The Other Guys

Let's face it. As recently as a year ago, Will Ferrell's movie career was in trouble. He seemingly ran his man-child persona into the ground with "Semi-Pro" and "Step Brothers," then followed that up with an embarrassing cash-in, "Land of the Lost."

But then he got his mojo back with "The Other Guys," a film that's just different enough from Ferrell's previous efforts to feel fresh and hilarious. (Interestingly, Ferrell doesn't get a writing credit here, although frequent partner Adam McKay does.) Instead of playing another ignorant, spoiled brat, Ferrell plays Allen Gamble, a mild-mannered accountant for the NYPD. Gamble is so bland that he has six Little River Band CDs in his car and so naive that he unwittingly accepts a bribe to see "Jersey Boys." For extra zaniness, he used to be a pimp named Gator.

"The Other Guys" also doesn't pair Ferrell with a fellow man-child. Instead he gets a genuine foil in Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg plays Terry Hoitz, a live-wire cop who makes up for his stupidity with energy. (Throughout the film, he's convinced that the accounting scandal they're investigating involves Columbian drug lords.) Wahlberg has a narrow range, but he can do this type of role extremely well: lots of yelling and confused looks. (That's a compliment, I swear.)

There's even a semi-relevant plot! In the wake of the financial crisis, "The Other Guys" focuses on accounting fraud, highlighting the fact that white-collar crime is often far more consequential than the robberies and drug busts we typically associate with police work. (The contrast is drawn with some hilariously over-the-top action sequences featuring Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson.)

But really, we're here for the laughs, not the story. Like all good comedies, "The Other Guys" understands this. And so the jokes keep coming, whether it's Wahlberg mistaking a dance studio for a strip club, Steve Coogan mocking the overuse of flashbacks in movies, or Michael Keaton dropping TLC references.

But at the center of it all is Ferrell. Comic actors tend to go downhill really fast. (Seen an Eddie Murphy movie lately? I hope not.) Maybe he won't find material this good again, or maybe he'll stick with big paydays from now on. Whatever happens, he and McKay have given us another gem.

Four Lions

American films tend to deal with politics in a few ways. There are the "up with the people" movies, paeans to the underdog like "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and Michael Moore-style documentaries that aim to stand up to special interests. (There are few truly even-handed documentaries.) Then there are Hollywood-style entertainments that try to dabble in serious issues. Oliver Stone and Ed Zwick are the major auteurs in this area; their movies tend to shoehorn heavy-handed monologues into conventional "good vs. evil" tales. Finally, there are movies that simply use politics as a vehicle for the plot: think cockamamie political thrillers and comedies with corrupt businessmen for villains.

These films all struggle to deal with politics in an honest way because their first priority is to entertain. (How else will they get funding?) Therefore, they tend to use policy to score political points or make plot points.

"Four Lions," a British film, puts virtually all of these efforts to shame. It's at once an incredibly entertaining movie and an honest examination of an extremely serious issue: Islamic terrorism.

How do you make terrorists entertaining? By turning them into bumbling nitwits. "Four Lions" focuses on five utterly incompetent jihadists. These characters are so ridiculous that the film could be about practically anything and it would still be hilarious. But the humor is taken to another level through the juxtaposition between their deadly aims and their hopeless stupidity. One character insists they must bomb a mosque (the logic is hilariously tortured). Another brings a Prayer Bear with him to Pakistan--pull the string and it gives you a prayer to say! (The al-Qaeda operatives are not amused.) Another invites a girl in to dance with him to Maroon 5 while their explosives are in plain sight.

However, as the film progresses, it slowly and skillfully begins to acknowledge the utmost seriousness of their intentions. It also tackles other issues, like the wide variety of views held by Muslims and the British government's practices of racial profiling and rendition.

The filmmakers can handle this material because they trust the intelligence of their audience. They show rather than tell--unlike, say, Oliver Stone, who probably would have included a scene with some paranoid government official ranting about the danger of Muslims. "Four Lions" is more subtle, and more effective as a result.

Chloe

There are two aspects to making art: the craft and the spark. The craft involves the technical aspects of art: brushwork, story structure, framing a shot. The craft can be learned through education and improved through perseverance. The spark, in contrast, represents those magical pieces of invention in art that captivate us. The spark cannot be taught; one can no more learn creativity than learn how to believe in God.

