Wednesday, December 26, 2012

The Hobbit: An Addendum

So, as you might have been able to tell from my first post about The Hobbit, the movie gave me a lot of feels.  Most of which came from the fact that I wanted to like it a lot more than I did - not that I didn't like it, I did quite a bit, but I was still kind of disappointed in the final product.  Which led pretty directly to me writing a "review" which didn't actually say anything useful at all, but whined a lot and threw in some stuff about dwarves.  This addendum is my attempt to say something substantive about the movie itself.

I did not see The Hobbit in 48fps, or even in IMAX.  Because of this I didn't have the hyper-realism issue that many people have been complaining about; however (and I don't know if this is BECAUSE I saw it in standard form, or if everyone had this problem), there were several panoramic scenes that ended up blurry and headache-y for me.  This was especially problematic because they were scenes I wanted to see - the opening scene of Erebor, the dwarven city, for example, and the goblin underground compound.  New Zealand is used to great effect, and Jackson definitely remembers how to use great sweeping panoramas to good effect, but the film is a little heavy on the scenery porn, which matters more because of how padded the movie already feels.

The scale of the movie is pretty grand - Jackson proved he was great at doing epics with LOTR, and he brings that same sense of grandeur to The Hobbit.  It works to mediate some of the tonal dissonance that the film has, since there's not as much of that weighty feeling to the book; The Hobbit adapted scenes are very true to the spirit of the book - lighter, with some levity, while the material from the ROTK appendices (most particularly a meeting between Gandalf, Galadriel, Sarumon and Elrond) is more serious, more ponderous.  While individually, every scene is pretty great, they don't transition very well..  The opening sequence, where we learn the history of the dwarves and their homeland, gives gravity to the story; as I'm thinking about it right now, part of the problem I may be having is that we got the big sweeping epic FIRST and are only now going back to the prequel story, which puts more expectation on The Hobbit to be similar to LOTR in terms of tone and feeling.  Jackson does a good job of incorporating his extra material, showing that the story he's trying to tell is bigger than just The Hobbit text, but staying true to all his sources hurts him in terms of meshing the elements together.

All in all, The Hobbit was an enjoyable, but flawed, experience.  I think we were all expecting something more, which is why it's getting so slammed in reviews right now - it's a pretty good movie, and we were expecting something great.  I hope parts two and three deliver a little bit more.

Friday, December 21, 2012

The Hobbit

The Hobbit is not Lord of the Rings.

I expressed concern when the first trailer hit, because it looked way too much like LOTR rescrambled with a different hobbit, and having read The Hobbit I wanted a movie that let the merits of that story shine without being overshadowed by the darker, more serious events of LOTR.

Well...yes and no.  The story Peter Jackson is telling here is much larger than what's contained in The Hobbit, which is why I'm finally comfortable with the fact that we're getting three movies (for a great rundown of what Jackson's doing with Tolkein's extended mythology, read this explanation by Dresden Codak author and artist, Aaron Diaz.  His whole tumblr right now is full of awesome LOTR, Hobbit, and Silmarillion facts).  But...

But.

There are two things that weaken this movie tremendously, and one of them is the constant insistence that this movie IS related to LOTR and IS a prequel and dammit, how many parallels can we fit into this film?  It's detrimental; Thorin Oakenshield is a badass with an awesome backstory, he doesn't need to be constantly and bluntly compared to Aragorn.  There's even one instance of a deus ex machina from Fellowship being directly reused, in a scene that was changed from the Hobbit text (not that I'm objecting to the fact that the book was changed - I'm objecting to the fact that Jackson reuses a terrible plot device that didn't work that well in the first place).

Radagast is pretty magnificent and I basically won't hear a word against him.

The other thing that hurts the movie is length; even with the added material, this didn't need to be a three hour movie.  I would go so far as to say it could have fit just as much story, and just as much scenery, comfortably into two hours and been a stronger film for it.  There are two scenes in particular, a chase scene and a battle, that are long to the point of being ridiculous and tiresome.  Edit more better, Jackson!  I know you can do it.

Some good stuff!  The dwarves are excellent.  Even though, for all its length, some of them are confined to caricatures and cut-outs (Bombur's most memorable characteristics are "fat" and "donut beard"), they still end up being memorable, and fun to spend screen time with.  They are also fierce; unlike the hobbits, who will always look a little funny with swords in their hands (intentionally, I think), the dwarves are true warriors.  They are also the best channel for the book's levity to come through; the scene where you meet them at Bilbo's house was one of my favorites in the whole film.

If my beard was this majestic, I'd want to be remembered for it too.

I don't really know how to talk about Riddles in the Dark, except by saying that it's the centerpiece of the movie, and could stand alone as its own short film.  It's amazing, and Martin Freeman (fabulous, amazing, I-don't-think-they-could-have-made-this-without-him Martin Freeman) sells the hell out of it.  It's kind of like Jackson conceived of this scene, and built the rest of the movie to support it (which is entirely possible, it's the cornerstone moment of the film, after all).  It's also a great way of starting the descent into darkness from the bright tones of the opening acts, and it's a great lead-in to part two.

Shall I talk some about Martin Freemen?  He's flawless, really.  He hits such the perfect tone, unassuming and pretty self-deprecating, that when his moments of bravery come he looks just as surprised as everyone else.  He makes those moments believable, as well - it's not like his cleverness in the face of danger comes out of nowhere.  He's always been a smart hobbit, and now he has the chance to be a hero, even if someone else will probably have to tell him when it happens.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Skyfall


I wasn't really a Bond fan until Daniel Craig remastered the superspy into a gritty, punchy daredevil, and I'm pleased to say that Skyfall represents a brilliant comeback from the plodding, dusty Quantum of Solace.  It's exciting, cohesive, and a more streamlined story, which gives some truly excellent character acting its chance to shine.  Reviewers are raving about Judi Dench and Javier Bardem for good reason - Bardem's peroxide blonde villain is slick and slippery, outwardly polished and maniacally twisted.  He is a polished psychopath; Entertainment Weekly compares him, aptly, to Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter.  He's chilling.  And if the Academy can nominate Johnny Depp for Pirates of the Caribbean, surely they can find it in their hearts to recognize Bardem.

What I deeply appreciated about Skyfall is that it's a serious action film that isn't afraid to be cheeky.  Casino Royale was an introduction to a new kind of Bond - not afraid to get dirty, more inclined to feats of parkour than gadgetry, it showed us the dark side of espionage (while still managing to include the obligatory martini and tailored suit).  Skyfall melds that with the more classic Bond feel, bringing back Q (Ben Whishaw, completely charming in the role) and some of the gadgets, as well as giving nods to some Bond staples (like the indomitable Aston Martin).  While there is never any danger of Skyfall veering into camp territory, it seamlessly brings back more elements of a previous Bond era.  Adele's theme song works into this as well; it has a very smoky, kind of scratchy 60's feel and I LOVE it.

(A side note about Q: I appreciated that Bond and I had the same thought about him at the same time.  Namely: "Dude, you're like TEN.")

