Copyright © 2007 Ed Bagley

Here are four average movies that do not get any better the second time around:

Anger Management – 2 Stars (Average)

Anger Management brings young Adam Sandler together with old Jack Nicholson in a dippy comedy that borders on a romantic comedy without the dramatic bent.

Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler) is a businessman who is wrongly sentenced to an anger-management program following an incident on airline flight, but insult is added to injury when Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson), an aggressive, unorthodox therapist, becomes his live in roommate during rehabilitation.

This film is dominated by Nicholson, has a script that begs for better lines, and becomes annoying after awhile, which is very similar to Nicholson’s character in the movie. I am not altogether sure this movie would not have been better if the roles of Nicholson and Sandler were reversed.

Imagine Nicholson as a problematic, anger-management reprobate (not hard to do) and Sandler as a recent psychiatrist grad about to deal with his first real patient (easy to do). I propose this because I felt very little chemistry between Nicholson and Sandler as they were cast.

Anger Management is not a film I would see twice under any circumstances. Apparently a lot of judges felt the same way as awards were really absent for this effort.

The Emperor’s Club – 2 Stars (Average)

The Emperor’s Club reminds me of the aspirations of people starting out in life and the disappointment that inevitably comes when forcing one’s ideas upon another.

William Hundert (Kevin Kline) is a passionate and principled classics professor who finds his world challenged when a new student, Sedgewick Bell (Emile Hirsch), comes into his class. A battle of wills ensues.

The Emperor’s Club needed a better script and suffered from the lack of a female presence. Who wants to watch a bunch of guys being smart asses? This gets to be about as interesting as watching flour turn brown.

The Emperor’s Club was not unlike the Dead Poet’s Society with Robin Williams as English professor John Keating, except Williams does a better acting job than Kline.

The message of The Emperor’s Club is negative and undermining; the message of Dead Poet’s Society is uplifting and encouraging.

Dead Poet’s Society earned an Oscar for Best Writing by Tom Schulman, and garnered three other Academy nominations: Robin Williams for Best Actor, Peter Weir for Best Director and Best Picture.

The Emperor’s Club was not even noticed at awards time.

The Fast and the Furious – 2 Stars (Average)

The Fast and the Furious is an action flick for guys featuring street car racing, macho wannabe men and mindless activity that sends a terrible message to every mixed up teenager who is out of control and looking for trouble.

Yes, the cars are great, yes, the race scenes are terrific for a fantasy world, and no, this film has no redeeming quality worth talking about. It is, in a word, stupid, and glorifies a stupid activity.

The Fast and the Furious picked up some minor awards for cinematography and music, but lacks substance and gets low marks for bad behavior. Save your money on the sequel.

Five Easy Pieces – 2 Stars (Average)

Five Easy Pieces was made in 1970 and 36 years later has become a cult film in the sense that it engenders a misplaced or excessive admiration because of an actor named Jack Nicholson and a restaurant scene that suggests humor but exhibits rage.

Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson) is a successful classical pianist from a well-to-do family who becomes a worthless piece of nothing on his way to nowhere about 1,000 miles an hour. Dupea becomes one troubled and sad person who ends up as a trashy oil rigger.

Dupea surrounds himself with enough dysfunctional people to field a basketball team. One of Dupea’s lines in the movie says a lot: “I move around a lot, not because I’m looking for anything really, but ’cause I’m getting away from things that get bad if I stay.” Dupea just needs to grow up and stop feeling sorry for himself; he simply cannot come to terms with life and what it has to offer.

Nicholson does a great job with his role in the film (he gets his second Oscar nomination for Best Actor), but the script, story, ending and everything else about Five Easy Pieces is negative and worthless. The message of the film is just a sad, sorry excuse for living.

Nicholson becomes a major force in acting during Five Easy Pieces. He goes on to earn no less than 2 Best Actor Oscars (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and As Good As It Gets), 1 Best Supporting Actor Oscar (Terms of Endearment) and no less than 9 other Best Actor nominations.

Jack Nicholson is the most nominated actor in Academy Awards history. I was about to say he could win an Oscar nomination in any film, and then I remembered Anger Management with Adam Sandler.

