3. Stonewall: The Moment Where They Crap On History From A Great Height
Roland Emmerich is the visionary director of large scale, effects heavy, cheerfully brainless films like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012. By visionary, of course, I mean may or may not possess a set of eyes, because theres nothing about his filmography that indicates that Emmerich knows how to competently make a real film, or how to direct a real script about real people. All of which makes him the ideal person to direct a deeply personal telling of the New York Stonewall Riots of 1969, that helped set off the LGBT liberation movement and remain a historical and cultural touchstone for America. All the usual Emmerich tropes are there: the inability to collate a decent script or to curate an appropriate production design; the misfire of the films central conceit (here hes transformed a fascinating, politically charged landscape into the background for a generic rites of passage teen drama); the failure to obtain anything close to a quality performance from his cast... The astonishing thing is that Emmerich and screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz are both openly gay, and the backdrop of their story - the context of the important American history playing out - clearly means something to them. That the execution of that story is so horribly screwed up is a worse indictment of the directors rudimentary filmmaking talent than any of the big, dumb shouty explosion-fests that hes most famous for. Its a film so bad you actually feel personally insulted watching it.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
