Thank you for Smoking review

 Number 637 on the top 1000 films of all time is the black-comedy Thank you for Smoking.

Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) is a high-ranking cigarette exec who lobbies for the tobacco industry. He must carefully balance his job and his relationship with his estranged 12-year-old son Joey (Cameron Bright.) Sam Elliot, Katie Holmes, Rob Lowe, JK Simmons and Robert Duvall co-star.

This wasn't an absolutely awful movie. I could see its intention to be a satire and it definitely had its funny moments, but it was also quite superficial. There could have been a lot more depth. Nowhere is this more true than with the character of Nick Naylor.

It's quite obvious that he was supposed to be a shallow character and his character arc would show him maturing into somebody deeper. He is supposed to go from an unlikable, self-confident jerk into a man who can recognise the error of his ways. Except this doesn't really happen.

True, I would question how liable you could ever make a tobacco lobbyist. Especially one who cohorts with other lobbyists of other questionable industries or have difficult relationships with their children. But I also have an anti-smoking bias - always have done. This type of character would never appeal to me.

Nick Naylor reminded me of characters I have seen in George Clooney's films like  Up in the Air and Michael Clayton, but unlike those characters, Nick Naylor doesn't go through a satisfactory transformation. Or a transformation at all. He begins as an unlikable and immoral jerk and ends as a slightly less unlikable and immoral jerk. 

After his boss stabs him in the back, Naylor publicly calls him out. His boss goes up in smoke, as does the reporter who honey-trapped Naylor into revealing information that she uses for a damning expose. All the characters around him face consequences. Except for Nick Naylor himself. He unfairly goes off as a hero with a son who believes in him again. Although their relationship was never that damaged in the first place.

It's a shame as this film had lots of potential. But the pay-off was disappointing and unearned.

Mash review

 Number 616 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Robert Altman's war-comedy film Mash.

Mash follows the antics of three medical officers Captain Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland,) Captain Trapper John Mcintyre (Eliot Gould) and Captain Duke Forrest (Tom Skerrit) during the Korean war. Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman and Rene Auberjonois co-star.

If you don't know the film Mash then you certainly know the subsequent TV show. Sufficed to say, it was one of the most popular American sitcoms with the most watched TV show finale ever. This is all in spite of how Altman absolutely despised the show.

And like how he despised the TV show, i despised the film. Many critics including the distinguished Roger Ebert, regard it as one of the funniest satires of war ever. Evidently, we we were watching different films, as I, far from my sides hurting from laughing, my eyes were hurting from rolling back in my head.

I barely cracked a smile through the two-hour run-time. it wasn't a funny film. Through a modern lens, you could certainly argue the humour hasn't aged well. I'm sure many modern women wouldn't be happy with how Margaret Houlihan was the butt of every joke.

Through every other lens, it just wasn't funny. It didn't help all the characters were really unlikeable. Hawkeye and Trapper were supposed to be loveable rogues, but they're also insubordinate jerks who like to cause trouble. They were obnoxious and annoying. They weren't characters I wanted to laugh with or at. And even the poor victim Houlihan was too much of a wet blanket to be truly interesting to watch.

In some ways, their characters reflected the actors playing them. Sutherland and Gould famously clashed with Altman and his improvisational directorial style - going so far as to try and get him fired by studio execs. Scriptwriter Ring Lardon JR also had his own problems with Altman. This is despite how he won the Oscar for best screenplay. It definitely changes your perspective of the film.

And my perspective? It was an unfunny film with unlikeable characters.