Five Easy Pieces also won Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress (Karen Black), Best Picture and Best Writing by Bob Rafelson and Carole Eastman. Great scripts do help, but I find the message of this script disturbing.

This film has received several awards: ‘Best Film’ and the ‘Audience Award’ at the 2004 European Film Awards. Fatih Akin is an internationally acclaimed film director whose works include ‘Visions of Europe‘, ‘Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul‘ and others. ‘Head-On’ is thrilling and in general, it has an excited atmosphere and the good music that makes understandable the whole movie even without words. Moreover, the film emphasizes the theme of ‘foreignness’ that is so familiar to its director. This movie has simple structure and clear plot. It is a richly entertaining film that colorfully evokes the music, dance, sexual life, and the concept of ‘foreignness’. The film is full of dramatic and realistic scenes. Moreover, it is full of dramatic theme and the theme of ‘otherness’ or ‘foreignness’.

Personal life of major characters from the film cannot be called happy. The ‘foreignness’ influences their lives. This does not mean their lives are the worst ones but the problems, which they face, are serious ones. Moreover, the culture is different in a foreign country and the film characters have to accept another type of society. The characters find it difficult to live in a foreign country, even for a short period of time. They remember that all changes are difficult and they need to go through all the difficulties in order to value everything they have. Both movies have received awards owing to the great performances of the characters. They are worth seeing as the play of characters is successful. All the parts of these movies have their brilliance.

A good movie usually has a simple plot. ‘Head-On’ is a good example of simplicity. ‘Head-On’ is a melodrama that will not leave you indifferent to it. It is worth seeing by all people who like movies of such kind. ‘Head-On’ is shot in German and Turkish languages. In my opinion ‘Head-On’ is one of the best dramatic films ever made. It has depth, emotion that makes the spectator think about the life and his actions. This is an affectionate film, salute to the magic of the movies, which recreates the experience of cinema in Germany and Turkey. It raises questions about the place of cinema and the meaning of love and realistic events in our life.

This film reveals the concept of ‘foreignness’, ‘otherness’ that is so familiar to the director of the film. The performance of the cast is great. Birol Unel shines in this great film. He has the role of the ‘lost soul’ playing a 40-year-old Cahit who is a patient at a German psychiatric clinic. The film is the study of important events in our life, of the significant events people face being at the crossroads between the illusiveness of life and the uncertainty of the future.

Section 1 Part 1 of a FREE online course on writing a screenplay by Cork Graham, screenwriter, scriptdoctor, and author of the 2004 bestselling memoir The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War.

I’m in film school, specializing in Editing. I really enjoy this, but more than that I am passionate about screenwriting. I decided Editing over this because of the job outlook for Screenwriting. I figured, “I can always screenwrite. I don’t need to go to graduate school for that.” Maybe, the same argument could be made for editing. Would it be so bad to change my specialty to Screenwriting? Would the job outlook be so bad? Would it be a waste of time and money?

Last week I read the book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer and quite enjoyed the wisdom that it had to offer.The basic premise of the book revolves around the fact that we can achieve any goal or change any challenging and difficult thing in our lives through simple, small baby steps forward.

  As I poured through the book it got me thinking about how some filmmakers (especially screenwriters) could benefit from this type of mindset. I know from my experiences that sitting down to write a feature length screenplay can sometimes become a painful test of will power and self discipline.  

So if you’re a writer, instead of sitting down and promising to write 5 pages before you get up…start by just writing for 5 minutes a day.

That’s it.

Once you have built up the habit of writing for 5 minutes…then stretch it to just 10 minutes working on your story everyday. Feel no pressure to increase your writing sessions.

Just work at your own pace. But I’m sure that as you continue to faithfully work on your story in 5,10 and 15 minute sessions you’ll easily build up your writing stamina to 30 minutes to one hour per day. Next time when the thought of writing your screenplay comes to mind and that small voice tells you that you’re too tired or too busy or not feeling inspired. Just walk right over to your computer, turn it on and invest just 5 minutes towards your future film.

Ian Agard is an independent writer/director/film producer commited to helping emerging filmmakers advance and achieve their dreams. You can learn more about him as well as his book “Stop Waiting and Make Your Movie” by visiting http://www.ianagard.com/how-to-finance-your-movie/.