Training Day *
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke
Written by: David Ayer
Rated R (violence, language, drug use, brief nudity)
I have never walked out of a movie before. I don’t intend to start doing so. But, man alive, did this flick try my patience.
Training Day is about Jake Hoyt (Hawke)’s first day in training to be a narc. His ‘mentor’ is Alonzo Harris (Washington), a veteran of the LAPD narcotics beat. Now, Hoyt isn’t a true rookie – he’s been a cop for over a year, but he wants to be a detective. One good way to become one is by training in narcotics. Alonzo has been on this beat for years, and is considered one of the best. What better training ground could there be? During his day of training, Hoyt learns to disregard the 4th Amendment, lie, use drugs, and all sorts of other things a good cop shouldn’t do.
Now, there is some validity to having an undercover cop or narc be familiar with the quality of drugs, but they must also remain above the culture. Donnie Brasco and Rush both showed this very well. Training Day does not.
I have a host of complaints about this movie. I’m going to address them in no particular order.
1) The story made no sense at all. It starts off fine – Alonzo is a typical hard-nosed narc with little to no patience with a rookie who wants to be a do-gooder. The street has no patience for those types. Ok – I’ll buy that. But then, all of a sudden, we’re in the middle of a mystery, and we have no idea where it started or what the details are. We know that Russians are involved, and some other guy, and then all of a sudden we make a bust that makes even less sense, and then, the movie doesn’t end. It keeps going, adding new subplots, and don’t even think that any of these are going to be resolved at the end. And then the movie is over.
2) Alonzo is not likable. Yes, he’s a tough cop. Yes, he uses methods that aren’t exactly legal. But Washington gives the audience nothing about his character to like. We grew to like Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket. We liked Darth Vader. We saw the humanity in those characters. Washington is a very good actor, and has the awards to prove it. I don’t know if it was the way the character was written or what, but we are given nothing about Alonzo to like. We aren’t allowed to see his humanity.
3) The pacing is terrible. This movie went on and on and on, and just kept going after it had stopped making sense. Now, this, I don’t understand. Fuqua started off directing music videos (This is not a bad thing – David Fincher, who directed Se7en and Fight Club started out the same way. As did Spike Jonze, who made Being John Malkovich.). He should understand pacing. He directed The Replacement Killers, which starred Chow Yun-Fat and Mira Sorvino – he can obviously work with actors. So, I’m not sure what happened. Perhaps the editor should be canned. Or the writer. Someone, anyway.
4) There was no closure. In a good-cop-bad-cop movie, the audience NEEDS closure. We need moral resolution. We need to have an epilogue, or at least, a hint that leads us towards a future conclusion. We hear about 'evidence', but don't see how this evidence is used. The ending isn't existensial like Chinatown, it isn't a romantic bummer like John Woo's The Killer -- it just is.
I’m done making my list. There are just too many things to go into with this movie. I’m not about to write a spoiler for those of you who still insist on seeing this movie, but I will advise you to reconsider. There are plenty of other movies opening this week.
Monday, August 07, 2023
Friday, March 06, 2015
CHAPPiE
CHAPPiE
Rated R (violence, language, philosophical content)
Directed by: Neill Blomkamp
Written by: Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
*** out of ****
First off, you need to click here: Die Antwoord
Tetravaal Robotics has the WORST security. They make police robots, and they have, just, AWFUL security.
This is another flick that I was going to see regardless. I really liked "District 9", and, while I admired the ambition of "Elysium", it suffered from trying to cram too many ideas into the film. Neill Blomkamp's artistic sensibilities really appeal to me. I love urban decay. I like my future urban and dirty.
"CHAPPiE" is a much stronger film than "Elysium", at least up until the end. It didn't go off the rails, but... Know what? I'm glad that the movie ended the way it did. Was it stupid? Yup. Do I care? Not one bit.
Johannesburg in the near future is a crime-ridden cesspool. The police are testing Scouts - bipedal autonomous robots made by Tetravaal Robotics. They're faster, tougher and stronger than humans, which is brilliant for dealing with gangs that have access to heavy artillery. Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) is the lead Scout engineer, but, really, he wants to develop a true AI. One that would, for all intents and purposes, think, reason, and feel.
Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) is the lead engineer on the Moose project - the ED-209 to the Scout RoboCop (and don't think that that design was accidental. Blomkamp knows he's treading on previously explored territory and doesn't avoid that particular elephant in the room.). Scouts are autonomous, while the Moose requires a human controller using a helmet that reads brain waves. It's a drone, but, that's a big selling point. A human would be doing threat-assessment. A human would be making the call to shoot or not.
Ninja (Ninja), Yolandi (Yo-Landi Vi$$er) and Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo) are some low-level thugs that wind up $20 million in hock to Hippo (Brandon Auret), and decide that they need to kidnap Deon, since, as Yolandi suggests, he would have the remote control that turns the robots off like a TV. They force Deon to upload his untested AI into a damaged Scout unit, and, holy cow, now the worst people possible are in charge of what is, essentially, a toddler. That is WAY stronger than a human. They call him CHAPPIE (Sharlto Copley).
Now, obviously, the comparison to "Short Circuit" is inevitable. It is, however, wrong. Nor is the correct comparison to "Pinnochio" or, well, "A.I." While I was watching it, I was thinking "Rain Man" and "Flowers for Algernon", and it was enraging. Like when you see a child, and the child has awful parents, and your heart just breaks, hoping that maybe, just maybe, that kid can break out and become a good person, but, you just know that it's not going to happen, and the cycle of violence and desperation will keep going on for at least another generation. It hurts to see people take advantage of dependents that don't know better because they haven't seen better, or because they are working with a diminished capacity. That's where "CHAPPiE" shines. Or rather, darkles.
Of course, there are other themes that are presented, but not really explored. That doesn't really bother me here, since they didn't need to be explored in depth. Deon is a skinny Indian nerd, while Vincent is a hulking white ex-soldier with a proto-mullet. Is that an allegory? If it is, is it what an American is going to think, or is it what a South African is going to think?
Like "Pacific Rim", this is almost a live-action anime. CHAPPiE's design is a throwback to "Appleseed" or, what I initially thought, a Varitech fighter from "Robotech". Moose is drawn from the Metal Gear video game series. While Hippo's design wouldn't be out of place in "Cowboy Bebop" or "Fist of the North Star", I thought that Ninja and Yolandi were CLEARLY supposed to be anime characters in real life. Nope. That's just how they look. In real life.
I really like the current trend of big budget, high profile sci-fi cinema, and, I certainly hope that the quality remains high. (It won't.)
Rated R (violence, language, philosophical content)
Directed by: Neill Blomkamp
Written by: Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
*** out of ****
First off, you need to click here: Die Antwoord
Tetravaal Robotics has the WORST security. They make police robots, and they have, just, AWFUL security.
This is another flick that I was going to see regardless. I really liked "District 9", and, while I admired the ambition of "Elysium", it suffered from trying to cram too many ideas into the film. Neill Blomkamp's artistic sensibilities really appeal to me. I love urban decay. I like my future urban and dirty.
"CHAPPiE" is a much stronger film than "Elysium", at least up until the end. It didn't go off the rails, but... Know what? I'm glad that the movie ended the way it did. Was it stupid? Yup. Do I care? Not one bit.
Johannesburg in the near future is a crime-ridden cesspool. The police are testing Scouts - bipedal autonomous robots made by Tetravaal Robotics. They're faster, tougher and stronger than humans, which is brilliant for dealing with gangs that have access to heavy artillery. Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) is the lead Scout engineer, but, really, he wants to develop a true AI. One that would, for all intents and purposes, think, reason, and feel.
Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) is the lead engineer on the Moose project - the ED-209 to the Scout RoboCop (and don't think that that design was accidental. Blomkamp knows he's treading on previously explored territory and doesn't avoid that particular elephant in the room.). Scouts are autonomous, while the Moose requires a human controller using a helmet that reads brain waves. It's a drone, but, that's a big selling point. A human would be doing threat-assessment. A human would be making the call to shoot or not.
Ninja (Ninja), Yolandi (Yo-Landi Vi$$er) and Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo) are some low-level thugs that wind up $20 million in hock to Hippo (Brandon Auret), and decide that they need to kidnap Deon, since, as Yolandi suggests, he would have the remote control that turns the robots off like a TV. They force Deon to upload his untested AI into a damaged Scout unit, and, holy cow, now the worst people possible are in charge of what is, essentially, a toddler. That is WAY stronger than a human. They call him CHAPPIE (Sharlto Copley).
Now, obviously, the comparison to "Short Circuit" is inevitable. It is, however, wrong. Nor is the correct comparison to "Pinnochio" or, well, "A.I." While I was watching it, I was thinking "Rain Man" and "Flowers for Algernon", and it was enraging. Like when you see a child, and the child has awful parents, and your heart just breaks, hoping that maybe, just maybe, that kid can break out and become a good person, but, you just know that it's not going to happen, and the cycle of violence and desperation will keep going on for at least another generation. It hurts to see people take advantage of dependents that don't know better because they haven't seen better, or because they are working with a diminished capacity. That's where "CHAPPiE" shines. Or rather, darkles.
Of course, there are other themes that are presented, but not really explored. That doesn't really bother me here, since they didn't need to be explored in depth. Deon is a skinny Indian nerd, while Vincent is a hulking white ex-soldier with a proto-mullet. Is that an allegory? If it is, is it what an American is going to think, or is it what a South African is going to think?
Like "Pacific Rim", this is almost a live-action anime. CHAPPiE's design is a throwback to "Appleseed" or, what I initially thought, a Varitech fighter from "Robotech". Moose is drawn from the Metal Gear video game series. While Hippo's design wouldn't be out of place in "Cowboy Bebop" or "Fist of the North Star", I thought that Ninja and Yolandi were CLEARLY supposed to be anime characters in real life. Nope. That's just how they look. In real life.
I really like the current trend of big budget, high profile sci-fi cinema, and, I certainly hope that the quality remains high. (It won't.)