I would also like to point out, without spoiling anything, that Skyfall has the best use of Chekov's Gun I have ever seen.  It is MASTERFUL, and it is batshit crazy, and I didn't think it would happen but then Christmas came early and I got the ludicrous death I so deeply deserved.  I won't tell you what it is, but I guarantee you'll know it when you see it.

I had planned to address the "Bardem as possibly gay" question, but...it doesn't really matter.  There's a scene between Bardem and Craig that might be flirting, might be gay chicken, might be a lot of things - the only thing about it that actually matters is that Bardem makes your skin crawl.  My personal interpretation is that Craig's Bond is simply trying to unseat Bardem's villain in the only way he currently can; I can't imagine that someone as savvy as Bond has never used sex as a weapon before.

(Also, if you're honestly getting your panties in a twist about Bond drinking a Heineken, he was on a BEACH in a SHACK.  Dude has to make due with what he has!)

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

More Scary Movies I Secretly Like Watching

Happy Halloween, my lovely haunted readers!  Tonight is Halloween, and in the spirit of the holiday I would like to both direct you to my Top Ten Horror Films I Secretly Kind Of Like, a list I made last year, and to also provide an addendum list (because, let's face it, I can talk all I want to about not liking horror movies - the truth is I am fascinated by them).

28 Days Later


That early scene, when Cillian Murphy stumbles out of the hospital and into the empty streets of London, is one of the eeriest things to be committed to film.  One of the brilliant things this movie does, that not many have tried to replicate, is change our expectations of the zombies: not only are they brutal, vicious, and hungry, but they're fast.  Zombies went from shambling horrors to rabid predators, more likely to dispense with the moaning and just rip into you with guttural shrieking.  Shivers.

(The use of red in the color palette of 28 Days Later is also interesting to note, for people who notice that kind of thing.  It borders on abrasive and gives me a headache, which was probably the point.)

Drag Me To Hell


Campy, over-the-top, and with a simplistic message (do unto others, and all that), Drag Me To Hell still manages some of the best jump scares in recent film.  Allison Lohman plays the loathsome Christine, a loan officer eager for a pay raise who declines to extend a loan to an old gypsy woman.  Christine apparently missed the memo on why it's a terrible idea to cross old gypsy women, because she finds herself the owner of a particularly nasty curse.  Thinking about the ending still makes me jump a little.  

Halloween


There are two classics on here, included because sometimes the originals are just better.  Halloween is scary because not only are there no ghosts, monsters or zombies, but because Michael Meyers doesn't have anything obviously wrong with him.  He's no Damien, no disciple of the devil, no possessed little boy - he's just a psychopath, enraged by young women who remind him of his slutty sister.  The blank white mask, which removes any trace of humanity, feels more like his face than any real one could.

Night Watch


I highly recommend watching this one with subtitles, because the cinematography actually incorporates them into the fabric of the film.  Watching a vampire lure a human through psychic calling is much creepier when the subtitles are red, and fade away like blood dissipating in water.  This movie, which is also the reason I get nervous around large flocks of crows, is about the supernatural forces that guard against each other and keep the world in balance...and what happens when a force too powerful to contain is released in Moscow.  It's beautiful and exciting, horror with a touch of class.  If you liked Let The Right One In you'll probably dig Night Watch.

Nightmare on Elm Street


The other classic I felt it was necessary to include.  A lot of horror deals with the invasion of so-called "safe" spaces, but none are as effective as the ghoul that can literally kill you in your dreams.  There's no hiding under the blankets here, and to know Freddy is to be killed by him.  Have fun trying to sleep tonight...

The Others


A shoestring budget and almost zero special effects give this one a lovely classic feel.  While not filmed in black and white, it may as well have been - the single location of the film is inside a great big house with all the windows boarded up to protect Nicole Kidman's children from their allergy to sunlight.  Shadows, light and darkness make up the special effects and create a mood so profoundly eerie that you'll find yourself jumping at nothing.  Very reminiscent of the original House on Haunted Hill.

[REC]


Another fun zombie movie that mixes them in with the found footage trope.  [REC] is kissing cousins with 28 Days Later, dealing with a virus and fast zombies, but adding an element of claustrophobia with the locked down building that the whole film takes place in.  In general, I think the found footage thing is a little played out, but this story of an apartment building dealing with a quarantine and horrifying monsters is exciting enough to get a pass.  

Red Dragon


Edward Norton makes almost as good of a foil for Anthony Hopkins as Jodie Foster.  Ralph Fiennes as the mumbling, wounded Francis Dolarhyde is a softer, though no less dangerous, villain than Buffalo Bill, which gives the whole film a different flavor when it could very easily have ended up being a rehash of Silence of the Lambs.  Also, as an English major, I can't resist the literary influence that Blake has on the film.  

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil


Making fun of every slasher film you've ever loved.  This wonderfully composed satire isn't light on the jump scares or the gore, and it's tempting to cover your eyes even while you're still laughing.  Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine play rednecks up for some fishing in the woods who have the unfortunate luck to stumble across a group of college co-eds, who become convinced that the two hapless hillbillies are actually serial killers.  This is only reinforced when the kids start dying in hilariously accidental ways (a woodchipper may be involved).

The Wolfman


I refer here to the 2010 version, starring Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins, which doesn't get enough credit as far as I'm concerned.  As a werewolf film it does some things quite well: it tells the story of the inner struggle between man and beast, and wonders if that struggle is universal and some are just better at suppressing it than others.  As any good monster film should, it has philosophical ideals framed in terms of literal monstrousness...but doesn't romanticize the monsters.  These werewolves are not your friends, and they will definitely eat you if given half the chance.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

OscarWatch 2012: It Begins!

September is well over and we are deep into OscarWatch - something that was made QUITE clear to me on Sunday, when I went to see Argo.


Argo is a stunning film.  It is tense and claustrophobic, exciting and unbelievable - made even more so by the fact that it IS A TRUE STORY.  I repeat: the CIA inventing a fake Star Wars ripoff, press release and terrible poster included, in order to rescue six people from being publicly beheaded in Iran, ACTUALLY HAPPENED.  As with any film adaptation of historical events, I imagine things may have been spiced up a bit for the screen...although the way Ben Affleck presents it on screen feels very true to life, down to the terrible 70s mustaches and slightly grainy film quality.  It's harrowing, watching the six Americans get more and more convinced that they're going to die in the Canadian Embassy, and thrilling to watch the admittedly half-assed plan take shape.  At one point, Bryan Cranston as the CIA Chief refers to Plan: Argo as "The best, worst idea we've got."  That hopelessness, that desperation, drips off the film - which makes the payoff even more worth it.  Everything about this movie is brilliant and you should go see it, posthaste.

AwardWatch: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (there's a book!  I wanna read it.).  Possibly a Best Actor nom for Affleck.  Best Visual Effects.  In my fantasies, John Goodman or Alan Arkin pulls a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but I don't think it's too likely.

Let's take a look at the other hardcore Oscar Bait movies I saw trailers for, and make some predictions over what awards these films will pull:

Life of Pi


Stunning, stunning trailer.  I haven't read the book yet (I KNOW), but if one was going to make a film adaptation about a boy in a boat with a tiger, I would want it to look like this.  And Ang Lee has serious philosophical chops (which worked for Brokeback Mountain, not so much for Hulk), so I think we can expect cerebral and gorgeous things from this one.  Plus, the word from the early release at the New York Film Festival has been largely positive.

