I've never been one to assert that movies need to serve an ethical or political purpose in order for them to matter. In fact, I've spent many hours arguing with people that movies dismissed as fluff often deserve closer readings. Recently, after watching Syriana and a week later United 93, I've begun to wonder if my tastes are changing. Rather than focus on the aesthetic merits or flaws of the movies, I was caught up in the politics and the moral questions beings posed.

What impressed me about both United 93 and Syriana was their depiction of moral complexity. Syriana's complexity bled over into the narrative to its detriment. But in United 93, the fact that the characters did not wear black and white hats allowed me to cheer on the passengers without feeling as if I needed to see vengeance enacted on screen. (If I were personally invested, I'm sure that I'd feel differently.) There was no doubt in my mind that the terrorist'acts were reprehensible while the passengers' actions were heroic, but I also felt that every single passenger and member of the crew were human. In both movies, I left the movie questioning systems which endenger terrorism rather than the terrorists themselves.

I've always respected movies which could entertain and make you think, but now I'm even less interested in the entertainment piece of the equation. Both United 93 and Syriana were very difficult to watch. I didn't enjoy any of the visual or narrative pleasures that I usually do in movies that impress me. And I wouldn't see either nominated for an award. But that doesn't matter at all. What matters is the fact that when I turned off the TV, I wanted to act. I didn't want to kill anyone. I wanted to change something.

As more of an aside than anything else, I'm obsessing over the film's motivation for having a North European (Dutch?) discourage the other passengers from fighting back. Was their factual support for his inclusion? Was his voice heard in any of the phone calls? Or was it part of the improvisation on the parts of the actors?
If the character was included by the director, was it intended as a criticism of appeasement as a policy with terrorists? Or was it a broader attack on those countries which haven't fought back?

(I actually did some googling and discovered that apparently Greengrass thought it likely that some of the passengers would have thought an attack unreasonable. Erich Redman, playing the role of Christian Adams --a German wine importer--, postulated that the cautious Adams would have been someone who would have thought it more prudent to obey the terrorists. Such moments in movies are so interesting, aren't they? I realized, for example, that I assumed the character was Dutch because of a perception of the Dutch as tolerant to the point of collaboration.)

I watched a few more episodes of Veronica Mars with the thought that the I'd warm up to the sassy detective. How could I not like a smart, wise-cracking, taser-toting chick? Since my childhood when Nancy Drew books kept me absorbed for hours, I've always liked crime-solving and/or butt-kicking girls. Alas, in spite of EW's praise, Veronica just doesn't cut it.

The problem for me with Veronica is that I just don't buy her transformation from fun-loving and popular sweetheart into a cynical outsider. When watching the show, I find myself thinking that she was wearing mask when playing one of the roles. It's possible to be the high school prom queen with a heart of darkness as Wynona Ryder showed us in Heathers, but I don't see it happening in Veronica Mars.

Recently, I've ventured into the world of teen noir where the hardboiled detectives are wise cracking high school students. Brick, the Sundance fave, follows the investigation of Brendan into his ex-girlfriend's murder while the TV series, Veronic Mars has as its detective a fresh-faced girl of the same name. I can see why both have been praised by critics.

Not surprisingly, it's the movie which provides the most faithful rendering of 40s noir down to its miniscule budget. In fact, its probably the most "noir" of any film I've seen for quite a while. While watching it, I remembered what it was like to see the unheimlich at work in film. Places typically considered innocuous such as a high school or a wood-paneled family room are depicted as slightly menacing. Characters are recognizable at first glance, but upon closer scrutiny, the bully, the jock and the rich girl, are as inscrutable as the language they use. And the film draws to an unexpected but inevitable conclusion just as it should.

Veronica Mars seems to refer back to glossy 80s noir such as Fatal Attraction and Body Heat rather than the black and white films of the forties. Rather than employ a murky visual style to evoke mystery, the series employes narrative conventions with a gender twist. Rather than watching as a femme fatale seduces a hardboiled detective with her feminine wiles, a high school girl must wrestle with maternal desire for a mother positioned as the femme fatale. I did not catch even a whiff of the heimlich but I enjoyed watching Veronica use her wit and her logic to thwart the baddies.

(Disclaimer: I've only seen Episode 1 of Veronica Mars so maybe I'll see some play with the noir style but I'm not hopeful.)