Monday, March 02, 2015
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Rated R (Holy crap violence you guys)
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Written by: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (screenplay) and Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons (Comic, "The Secret Service")
**1/2 out of ****
Competency porn, when it's done well, is amazing to behold. Seeing someone who is so damned good at their job... Unf. Macguyver. Sherlock Holmes. Gregory House. Tywin Lannister (an evil bastard, but damned good at running a kingdom). James Bond. This movie strives for it, so hard, but, just misses the mark, and I think the problem is that it was trying to do too many things at once.
The Kingsman Organization is, basically, Batman organized along the lines of the Special Operations Executive (The Baker Street Irregulars) -- a private group dedicated to keeping the world safe through extra-legal means. They're not mercs, since they aren't for hire. And, above all, they are Gentlemen.
When an opening appears within the group, Harry "Galahad" Hunt (Colin Firth) recruits a kid who, in America, would be considered white trash. Gary "Eggsy" Unwin (Taron Egerton) is the son of one of Galahad's prior recruits. A diamond in the rough. Eggsy isn't familiar with "Trading Places" or "Pretty Woman", but does know "My Fair Lady". The Big Bad in this flick is Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson playing Russell Simmons as a tech genius).
The movie has some really impressive fight sequences (which, I guess, would be technique porn). Like Zack Snyder, Vaughn knows how to frame even frenetic sequences so you don't get lost in what is happening. Eddie Hamilton and Jon Harris really need to be congratulated on their editing work here. Either they made a massacre look nearly seamless, or Vaughn and his choreographers and cinematographer did something AMAZING.
The movie is CRAZY violent, but, for some reason, it never hit a gleefully fevered pitch. I never got swept up into a giggle fit because of something amazing that just happened. The flick isn't grimdark, but, it's never especially joyful, which is a shame.
From a tech standpoint, yes, the movie is stellar. But, it felt cramped.
It would have been better served, I think, as a miniseries. The world that Millar and Gibbons created and Goldman and Vaughn adapted is simply too rich to be crammed into a 2-hour movie. The only things that were allowed to breathe, really, were the bits with Colin Firth. Checkov brought a lot of guns into the picture, but, sadly, they were only starter pistols. If you're using climate change as a plot device, make more of it. If class strife in a deeply traditional organization is important to character development, by golly, let us see more than just snooty douchebaggery. If times, they are a-changing, make clever design choices in things beyond costumes. And when you have Michael Caine in a movie, use him more.
Rated R (Holy crap violence you guys)
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Written by: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (screenplay) and Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons (Comic, "The Secret Service")
**1/2 out of ****
Competency porn, when it's done well, is amazing to behold. Seeing someone who is so damned good at their job... Unf. Macguyver. Sherlock Holmes. Gregory House. Tywin Lannister (an evil bastard, but damned good at running a kingdom). James Bond. This movie strives for it, so hard, but, just misses the mark, and I think the problem is that it was trying to do too many things at once.
The Kingsman Organization is, basically, Batman organized along the lines of the Special Operations Executive (The Baker Street Irregulars) -- a private group dedicated to keeping the world safe through extra-legal means. They're not mercs, since they aren't for hire. And, above all, they are Gentlemen.
When an opening appears within the group, Harry "Galahad" Hunt (Colin Firth) recruits a kid who, in America, would be considered white trash. Gary "Eggsy" Unwin (Taron Egerton) is the son of one of Galahad's prior recruits. A diamond in the rough. Eggsy isn't familiar with "Trading Places" or "Pretty Woman", but does know "My Fair Lady". The Big Bad in this flick is Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson playing Russell Simmons as a tech genius).
The movie has some really impressive fight sequences (which, I guess, would be technique porn). Like Zack Snyder, Vaughn knows how to frame even frenetic sequences so you don't get lost in what is happening. Eddie Hamilton and Jon Harris really need to be congratulated on their editing work here. Either they made a massacre look nearly seamless, or Vaughn and his choreographers and cinematographer did something AMAZING.
The movie is CRAZY violent, but, for some reason, it never hit a gleefully fevered pitch. I never got swept up into a giggle fit because of something amazing that just happened. The flick isn't grimdark, but, it's never especially joyful, which is a shame.
From a tech standpoint, yes, the movie is stellar. But, it felt cramped.
It would have been better served, I think, as a miniseries. The world that Millar and Gibbons created and Goldman and Vaughn adapted is simply too rich to be crammed into a 2-hour movie. The only things that were allowed to breathe, really, were the bits with Colin Firth. Checkov brought a lot of guns into the picture, but, sadly, they were only starter pistols. If you're using climate change as a plot device, make more of it. If class strife in a deeply traditional organization is important to character development, by golly, let us see more than just snooty douchebaggery. If times, they are a-changing, make clever design choices in things beyond costumes. And when you have Michael Caine in a movie, use him more.
Friday, February 06, 2015
Jupiter Ascending
Jupiter Ascending
Rated PG-13 ('splosions and nekkid butts)
Written and Directed by: The Wachowskis
*** out of ****
Are you 12? Do you like video games and anime and comic books and sci-fi? Go and see this movie.
Are you an "adult"? Do you like driving your car, and going to work, and reading the newspaper? (I am not fully aware of what "adults do.) You might not like this movie.
Let's get this out of the way first: I was going to see this movie. I didn't read any reviews, and I know that the release was pushed back from last summer to February, which never bodes well, but I was going to see this movie because, even if it was terrible, it was going to be a beautiful disaster. The Wachowskis make stunning movies. Even in their neo-noir lesbian heist flick "Bound", they knew how to make a shot look cool.
Fortunately, this movie wasn't a disaster. It was, however, beautiful.
Plot? Pshaw. It's space-opera. It's well done space-opera, but it's space-opera nonetheless. You know all you need to know story-wise from the trailers. Jupiter Jones (my girlfriend Mila Kunis) works with her mother and aunt cleaning condos and penthouses in Chicago, but she's REALLY the genetic reincarnation of the matron of the House Abrasax, a bunch of ultra-wealthy twits with nothing better to do than snipe and sabotage each other, because they are THAT RICH. They own galactic sectors, not just planets. Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) is a former genetically engineered Legionnaire/bounty hunter hired to take Jupiter to (wait for it) Jupiter where destiny and blah blah blah. The story makes as much sense as Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy, which, while epic, was really just one damned thing after another.
This is the movie that "Chronicles of Riddick" wanted to be SO BAD. "Pitch Black" and "Riddick" worked because Richard B. Riddick is a bad, bad man like Mad Max or Snake Pliskin. "Chronicles of Riddick" didn't work because we really don't need the character to be in or part of a space-opera. The extensive lore that they put in actually worked against the character. In "Jupiter Ascending", while the story starts from the beginning Jupiter's life, we are dropped in medias res plot-wise. Wheels have been turning for millennia, and Jupiter is not only the protagonist but the audience surrogate. We learn things when she learns things. She's confused because we are, and this works quite well.
The universe that the Wachowskis have made here has more in common with "Dune" than with "Star Wars", and more in common with "Guardians of the Galaxy" than "Pacific Rim". The bad guys (and you can tell they are bad guys because HOLY CRAP ARE THEY ACTING. ACTING SO HARD.) are part of galactic society, but they are subject to the Aegis (Space Police) and a huge bureaucracy that leads into a fantastic Terry Gilliam homage that I won't spoil further.
There's no "magic" like The Force or Spice Awareness or psychohystory here. It's all genetics and gravity and physics that our branch of humanity doesn't understand, but it gives Channing Tatum gravity rollerblades because if he didn't have them we wouldn't have crazy action scenes. Also, he loses his shirt for a long time (ladies).
It's a big, dumb, pretty, somewhat lightweight space-opera that has a nicely self-contained story, but plenty of lore to explore. I would like to do some reading to look for the hidden symbolism that they are fond of putting in their movies (and, man, when you hear someone joking about college courses designed around "The Matrix", you stop them from making fun of it because, seriously. The amount of hard philosophy in that series is mind-boggling.), but it ain't gonna kill me if I don't.
Rated PG-13 ('splosions and nekkid butts)
Written and Directed by: The Wachowskis
*** out of ****
Are you 12? Do you like video games and anime and comic books and sci-fi? Go and see this movie.
Are you an "adult"? Do you like driving your car, and going to work, and reading the newspaper? (I am not fully aware of what "adults do.) You might not like this movie.
Let's get this out of the way first: I was going to see this movie. I didn't read any reviews, and I know that the release was pushed back from last summer to February, which never bodes well, but I was going to see this movie because, even if it was terrible, it was going to be a beautiful disaster. The Wachowskis make stunning movies. Even in their neo-noir lesbian heist flick "Bound", they knew how to make a shot look cool.
Fortunately, this movie wasn't a disaster. It was, however, beautiful.
Plot? Pshaw. It's space-opera. It's well done space-opera, but it's space-opera nonetheless. You know all you need to know story-wise from the trailers. Jupiter Jones (my girlfriend Mila Kunis) works with her mother and aunt cleaning condos and penthouses in Chicago, but she's REALLY the genetic reincarnation of the matron of the House Abrasax, a bunch of ultra-wealthy twits with nothing better to do than snipe and sabotage each other, because they are THAT RICH. They own galactic sectors, not just planets. Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) is a former genetically engineered Legionnaire/bounty hunter hired to take Jupiter to (wait for it) Jupiter where destiny and blah blah blah. The story makes as much sense as Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy, which, while epic, was really just one damned thing after another.
This is the movie that "Chronicles of Riddick" wanted to be SO BAD. "Pitch Black" and "Riddick" worked because Richard B. Riddick is a bad, bad man like Mad Max or Snake Pliskin. "Chronicles of Riddick" didn't work because we really don't need the character to be in or part of a space-opera. The extensive lore that they put in actually worked against the character. In "Jupiter Ascending", while the story starts from the beginning Jupiter's life, we are dropped in medias res plot-wise. Wheels have been turning for millennia, and Jupiter is not only the protagonist but the audience surrogate. We learn things when she learns things. She's confused because we are, and this works quite well.