AwardWatch: Best Cinematography for sure.  Best Adapted Screenplay is also a pretty safe bet.  Best Director and Best Picture, MAYBE, but it depends on how the Academy feels about another 3D feature by someone with less pull than James Cameron.

Cloud Atlas


This feels like the illegitimate lovechild of The Fountain and Tree of Life to me, which gives me conflicted feelings.  I want it to be more Fountain and less bullshit - but it looks potentially overwrought, over-complicated, and unintelligible.  I won't mind the skips around in time and place if the story stays streamlined, and I don't have a lot of hope for that.  Looks pretty beautiful, though.

(On a related note, a Google Image search of "Cloud Atlas" brings up what looks like pictures from seventeen different movies.  This is my concern: that it will not only be overly complicated, but disconnected and incomprehensible.)

AwardWatch: After last year's Tree of Life event, I don't think this one has a lot of hope for Best Picture.  Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Visual Effects and probably Art Direction, Best Costumes and Best Makeup nominations are assured, and it'll probably pull some other technical awards - I can see Best Film Editing and Sound Mixing, and Sound Track if the Cloud Atlas sonata score was written for the movie.

Lincoln


It is deeply ironic that this film is being released in the same year as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Ironic and a little sad, because AL:VH might have had more pull as a summer action flick if it hadn't drawn the inevitable comparisons to Spielberg's historical beauty.  Ah well.  

AwardWatch: Possibly everything.  Best Actor for Daniel Day Lewis for sure, Best Picture, Best Director.  Best Original Screenplay?  Probably.  Best Costumes and Makeup, because duh, it's a historical.  Best Art Direction, Cinematography, probably a Best Supporting Actor nominee in there (my bet is on Tommy Lee Jones), and Best Supporting Actress for Sally Field.  

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Karl Urban is the Judge and Everything is Awesome

Dredd, Karl Urban's latest action gunfest, is currently holding steady on Rotten Tomatoes at a 77%.  For its genre, that's a solid score - more than I expected it to be garnering, before I saw it myself.  Resident Evil: Retribution, on the other hand, is maintaining a 26%.  It should also be noted that none of the flock of Resident Evil movies currently rates above 34% (the first one; the next highest is that whopping 26%).

Why is this significant?  Because I need you to know how utterly criminal it is that there will undoubtedly be another Resident Evil movie, but Dredd will never see the sequels it has so gloriously earned.


I saw both films.  Retribution was fun, and short, and so clearly a bridge to the next RE chapter that it was almost breathtaking; in terms of plot, you learn nothing new and maybe one important thing happens.  It reminded me very much of the fourth Terminator film that way, in that it exists solely to remind you that the franchise continues to chug along.  It has the requisite amount of action, lots of character death, and Mila Jovovich in a fairly ridiculous amount of leather and buckles.  Stuff blows up and blows up good.  I had fun watching it.

Stuff blows up and blows up good in Dredd, too.  Urban, stoically costumed in leather armor and that inscrutable helmet, shoots a lot of people with voice-activated ammunition.  People die in hilariously over the top ways.  Both films share a genetic component; the same dystopian, gun-slinging, face-kicking helix exists on both screens.

The difference is the core that helix wraps around, and maybe this is because we're looking at volume 5 of a franchise versus a new film (well, sort of, but this hardly counts as a sequel to Stallone's 1995 travesty).  Retribution feels no need to tell you a story, because you already know what's going on; whereas Dredd is a pretty impressive piece of tight storytelling wrapped up in some surprisingly beautiful cinematography.

One of the things that impressed me the most about Dredd was how much trust it places in its audience.  It is not heavily leaden with exposition; instead, you see a shot of barren countryside, a dense and dreary metropolis, and you hear maybe two lines about the state of the world.  That's it, but that's enough; at this point we have seen so many dystopian, post-apocalyptic settings that we know the drill.  Likewise, no time is wasted telling you how incredibly badass, capable, incorruptible, and the best at his job Dredd is - you know it from his manner and how the other characters around him treat him.  There's more showing than telling going on here.

It is also extremely well filmed.  Long, foreboding shots of empty, rusted corridors and sparkly drug-induced hazes against the standard post-apocalyptic gray and brown color palette make for some striking visuals, coupled with smart camera motion and well choreographed action (I could always see who was hitting who, and if you've been reading this blog enough you'll know that scrambled, jerky action sequences are a particular pet peeve of mine).  Dredd understands that there is a time and place for jerky filming, which is sparely and to make the audience uncomfortable (there's one haunting shot of Lena Headey as the crime lord gouging someone's eyes out that lasts maybe five seconds and gets two replays - I'm still cringing thinking about it, but the point is that it doesn't overstay its welcome).

The last thing I want to remark on is the pretty fantastic job that Karl Urban does in this role.  His acting is so Spartan, so economical, because he doesn't need to grandstand.  It's reminiscent of the way that Ryan Gosling played the Driver in Drive, in that Urban also lets the little things speak for him instead of actually saying anything.  It's all there in the creak of his armor, the set of his chin, the way he never uses three words when one will do.  His helmet, which covers most of his face and never comes off, contributes to rather than hinders his performance; it adds to the menace (in contrast is Olivia Thirlby as the Rookie, who never wears her helmet and trades on her empathy - it's also effective, but in a very different way).  He's all rock solid justice, being hurled against Lena Headey's mercurial ragemonster crime lord: the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object.  Watching them battle it out in the enclosed tower environment is not only incredibly fun, but a memorable experience.

Do the Resident Evil movies blend together in your head the same way they do in mine?

Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Words

In spite of myself, I find myself becoming fonder and fonder of Bradley Cooper.

I have never liked him - which is not to say I don't recognize his talent, I thought he was quite good in Wedding Crashers and The Hangover (I was thoroughly underwhelmed by Limitless, for more reasons than him).  I've just always gotten this incredible...smug feeling from him.  He seems smarmy to me, like in real life he'd be kind of sleazily good looking and take advantage of every drunk girl in the room.  (PLEASE NOTE: I have NO IDEA if this is true.  It's probably not.  But it's the air I got from him.)

Well, I'm coming around.  While The Words suffers sometimes from being too clever for most of its plot lines - including never actually stating that it's about Hemingway's lost manuscripts, even though it's totally about Hemingway's lost manuscripts - it is saved by completely absorbing performances and the very bold risks it takes.


Let's talk about that for a minute.  When I was picking a movie to see this weekend, I narrowed my choices down to Lawless and The Words.  The deciding factor, after weighing hearsay, actors, and subject matter, was length: The Words caps out at 97 minutes long.  Aside from movies intended for children, I can't even remember the last movie I saw in the theater that was less than two hours long.  The trend seems to  be toward longer and bigger stories, which isn't bad in and of itself, although it does make for some poor editing choices.  The Words, however, commits to its short length, with tight storytelling and good editing.  There's no wasted time here, and no wasted space.

The only real missed opportunity is Zoe Saldana as the wife of Bradley Cooper's suffering author, who only ever pops up to react to something he's done.  What she does, she does beautifully (no one can cry like Zoe), but she's better than this role, and could have brought some real edge to Dora if she'd been given more material to work with.