Different art forms require different proportions of craft and spark. Songwriting requires a great deal of creativity; while songs can be well-played and well-structured, ultimately a song tends to be carried by a tune or inspired lyrics, the kind of thing that seems to emerge from the ether. Narrative writing generally requires a fair amount of both craft and spark. Writing well-constructed sentences and believable characters can be learned, but an inventive plot or a fervent piece of prose comes from one's imagination. Directing a movie can often be almost all craft: a director is frequently akin to a construction foreman. If a foreman is working with a talented architect and contractors, he will be successful as long as he has an eye for what works and knows how everything works together. Likewise, a director working with a skilled cast, editor, cinematographer and screenwriter will probably be successful. Imagination can be immeasurably helpful, but it often isn't necessary.

The craft and the spark are key to understanding artists' evolution as they age. Craft can be maintained, even improved upon, with experience. The spark is a much more fickle element. This is why songwriters often seem to lose their touch. Why couldn't David Bowie write ten more albums as good "Ziggy Stardust"? How did Jimmy Paige pull off possibly the best songwriting run over ten years or so in pop history, then quickly lose his touch? How could U2, the same band that wrote so many inspired songs in the '80s, become a hollow shell of themselves in this century?

On the other end of the spectrum, directors like Scorcese and Spielberg can often be incredibly successful for decades. They're such masters of their craft that they don't need the creativity of their youth, when Scorcese wrote "Mean Streets" and Spielberg orchestrated the incredible ending of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Their choice of material may be a bit dodgier now: "Shutter Island" had a rather embarrassing plot, while Spielberg has had increasing difficulties with the third acts of his films. But while both have made bad movies, it's almost impossible to imagine them directing a poorly made film.

Things are a bit hairier for writer-directors who generate their own material. They may maintain their craft as directors but see their spark as writers start to fail them. Over the last fifteen years, Woody Allen's scripts have grown considerably weaker; in particular, his sense of comedy seems to have left him almost entirely. Yet his movies are always well-made; he works with talented people and knows filmmaking like the back of his hand. Or witness the Coen brothers: lately their results are a bit mixed when they work from their own material (witness "Burn After Reading" and "A Serious Man"). But when base their films off the work of others, the results--"No Country for Old Men" and "True Grit"--are spectacular, thanks to their complete command of the technical aspects of filmmaking.

Which brings us to Atom Egoyan. Egoyan wrote and directed "The Sweet Hereafter," arguably one of the best films of the '90s. It had a hypnotic, elliptical quality to it, pulling you in while leaving you unsure about just what was going on. Indeed, the actors were only given their parts of the script, so they were often just as confused the viewer, adding to the movie's cryptic feel. Only in the final frames of the film does the audience learn what really took place.

It's almost shocking that the auteur behind a movie as good as "Hereafter" could produce "Chloe," Egoyan's latest effort. A huge part of the problem is the source material: for the first time, he's directing a feature film he didn't write. Not only is it a lurid, predictable thriller; it explores some Egoyan's previous themes in an embarrassingly juvenile fashion. When two characters chat over Skype, one laments that he cannot see the other in person--see how alienating the Internet is! A high schooler could do a better job exploring the impact of technology on personal relationships.

But all of this could be attributed to the terrible script, which Egoyan didn't write. Perhaps he's lost the spark, run out of ideas. (Or perhaps he just needed money or wanted to make a film and couldn't come up with an idea.) What really makes "Chloe" shocking is the terrible production quality. It doesn't just feel like a late night movie on Showtime; it looks like one too. The cinematography is practically indifferent: paint by numbers master shots, over-the-shoulder shots, and so on. The score is utterly rote, hitting every note you expect at the most predictable moments. The production design is downright drab, with much of the action taking place in tacky-looking restaurants, a far cry from the vivid small-town sets of "Hereafter". And none of this can be explained by money: "Chloe" cost more than twice as much as "Hereafter" to make.

Egoyan doesn't just lose his spark here, he loses his craft. It's mystifying, and depressing given how few quality films are released in the U.S. already. But Egoyan is only 50. Here's hoping he still has something left in the tank.