The universe that the Wachowskis have made here has more in common with "Dune" than with "Star Wars", and more in common with "Guardians of the Galaxy" than "Pacific Rim". The bad guys (and you can tell they are bad guys because HOLY CRAP ARE THEY ACTING. ACTING SO HARD.) are part of galactic society, but they are subject to the Aegis (Space Police) and a huge bureaucracy that leads into a fantastic Terry Gilliam homage that I won't spoil further.
There's no "magic" like The Force or Spice Awareness or psychohystory here. It's all genetics and gravity and physics that our branch of humanity doesn't understand, but it gives Channing Tatum gravity rollerblades because if he didn't have them we wouldn't have crazy action scenes. Also, he loses his shirt for a long time (ladies).
It's a big, dumb, pretty, somewhat lightweight space-opera that has a nicely self-contained story, but plenty of lore to explore. I would like to do some reading to look for the hidden symbolism that they are fond of putting in their movies (and, man, when you hear someone joking about college courses designed around "The Matrix", you stop them from making fun of it because, seriously. The amount of hard philosophy in that series is mind-boggling.), but it ain't gonna kill me if I don't.
Sunday, December 21, 2014
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Rated PG-13 (beheadings and 'splosions)
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro (Screenplay), J.R.R. Tolkien (Novel, "The Hobbit")
**1/2 out of ****
You have no excuses to not know this story. None. If you didn't see "The Lord of The Rings", you are a liar, and if you didn't read "The Hobbit", you had an awful childhood that should have been rectified by this point.
I'm not going to recount the story, really. It's in the damn subtitle. There's a battle, and it involves five armies. Also, a dragon.
I know that Jackson and company added some characters and changed a few details, but, overall, the adaptation is fairly faithful. And yet, only 2 1/2 stars.
The acting is fine. You couldn't have found a better actor to play a young Bilbo Baggins. Richard Armitage is a handsome, brooding King Under the Mountain. There are other dwarves and people, but... Well, let's let Bilbo say what the problem is.
"I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."
That's basically the problem with "The Hobbit" trilogy. It shouldn't have been one. It should have been two movies - The Shire to The Desolation of Smaug, and then The Battle of the Five Armies. Gandalf vs. The Witch King of Angmar should be a separate movie all together.
And, sadly, Peter Jackson had to make the movies. He didn't even want to in the first place. Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro were on the short-list to helm it, but, due to lawsuits and licensing taking forever, del Toro wound up dropping out because he had other productions to deal with. (One of which was "Pacific Rim", so, I'm not too sad.)
You can feel that Jackson's heart simply wasn't in these. Especially in the first two, not so much in this one, but, that's because character building has already happened, and now it's time for the payoff.
From a technical standpoint, wow. Just seeing how much technology has progressed since LOTR is stunning. There did seem to be some strange frame-rate or resolution issues going on, however. The battles were huge, and had even better choreography than in the original trilogy, but, they felt less intimate. Faramir trying to save Osgiliath was brutal, but felt intimate. Thorin and some other dwarves (seriously, there were too damn many dwarves, and didn't have strong enough personalities for me to tell which was which. There was Old Beard, Time Bandit Hat, Baldy McTattoo, Braided Beard, Young Handsome Dwarf, and I'm sure several others.) taking on orcs was equally brutal, and even better visually, but, meh. Even with beheadings, it just lacked the emotional heft.
Is this movie bad? No. Far from it. It's just... I'm sure Jackson is tired, and would REALLY like to move on.
Rated PG-13 (beheadings and 'splosions)
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro (Screenplay), J.R.R. Tolkien (Novel, "The Hobbit")
**1/2 out of ****
You have no excuses to not know this story. None. If you didn't see "The Lord of The Rings", you are a liar, and if you didn't read "The Hobbit", you had an awful childhood that should have been rectified by this point.
I'm not going to recount the story, really. It's in the damn subtitle. There's a battle, and it involves five armies. Also, a dragon.
I know that Jackson and company added some characters and changed a few details, but, overall, the adaptation is fairly faithful. And yet, only 2 1/2 stars.
The acting is fine. You couldn't have found a better actor to play a young Bilbo Baggins. Richard Armitage is a handsome, brooding King Under the Mountain. There are other dwarves and people, but... Well, let's let Bilbo say what the problem is.
"I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."
That's basically the problem with "The Hobbit" trilogy. It shouldn't have been one. It should have been two movies - The Shire to The Desolation of Smaug, and then The Battle of the Five Armies. Gandalf vs. The Witch King of Angmar should be a separate movie all together.
And, sadly, Peter Jackson had to make the movies. He didn't even want to in the first place. Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro were on the short-list to helm it, but, due to lawsuits and licensing taking forever, del Toro wound up dropping out because he had other productions to deal with. (One of which was "Pacific Rim", so, I'm not too sad.)
You can feel that Jackson's heart simply wasn't in these. Especially in the first two, not so much in this one, but, that's because character building has already happened, and now it's time for the payoff.
From a technical standpoint, wow. Just seeing how much technology has progressed since LOTR is stunning. There did seem to be some strange frame-rate or resolution issues going on, however. The battles were huge, and had even better choreography than in the original trilogy, but, they felt less intimate. Faramir trying to save Osgiliath was brutal, but felt intimate. Thorin and some other dwarves (seriously, there were too damn many dwarves, and didn't have strong enough personalities for me to tell which was which. There was Old Beard, Time Bandit Hat, Baldy McTattoo, Braided Beard, Young Handsome Dwarf, and I'm sure several others.) taking on orcs was equally brutal, and even better visually, but, meh. Even with beheadings, it just lacked the emotional heft.
Is this movie bad? No. Far from it. It's just... I'm sure Jackson is tired, and would REALLY like to move on.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Interstellar
I am dictating this, rather than typing it, both to try something new, and because my computer is broken.
If you wanted to make a movie that would just give me the biggest boner you've ever seen, it would be interstellar.
Quotation marks 2001: a Space Odyssey quotation marks is the greatest movie ever made in my opinion. Not only science fiction, but movie in general. It is tough to overstate if impact culturally artistically and cinematically. Kubrick and Clarke busted the doors wide open. And now, every science fiction movie has to measure up to that. Not every science fiction movie needs to. Obviously some have different goals. Alien, for example, was essentially a monster movie but grounded in theoretical biology. Blade Runner ask the question of what it actually means to be human. 2001 was a monster movie, questioned what we were, asked where we came from, and suggested where we could go.
Christopher Nolan's interstellar does not shy away from this. It recognizes that it can't just ignore the elephant in the room. And not just the elephant of 2001. It also recognizes that Disney play a role.
I really don't want to get into the plot too much. It's really good. The story is one that hit me all over the place. The challenge with interstellar, and any really good sci-fi, is to connect humanity with sometimes very abstract scientific ideas. Blade Runner was the Turing test wrapped inside a detective story. 2001 replaced the notion of God with the concept of a species vastly more evolved than humanity. Interstellar explorers the effects of relativity on families. Relativity for relatives.
What is time? What is gravity? Why are these two phenomena connected? Why are we only able to receive three dimensions when we know that more exist? Is Christopher Nolan comfortable with questions of time because he's British and there's been a blue police box in his cultural psyche for 50 years? No, seriously. Time gets wibbly wobbly, and it works dramatically.
Design wise, you have to recognize the design of the robots. Clearly, they hearken back to 2001 and its monolith. But you also have to notice the naming conventions. It is been ages since I have seen the movie, but one of my favorite parts of an older sci-fi flick was the robots, V.I.N.C.E.N.T. and Old B.O.B. Here, we have T.A.R.S. and C.A.S.E. When I made that connection, oh boy did I smile.
Another huge influence on Interstellar is Steven Spielberg. Close in counters of the third kind is represented big and bad. And I loved it. I don't mind being emotionally manipulated if it's done skillfully.
So, what we have here, is christopher nolan love letter to stanley kubrick, steven spielberg, and to quantum physics. This movie needs to be seen in the theater. I'm going to stop now because I can just go on forever.
Sunday, November 09, 2014
Big Hero 6
Big Hero 6
Rated PG ('splosions, death)
Directed by: Don Hall and Chris Williams
Written by: Jordan Roberts and Don Hall (story), Jordan Roberts, Daniel Gerson and Robert L. Baird (Screenplay), Man of Action (concept and characters)
*** out of ****
Cute.
That's how I would describe this 'un.
Cute.
It's not a knock against it at all. It's a good family flick, it is superbly paced, it has just the right amount of drama (it's not a Pixar flick, so you probably won't cry (not like I ever have at a Pixar movie))... It's... It's cute. It plays it safe.
Big Hero 6 is loosely based on a comic of the same name that I'm not familiar with. It's a Marvel movie, but not part of the MCU. So, you don't have to worry about figuring out if that thing you saw out of the corner of your eye was a reference to Thanos. The premise is this: Hiro (ha!), the protagonist (but not Hiro Protagonist), is a genius. He makes and fights robots as a hobby. His older brother goes to school to study robotics with his nerd friends with clever nicknames (Wasabi, GoGo, Honey Lemon and Fred). Hiro develops microbots that act as a swarm after being inspired by seeing what his brother did: making a medical robot named Baymax. Baymax is inflatable vinyl around a carbon fiber core, and can diagnose and treat pretty much any physical ailment. He helps. The microbots could help, swarming to transport things, build things, what have you. Disaster strikes, the microbots are used for EVIL, and the adventure begins.
I'm not 8, but, if I were, I'd be WAY down with this movie. I'd be down harder for this than I was for Short Circuit. I think that this will age FAR better than that did.
Characters, story, it's nothing that you haven't seen before (not that that's a bad thing, mind you). It's not Iron Giant, but doesn't try to be. It's not the gleeful exercises that The Goonies or The Adventures of Tin-Tin were, and that's OK, too. It's OK to be small sometimes. Leave some room for the sequels.
As far as I am concerned, Pixar is the gold standard for computer animation. What they do is simply phenomenal from a technical standpoint. Disney owns Pixar, but this is not a Pixar movie, although some of the work is stunning.