But the story is the real star of this show, with three twisting strands: you have Dennis Quaid as author Clayton Simmons, giving a reading of his book.  That book is about author Rory Jansen, struggling in NYC to get his labor-of-love manuscript published.  He finds an old manuscript (A Farewell to Arms disguised by cinematic convenience and a briefcase from the 1940's) and, after finding his despair in it (he will never be half the author this mystery writer is, woe), he publishes it under his name.  Jeremy Irons reads it, recognizes his own work, and finds Rory to tell him the true story behind the transformative writing.

That's a lot going on, but due to some beautiful cinematics and the aforementioned tight storytelling, there's no confusion about where or when you are in the story.  The only vagueness wanders in at the end, and it's there for a reason: you as the audience are meant to contemplate the truth of the words, and decide for yourself what the edges of the reality for all three writers (Quaid, Cooper, and Irons) are.  It's a lot of meat for such a short movie, and I appreciated the chance to chew on it.

The other big risk here is that The Words is not out to please its audience, or even to provide a satisfying conclusion.  It doesn't even really end.  It's a movie about a moment, and the immediate fallout of a decision, and the lingering self-doubt and guilt that gets left behind.  It is almost refreshing its unwillingness to satisfy anyone, the audience or the characters, and while I don't think I'd make a habit out of watching movies of this flavor, it certainly made for an interesting experience.

Monday, September 10, 2012

The Nature of Kids' Movies

I saw The Bourne Legacy, and I really enjoyed it - there's not much to say about it, though, because it's very similar in structure and tone to Matt Damon's Bourne Trilogy.  I don't think that's a weakness, though; I think it's ok for a movie to be formulaic when the formula works.  Jeremy Renner is an excellent choice to carry on the Bourne name, and I thought Legacy did a very good job expanding the universe and deepening the intrigue.  Good job!

What I really want to talk about today is the other movie I saw that weekend:


ParaNorman, the newest offering from Laika (who brought us, previously, the marvelous Coraline), can be pretty neatly divided into three acts.  The opening act, wherein we meet our hero and learn about his interesting talent (he can see and talk to ghosts), is excellent.  We get a solid sense of Norman and his obsession with zombies and horror movies, and in one beautiful scene we get to see the world the way he does (full of ghosts, who know him by name and wish him good morning on his way to school) and the way the world sees him (a boy with a backpack full of monster action figures who talks to thin air).  Norman is weird and lonely, but you get the feeling that he's largely made his loneliness into armor; the bullying gets him down, but he's also quick to reject motions of friendship by Neil, another outcast.

The second third, wherein we are introduced to the conflict, is the weakest of the film.  The ghosts largely vanish from the scene, appearing only when the plot needs them too, and the film waffles on what the conflict actually is - I got the feeling that it wasn't quite sure what kind of movie it wanted to be, what it wanted to focus on.  Things get a little blurry here.

Luckily, though, ParaNorman comes roaring back for a spectacular conclusion, which both wraps up the story and provides lots of growth for all characters involved.  This was one of the things I appreciated the most about ParaNorman: the characters experience and exhibit real, believable growth.  This, in addition to the wonderful messages about bullying, parental expectations, and the joy of being odd, made it, for me, a strong experience and great all-around kids' film.

As I said before, the last film we got from Laika was Coraline, in general a stronger movie than ParaNorman but very similar in tone and execution.  What I want to know is: why are there so few kids' movies like these?  It is becoming less true now with things like Frankenweenie on the horizon, but why has it taken so long for kids' programming to get its teeth back?  When I think about the shows and movies I watched as a kid (mostly tv, with things like Aaah! Real Monsters, Rocko's Modern Life, and Invader Zim on my regular schedule, not to mention the stuff I stayed away from - Are You Afraid of the Dark?, anyone?), it seems like studios gentled down their kids' fare for a long time into almost unwatchable saccharine slop.

When I saw Monster House, a 2006 film from Columbia Pictures, I celebrated - that movie is wonderfully spooky and creepy, but never wanders outside of inappropriate for kids.  It was fun without being safe, and I (and the kids in my audience) gasped and cheered together through the course of the movie.  I wanted Monster House to be the lead-in to children's film getting its edge back - and now, six years later, it seems it finally is.  I think it's easy to forget sometimes that scary can be fun, and that there's nothing wrong with not playing it so safe in the arena of children's entertainment.  I'm eager to see what's next for animation, and it looks like this fall there are lots of films serving up the spooky.  Can't wait!

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Brace Yourselves - It's Time For Batman

Ok, guys.  Let's talk Batman.


I saw the film on Saturday, almost a week after it was released in theaters, and despite my best efforts I couldn't quite shield myself from all the reactions pouring in.  With one major exception, I did go in spoiler free, but I wasn't free from the baggage of those detestable fanboys who took it upon themselves to actually threaten the movie critics, and I certainly wasn't free from the pall of Aurora, CO.  My heart breaks for those families.

Because of the hurricane of emotion surrounding The Dark Knight Rises, I don't think it's possible to watch it free from expectations or preconceptions.  However, I believe that The Dark Knight is as close to cinematic perfection as I've ever witnessed, so I was both prepared to like TDKR and comfortable with the idea that it would not, could not reach the same heights as Christopher Nolan's second Batman movement.

I had...feelings about it.  Not all of them are good.  As I put it on twitter right after the show, the film had some excellent parts - but the sum wasn't equal to them, and multiplying excellence by zero (zero being, in this case, a tremendously wooden and boring Marion Cotillard, who I am normally quite fond of) still leaves you with zero.  She is perhaps the perfect illustration of my biggest issue with the film: it reeks of missed opportunities.  Without spoiling you deeply, there could have been a fascinating story here about revenge, power, tragedy, hubris, and identity - but due to poor writing and two poorly developed (and deeply important) characters, the film never quite gets there.

Rarely does it feel like Nolan puts plot points in his films just to have them exist - yet he does that here, not just once but several times.  Including a brief, and ultimately pointless, romance for Bruce Wayne that seems occur only for some comic book accuracy...accuracy which comes across as, again, pointless, when you consider the gulf between the Bane of Nightfall and the Bane we see here.  Why, when given an actor of Tom Hardy's caliber, do you waste him on a mushy-mouthed musclehead with no unique features?  I'm told the Bane of the comics was not only Batman's physical equal, but his mental equal as well.  That would have been nice to see.

Nolan is tackling some big issues (and a lot of them) here, but I wish he'd stuck more solidly to the identity questions that have run through his films since Batman Begins.  His Batman trilogy feels daring because it questions the very nature of heroism: does Gotham City need Batman?  Superficially, the answer is yes; but consider how much of Gotham's problems originate because Batman exists.  His very purpose is held up for judgment: does Gotham need Batman?  This is the issue I wanted Nolan to explore even further, the philosophical question that has driven the whole trilogy.  Instead, a large part of the film is given over to class warfare and economic questions of ethics; important topics, yes, but I'm not sure Nolan is saying anything new here.

