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.

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. 

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?

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.  

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.

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.

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!