Watch some of the virtual camera work. Very nice things done with "lenses". Especially watch the swarms in action. I don't know how many polygons they were pushing, but the way they moved was fascinating, especially when other actors were in the frame. Very herky-jerky stop-motion, which is, I suspect, how they would actually move in reality.
It's not the triumph that The Lego Movie was, but it's far from a disaster. If you are a fan of animation as an art form, you should definitely see it. Great work with translucency and texturing.
Rated PG ('splosions, death)
Directed by: Don Hall and Chris Williams
Written by: Jordan Roberts and Don Hall (story), Jordan Roberts, Daniel Gerson and Robert L. Baird (Screenplay), Man of Action (concept and characters)
*** out of ****
Cute.
That's how I would describe this 'un.
Cute.
It's not a knock against it at all. It's a good family flick, it is superbly paced, it has just the right amount of drama (it's not a Pixar flick, so you probably won't cry (not like I ever have at a Pixar movie))... It's... It's cute. It plays it safe.
Big Hero 6 is loosely based on a comic of the same name that I'm not familiar with. It's a Marvel movie, but not part of the MCU. So, you don't have to worry about figuring out if that thing you saw out of the corner of your eye was a reference to Thanos. The premise is this: Hiro (ha!), the protagonist (but not Hiro Protagonist), is a genius. He makes and fights robots as a hobby. His older brother goes to school to study robotics with his nerd friends with clever nicknames (Wasabi, GoGo, Honey Lemon and Fred). Hiro develops microbots that act as a swarm after being inspired by seeing what his brother did: making a medical robot named Baymax. Baymax is inflatable vinyl around a carbon fiber core, and can diagnose and treat pretty much any physical ailment. He helps. The microbots could help, swarming to transport things, build things, what have you. Disaster strikes, the microbots are used for EVIL, and the adventure begins.
I'm not 8, but, if I were, I'd be WAY down with this movie. I'd be down harder for this than I was for Short Circuit. I think that this will age FAR better than that did.
Characters, story, it's nothing that you haven't seen before (not that that's a bad thing, mind you). It's not Iron Giant, but doesn't try to be. It's not the gleeful exercises that The Goonies or The Adventures of Tin-Tin were, and that's OK, too. It's OK to be small sometimes. Leave some room for the sequels.
As far as I am concerned, Pixar is the gold standard for computer animation. What they do is simply phenomenal from a technical standpoint. Disney owns Pixar, but this is not a Pixar movie, although some of the work is stunning.
Watch some of the virtual camera work. Very nice things done with "lenses". Especially watch the swarms in action. I don't know how many polygons they were pushing, but the way they moved was fascinating, especially when other actors were in the frame. Very herky-jerky stop-motion, which is, I suspect, how they would actually move in reality.
It's not the triumph that The Lego Movie was, but it's far from a disaster. If you are a fan of animation as an art form, you should definitely see it. Great work with translucency and texturing.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Hercules
Brett Ratner's Hercules!
That's what I could have called this, but, sadly, I am unable to. It's clearly what he was going for, but, as his oeuvre, he was unable to pull it off.
I'm breaking my format here, because, in order to address this flick, I need to spoil the hell out of the movie.
If you're planning on seeing it, or don't want spoilers because it might be on Netflix some rainy Sunday afternoon and you've run out of series to bingewatch, Ima give it ** out of ****. That's generous, but there were some moments that made me laugh out loud.
For the rest of you...
I'm sure you've seen other reviews that said the movie was a dirty lie. That all the monster fights are in the first 5 minutes. And, those reviews are correct. Well (Can you read that "Well," in the Tenth Doctor's voice? Because I totally did in my head.), not the part about the movie being a dirty lie. Well (Keep the Tennant up, please (Ladies).), I mean, it IS a lie, in that it's a work of fiction, and, well, perhaps the trailers WERE misleading, a bit. But, that's because they were trying to tell a different Hercules story. And, if they told you that from the outset, WELL, would you have gone?
NOW, the story that they're telling us not the one of Hercules being the son of Zeus (I'm rusty on my mythology (which is what we call religions that aren't practiced anymore), but was Hercules sired while Zeus was a swan or bull? Also, damn. Ancient Greek women be fuh-reeks!).
The story is one that, in theory, is much more interesting. In the right hands. Which these aren't.
Here, Herc is a mercenary. With a team. And a tragic backstory. Yes, he did do the tasks laid before him (slaying the Hydra, killing a big ol' boar, killing a big ol' lion, seducing the hell out of an Amazon), but, his sidekicks did just as much work as he did. The myth is promoted by Herc's nephew, both as a means of securing work and demoralizing the enemy.
This is all very interesting, but it would be even MORE interesting if Hercules didn't actually kick ass physically. Like, if he was big and handsome, but, like, crazy nearsighted with a genius for guerrilla military tactics. But, nope. He's awesome on his own. So, at the end, when Ian McShane tells him to become the truth behind the myth, it's anticlimactic. Of COURSE he can break those chains. He's Hercules.
So, there's one change that needed to happen.
Another is this: You have Ian McShane as a possibly drug-addicted seer. You have John Hurt as an elderly, apparently weak and possibly incompetent king. You, Brett Ratner, don't tell them to chew the absolute HELL out of the scenery? Cripes, man! When you have great actors and let them go to town, you get gold. Kevin Spacey was the absolute best Lex Luthor. Gene Wilder was the best Willy Wonka. I defy you to find a better actor for Wormtongue than Brad Dourif. So what if Dwayne Johnson can't keep up? Know what? I bet he could. He was a professional wrestler. The best rasslers are BRILLIANT scenery gourmands. Can you see Ric "The Nature Boy" Flair or "Macho Man" Randy Savage playing their roles with subtlety? "The Rock" was one of the most popular rasslers in his era. I bet he could hang.
Thirdly, let the characters grow. You're using Greek mythology as a starting point, and the Greeks codified drama. Let's see Hercules be bold in a fight, but timid around other people, becoming who he is meant to be when the chips are down. Let's see John Hurt be conniving and sinister, but only after he thinks he's won. Until then, oh, he's just a frail, old man. It's not that tough.
Fourthly, if you're going to base part of your tale on "The Seven Samurai", spend more time on that part. We need to care about these people, both the heroes and the peasants. You did do a good job with the trap that you sent them into before they were fully trained, but, Hercules and King Hurt (I'm too lazy to look up the character's name) to play that scene with more gravitas. (I'm aware that I'm advocating melodrama and real drama in the same movie, but, I'm certain that I know what I'm taking about.) Don't just throw that scene away. Remember: we need to care about these people.
Also, if you're making a sword-and-sandals flick, for the love of Pete, bust out the big lenses. And use more practical effects.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Rated PG-13 (violence, mild language, allegory)
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Written by: Mark Bomback (story), Rick Jaffe and Amanda Silver (story and characters), and Pierre Boulle (novel "La Planète des Singes")
*** 1/2 out of ****
Rated PG-13 (violence, mild language, allegory)
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Written by: Mark Bomback (story), Rick Jaffe and Amanda Silver (story and characters), and Pierre Boulle (novel "La Planète des Singes")
*** 1/2 out of ****
"All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again." - Battlestar Galactica
I went to this flick because I thought it would at least LOOK good. I wasn't expecting a think piece, but, here we are.
I love science fiction. It shows us what we can be, but, as Rod Serling showed us, it's even better at showing us what we ARE.
What's the movie about? It's a sequel to a reboot that I haven't seen.
Apes, under the leadership of a chimpanzee named Caesar (Andy Serkis), think that humans are extinct. "Ten winters. Two without seeing them," intones Maurice (Karen Konoval), an orang-utan teacher. The Apes have a good life. A village, fire, food, a home. A future. Maurice teaches the children the Laws of the Apes. The chief law is "Ape does not kill Ape." Caesar's son, Blue-Eyes (Nick Thurston) is one of his students. He's also a teenager. Caesar's best friend is Koba (Toby Kebbell), a former lab chimpanzee, who bears the scars of "human work".
The humans that live in San Francisco are running out of fuel. Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) sends an expedition to a nearby hydroelectric dam. The group, led by Malcolm (Jason Clarke) crosses paths with Blue-Eyes and his friend. A shot is fired in panic and anger, and... You can see where this is going.
I started with a quotation from the 2004 version of "Battlestar Galactica" for a reason. Because it's fitting.
I'm watching the movie, which opens with Apes and subtitles. I'm sold before we even get to the post-apocalyptica (which I love).
But, as the story moves forward, bits of the amateur scientist in my brain get activated.
Homo Sapiens is the dominant hominid species on the planet, but we weren't (and possibly still aren't) (not to get into Bigfoot bullcrap) always the only ones.
Let's say that h. sapiens comes across h. neanderthalensis. One is smarter (we think), one is stronger (we know). What happens? Do we fight? Humans love fighting. Do we fuck? Humans love fucking almost more than we love fighting. Do we, dare I dream, try to communicate and coexist?
All three probably happened, but, eventually, we "won".
The original film (the one with Charlton Heston and the damn dirty apes) was obviously an allegory for race relations. This one doesn't shy away from it. Koba bears the scars, memories and hatred of his servitude. Caesar had a different upbringing, and has different ideas about how humans are. In a couple of scenes, Koba actually employs minstrelry to fool humans. Very clever, and very, very angry.
Language was addressed, but not as well as I would have liked. Amongst themselves, the Apes used sign language, with grunts and rumbles for emphasis. With humans, some chimpanzees had a limited verbal vocabulary. Short, declarative sentences. I don't know if the crew studied chimpanzee anatomy and the films of the "talking chimps" of the early 20th century or not, but, for the most part, the words that they used seemed physically possible. Sadly, this fell apart towards the end.
One thing I really liked was the fact that the "noble savage" archetype was avoided. The Apes didn't need the White Man to save them, or one of their own to show them the path to salvation. An uneasy truce is the best that can be hoped for.