The more interesting feature of The Dark Knight Rises is that it is a Batman film with very little Batman.  I have heard this aspect of it criticized, but I think it says a lot about the world Nolan has crafted, that it is complete in and of itself, and not wholly dependent on the cowl.  Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt command a large portion of the second half of the film, in a compelling siege under Bane-as-warlord.  It's a good thing our Commissioner and his prodigee turn in such strong performances, because (regardless of how you feel about Bane as a character or villain) he's weak sauce; not just compared to the chaotic force of nature that was Ledger's Joker, but even to the sardonic, almost whimsically mad Cillian Murphy, reprising his role (once again) as the good Doctor Jonathan Crane.

I'd also like to interject a word here about Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle, who is slinky, 1920s femme fatale perfection.  Her voice drips with sleek disdain, and even though she runs around the ruined city in stiletto boots she never feels less than perfectly capable.  There are a few shining moments of flawlessness that could not have been so great with someone else in the leather catsuit.

There are fleeting moments of perfection.  The opening sequence, which begins without context, is heart-stopping and daring; the collapsing stadium, which we all saw in the trailer, is tremendously tragic in its level of sheer destruction.  It is being said in reviews that any comic book/super hero movie would kill to be the weakest Nolan Batman film; I'm not sure I agree, but I can say for certain that even though Nolan crashes some leaps, there are places this movie soars.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

The Amazing Spider-Bat

Let's talk Spider-Man.


Instead of going to see The Dark Knight Rises this weekend, like everyone else on the planet, I decided to catch up on my movie-watching and see Spider-Man instead.  I haven't been to see anything since Prometheus, which makes me sad (I missed Abe Lincoln Kills Shit, grrrr) and I'm confident that Batman will be around long enough for me to see it next Saturday.

I enjoyed Sam Raimi's trilogy.  I thought Tobey Maguire was kind of sweet and awkward, and the second film is still one of my favorite superhero movies ever, mostly because Alfred Molina is completely inspired as Doc Ock.  And while Molina is still the best villain ever committed to Spider-Man cinema, I gotta say that this new take blows the previous tried out of the water.

It comes down to two things: a new hero and Batman.  No, really: Marc Webb is borrowing heavily from the Christopher Nolan school of filmmaking, and I'm not mad at him for it.  The Amazing Spider-Man feels like the first Raimi film run through a Batman Begins filter, which makes it more interesting and more real-feeling.  The scene where you get to watch Peter Parker build his web-shooters is brilliant, because of how real it feels; yes, Peter's got amped up strength, reaction time, and all that other jazz, but he's also got to figure some shit out from the ground up.

Which brings me to Andrew Garfield.  I like Tobey, I really do, but Garfield gets to be snarky and awkward and feels way more like an actual high school student than Maguire ever did.  Even when Garfield is nabbing criminals and saving New York, he show-boats just because he can.  He takes a measure of daredevil joy in his powers that I never got from Maguire, which fits because he's only supposed to be 17.  His Peter is more charming, more fun, and more convincing, because Garfield lets himself be awkward and surly and angry and sassy.  He also has mad-style chemistry with Emma Stone, which helps, because I never really felt Maguire and Kirsten Dunst.

The story is fun but Rhys Ifans as Dr. Connors feels so much like a rehash of Willem Defoe's Norman Osborn that I can't give them full originality points.  There are a couple moments that feel like maybe the script writers needed something to happen, so it does because of reasons, but for the most part it's an exciting, if standard, hero film.  I'm ALMOST sorry I didn't get to see the 3D, because I bet all the scenes of Parker swinging around NYC would have been pretty cool looking, but not sorry enough to try and see it again.

I am pretty excited about the inevitable sequel, though.  Bring it on.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Prometheus, or, David Don't Touch That

So.  Prometheus.  I hear people have a lot of feelings about this movie - and so do I.

I really wanted to like this one.  Every time I heard another negative review or saw more backlash, I became more determined to enjoy it.  And at the end of day, I did enjoy it.

But it's not a good movie.

Superficially, it's a treat.  The visuals are stunning, with sweeping vistas and brilliantly envisioned technology.  The horror elements are, at times, jaw dropping.  The music is largely effective (although there were moments where I didn't feel the score matched the tone of events).  All the dressings are there, but the structure itself is flawed.

The premise of the film is thus: two scientists (Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green) trace a number of disparate ancient pictograms to one star system so far away from Earth that the artists could not have possible known of its existence without being told by (presumably) a superior being.  Somehow, these two scientists decide that those superior beings must have engineered humanity's existence.  Somehow, this determines that our scientists, along with a team of other scientists, will travel to that star system in order to, in a phrase, meet our makers.  Now, I have no problem with exploring the tension between science and religion - that would have been an interesting thing for the movie to explore in depth, and a solid foundation for that particular story.

But that's pretty much all we get about that, except for a few throwaway lines about Rapace's character's faith.  And a whole lot of misplaced religious references, which might have supported a stronger theme if Scott had committed.

And that right there is my basic issue with the film: somehow, it has managed to be both overly ambitious and incredibly lazy.  It pursues about four different big ideas but commits to none of them, and as a result we have the seeds to the aforementioned science v. religion film, a solid Alien body-horror movie, and some half-baked ideas about classism, robot bigotry, colonization, and the generation of life, but nothing conclusive on any of them.  Well, except the vague sense on leaving that science and curiosity might be bad for your health, and some uncomfortable ideas about pregnancy.  It's problematic, to say the least.

My secondary issue is that not only are none of the scientists in the film particularly likeable, but they're all bad scientists.  No one seems concerned about quarantine, containment measures, contamination, or even briefing the scientists on what they're doing (the biologist, who you'd think would have the most to do on this kind of mission, wanders away a quarter of the way through the film).  Michael Fassbender gives absolutely the best and most convincing performance as the android David, who balances clinical robotic intelligence with childlike naivete (which is why I've assigned Prometheus the subtitle of David Don't Touch That - it's a repeating chorus from the other characters).

There is some good stuff there - the parts most clearly related to the previous Alien films are tense and visceral, and the ideas presented are definitely worth chewing on.  At the end of the day, I would rather a movie try for the big ideas and fail than not try at all.  At least it got a conversation going.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

The Great Gatsby

Let's get two things out of the way right off the bat: I am very, very fond of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I think that the new adaptation by Baz Luhrmann looks tremendous.


I'm honestly a little surprised by all the backlash this film is getting, especially in terms of the casting.  If Luhrmann had asked me for my personal opinion I could not have picked a more perfect cast.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a proven quantity at this point.  He can do gravitas, he can do the breakdown, he can do pretty much everything - when I think about him as Gatsby, I'm reminded of his role in Catch Me If You Can, wherein he plays a character that is both involved in a disastrous downward spiral but is also living a sumptuous life of wealth and the freedom that comes from breaking the law.  It's a similar feel to how I read Gatsby, except that Gatsby is older than Frank Abagnale, so his descent is tempered against the fact that he really should know better - but he can't, because he's trapped himself in his own stories and delusions.  Appropriately, DiCaprio is older now, older and a better actor.  He can handle this, guys.  Think of that first shot in the trailer, of Gatsby holding the champagne glass and looking down from his window.  That's a man who believes he's controlling the world - until he realizes that he can't.

Who can't love that shot?

