Seconds

I rarely try to organize my blog entries according to a particular theme, but my online friend The A.V. Club seems to have done the job for me.

First, there is the lovely article For Your Reconsideration, which lists failures too ambitious and too promising to be forever forgotten. One such treat, which deserves revisiting, is Ang Lee's The Hulk:

Detractors weren't wrong when they assessed Ang Lee's foray into the realm of big-budget superhero movies as ponderous, slow, atmospheric at the expense of action, and more in love with its cineastic allusions to Alfred Hitchcock (via shots of golden San Francisco and a quasi-Bernard Herrmann score) than with its source material in old comic books. The objectors were wrong, however, when they wrote off such attributes as liabilities. Hulk's moody pacing has helped to sustain and bear out the film's mysteries over time, and even its most indulgent scenes—many marked by the conspicuous absence of a certain green character with big muscles and bad shorts—answer to a special kind of ambition.

Next, there is the delightfully harsh judgment which anchors When Comebacks Collapse: 10 Blown Second Chances. Case in point? John Travolta:

Practically the poster boy for blown second chances, John Travolta went from superstar lead of Grease, Urban Cowboy, Saturday Night Fever, and Staying Alive to has-been star of three Look Who's Talking movies, not to mention a bunch of forgotten '80s fare like Two Of A Kind and Eyes Of An Angel. Then Quentin Tarantino revived his cool rep with Pulp Fiction. For a brief and shining moment, Travolta was a star again, though in an uneven sort of way, with snazzy vehicles like Face/Off and Get Shorty blending weirdly with failed projects like the mopey, ill-conceived White Man's Burden and Michael. The less said about what's followed, from Battlefield Earth to Wild Hogs to his fat-suited, over-the-top crooning in Hairspray, the better. Remember when he was a sex symbol? Does anyone?

Lastly, there is the poignant reminder that things of startling beauty have a fragility or strength that makes them unbearably painful to witness. The article Not Again: 24 Films Too Painful To Watch Twice lists many such prickly treasures, such as Leaving Las Vegas:

It's been a long fall for Nicolas Cage, from celebrated Best Actor Oscar winner a mere decade ago to the star of Next, Ghost Rider, and (tee-hee, "How'd it get burned?") The Wicker Man. It's honestly hard to remember at this point what a revelation he was in his Oscar-winning role in Leaving Las Vegas, as a failed screenwriter pointedly setting out to drink himself to death. The film, written and directed by Stormy Monday's Mike Figgis, is more consciously polished and Hollywood-y than most of the films on this list, but it has much the same quality of unstintingly, aggressively delving into just how miserable human beings can get. It isn't enough, for instance, that co-star Elisabeth Shue is trapped in a degrading life as a Vegas prostitute. It isn't enough that her best friend is an abusive, suicidal drunk who seems content to drag her down with him. It isn't enough when she gets gang-raped, and subsequently evicted from her home by landlords clearly uncomfortable with the disreputable appearance of a bruised-up, limping rape victim. No, she actually has to get mocked and abused on her way home after the rape, as her taxi driver, noticing how gingerly she's moving, asks if she got "a back-door delivery you weren't expecting," then tells her she was asking for it by dressing the way she does. Only Figgis' glittery, somber direction and the leads' stellar performances turn this wallow in miserablism into something sadly poetic.

Of course, none of the aforementioned articles are light reading, in both senses of the term, but all have their merits. Enjoy?

Photo Credits:
Picture of The Hulk comes courtesy of The A.V. Club.