I don't want to say that the filmmakers are being cynical, but, it seems that war is inevitable. The people in power, or who want to be in power, while they think they have the best interests of society at heart, are short-sighted, selfish and genocidal. But, regardless of our fear of "The Other", we need hope.
One big question is: at least in the world of the movie, does humanity need to survive? The Apes are doing just fine. They've adapted to their new world. They have fire, food, water, shelter and family. Humanity needs technology. The Apes have tools, but humanity had forgotten how to make them. We can repair what we have, but we can no longer create.
At every They Might Be Giants show I've been to, the band divides the audience into "Apes" and "Humans", and, while the band jams, the audience shouts their allegiance. The Apes always win.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Godzilla (for crazy people)
Godzilla
No stars.
This movie was disgusting. Absolutely depraved. The audience is left wondering if we are just as monstrous as the blasphemously named creature.
The gay agenda, the pro-abortionists, the LIE-berals, they will eat this trash right up.
First of all, the HollyJews cast Bryan Cranston, a man who is known for playing "men" who are unable to provide adequately for their families.
Then, they make the American Military, the only reason that we are free, look completely incompetent. Not only are the weapons useless against the monsters, the people behind this garbage have the audacity to claim that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was a bad idea. Do you know how many people that saved? It saved you, for one. (If you can call living in this day and age "living", what with our morals going down the toilet)
But what really sickens me is how the movie ends.
G*dzilla (I don't want to risk blasphemy any more than I have to) is chasing a monster that only wants to meet his wife.
This MUTO wants to raise a family. A stable, loving, and, most importantly, HETEROSEXUAL family.
G*dzilla wants to stop this. And where does this happen?
In San Francisco, of course.
That's right. This beast kills a heterosexual family in San Francisco. And a member of the new gay military kills the children.
It doesn't end there. Of course not.
The depraved citizens of New Sodom actually cheer the giant sin monster after he kills the heterosexual monsters. And the lamestream media has the gall to name G*dzilla "King of the Monsters".
The gays aren't even trying to hide their agenda against families, traditional values, and America anymore.
Thanks, Obama.
Godzilla
Godzilla
Rated PG-13 (destruction and 'splosions)
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Written by: Dave Callaham (Story) and Max Borenstein (Screenplay)
***1/2 out of ****
Godzilla is not Pacific Rim, and that's good. I loved del Toro's love letter to anime for what it was: one hell of a fun time. It was stupid for all the right reasons and in all the right ways. It was giant robots punching giant monsters, it looked great, it had just enough story to... set up the punching? It was a live-action cartoon.
Godzilla was always something more. At its core, it was a cautionary tale about atomic weapons (the dumbest thing we have ever come up with as a species). Yes, the later films were campy, and the rubber suit was laughable, but, he had some sort of dignity.
I think I saw the Roland Emmerich excrement with Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno and an indestructible taxi cab using a free pass, and I still wanted my my money back. There was nothing good about it. I'm still baffled as to how you make a movie with a giant monster in it boring.
I'm hesitant to call this Godzilla a reboot. I mean, it is, but it's not. It's more of a reinterpretation, like Burton's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which I thought was hands-down a better movie than the original).
In this latest version, it wasn't humanity's hubris that created monsters. They are ancient, like younger versions of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones. They are creatures that consume radioactivity. When Earth was younger, it was "hotter". As this radiation dissipated, they adapted and went underground or underwater, where the radiation would be more plentiful. Hiroshima didn't make the monsters (and I am trying so hard to not make a Twilight Zone joke here); it merely showed them that pickins were good on the surface again.
In 1999, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) was working at a Japanese nuclear reactor. Some... thing... that looked like an earthquake was heading towards the reactor. Meanwhile, Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) found that some... thing... was headed towards Japan from the Philippines. (The two things were the same thing.)
The reactor was destroyed, the town evacuated, and a no-man's-land grew in the quarantine zone. (Cranston) felt something was fishy, and was arrested for trespassing in the zone. His son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) a Navy Lieutenant, had to leave leave to bail him out, flying from San Francisco to Japan. This sets in motion the human part of the story. It's an important distinction.
The core of the story here is not that we make monsters or anything like that. The tale is not a parable or fable. We aren't meant to learn, or change our ways or face dire consequences. It's actually much more... Cynical is the wrong word. So is pessimistic. Realistic? The movie has giant monsters. Not symbolic monsters, not Monsters of the Id. Actual giant monsters.
Godzilla is a force of nature, like a hurricane or a tornado. Earthquakes are not mad at California. Godzilla is not an enemy of humanity. He is, at best, indifferent to us.
That's one of the things that this version gets right. Godzilla's story happens regardless of the story of the human characters.
This isn't to say that the human characters are undeveloped. They aren't. I mean, they aren't the deepest, but, there is enough humanity there to latch on to. Just not enough to hate. There are kids in the movie, but not annoying ones. We aren't subjected to heavy-handed reunion scenes, or emotionally manipulative music cues. There aren't any silly heroics, or sacrifices, or speeches. The movie is not emotionless, though. It is simply matter-of-fact. About giant monsters.
The monsters are not given characters, but we project "good" and "bad" on to them, and I found myself changing allegiances more than once.
The effects are good, as would be expected. Stylistically, however... I don't know if it was a choice, or coincidence, but the digital mattes looked delightfully like the miniatures in the Toho productions. And the scale of the monsters was, thankfully, consistent.
Godzilla wasn't campy, or grim and dark, or overwrought. It was simply, for lack of a better word, good.
Monday, April 07, 2014
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Rated PG-13 ('Splosions and guns)
Directed by: Anthony and Joe Russo
Written by: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (screenplay), Ed Brubaker (concept and story), Joe Simon and Stan Lee (comic book)
***1/2 out of ****
THIS is why I love Captain America.
Batman has brains and money, but he's insane. Superman is good, but he's basically a god. (Yes, I know that DC and Marvel take different approaches to their respective superheroes, but I didn't read a whole lot of superhero comics growing up.) There was just... something about Cap that I liked.
I'm sure that you've seen the previous Marvel Cinematic Universe flicks. If not, I'll try to recap them.
Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) was a 90-pound weakling when Hitler started doing his stuff in Europe. Steve wanted to help out so damn badly. His best friend, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is going to be an amazing soldier, and Steve doesn't want to be stuck being just a stateside volunteer. He won't take "no" for an answer from the enlistment board. His moxie is noticed, and he is put in the "Super Soldier" program (which, due to licensing deals, can't be called what it became by Marvel Studios films. Captain America is Weapon I. Wolverine is Weapon X.). Cap goes to Europe, socks Hitler in the jaw, and loses Bucky.
After being frozen in the North Atlantic for decades, he's "resurrected" by S.H.I.E.L.D., and joins the Avengers Initiative. He helps Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Thor and Hawkeye beat Loki, and continues working as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent while trying to adjust to the 21st century.
So, now we're here. Cap and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) are sent on a rescue mission. A S.H.I.E.L.D. launch platform was hijacked by pirates. Wait. Cap was sent on the rescue mission. Black Widow was sent on another mission that just so happened to be on the same ship.
This really irritates Cap, and he lets Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) know. Fury doesn't really care. What he doesn't tell Cap is that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been compromised.
Fury tells his best friend, and S.H.I.E.L.D. executive, Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford). An attempt on Fury's life is made by a "ghost" known only as the Winter Soldier.
Then a bunch of stuff blows up.
Marvel really keeps raising the bar with each installment. One helicarrier in "The Avengers"? Let's do three. One kickass woman in the "universe"? That sounds like an awfully small number.
I think I liked this better than" The Avengers". Much like in "Thor: The Dark World", the Marvel team is letting the characters breathe. If you wondered why Black Widow was in The Avengers, you won't after this. Captain America needs a team, and with Black Widow, Nick Fury and Falcon (Anthony Mackie), he has an amazing one. while I'm going to see all of the Marvel Studios movies, I am really interested in seeing where Captain America goes from here.
Captain America is a soldier, yes. But he's not a blind soldier. He is a government agent, yes, but he doesn't fight for the government. Captain America represents the best of America, regardless of politics. Superman fights for Truth, Justice and the American Way, but Captain America IS Truth, Justice and the American Way. His attitude isn't "My country, right or wrong," but "When my country is right, it's right. When it's wrong, it needs to be taken to task."
Monday, February 24, 2014
The Monuments Men
The Monuments Men
Rated PG-13 (It's kind of a war movie, but not like Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down)
Written by: George Clooney and Grant Heslov (Screenplay) and Robert M. Edsel and Bret Wittier (Book)
Directed by: George Clooney
*** out of ****
A quotation attributed to Winston Churchill goes something like this: When asked if he planned to cut funding for the arts to help fund the war against Germany, Churchill replied, "Then what on earth are we fighting for?" He didn't say it, apparently, but, the sentiment is accurate.
I'm not an artist. But, I kind of am. I can't draw, or sculpt, or compose. I'm told I can sing well, I used to be able to play the violin passably well, and, while I'm not Twain or George Bernard Shaw or Roger Ebert, I do enjoy playing with words. I like mashing them together, I like making sentences, I like the act of making things that exist in my head exist elsewhere.
I'm not a historian, or an anthropologist, but I do feel strongly that art is what we, as a culture and as a species, are. We need food, and water, and air. We need shelter and warmth and sleep. Do we need art in the same way? I'd wager that we do. If it's not necessary, then why do we enshrine it and continue to make it?
I refuse to classify art as "high" or "low". I've been to The Louvre and seen the "Mona Lisa". My reaction was "Huh. There it is." I've read "Preacher" by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. My reaction was "Ho... Holy shit. Wow." I think that Philip Glass is the greatest composer of the last 100 years, and I think that "Surfin' Bird" by The Trashmen is the greatest rocknroll song ever written. Picasso's "Guernica" does nothing for me, but Zdzisław Beksiński draws my dreams.
I thought that we had finally stopped fighting WWII after Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Of course, that was more than 15 years ago, back before the History Channel became the Shit We Just Made Up Channel. As I've gotten older, I've realized that there really are many, many stories to be told, and shouldn't be forgotten. The Monuments Men is one of these stories, but, in a way, it's about every story.