The other inspiration is Carey Mulligan as Daisy.  Daisy is beautiful, ethereal, too young for her place in life, too much of a dreamer, and with too tenuous a grasp on reality.  How can anyone look at Mulligan in the trailer and not utterly believe her?  From her blond flapper bob down to that last line - "I wanted to do everything in the world with you."  I am in love with her already.  Even Mulligan's characteristic "two moments from weeping (and she'll probably do it prettier than you)" expression fits in here.

Perfection.

As for the rest of the trailer: it's a visual treat, over-the-top and art directed from here to eternity, but this is the 1920's and we're talking about characters who have no desire to behave themselves.  They have too much money, too much time on their hands, and no real sense of personal responsibility.  Luhrmann's tone is right on point, with the air full of metallic confetti and a drink in every hand.  The story is about a lot of things, but at its most basic it's about the rich behaving badly, and superficially we're definitely getting that here.

I can't wait to see the kind of trouble they'll get in to. 

Monday, May 7, 2012

The Avengers

Let's chat.

There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong with The Avengers, truth be told.  It was helped immeasurably by some solid prequels, great actor choices, and a seemingly great writer/director, but still: I had my suspicions that it was simply going to be too BIG to handle.  Comic film franchises tend to suffer in their later films by the attempt to cram too much shit into one film: Spider-Man 3 was a clusterfuck of bad guys, X-Men 3 was a mess of poorly written plot and badly explained detail.  I was afraid that The Avengers was pulling too many elements together.

1. Joss Whedon dialed back his "Joss-ness."  Yes, I appreciate what Whedon does, and I love the dialogue he writes, but going at this big, hulking Hollywood behemoth with his style turned on 100% was never going to work.  I deeply appreciated that he was able to dial the irony back, and that Tony got the majority of his snark (which is where it should have gone) but that he also wrote the characters who needed to be earnest and transparent in that manner (Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner, mostly).  He found a good balance between his preferred aesthetic and the Hollywood comic machine, and it works.


2. The direction and cinematography were perfection.  Let's talk about Whedon a little more as a director, because this may be his biggest project yet in terms of Hollywood grandeur and dude seriously stepped up to the plate.  Shakey-cam was conspicuously absent - I could see and process everything that was going on, which is exactly what the singular power sets of our heroes demands.  (This is how you know that someone in the visuals department plays Marvel Ultimate Alliance; who else saw the Iron Man/Captain America fusion power?).  In the big fight scenes, the camera moves seamlessly from one hero to the next, so that you can see how, even while they're all fighting their own piece, it's all an interconnected sequence.  I called Whedon a virtuoso on Twitter, and I stand by that.


3. Not a minute was wasted.  Whedon was not playing around: he dropped you into the story, trusting that you'd done your homework and seen the lead-in films, and kicked the movie into overdrive in a matter of minutes.  This made his huge cast of characters easier to juggle, since none of them were burdened with obligatory background; the only characters who hadn't really gotten an origin story already, Black Widow and Hawkeye, delivered exactly as much detail as was necessary to understand their place in The Avengers narrative.  I would totally watch a prequel movie about the two of them being superspies, but for the purposes of this film we got what we needed and not a speck more.

That sense that no time was being wasted meant that, even at 2 and a half hours, The Avengers never drags or feels slow.  It's a briskly paced action film with rapid-fire dialogue that trusts its audience to keep up.

4. Mark Ruffalo is the best-written, and best-acted, Hulk we've ever seen.  I've been told the Edward Norton version of The Hulk gets better on re-watching, but I've never tried to sit through it again so I wouldn't know.  I can say, definitively, that Ruffalo does very different things with the character than Norton does and it works COMPLETELY.  This is not a Bruce Banner who's just been through the gamma ray accident - this is a Bruce Banner who is totally beaten down and defeated.  The way Ruffalo stands, the way he holds his hands, the way he talks to other people are all so indicative of a man who is completely resigned to his life being horrible and isolated.  But, and this is important, this is not a man who's lost control - rather, he is SO in control of every aspect, every emotion, every bodily movement that it's tragic.  Ruffalo gets my three favorite moments in the film, and I like them so much because they say so much about how Bruce lives with the Hulk, and how extraordinarily sad his life has been.  This is also the first time that I've ever been afraid of the Hulk and what he can do on a destructive level.

No, really.  He's freaking terrifying.

THIS PART IS KIND OF SPOILERY, FYI, SO YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET.

I really loved the way that Ruffalo gives you the sense that, rather than the Hulk being the product of Bruce "getting angry," that he's ALWAYS angry; the Hulk is a product of him loosing the reigns on that anger.  So, you end up with two possible scenarios: Bruce loses control of the Hulk and that destructive energy, and lays waste indiscriminately to everything around him; OR, Bruce CHOOSES to let the Hulk loose, and can thus direct that energy to specific destruction.  Both go back to that idea that Bruce is a man tightly, tightly under his own thumb all the time, and it just makes him so endearing and empathetic as a character.

END SMALL SPOILER


5.  Everyone has a purpose.  This is not to be taken lightly.  You've got a team with three over-powered superhumans and one literal god, and then...two assassin-spies with a lot of gymnastics training and good eyesight.  And yet, I never felt like Hawkeye or Black Widow were shoe-horned in, or a waste of time.  They had clearly defined roles in the party and did some useful, kick-ass stuff.  I was also impressed with Scarlett Johanson's acting, which I haven't been in a really, really long time.  She gets some good scenes and some good lines, and actually delivers on them.


In summary: this movie does not disappoint.  I'm ready for the next round of Avengers, are you?

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Summer Movie Season!

This Friday, The Avengers will finally open in U.S. theaters, officially marking the start of Summer Movie Season.  I tend to think of SMS as lasting from whatever Marvel blockbuster opens in May until early September, when it bleeds into the beginning of Oscar Bait Season.  With that timeframe in mind, allow me to share with you the top ten movies I'm excited about seeing this summer (that aren't The Avengers, since DUH).

These are in order of release date rather than order of excitement, since my excitement over movies is hard to quantify - it is roughly equivalent to length of time until the movie is released, multiplied by my familiarity with the property, triangulated with how awesome the trailer looked.  The point is, these are my must-sees this summer:

May 25: Men in Black III
I've been on the fence about this one for a long time - MIB2 was so bad, you guys.  SO BAD.  But I'm cautiously optimistic...and I have faith in the fact that Will Smith is only getting better with age, while retaining a bit of that smart-ass edge that MIB the original had so much of.  Also, Tommy Lee Jones should make more movies.

June 1: Snow White and the Hunstman
HELLO, ART DIRECTION.  But seriously, this movie looks super beautiful, and my love and respect for Charlize Theron more than makes up for how ambivalent or hostile I may feel about Kristen Stewart.  Plus I love the idea of a warrior-princess Snow White, and it is typically an easy sell to get me into a glossy, high profile fantasy film.  

This one also got a boost from how completely dreadful Mirror Mirror looked - if you can only see one Snow White retelling this year...

June 8: Prometheus
There is nothing about this that doesn't look awesome.  Space travel?  Science fiction horror?  Michael Fassbender playing a robot with ~feelings~?  Cinematography that looks like it took notes at David Fincher's film-making seminar, and staticky kind of scary music?  The return of Ridley Scott?  YES PLEASE.

