The Floorage Index
I’ve invented a new way to gauge how much I like a movie. I measure how long it takes from the end of the movie to the time I can properly put my reaction into words. And I mean complete sentences, as opposed to “Wow” or “Holy crap”. It’s easy to mock a movie I hate, but a movie I like needs a bit more thought. One wants to accurately convey what she feels about it, and describing a feeling is harder than applying the rules of logic.
I’m going to call this The Floorage Index or TFI. TFI is directly proportional to Recovery Time (RT), or how long it takes for me to get up from the (metaphorical) floor. RT is the amount of time between T1—the end of viewing—and T2—the moment at which I can efficiently verbalize an opinion. I’m still working on the value of the constant.
The Floorage Index of movies I’ve seen recently.
Atonement. Recovery Time: 3 hours. Beautiful to behold, valiant effort, pales in comparison to the novel it was based upon. Which I really don’t mind. I find it comforting that the written word trumps the film adaptation.
Michael Clayton. RT: 6 hours. Much of the Recovery Time was taken up by the realization that George Clooney has acting talent.
No Country For Old Men. RT: 24 hours. Compelling, taut, bleak, the blackest comedy. I had to deal with the discovery that compared to Cormac McCarthy’s and the Coen Brothers’ take on the human condition, my world-view is close to Hallmark greeting card. That said, I’m not usually convulsed with laughter at the line, “Mister, you got a bone sticking out of your arm”, but here I was hysterical. I hope they win the Oscar, but you never can tell with those voters.
There Will Be Blood. RT: 48 hours. The movie makes good on the title’s threat. Weird, original, apocalyptic, wildly ambitious—the dream of industry and progress descends into a nightmare of madness and violence. It’s not for everyone, but if you want to see something new, something visionary, this is the one. I’d never seen a thrilling oil strike before this, and I’ll never hear the words “I drink your milkshake” again without repressing a shudder. And I don’t like dissonant, atonal music, but. . .wow.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
February 17th, 2008 at 23:23
Just came from a screening of “There Will Be Blood”…aside from the ever-dependable Daniel Day-Lewis, what impressed me about this film is Paul Dano as Eli Sunday, the revivalist preacher who somehow reminded me of an Amish version of Bro. Eli Soriano (btw…he also plays his twin brother Paul)
For such a young talent, the kind of roles he gets – looks like Ellen Page’s got competition!!!
Speaking of roles, look for Ciaran (“Rome”‘s Mark Antony) Hinds as Daniel Plainview’s (Daniel Day-Lewis) half-brother Henry…
February 25th, 2008 at 03:34
On the day before the Oscar awards are handed out, I was holed up for 12 hours inside a theater watching all 5 best-picture nominated films. I thought Michael Clayton (both the film and the central character) was slick and smart. In There Will Be Blood, there was an apparent contrast in acting between Daniel Day-Lewis and Dillon Freasier, who played his “son” and who was not an actor. Atonement was lukewarm — the principal characters were under-developed — and desperately needed editing. The much-praised five minute tracking shot of the Dunkirk beach scene was self-serving. Juno was funny but, like Atonement, don’t deserved to be nominated in my opinion. Watching Javier Bardem’s deadpan characterization of the cold-blooded killer/villain in No Country for Old Men reminded me a lot of the humanoid cyborgs in The Terminator; sans blood that is. Coincidentally, Garret Dillahunt (in the role of Wendell, the sheriff’s sidekick) plays a cyborg in the tv series “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”
Trivia: TWBB and NCFOM were shot in neighboring locations in Marfa, Texas. The enormous billowing of smoke from the oil derrick fire scene in TWBB forced the filming of NCFOM to be suspended for a day. The Mercedes-Benz sedan used by Clooney’s character in Michael Clayton was the same car used by Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. Diablo Cody, the the best first screenplay winner for Juno at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards, actually owns the hamburger phone that was used in the film. The set of Dunkirk, built for Atonement, cost an estimated 1 million pounds.