Frank Stokes (George Clooney) is an art historian. He learns that Hitler is stealing Europe's art (starting with private Jewish collections, of course) to populate his Führermuseum in Linz, Austria. (Just a quick aside, the Nazis were unquestionably evil, but, man alive, did they ever have design figured out. This museum would have been glorious. Except, you know, for all the evil.) With the permission of FDR, he assembles a team of, while not exactly Top Men, men of respect in their various fields. There's James Granger (Matt Damon), another art historian, Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), an architect, Walter Garfield (John Goodman), another architect, Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), a French museum curator, and Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban), a choreographer or director (it's not really made clear). All men who know art, artists, and the importance of the mission: save art, and, thereby, save history. They are assisted by Sam Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas), a Private from New Jersey by way of Germany and Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), a French secretary to a Nazi officer, Viktor Stahl (Justus von Dohnányi), who is one of the men "curating" the art for the Party.
The movie obviously takes some dramatic liberties with history, and, while it's packed to the gills with some terrific comic actors, there aren't really than many big laughs. Which isn't to say that it's grim or dark. It takes a while for the story to get rolling, but once it finds itself, it goes along just fine.
There are ideas worth fighting and dying for. Can we say the same about art? Should we be spending money to preserve art? Absolutely.
Art is what we are. It is our legacy. Cinema is a little more than a century old, and, already, countless films have been lost due to simple chemistry and carelessness. Television is even newer, and even more documents have been lost for the same reasons. Paper documents -- poetry, novels, plays, compositions -- are decaying as we speak. Even digital archival techniques are not completely reliable. Years ago, the BBC decided to archive its library on laser discs. When the readers broke down, they had to write computer programs to get the data back off of the discs. Things like this are simply inevitable. Cuneiform clay tablets have held up better than a healthy chunk of the history of the Industrial Era. But, when you deliberately destroy art, you are destroying an entire culture. The loss of the Library of Alexandria set our species back thousands of years. Hitler (riding high on a wave of nationalism that started well before he came along) wanted to, if not re-write history to benefit Germany, destroy history. It's a road that humanity has traveled down before. Banning languages (German, Navajo, etc. in America), stealing or destroying "pagan" symbols in Latin America and elsewhere, by destroying the art and the language of a culture, you destroy the culture, and, thankfully, we seem to be waking up to that fact.
And, speaking of art, man, Europe is just beautiful. I wish that Clooney had taken a cue from Tarantino when filming France in springtime. War is hell, yes, but, sometimes even destruction can be beautiful.
Rated PG-13 (It's kind of a war movie, but not like Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down)
Written by: George Clooney and Grant Heslov (Screenplay) and Robert M. Edsel and Bret Wittier (Book)
Directed by: George Clooney
*** out of ****
A quotation attributed to Winston Churchill goes something like this: When asked if he planned to cut funding for the arts to help fund the war against Germany, Churchill replied, "Then what on earth are we fighting for?" He didn't say it, apparently, but, the sentiment is accurate.
I'm not an artist. But, I kind of am. I can't draw, or sculpt, or compose. I'm told I can sing well, I used to be able to play the violin passably well, and, while I'm not Twain or George Bernard Shaw or Roger Ebert, I do enjoy playing with words. I like mashing them together, I like making sentences, I like the act of making things that exist in my head exist elsewhere.
I'm not a historian, or an anthropologist, but I do feel strongly that art is what we, as a culture and as a species, are. We need food, and water, and air. We need shelter and warmth and sleep. Do we need art in the same way? I'd wager that we do. If it's not necessary, then why do we enshrine it and continue to make it?
I refuse to classify art as "high" or "low". I've been to The Louvre and seen the "Mona Lisa". My reaction was "Huh. There it is." I've read "Preacher" by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. My reaction was "Ho... Holy shit. Wow." I think that Philip Glass is the greatest composer of the last 100 years, and I think that "Surfin' Bird" by The Trashmen is the greatest rocknroll song ever written. Picasso's "Guernica" does nothing for me, but Zdzisław Beksiński draws my dreams.
I thought that we had finally stopped fighting WWII after Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Of course, that was more than 15 years ago, back before the History Channel became the Shit We Just Made Up Channel. As I've gotten older, I've realized that there really are many, many stories to be told, and shouldn't be forgotten. The Monuments Men is one of these stories, but, in a way, it's about every story.
Frank Stokes (George Clooney) is an art historian. He learns that Hitler is stealing Europe's art (starting with private Jewish collections, of course) to populate his Führermuseum in Linz, Austria. (Just a quick aside, the Nazis were unquestionably evil, but, man alive, did they ever have design figured out. This museum would have been glorious. Except, you know, for all the evil.) With the permission of FDR, he assembles a team of, while not exactly Top Men, men of respect in their various fields. There's James Granger (Matt Damon), another art historian, Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), an architect, Walter Garfield (John Goodman), another architect, Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), a French museum curator, and Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban), a choreographer or director (it's not really made clear). All men who know art, artists, and the importance of the mission: save art, and, thereby, save history. They are assisted by Sam Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas), a Private from New Jersey by way of Germany and Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), a French secretary to a Nazi officer, Viktor Stahl (Justus von Dohnányi), who is one of the men "curating" the art for the Party.
The movie obviously takes some dramatic liberties with history, and, while it's packed to the gills with some terrific comic actors, there aren't really than many big laughs. Which isn't to say that it's grim or dark. It takes a while for the story to get rolling, but once it finds itself, it goes along just fine.
There are ideas worth fighting and dying for. Can we say the same about art? Should we be spending money to preserve art? Absolutely.
Art is what we are. It is our legacy. Cinema is a little more than a century old, and, already, countless films have been lost due to simple chemistry and carelessness. Television is even newer, and even more documents have been lost for the same reasons. Paper documents -- poetry, novels, plays, compositions -- are decaying as we speak. Even digital archival techniques are not completely reliable. Years ago, the BBC decided to archive its library on laser discs. When the readers broke down, they had to write computer programs to get the data back off of the discs. Things like this are simply inevitable. Cuneiform clay tablets have held up better than a healthy chunk of the history of the Industrial Era. But, when you deliberately destroy art, you are destroying an entire culture. The loss of the Library of Alexandria set our species back thousands of years. Hitler (riding high on a wave of nationalism that started well before he came along) wanted to, if not re-write history to benefit Germany, destroy history. It's a road that humanity has traveled down before. Banning languages (German, Navajo, etc. in America), stealing or destroying "pagan" symbols in Latin America and elsewhere, by destroying the art and the language of a culture, you destroy the culture, and, thankfully, we seem to be waking up to that fact.
And, speaking of art, man, Europe is just beautiful. I wish that Clooney had taken a cue from Tarantino when filming France in springtime. War is hell, yes, but, sometimes even destruction can be beautiful.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
RoboCop
RoboCop
Rated PG-13 (Violence, brief language)
Directed by: José Padilha
Written by: Joshua Zetumer (Screenplay) and Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner (Original screenplay)
**1/2 out of ****
Rated PG-13 (Violence, brief language)
Directed by: José Padilha
Written by: Joshua Zetumer (Screenplay) and Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner (Original screenplay)
**1/2 out of ****
I'd like to tell you a story. Now, now, don't get antsy, I'm not here to bore you. Just hear me out. It's a simple story, but it might just be the most important, nay, the Greatest Story Ever Told.
It's about a man. Just like you or I. Just an average man. But, this man was something, had something, special. See, he cared. He cared about you and me. He cared so much for us, in our little lives, that he laid down his life for us. He died for us.
Now, you hear stories like that quite often, don't you? About people sacrificing themselves for others. There was the track star who gave up Olympic glory to become a bone marrow donor. There are the parents who sacrifice for the sake of their children. So, one man, who loved the world so much, sacrificing his life for us, while it is a big deal, it really isn't terribly uncommon.
But, this man... Well, there's something that makes his sacrifice even neater.
See, he came back from the dead. He was resurrected. And he continued to fight for each and every one of us. Red and yellow, black and white, for all of us he continued to fight.
His name?
RoboCop.
Actually, his name was Officer Alex Murphy, and he was played by Peter Weller. His deeds were originally chronicled in 1987 by Paul Verhoeven. Oh, yeah. And there was a dude named Jesus that you may have heard of, too. But he wasn't a cyborg.
This new RoboCop... I didn't have a lot of high hopes for it, frankly. The original was a pretty blatant re-telling of the death and resurrection of Christ (No, really.) in a sci-fi violence wrapper. I didn't see the original until... last year, maybe? A while after it came out. But I liked it.
Is Hollywood out of ideas? Maybe. But, during the prologue, my hopes were raised considerably.
Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson, who doesn't turn on his Samuel L. Jackson until the end of the movie) is a (presumably) conservative talk show host. In the future, robotics have advanced considerably. ED-209s, smaller versions of the ED-209 and even human-sized robots are used to patrol streets, while AI-controlled drone jets patrol the skies. In other countries. They are used for riot control, for threat assessment, for everything that would normally require the use of human troops. Novak has a film crew on the streets in Tehran, watching a patrol happen. The robots are owned and designed by Omnicorp, and (presumably) under the control of, if not the US Military, a private security firm (or, in the parlance of "Metal Gear", a PMC). What are they doing in Tehran? Installing "freedom", of course. When suicide bombers take down a few robots ("We aren't going to kill anyone. We just want to make sure we get on TV."), the feed is cut by the Pentagon, but Novak explains that this action would normally have killed American Troops, while now we are just out a few robots. So, why can't we have this kind of security in America, the Greatest Nation in The World?
Mostly because of the actions of one Senator, Hubert Dreyfuss (Zach Grenier). Dreyfuss asks the president of Omnicorp what a robot would feel if it killed a child. "Nothing," replies Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton). That's the problem. Do we want a security force that has absolutely no emotion? That carries out actions based solely on threat assessment in a binary language?
Well, this is a bit of a pickle for Dreyfuss. His company is missing out on billions of dollars in sales because America isn't on-board with the idea. So, he goes to his head of prosthetics, Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), with a proposition: put a man in the suit, and your division (which isn't really a great money-maker for Omnicorp) will get all the funding it needs. Forever.