June 22: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
The title of this movie sells itself, really.  Also I really liked the book, and while this looks like it's veered a bit more into whack-a-doo territory, I have faith in the power of axes that can explode trees.  And Rufus Sewell playing a vampire.

June 22: Brave
Are you excited about Pixar's first feature film starring a lady?  BECAUSE I AM. 

July 3: The Amazing Spider-Man
Spider-Man 2 was awesome.  The third one, much less so.  Which is why I'm glad Sony is going back to basics with this reboot, scrapping even the visual tone of their first trilogy.  Andrew Garfield has enough dorkiness about him to make a convincing Peter Parker, so it just remains to be seen if he can pull his action weight.  Emma Stone is guaranteed to be charming, and I'm really, really hoping the villain delivers - The Lizard could be either really cool, or...really, really bad.  Fingers crossed for the former.

July 20: The Dark Knight Rises
BATMAN.  Although INFINITE SADNESS that Nolan and Bale aren't making any more of these.  I hope directors of Batman films in the future will take a page from Nolan's notebook; especially his fearlessness to explore the darker corners of this franchise.  Can I get a Long Halloween movie, now?  Please?

August 3: The Bourne Legacy
Jeremy Renner was pretty much born to play an action hero, and these movies have been SO fun.  While I found the original trilogy to be complete on its own, I feel as though there are still plenty of ~government secrets~ to plum, and you know what?  I trust Jeremy Renner to do that, and to kick a lot of people in the face in the meantime.

August 3: Total Recall
I didn't know I needed this movie in my life until I saw the trailer.  I love how they've spiffied up the super campy visuals from the original, and while it's kind of a bummer this one doesn't go to Mars (or so I've heard) I look forward to the CGI mutant yelling at Colin Farrell's eyebrows.  This is a remake that needed to happen, no matter how good you think the first one is - memory and brain stuff is a common science fiction story trope, but hard to do right.  I'm hoping this one does the job.

August 17: ParaNorman

I'm a sucker for good animation, and this one just looks charming (I'm more excited about Frankenweenie, but that one's not a summer release).  It also reminds me of Monster House, which I LOVED and felt was tremendously under-appreciated.  

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Catching Fire Casting Call

Now that we know Catching Fire will actually get made, due to The Hunger Games making a squillion dollars and Gary Ross signing on to direct, we need to start asking the important questions: who should play the repeat tributes?

*SPOILERS FOR CATCHING FIRE AHEAD*

The casting in The Hunger Games was so good that I'm willing to trust in Gary Ross' decisions; that doesn't mean we can't speculate, though.  Especially since I'm a pretty prolific tumblr user and right now that's all people seem to be able to talk about.  The two biggies are Finnick and Joanna, since they are so integral to the plot of not only Catching Fire but also Mockingjay.  My choices?


Someone mentioned Jesse Williams yesterday and now not only can I not unsee it, but I think it's absolute perfection.  His most striking feature, aside from sheer physical perfection, are his "sea green eyes" - what you may not be able to see in this less than HD pic is Williams' clear blue-green stare.  Finnick is also by turns cocky, smarmy, charming, a touch sleazy, supremely talented, and has a huge dose of swagger - all things I've watched Williams pull off with aplomb in his role as Dr. Avery on Gray's Anatomy.  GARY ROSS.  WORK ON THIS.




I've actually got two picks for Joanna...

Naya Rivera and Kristen Bell have more in common for this role than you might think.  They're both petite women with innocent looking brown eyes (Joanna's only explicitly described features are her small stature, which helped her win, and those big brown eyes) and they have both shown they can handle rolls with kick serious amounts of ass.  Bell may be the stronger choice - she's a little bit older, and is the better actress.  But Rivera's no-holds-barred role as Santana on Glee shows she's pretty fearless on camera.  It may come down to who's willing to shave their heads for the roll.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

HUNGER GAMES

Flawless Tribute Casting

Let's do this.

DISCLAIMER: I really liked the movie.  I liked it more than I liked the book.  If someone asks me which form they should imbibe, I will recommend the movie over the book.

WHAT THIS MOVIE DID REALLY WELL, AND WHY I THINK IT'S SUPERIOR TO SUZANNE COLLINS' ORIGINAL TEXT:
- Getting out of Katniss' first person, present tense perspective.  Not only does this mean we're not treated to the oddities of Collins' pacing, but it opened up a lot of opportunities for Director Gary Ross.  And he definitely took advantage of those opportunities - not being bound inside Katniss' head, we get to see the Gamemakers at work, and we get to see Haymitch at work, and we get to see the audience react to the events in the Arena (although I personally thought they could have gone way further with this; I would have loved to see some people watching from their homes and seeing how different people reacted to the Games on a more personal level).

- CASTING.  Oh my goodness, the casting and the acting in this film are flawless perfection.  Jennifer Lawrence is likable, charming, and fierce in ways that Collins' Katniss is supposed to be (I never got this from the character.  I did not like Book!Katniss.  I did not find her engaging, or interesting, or particularly intelligent; she's so reactionary that I didn't get why readers loved her so much.  If they were all reading her the way that Lawrence portrays her, I get it now.).  Lawrence hits her pitches at every turn, from the heartbreaking and desperate wail when she volunteers to save her sister, to sticking it in the eye (figuratively) of the Gamemakers when they refuse to pay attention to her.

I don't think I could ever say enough about the strength of the supporting cast, who Ross has wisely given more to do here than in the novel.  Stanley Tucci especially blows up in his expanded roll as the tv host Caesar Flickerman; he gives the impression of being on the side of these doomed children, while still being utterly a product of the Capitol.  Woody Harrelson as the alcoholic mentor Haymitch and Elizabeth Banks as the overly colorful and chipper District 12 wrangler Effie Trinket shine, particularly when they're fighting with each other.  Lenny Kravitz is superb as the grounded, deceptively laid-back Cinna, Katniss' stylist and number one supporter.  Donald Sutherland manages to make simply standing around and cutting roses look menacing.  The strength of these actors more than makes up for the occasionally stiff or silly sounding dialogue (a mainstay of book-to-movie adaptations, I'm afraid - not everything that's written down sounds good coming out of actual human mouths).

The biggest criticism I have is that Ross seems to have pulled the teeth out of the most vicious and problematic scenes; necessary to keep his PG-13 rating, I'm afraid, but in losing the hard edges of the novel we lose some of the urgency and the horror that Collins is trying to convey.  The cinematography seriously suffers from an overdose of close-ups and shaky-cam, which particularly weakened the opening scenes.  A few of the special effects were cheap looking.  There wasn't enough of an effort to explain the history of Panem and why, exactly, the Games are held in the first place (I'm hoping more of this comes out in Catching Fire).

