-horned into one. As a result, no genre, with the possible exception of romantic comedy, clings to formula like biopics do. And formula is anathema to greatness.

The problem is that when you go to the other extreme you end up with some of the most unmatchable films ever made. Films with no plot (or an incoherent plot, etc.), so while I think an over reliance on formula is still the bane of Hollywood, but so is the opposite among certain kinds of film makers.
-Jeremy

Re: Bio-Pics

What James says is true to an extent. Among the bio-pics I've seen, I can think of maybe a couple (Malcolm X most notably) that came close to greatness. One I previously mentioned (Ray) is a prime example of the formula approach James pointed out. I liked it a lot when I saw it back in 2004. Now, 8 years later, I see how it was overpraised at the time. Take Jamie Foxx's fantastic performance out of the equation and you're left with a standard issue formula bio-pic. Not a bad movie by any means. But not the pinnacle of cinematic greatness a lot of us seemed to think it was at the time.

Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind may not have been a great movie. But it dared to take chances as far as bio-pics go. In fact, it could be seen as a slap in the face at the formula of bio-pics like A Beautiful Mind.

Re: Fight Club

It seems to me like that movie has two groups: People that love it (myself) and people that hate it (James). Very few in-betweens.

The Fight Club bashers seem to view the movie as being targeted primarily at immature mooks. Most of the defenders argue that the movie has a lot more depth to it than the bashers realize.

I think that it's more intelligent than many people seem to feel it is. What Fincher shows accurately is that the Fight Club minions, in their rush to escape from corporate hell, end up exchanging one form of servitude for another.

Consider the scene where Edward Norton's Narrator realizes things have gotten out of hand. He tries to talk to Tyler Durden and the Project Mayhem followers start chanting the rules in a mechanical drone. They're no less freen than they were when they were corporate slaves punching a time clock and living for weekends and two weeks off each year.

I just happened to be watching Fight Club a couple days ago and noting that it does hold up. In fact, it's held up better than the even more praised American Beauty from the same year. I still like Beauty. But to me the alieenated man aspect was handled better in Fight Club and David Lynch's Blue Velvet was a better depiction of the dark side of suburban America. FIght Club, from the perspective of 13 years, is a modern classic while Beauty is a very good movie yet not quite at the same level.

This is exactly how I feel (except I still find American Beauty to be just as great now as it was then). The characters in Fight Club might be immature but that's not how I would describe the film itself which to me offers a great deal of insight into the crippling nature of corporate America and how many young people, because of the need to be a part of something that's truly meaningful and exciting, get caught in the cult mentality and basically, as Jeff pointed, exchange one form of servitude for another.

True fact: from the words of a friend of Palahniuk (I live near Portland, so they're easy to find)... in all the author's ambiguity about the origins of Fight Club, it was actually inspired by underground gay wrestling matches. Read that as you will.

What disturbs me are the people who somehow watched the movie and thought that Tyler Durden was the hero, and try to live their lives according to his philosophy.

Much has been made of the gay subtext of Fight Club, book and film. Check out the particularly comfortable strain of male camaraderie in the scene when Tyler is taking a bath and Ed Norton is in there chatting with him.

That sub-topic aside, it is an excellent movie, and those who look to criticize it shouldn't confuse the movie itself with other people's interpretation of it.

American Beauty... not so much. Now there's a movie made for 19 year olds, or at least people with the typical 19 year old's patience and grasp of subtlety.

---

An issue with biopics is that the writers shoot for all-inclusiveness. They seem to think that the movie should cover as much of the subject's life as possible. But, like any source material--someone's life, novel, play, video game, whatever--adaptation works best when the writer goes through and selects the specific chunk that will be most interesting for the screen. I'm thinking of Patton, but I'm also thinking of non-biopic movies like The Shining or The Last Temptation of Christ. The subject of the movie isn't the character, so much as a theme that can be extracted from their lives and presented well on film.

You've pretty much explained why Milk works so well as a film. The film pretty much ignores the first 40 years of his life, and it concentrates on the things that made Harvey Milk an important figure. That's why it is much stronger than your standard bio.

Noticed that JB used the words "Instant Classic" in his "new" Beauty and the Beast review. Not sure when he wrote that as he appears to have added on to his original review with the subsequent releases.

Haven't read it, but that's actually kind of funny. Referring to a re-release of a 1991 movie as an "instant classic"... I suspect that's Ironic James talking.

You said it Major. Nobody fucks with the Jesus.

I remember a bright sunny day in 1998 (maybe a hint of fog) walking into a BIG W store and seeing Boogie Nights in the instant classic section. What morons. How dare they? What lack of insight from a store not even known for videos.

My mum (mum) told me she watched Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and was so impressed she brought the movie up a lot when I was growing up in the 70's. What an idiot she is. I'm sure she'd only seen it once. Fuck her.

This idiot at work the other day said how much he loved The Lord of The Rings. I'm sure the moron thought he thought he had seen a classic. I pulled him up quick smart. I said "Listen Chinaski, are you referring to the first one or the latter Return of the fucking Jedi and or Rings bullshit?" I promptly added, “If you're referring to the first one, than okay, that can now be called a classic officially as the date has passed 31/12/2011. If you’re referring to the last one than best wait til the end of 2013 to make if official." Dickhead didn't know what I was talking about. His wife sure did though. Fucked her like there was no tomorrow.

A fine post, reminds me of something I'd write. The last sentence is particularly flavorful. "I pulled him up quick smart," is something I wish I'd written.

Point taken, anyway.