The ideal candidate presents itself in Detective Alex Murphy, a family man with a wife and a kid, who is trying to stop a Bad Guy named Antoine Vallon (Patrick Garrow) and some possibly Corrupt Cops. A bomb is placed on Murphy's car, which then explodes, which results in severe injuries. The Only Hope for Survival is, of course, the robot body.
The movie started out really, really strongly. This remake went away from the Christ story and updated it to reflect today. The ethics of drone strikes, the meaning of humanity, the nature of free-will, all really, really juicy topics. "You aren't your body," Norton tells a man who lost both of his arms. "You are your mind, and your arms are simply tools." An artificial arm that transmits sensation was just revealed this past week or so, so we are getting close to the future presented here. "Now, play," Norton tells the man. The man picks up a guitar, and begins playing a flamenco tune flawlessly. Until he gets into it, and his emotions start making his new arms fail. "Just relax. Don't get so emotional," Norton tells the man.
"I can't play without emotion," is his reply.
"I can't play without emotion," is his reply.
So, we have one aspect of the nature of humanity: emotion. And the filmmakers start to address this. They also address the question of free-will in a manner similar to the way Kubrick did in "A Clockwork Orange", and just about as subtly, if not as skillfully. If a man is compelled to act in a certain way, is he actually making a choice to act that way? If you take away a person's "ability" to act, are they still a person?
The ethics of drone strikes is... kind of ignored. Which is fine. That might be even trickier than the notion of free-will.
RoboCop started out strong, but then... Somewhere along the line, it just... I don't know. It's like the writer was like, "Well, that's some neat philosophy, isn't it? Too bad we've got this whole plot to take care of. So, let's just kind of take some shortcuts and shoot some stuff and end with the possibility for a sequel."
I know I shouldn't look for too much depth in a movie like this, but, damnit, I hold sci-fi up to a higher standard. I can appreciate a good ol' space opera, I think Pacific Rim was one of the best movies I saw last year, and the Resident Evil movies are good, stupid fun. But, I know that the genre can be absolutely breathtaking. It can get into philosophy and not be boring. And to dangle some interesting concepts in front of me and not follow through? Not cool, guys.
On the plus side, Michael Keaton is always entertaining.
Sunday, February 09, 2014
The Lego Movie
The Lego Movie
Rated PG (I honestly don't know why. There isn't anything that happens that all of us haven't done or said.)
Directed by: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Written by: Dan Hageman and Christopher Hageman (story), Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (story), Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (screenplay)
***1/2 out of ****
I suck at Lego. Just plain suck.
Sure, give me the instructions, and I can build the thing. But, coming up with something original? Well, I can come up with a pretty good box, which might have a door and a window. So, a house?
I guess that would make me both Emmet (Chris Pratt) and Lord Business (Will Ferrell), the hero and villain of "The Lego Movie". Which means that I'm complicated. Or not. The movie isn't subtle.
It is, however, gleefully stupid, gloriously silly, and clever without being smug about it.
Emmet is a Construction Worker in Blocksburg. The town is populated by Office Workers, Police, Firefighters, Doctors and a Surfer Dude. Just a typical, normal Lego town. One day, he accidentally discovered the Piece of Resistance, a legendary object that can, according to prophesy, stop the Kragle, a weapon capable of freezing the world.
Emmet meets WildStyle (Elizabeth Banks), a lady figure, Vitruvious (Morgan Freeman), a hippie wizard, Benny the '80s Astronaut (Charlie Day), Unikitty (my girlfriend Alison Brie), a kitty that is also a unicorn, Metal Beard (Nick Offerman), a cyborg pirate thing, and Batman (Will Arnett). Yes. This is an awesome team.
These people are up against Lord Business and his chief henchman Bad Cop/Good Cop (Liam Neeson), and the plan to freeze the multiverse.
The plot is there, moreso than in "Pacific Rim", but, really, the story isn't the point. The movie is about the magic of being a kid. The magic that you are only capable of before your prefrontal lobe develops fully. The magic that makes "Toy Story" and "Adventure Time" work. It's about worlds with rules and an internal logic, but at the same time, of course Luke Skywalker can show up in the G.I. Joe Mobile Command Center. Yeah, he can't drive, and he doesn't have a kung-fu grip, but, really, the Force against COBRA? The only thing that could beat that would be, what? Skeletor and Serpentor just teamed up? Well, that's fine. Optimus Prime just showed up and, no, dammit, you can't use a NERF dart gun! You're gonna break it! I HATE YOU! I'M TELLING YOUR MOM!
I can't say enough good things about this movie. The voice work is top-notch, the silliness is just delightful, and the cameos. Oh, man, the cameos. I'm sure I annoyed the entire theatre with my laughing. I smiled the entire time.
The movie draws on so many influences. Lego, obviously. But, also the Pikmin video game series, a huge range of pop culture (the end of "The Return of The Jedi", "Terminator 2", "Akira")... It's just delightful. I want to buy all the Lego sets.
Which brings me here. Only Fox News could be so completely comfortable with cognitive dissonance to say that a feature length commercial for a brand of toys could be "anti-business".
Sunday, December 15, 2013
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Rated PG-13 (So many decapitations)
Written by: J.R.R. Tolkien (novel), Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro (screenplay)
Directed by Peter Jackson
*** 1/2 out of ****
Peter Jackson just dropped the mic.
Boom.
We all know the story of "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again". If you don't, you probably had terrible parents, or didn't have a cool uncle or cousin, or something. Regardless, you missed out on a good chunk of childhood, and you need to stop reading this and go to the library or fire up a Kindle or something and rectify this immediately.
Back? Good.
Bilbo, Gandalf and the crew of Thorin have escaped the Goblin King and Gollum, and are continuing their quest to Mount Erebor, to reclaim Thorin's throne. They meet Elves, and Men, and Beorn, and Smaug. Seriously though, if you don't already know the story, man. Fix that.
It took a LONG time to get "The Hobbit" to the screen. Trying to figure out who owned the film rights to the book took years. Once that was sorted out, a director needed to be found. Jackson was burned out on Middle Earth, having spent a huge amount of time on "The Lord of The Rings". He had other things that he wanted to do, so Sam Raimi was attached for a while. Then he backed out, and del Toro stepped in. He dropped out because it was just taking so damn long to even get to principal shooting, but did help with the adaptation. Sadly, his designs were not used. I would have LOVED to have seen Smaug designed by him.
So, the ball was passed back to Jackson. When he announced that this would be another trilogy, nerds were shocked and confused. I could see two movies (The Shire to The Lonely Mountain, and The Battle of the Five Armies), but three? Not without some insane padding. After "An Unexpected Journey", I still had doubts. I thought the first installment was disappointing. Too many dwarves, too little character development. Not enough big set pieces. Slow going.
I no longer have these doubts.
Is this adaptation faithful? Mostly. Did I object to the changes? Not at all.
"The Hobbit" was, essentially, a children's story. I am sure I will be corrected, but I just don't feel like doing research, so, I'll go with what I think I remember.
During WWI, Tolkien wrote a sentence: "There was a hobbit that lived in a hole in the ground." He then had to figure out what the hell a hobbit was, and went from there. He hadn't yet invented the languages and cultures of Middle Earth, but he had a rough notion. The characters are little more than sketches, apart from Bilbo, Gandalf and Thorin.
But, when he wrote "The Lord of The Rings", Tolkien remarked that "the tale grew with the telling." That's what I see here. Jackson and company have taken a perfectly fine story and slapped on some chrome.
The story here is centered on Thorin (Richard Armitage), Balin (Ken Scott) and Bilbo (Martin Freeman). The characters are far more fleshed-out than in the previous installment. They brought back Legolas (Orlando Bloom), made up a character with Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), and, somehow, nothing felt shoehorned in.
Then, there are the action sequences. Oh, lordy. Wow.
I was actually giggling during the barrel escape, simply because it was such fun to watch. Much like the motorcycle chase in Spielberg's "Tin Tin" movie, it's completely improbable and that's what makes it great. Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) is huge and impressive. The hoard beneath Erebor would make Scrooge McDuck jealous.
Everything here is bigger and better than in the first installment, and, I have a feeling that the final one will be almost entirely one huge action sequence.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Thor: The Dark World
Thor: The Dark World
Rated PG-13 (Destruction, language)
Written by Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (screenplay), Don Payne and Robert Rodat (story), Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby (comic and characters)
Directed by Alan Taylor
*** out of ****
Let's get a couple of things out of the way. Chris Hemsworth is a handsome man. I've had a crush on Natalie Portman for years. And, Kat Dennings should give me a call sometime.
I will be the first to admit that I really didn't care to see this movie. Thor was never one of my heroes. I read "Captain America". Not "Iron Man", not "Hulk", not even "Avengers", classic or west coast. I went to this movie, much like I went to the first "Thor", simply because Marvel Studios is doing something that I admire. They are working on what could be the biggest epic series in film history. Much like you don't need to read EVERY comic in the Marvel Universe (which one is an even bigger question), you don't need to watch EVERY movie (or TV series, for that matter) to enjoy the big picture.
I had, not high hopes, but certainly higher expectations for the first "Thor" movie. Why wouldn't I? It was directed by Kenneth Branagh. If anyone should know how to deal with larger-than-life characters, he should.
And, it fell short.
I don't know exactly what went wrong, but the movie felt "small". Maybe it was because we needed to be introduced to the characters. Maybe the story sucked. I don't know.
That's been fixed here, though. Wow.
It's important to remember that, in the Marvel Universe, the Asgardians are not truly gods. They aren't humans, they live far longer than us, but can die. They don't have magic. Instead, they obey one of Clarke's Laws: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And, by Odin, they got that right. So, so right.
The Dark Elves waged war against Asgard millennia ago. They lost, but Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) wants revenge. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been imprisoned by Odin (Anthony Hopkins) for being an ass. Thor (Hemsworth) has been putting down revolts across the Realms (different planes of reality, because shut up, that's why). Jane (Portman) and her "team" of scientists have been picking up strange gravimetric readings that indicate something is going to happen. The bad guys show up, things explode, Thor and Loki have to team up, and the rest just writes itself.