The movie has other flaws, but they don't originate here - moments that were silly or stilted or poorly planned in the book are similar here.  But Ross has certainly done an admirable job of translating this gladiatorial event into a consumable film, and I'll be one of the first in line when he turns out the sequel Catching Fire.  Even if the dialogue is weak, you know it'll at least be exciting.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Why I want Hugo to win Best Picture

Let's be real: The Artist is probably going to go all in on Sunday.  Which I'm not pleased about.  I haven't seen all of the Best Picture noms (I'm short War Horse, Midnight in Paris, The Descendants, and Extremely Inconvenient & Incredibly Annoying), but I did see The Artist and I did see Hugo and there's no question to me that Hugo is a superior film and a superior experience.

For one thing, Hugo IS an experience.  Watching The Artist, it felt like a lot of work on my part for not a lot of payoff; I didn't feel like the filmmakers had made the same kind of effort that they were requiring me to make.  Let me try to explain that better: Hugo is a film that I felt asked for effort on my part (mostly it demands an emotional investment) but was also clearly a labor of love and craft.  The Artist demands intellectual effort by virtue of its form, but seems lazy in how it was put together.  Down to the performances (I thought Asa Butterfield and Ben Kingsley both turned out more convincing jobs than Jean Dujardin, no matter how charming he might be) I was more involved, more enraptured, more rewarded by Hugo.

Other wins I want to see tomorrow: Viola Davis for Best Actress, Octavia Spencer for Best Supporting Actress, Jonah Hill for Best Supporting Actor, Margin Call for Best Original Screenplay.  I want to see some slammin' dresses on the red carpet, and I want Billy Crystal to pull it out and be awesome as host.  We'll see how it goes!

Monday, February 13, 2012

Oscar Roundup: The Artist

The Artist.  So...that happened.  I'm going to say flat out that I don't understand why so many people are so excited about this movie.  I thought it was kind of interesting, and sort of a fun experiment, but overall?  I was honestly pretty bored.  It was saved a bit for me by the absolutely charming acting jobs by Berenice Bejo and Jean Dujardin, but when I left the theater I wasn't impressed.

This is short because I don't have a lot to say (SEE WHAT I DID THERE), but I'm pretty mystified by everyone going nuts over this movie.  (To say nothing of how baffled I am that this experiment in silent film earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination.)  I guess my big issue is that yes, it was kind of interesting to watch a silent film in this day and age, but I didn't get why it was done this way?  I don't feel that having The Artist be silent and in black and white added anything to my experience watching it.  Hugo, the other love letter to film that's collecting accolades this year, is also about the history of film - but it's dynamic, exciting, and beautiful.  Which are not adjectives I would have used to describe The Artist.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Oscar Roundup: The Help

It's that time of year that falls between the Oscar nominations being announced, and the telecast airing - that time of year when I frantically scramble to try and see the nominees I haven't had the chance to yet.  This year I have a lot of ground to cover, partially due to my own delinquency in seeing movies and partially due to the seemingly randomness of the nominations.  Of the nine best picture noms, I've already seen Moneyball and Hugo; yesterday, I watched The Help.

I read the book last month because I wanted to be part of the discussion.  I've heard a lot of the controversy and strong feelings surrounding this book (and subsequent movie), and I always like being included.  Having read it, I can say that I both enjoyed it and understand why people are complaining about it.  It's a very self-serving story, and sags a little under the weight of the author's guilt - but it's also a strong story about racial relationships (obviously) and the relationships women form between themselves...and how those get warped and break down when the women involved have very little power to affect their own lives. 

The movie is similar, but gets an extraordinary boost from the actresses.  Every performance is wonderful, from Emma Stone's squeaky wheel Skeeter straining against the claustrophobic confines of her home to Viola Davis' worn down, worn out, compassionate housemaid who continues to give even after she's got nothing left to offer.  The surprising note here was Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays the villain; her Hilly Holbrook is a contemptible character who schemes and back-stabs and plays with the tiny amount of power that society has given her...and ultimately makes you feel for even her, when she gets force-fed some badly needed truth for, you realize, probably the first time in her life.  Davis gives the best performance, but she's the star of the media at the moment so I won't repeat what everyone else is doing - suffice to say, she's as brilliant as people are saying. 

The strength of the performances means that even the bits of the story you want to side-eye (and while I enjoyed the movie, there are a lot of them) are full of emotional honesty and weight.  Getting the story in visual form also helps alleviate the problems the book has with voice.  That is, while I was reading it I was always aware that no matter which character was speaking, I was reading narration that had been written by a white person and thus was subject to white privilege and experience.  Watching it play out on screen means that I don't have that white person narrator between me and Aibileen or me and Minny - it's just their experience.  Clearly there's still the problem of the story's origins, I'm just saying that this mediates that a bit.

Oscar predictions: I haven't seen The Iron Lady, so I can't weigh in on Meryl Streep's performance, but if Viola Davis gets Best Actress she'll definitely have earned it.  And despite having two noms in the Best Supporting Actress category, I hope Jessica Chastain doesn't split the vote enough to take the award away from Octavia Spencer.  Her impeccable comedic timing and sass made for some of the best moments in the film.

I don't think this one has a real shot at Best Picture, and honestly, having seen Hugo I would pick the Scorsese love-letter to film over this one.  But I'm glad it was recognized.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

2011 In Review

I don't really have a top ten list of films for 2011 because I don't feel like I saw a complete sample of things that came out - I missed A LOT of movies that I wanted to see.  But several things did come out that, if I had a top ten list, would most likely have made the cut:

X-Men: First Class and Captain America, both two of the finest super hero movies the genre has turned out since, well, ever.

Drive, which won't get nearly as much awards press as I want it to.

Hugo, which I liked a whole lot more than I expected to, due to an unfortunately misleading trailer.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a movie which manages to be more exciting than both the original source material and the first adaptation.

Margin Call, which I tried to write about but had difficulties I can't really articulate; it's a wonderfully sharp piece of writing and acting that I maybe didn't really understand completely?  There's a lot of financial business that I didn't get, but it's a testament to the power of the actors that it didn't matter.  Check it out if you get the chance - I don't understand how it didn't get a wider release, with the surplus of powerhouse names in it (Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Spacey, Bradley Cooper, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany).

Maybe Moneyball?  I didn't write about this one, either, because I have a problematic relationship with it.  I want to recognize the wonderful writing and excellent performances (especially by Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman), but...it didn't resonate with me the same way it seems to have with the rest of the world.  I just didn't feel like there was enough of a story to fill the whole time slot - all the bits about Pitt's family life felt like padding to me, and didn't really add anything in terms of emotional development.  I wish it had been a really tightly-focused 60 minute film, concentrating on the baseball aspects of Pitt's character's life rather than a weakly-written relationship with a daughter I didn't care about.  The fascinating moments of this movie are the negotiations and the game itself, not the private lives of the characters.

If I get the chance to see more 2011 films before the end of January, I'll do a list for you guys.  Otherwise, what's above is pretty much my greatest hits of things I actually saw.

My biggest hope for 2012 in terms of film is simple: MORE.  ANIMATED.  MOVIES.  Is it just me, or was 2011 COMPLETELY LACKING in good animation?  I'm not sure I realized it until I watched the Golden Globes on Sunday, but to follow 2010, a year which gave us Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon, and Tangled with a spat of sequels and poorly reviewed items that disappeared almost as soon as they hit theaters seems...sad.  I hope Pixar delivers with BRAVE, is all I'm saying.