This installment just felt so much bigger and better in every way. I fell in love with the design of the worlds. Asgard looked carved and sculpted. Art deco done by Vikings. The Dark Elves had ships and weapons that looked extruded, like lava coming up underwater. Primal. Rough. The worlds looked lived-in, and felt right.
The characters were more developed. Yes, this is the third movie for Thor and Loki, but it seems like the writers are finally figuring out how to write the characters. I'm sure that this is at least partly due to Joss Whedon shepherding the movie universe.
I honestly can't think of anything that I didn't like about this movie. True, it didn't advance the metastory much (as far as I know), but, as a stand-alone movie, it far outshines the first.
Sunday, November 03, 2013
Ender's Game
Ender's Game
Rated PG-13 (Violence)
Written and directed by Gavin Hood, based on the book by Orson Scott Card
*** out of ****
They were close. So damn close.
Before I get into the meat of the review, lemme talk about separating the art from the artist. Phil Spector is one of my heroes, and he is spending the rest of his life in prison. He is, and always was, crazy as a shit-house rat. But, the music that he recorded was just amazing. Without Spector, we would have had The Beach Boys, but, would Brian Wilson have had the guts to use the studio as an instrument?
Orson Scott Card is a homophobic asshole, but, that doesn't mean that "Ender's Game" isn't an amazing story. So, while I understand why some people might stay away from the book and the movie, it really is worth your time.
Back to the review.
Andrew "Ender" Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is a Third. Earth has instituted population controls, limiting parents to two children. But, Ender is special. The International Fleet (a united Earth defense force) is looking for humanity's Last Best Hope, and Ender's older siblings were almost, but not quite, the right child for the job. Valentine was too compassionate, and Peter was a psychopath. Hopefully, Ender will be the balance that the IF needs to stop the next Formic (or Bugger) invasion.
Ender is recruited for Battle School, where Major Anderson (Viola Davis) is the bad cop, and Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) is the worse cop. Ender's training is based not only on tactics and physics, but on how he relates to his platoon mates.
The team behind the movie got most of the core of the story. The events (and, I'm taking as a fan of the book) were mostly intact. But, dammit, it's what was left out that is what made the story truly great.
A good portion of the story is based around the Battle Room, a zero-G arena designed to teach tactics and improve unit cohesion. And, it looks great in the movie. It was just too damn short.
That's my main complaint about the whole thing, really. It runs two hours, but, man, there's so much STORY that was left out.
The casting was spot on. Ford was great as Graff, and Butterfield was perfect as Ender. But, it just just felt like an abridgement, and, when a screenplay is adapted, the good ones don't feel abridged.
There are two defining moments that I was worried would be glossed over, but they weren't. Two other things, however...
SPOILERS AHEAD
Ender was pushed past his limits. What he went through was a crime. At best, it was child abuse, and was presented as such in the book, and hinted at in the movie. He was brutalized physically and mentally. He was hated by squadmates, he killed two children in self-defense. When he started winning Battle Room matches, Graff changed the rules. He and his squads were forced to fight multiple battles a day, without sleep or food. At the end, Ender gave up. He, in essence, said "Fuck you" to Graff. "Fuck you. If you aren't going to play by the rules, neither am I. I'm going to win in spite of you, and then, dammit, I am going to quit."
It wasn't heroism, and, while Ender was a tactical genius, it wasn't just that that enabled him to win. It was Ender giving up, Ender telling authority to screw itself, Ender just wanting to go home, that won.
END SPOILERS
They were just so damn close.
There were great moments. Butterfield is a strong actor, but, because the movie was so short, we weren't able to see Ender develop. Davis was a good counterpoint to Ford, but, again, we aren't able to see their doubts, convictions and justifications. We see Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley) but don't see him beat the living hell out of a little boy. (That might not have been due to the length of the movie.)
I first read the book in my early 20's. Others probably read it when they were younger, as it shows up on suggested reading lists in high schools. The movie was stuck in development hell for years (when I read it, Wolfgang Peterson was attached to direct, and I don't think Asa Butterfield had been born).
It was going to be difficult to adapt for anyone, and, this is an admirable effort. If you haven't read the book, the movie is fine. Good effects, decent story, enjoyable all around. If you have read it, you'll know what's missing. They were so damn close.
Sunday, October 06, 2013
Gravity
Gravity
Rated PG-13 (Space is scary.)
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron
Written by Alfonso Cuaron and Jonas Cuaron
**** out of ****
Wow.
Let me elaborate: Holy wow.
If you'll indulge me for a bit, I have a little story to tell you about me.
From my earliest memories, I have always wanted to be an astronaut. There was never any question in my mind that it was what I was going to be when I grew up. Then, one day in third grade, Mr. Saathoff, the janitor, came into the classroom (reading, I believe, with Mrs. Wood), and told us that the space shuttle, Challenger, had exploded. This news completely broke my heart. Completely.
Now that I'm older, I understand that accidents like that happen, but it doesn't lessen the sorrow that I felt when Columbia exploded on re-entry, or that I will feel the next time a spacecraft is lost.
Nor does it diminish my desire to go to space.
Space is huge and dangerous. Your body rebels in zero G, there is next to nothing to protect you from radiation, micrometeorites are zipping around at tens of thousands of miles an hour, and everything up there is amazing.
If you have any fear of drowning, or have problems with vertigo, do NOT go to this movie. If you are prone to motion sickness, you should skip the 3D version.
That being said, damn. Just... Just holy crap.
I'm sure you can put the story together from the trailers. Captain Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) is on his last shuttle mission. Mission Specialist (usually NASA shorthand for "dead weight") Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock and her legs (I'm sorry, but they are amazing legs)) is installing a piece of equipment that she has designed onto the Hubble Space Telescope. The Russians used a missile test to destroy one of their obsolete spy satellites, and the debris causes everything to go wrong.
The film is event, rather than character, driven, but, since there are only two characters in the film, we bond with them. Hard. You know how some people watch horror movies and tell the characters what to do and not do? Yeah. I did that here.
Roger Ebert once described the Indiana Jones movies as "one damn thing after another", and that's what Cuaron has here. In a movie like that, the pacing is critical. The audience needs time to breathe. Not too much, but just enough. Cuaron has this nailed here.
The special effects are stunning. I don't know if any part of the movie was filmed in the Vomit Comet or not, but I doubt it. Here's why :
The cinematic language of the film is established right at the top with a 15 - minute long single (or so cleverly edited to appear so) uninterrupted take. There are no quick shots. There is at least one shot that, when I realized what was going on, made me smile, like the scene in "Contact" that looked like a Steadicam shot of young Ellie running through her house, only to end with her opening the medicine cabinet with a mirrored door, as if the entire shot was an impossible reflection.
I'm a gigantic nerd, so, while watching the astronauts, I was paying attention to the physics of motion. I know that, in a stable orbit of Earth, one circuit takes roughly 90 minutes. I'm going to say that James Cameron has some SERIOUS competition in the scientific accuracy and plausibility department. Again, wow.
I don't think anyone but Clooney could have played the captain. He's the right age to be plausible in the role, and he's handsome and cocksure enough to fit our (my) idea of what an astronaut is. Bullock carries most of the weight of the story, and does it well. She's not an astronaut, but she's not incompetent. She's had training, but she has to think things through.
I saw the 2D version, because of my problems with motion sickness. (I watched "Cloverfield" by looking at the ceiling of the theatre and listening to the dialogue.) However, I think that this might be one to pay the extra money to see in 3D, simply because it would make it that more immersive and scary.
Wow.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Riddick
Riddick
Rated R (violence, gore, brief nudity)
Written and directed by David Twohy
** 1/2 out of ****
If there was such a thing as an impressionistic action character, it would be Richard B. Riddick.
Years ago, I saw "Pitch Black", and thought it was a perfectly fine B-grade sci-fi flick. Solid premise (a planet with multiple suns that had constant light until an eclipse, creatures that hunted with sonar, a bad ass with night vision), decent story (a group of people who depend on a murderer to survive), everything hit the right notes. It was small, self-contained and fun.
Then, "The Chronicles of Riddick" came out, and it tried to be, like, seven things at once. There just wasn't enough room in the movie for all the ideas it had. However, it was designed within an inch of its life. It LOOKED amazing, but, it FELT impressionistic. Characters and situations were sketched out, but never fleshed out. Concepts were introduced, but, it's like we had to (along with the actors) fill in the blanks.
In "Riddick", the series has returned to its roots, as it were. It's small, self-contained, and has an absolutely gleeful amount of gore.
And it's still impressionistic. Riddick (Vin Diesel) is a bad man. When we last saw him, he had become Lord Marshall of the Necrons ("The what of the who?" You ask. And I nod in agreement.), but, apparently, things happened, and he's stuck on this planet. With monsters. And a dog. And he somehow determines that something bad is coming, so, he finds a merc/bounty hunter way station and calls in two ships with a distress beacon. One is only looking for the bounty on Riddick, the other is looking for answers from him. And then violence happens.
The movie looks great. It was obviously filmed on location in Green Screen National Park, with additional scenes filmed in Available For A Few Months Memorial Soundstage, but the design more than makes up for it. Everything looks lived-in and detail was not skimped on. The team loves this world they've created, and it shows. The acting isn't going to win any awards, but that's fine. David Bautista is not a bad actor, and I've had a crush on Katee Sackoff for years, but, we come to this little sticking point:
How does Riddick know what he knows? He seems to be a genius in tactics, he apparently understands alien biology and human behavior, but none of the how or why is presented. I know that there is TONS of backstory that isn't put on screen, but I want to see it. "He's a bad ass" is fine for a character sketch, but if a psychopath all of a sudden displays sympathy or caring, I want to know WHY.
The characters aren't one-dimensional, but, in movies like this, with worlds that aim for space opera epicness, you need more than impressionism.
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